Self Care Tools
Self Care Skills
What are they?
How do they work?
Finding the activities that are truly caring for ourselves can be difficult, and it’s not just about taking a break. It’s important to know what self care is for us personally. Self care skills or activities are usually needed when we are burned out. Emotional challenges and stress can arise when we are putting all our energy into one area of our lives and we start to neglect other important areas. This neglect of important needs and values can make use feel unbalanced and can make us feel unaligned with our true selves. Self care skills work because they align us again with our true self and get us back on track with who we are. This allows us to feel more fulfilled in our life and gives us energy for those other arenas that can be difficult.
When should they be used?
The time to use self care skills and activities is consistently, this is what causes us to keep up the pace with daily life. But when they should be used as a lifeline while in crisis, is when we are feeling emotionally drained, burned out, overwhelmed, or feel like we have nothing else to give. The big goal is to avoid getting to that point, but if we find ourselves there, try thinking of something small you can do each day that helps you to connect again to yourself. It could be doing a hobby that you haven’t done in awhile, or going to a location in nature where you feel at peace, it can be something as small as treating yourself to lunch, or doing something that helps you connect spiritually. Self care is one of those things that need to be done regularly in order to get out of and avoid burnout. Often the smaller daily and weekly consistent self care skills will go farther in fulfilling your emotional fuel tank, than the big once every 3 months to a year self care activities will. The big self care items are important as well, but as far as purposes of getting out of being emotionally empty and staying fueled up smaller consistent actions are needed. And remember that it is the action and the doing that helps fill us, not the thinking about it.
Specific Skills
Identifying fulfilling values and acting on them.
Identifying times that you have felt peace, and what actions had caused peace.
Reconnecting too or finding a spiritual practice.
Doing something healthy that satisfies a need for achievement.
Doing something healthy that satisfies a need for relationships.
Doing something healthy that satisfies a need for freedom.
Doing something healthy that satisfies a need for fun or relaxation.
Basic Needs Circle
Narrowing values
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