Practicing Self Care

Practicing Self Care

Practicing Self Care
Transcript

So what does it mean to practice self care? We often associate self care with things that we do once in a while – like getting a massage or taking a bath, but I like to think about self care as meaningful self care on a daily basis as a way to take care of our emotional and physical needs. I like to think of the four C’s of self care: Clock, Care, Connection, and Compassion. When we think of clock, we think of making time, dedicating time to taking care of ourselves. Sometimes this could be a very short practice – taking one or two minutes to do some deep breathing, a brief guided meditation or some journaling – or sometimes we might decide to dedicate a longer time to a more involved practice. The second step is care. How do you really take care of yourself? This often begins with physical practices, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, and then can move beyond that to meditation, journaling practices, and so forth. The third step is connection. Making time to connect with family and friends on a regular basis so that we’re both giving support and receiving support. Connection can also mean connecting to a professional. So for example, if you’re struggling with severe stress, depression, or anxiety, making it a priority to seek professional support can actually be a very important part of self care. And the last step is compassion – self compassion in particular. Oftentimes when we think of self care, we can actually get a bit rigid with our routines and get hard on ourselves if we’re not doing our journaling every night or we haven’t exercised every day. Really noticing our internal voice and making it a practice to be kind to ourselves as we go through our self care routines is very, very important. Also, compassion towards other people. Things like random acts of kindness, service, and helping others can go a long way in helping us to feel good about ourselves.

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Practicing Self Care

So what does it mean to practice self care? We often associate self care with things that we do once in a while – like getting a massage or taking a bath, but I like to think about self care as meaningful self care on a daily basis as a way to take care of our emotional and physical needs. I like to think of the four C’s of self care: Clock, Care, Connection, and Compassion. When we think of clock, we think of making time, dedicating time to taking care of ourselves. Sometimes this could be a very short practice – taking one or two minutes to do some deep breathing, a brief guided meditation or some journaling – or sometimes we might decide to dedicate a longer time to a more involved practice. The second step is care. How do you really take care of yourself? This often begins with physical practices, such as nutrition, sleep, exercise, and then can move beyond that to meditation, journaling practices, and so forth. The third step is connection. Making time to connect with family and friends on a regular basis so that we’re both giving support and receiving support. Connection can also mean connecting to a professional. So for example, if you’re struggling with severe stress, depression, or anxiety, making it a priority to seek professional support can actually be a very important part of self care. And the last step is compassion – self compassion in particular. Oftentimes when we think of self care, we can actually get a bit rigid with our routines and get hard on ourselves if we’re not doing our journaling every night or we haven’t exercised every day. Really noticing our internal voice and making it a practice to be kind to ourselves as we go through our self care routines is very, very important. Also, compassion towards other people. Things like random acts of kindness, service, and helping others can go a long way in helping us to feel good about ourselves.

How To Manage Stress

There are several factors to consider when we look at how to manage stress. The first is to be aware of when we’re going through difficult times. It’s important to remember that even positive life changes can be stressful, so things like moving, getting a new job, getting married, even those can be stressful and it’s important for us to be aware of that. The second thing to note is: what are your personal signs and symptoms of stress? Do you tend to have a difficult time falling asleep? Do you get sick more frequently? Do you notice pain in your neck and shoulders or stomach upset? Knowing how you in particular respond to stress can help you be aware when you’re actually under stress. The third step is to practice really good self-care. This starts with physical practices like being conscious of our nutrition, exercise, sleep, hygiene, and then also considering other practices such as meditation, journaling, and making sure that we’re connecting with family and friends. And the fourth thing to be aware of is to know when we get really overwhelmed that that’s when it’s important to reach out for professional support. Looking for a therapist, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even your primary care doctor to get additional support and resources when you’re starting to feel really overwhelmed.

CBT Therapy

CBT or cognitive behavior therapy is a therapy that was developed by Aaron Beck and focuses on how your thoughts impact your behaviors as well as your emotions. The C or cognitive focuses on your thoughts. This means any sort of thought that might come into your head at any given moment. For example, if I bumped into someone on the street, I may have the thought, oh, that person hates me. When I think about that thought a little more, I may realize, oh, they look like they were in a rush. Maybe they don’t hate me. The behavior refers to any actions or physical feelings you might have as a result of that thought. So for example, if someone bumps into me, I may turn around and look at them funny. Finally, emotions are the result of the thought as well as the behavior. The emotion that comes out of thinking someone hates me can be very defensive or insecure. However, if I’m able to reformulate that thought, I then have a different emotion of more security and confidence. CBT is typically short term and structured. Your CBT therapist will typically assign you homework assignments for you to do over the course of the week so that when you come back to therapy, you can pick up where you left off. Research shows that CBT therapy is one of the most effective forms of therapy and should be considered in a wide variety of settings including anxiety, depression, and ADHD. CBT is a skills-based therapy, so if you feel like I really need to learn more skills to cope with and deal with my anxiety, CBT might be right for you. CBT is typically useful when you have an acute problem or specific issues that you want to deal with. If you are coming into therapy thinking, I just want to talk about myself, CBT might not be right for you. But if you have something that is going on in your head, maybe a bunch of thoughts racing and you want to learn how to control those thoughts, CBT might be the right fit. CBT focuses on automatic negative thoughts, which are automatic thoughts that pop into your head, but that involve a negative evaluation of either yourself or the situation. These thoughts can be very problematic because they can color the way you interpret a situation. Oftentimes, CBT therapists will recommend breathing exercises or mindful meditation to help you get in that state where you can finally evaluate your automatic thoughts and maybe even restructure them and come up with a more helpful and useful thoughts.

Napping

Often people ask me about naps – are they good? Are they bad? Can they help your sleep deprivation? Well, the truth is – it depends on you. If you can get away with a 10 or 20 minute nap and you feel refreshed and you’re able to wake up easily and get to work and get back to work but then you can still sleep well at night, there’s no reason not to have a nap. The problem with napping comes with somebody who suffers from insomnia. If they say that they can’t sleep at night and then they’re sleeping for an hour in the afternoon, I wouldn’t be that surprised. It’s kind of like having a snack an hour before dinner – how hungry are you for dinner if you’ve just eaten recently? For insomniacs who have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep – I discourage them from taking naps. On the other hand, if you enjoy a nap and it makes you feel refreshed – as long as it doesn’t go for too long and get in the way of your night sleep – there’s no problem.

Tips For Staying Hydrated

Water is what most of your body consists of but most people aren’t staying adequately hydrated. There are some great strategies that you can employ to get more water into your body and to be your healthiest self. The thing that I like to do is to take lemon slices and lime slices along with different herbs like mint to add to my water so that it tastes great and I enjoy drinking it all day long.

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