What Is Self-Care and Why Is It Important?
Self-care is a term that typically comes up throughout the course of therapy. It is a phrase that is gaining popularity as mental health awareness increases in our world. But what exactly is self-care, and why is it emphasized so much?
Put simply, self-care is an act of taking care of yourself. However, self-care is not just taking care of your basic needs. It’s going beyond taking care of yourself enough to survive life and doing things so that you can thrive in life. Self-care includes behaviors or actions that “fill your tank”, which can result in improvements in mood, a decrease in anxiety, and stronger connections in relationships.
Examples of Self-Care
What does self-care look like in everyday life? There are different categories that self-care can fall into. In therapy, we talk about the Bio-Psycho-Social-Spiritual model. This model explains the four main areas that affect our mental health.
We have the biological factor that includes our physical health and biological components such as brain chemistry, hormones, or how drugs or alcohol affect us. Next, we have the psychological sector that includes our beliefs, emotions, attitudes, IQ, etc. In the social sector, we have our relationships, how we were raised, and our culture. Spiritually, we have religious beliefs, spiritual practices, and higher levels of consciousness.
Self-care can occur in each of these areas. For the biological sector, you may engage in self-care by cooking yourself a healthy meal or by exercising. Psychologically, self-care can look like speaking kindly to yourself or listing out your accomplishments. Socially, self-care may include spending time with a friend or going to a support group. Spiritually, you may implement self-care by practicing gratitude, meditating, or praying.
Why Is Self-Care Important?
For many people, it can be difficult to consciously practice self-care. It may feel selfish to prioritize yourself, or maybe you feel that you do not have any extra time. When self-care is not practiced, issues like burnout at work, depression, anxiety, or anger outbursts can occur. Additionally, drug or alcohol use can increase when there is no self-care.
Self-care helps cope with stress, difficult life transitions, anxiety, and depression. Self-care is an act of nurturing ourselves so that we can continue forward in life.
When you neglect self-care, you are living a life that is not sustainable. Eventually, the lack of self-care can catch up to you and leave you running on empty. Just as a car cannot run without gasoline in the tank, we cannot run without having “fuel” in our tank.
How To Practice Self-Care?
For many people, they may consider the few days of vacation or time off enough self-care for the entire year. However, think about how often we have to fill our cars with gas? We are constantly driving our cars, demanding they take us from A to B, and in return, we have to regularly fill the tank. We cannot expect that we can fill our personal tank once a month, or twice a year, and continue to keep up with daily demands. Self-care needs to happen on a regular basis. Depending on your level of stress, you may need more self-care. While it may be hard to make time for self-care, starting out with just a few minutes each day or week can be helpful. Self-care does not always have to look like going to the gym for an hour a day or meditating for thirty minutes. The act of self-care can start small, such as having a cup of hot tea in the evening or going on a 10-minute walk in the morning. It may be going to bed 15 minutes earlier, or spending 10 minutes resting and listening to music on your lunch break. Self-care can even look like seeing a therapist for an hour a few times a month! If you are struggling to practice self-care, starting with just a few minutes each week can make a big difference.
What If I Can’t Make Self-Care A Priority?
If you find yourself struggling to implement self-care, it may be helpful to talk to a therapist. Therapy can help uncover reasons why you cannot practice self-care and help to develop strategies and goals to make self-care achievable. If you’re interested in working with a therapist, please reach out to me to see if I can help.
