Take care of yourself

Sharing – Beyond Survival: How Daily Self-Care Leads To A Flourishing Life

ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

I wanted to share this post because I think the idea of self-care has gotten a little exaggerated. I always like to break it down to its simplest form – “self-care” is literally taking care of yourself. Whatever that looks like.

Simply put, self-care has two general aims. To protect us or manage stress and other negative states and to enhance our wellbeing and overall functioning (Butler, Mercer, McClain-Meeder, Horne, and Dudley, 2019). Put another way, it’s the act of treating ourselves with a caring attitude, i.e. kindness (Michael, Schujovitzky, and Karnieli-Miller, 2024).

https://unwantedlife.me/beyond-survival-how-daily-self-care-leads-to-a-flourishing-life

My favorite takeaway from this is that self-care is an everyday thing. It’s not something we plan to do; if the stress gets bad enough, it’s the actions we take every day for ourselves. Think of it like brushing your teeth. You do it every day because it keeps your teeth healthy; you don’t wait until they are dirty enough that they need a dentist’s attention to decide now is a good time to start brushing them.

Find ways to take care of yourself every day, and do them. Those are the tools that will help you when times are stressful and anxiety-inducing. You are worthy of that.

What are the ways in which you take care of yourself regularly?

Similar Posts

  • Links I’m Sharing (weekly)

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Linked: How to Cope with Losing Your Job A Psychologist’s Notes from Quarantine Don’t you dare give up Four Unusual Signs of Anxiety We’re All Doing This During the Pandemic “We are all riding on our own personal emotional roller coasters.” Julie Laperouse: Do what you can School Counselors Have A Message For Kids: It’s…

  • Sharing – Digital Tools Are Revolutionizing Mental Health Care in the U.S.

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    Is technology a panacea for everything that’s wrong with mental health care in the US? No. Are they always the appropriate solution? No. But do we need to find some way for technology to step in a fill this gaps when the need has been going unmet like this for so long?

    “We have a crisis in mental health care in the United States. Sixty percent of young people with major depression received no mental health treatment in 2017-2018, and one quarter of adults with mental illness reported an unmet need for treatment. In the U.S., 55% of counties have no psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker, and 70% don’t have a single child psychiatrist. Queues for substance abuse care can be weeks long; 70% of those who needed substance use treatment in 2017 did not receive it. To make it worse, many practices have closed or reduced their capacity in response to pandemic health concerns.”

  • Sharing – Depression and Older Adults

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    I think this is something that often gets overlooked. It shouldn’t be: “Sometimes older people who are depressed appear to feel tired, have trouble sleeping, or seem grumpy and irritable. Confusion or attention problems caused by depression can sometimes look like Alzheimer’s disease or other brain disorders. Older adults also may have more medical conditions,…

  • Sharing – Acknowledging Limits – Helping Others

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 2 minutes

    One of the things I immediately recommend to anyone asking about starting a blog like mine is to set your boundaries. If you don’t, you’ll burn out and be gone within 6 months. Decide what you will say, what you won’t, and how much time you’ll dedicate to writing for the blog and interacting with people online. Because if you don’t you’ll find yourself unable to cope and you’ll bail on it.

    I’d say the same thing about anything. Yes, be with someone who needs support, but set your boundaries around it, and make sure you are still taking care of your own life. Because the only thing worse than someone not sitting and listening to a friend or loved one when they are struggling, is having some do it for a while, and then disappear. That doesn’t do anyone any good. We all need you to be well just as much as we need you to stick with relationships when someone is dealing with healing, or mental health issues.

    Set your boundaries, and be willing to stick to them, lovingly. As Liz says in her piece, it’s not about you doing everything, it’s about you pointing them to a whole host of options for support. That is what being a good support system is all about.

  • Link – The power of kindness

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    “I have learned,” she writes, “that when you teach kindness and compassion to students and they really understand the concept, everything else falls into place. This should be the first lesson of every teacher.” Looking at other people with kindness prevents the kind of dehumanization that I’ve written about before. It’s when we see other…

  • Sharing – RUOK? A step based guide on how to ask, how to answer, and how to act!

    ByMikeM Reading Time: 1 minute

    This is an Australian-based resource, but in honor of the upcoming RUOK day for my Aussie friends, I wanted to share it.

    In addition, the tips they give for how to ask if someone is OK, and how to respond, are useful to anyone, everywhere.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

To respond on your own website, enter the URL of your response which should contain a link to this post's permalink URL. Your response will then appear (possibly after moderation) on this page. Want to update or remove your response? Update or delete your post and re-enter your post's URL again. (Find out more about Webmentions.)