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Self-care simply means being kind to yourself, both mentally and physically. It is about knowing when your resources are running low, and stepping back to replenish them. It is about not letting those resources get too low in the first place. It is about consistently integrating self -compassion into your life on a daily, ongoing basis. Practicing consistent self-care can improve your mood and reduce anxiety. It can reduce the negative effects of stress.
The self-care journey is ongoing–and it changes over time. Here are some ideas and guidance to starting and growing your self-care routine:
Moving through the storm: From surge capacity to self-care
What if going through the motions isn’t an ability—but a survival mechanism rooted deep in our subconscious? Surge capacity is a collection of adaptive systems that allow us to “keep going” for short-term survival in acutely stressful situations.
Self-Care: What works for us
Threads of Life’s Volunteer Family Guides provide peer support to others who are coping with the effects of workplace tragedy. Every guide goes through intensive training for their volunteer role. They learn how to draw on their own life story to help another along their journey of healing. And they learn the importance of self-care – both for themselves as volunteers, and for the families they’re supporting. Here, our VFGs offer a grab bag of self-care ideas from their own tool kits:
Resources for your self-care plan
Self-care is a bit of a buzz word these days. Unfortunately, lots of people are ready to dismiss it, at the very time we all need it most. If you’ve been affected by a work-related tragedy and are coping with illness, injury or grief; if you face challenges to your mental health; or if you’re simply trying to keep things balanced while you navigate the pandemic and all of life’s other currents, you need a plan for your own self-care.
Self-Care during the COVID-19 Pandemic
These are very challenging times we are living in right now. The last three months have been difficult, to say the least, with everyone on lockdown due to COVID-19 … the invisible enemy.
Men in Grief: Self-Care is for You Too!
While grief styles may shift for both men and women, exploring our own style of grieving can provide insight into how we as individuals need to work through the messy part and feel supported. How we care for ourselves as grievers can also give focus and attention to what we need to do for self-care.
Un-planning Self-Care
Have you ever asked yourself ‘what does good self-care really look like?’ I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that most people don’t exactly know what self-care is to them. To be honest though, it doesn’t really matter if you haven’t figured it all out yet!...
The 3 Ingredients in Restorative Self-Care
When was the last time you were stressed out? Maybe when you were paying bills, watching the news, attempting to make sense of COVID-19 or processing paperwork as a result of the loss of your loved one. Your heart starts racing, your palms get sweaty, your stomach jumps into your throat. We experience these feelings so often we don’t even recognize that we are stressed, and that our physical and mental health is compromised.
More than just one day
July 24 marked International Self-Care Day. Dedicating a day to celebrating self-care and what it can do is certainly beneficial—for some people, maybe this day will be the first time that they will hear about self-care. Over the past month, we’ve explored the many different facets of self-care.
The Healing Path
So, I’m sure we can all agree that grief doesn’t magically disappear. We are often reminded of the pain of loss. Even years after my brother’s sudden death, I still feel the ripples of what was a stinging loss.
You-shaped self-care
Over the past few years, as self-care has risen in popularity, it has also risen in complexity. With products, classes, activities, and recommendations coming from every direction, it can feel really challenging to weed through everything and see what’s right for you. It can feel hard to even know what self-care is.
