Self-Care Plan

Okay, so we've established that self-care is necessary to radical practice.  But how do you actually accomplish taking care of yourself with the amazing number of things we have to and want to do every day?

In my life, self-care was a joke for a long time.  As a young person growing up in an emotionally stressful home, self-care was in limited supply.  Most of the time I was helping others or staying busy enough that I didn't have to think.  So I lived on a spectrum from helping others to completing objective tasks, a spectrum of activities largely divorced from self-care.  This seems like it is a fairly common reality, particularly for women and/or people involved with caregiving.  Hence, self-care activities for the purpose of self-care alone - not for resume-building or because someone told you to or because someone required it - was not something I built into my personal habit arsenal.  I lived in this way through college.  And through my first years post-college.  Finally, I realized life was not going to slow down.  I wasn't going to "get there" - there being a fantasy land where I had a daily routine that had ample time for self-care.  Then a few things happened at once.

1. I realized I was planning for an emotional retirement that was likely to never occur.  
Suggestion: Accept that life is busy and fast because we live in a competitive capitalistic society.  If you are going to get self-care, you are going to have to prioritize it and carve time out to allow for it.  It's part of getting through this marathon in a healthy way.

2. My family and friends finally convinced me that I like self-care.
Suggestion: Try to listen to the people who love you when they say things that - if you are like I was - you hate.  Examples include, "don't work too hard," "you should go home," and "take a deep breath."  When I was a workaholic I interpreted these as being related to competition (i.e. they wanted me to stop working so I would be easier to beat) or that they just did not understand my work ethic (i.e. they couldn't understand me - adolescence, anyone?).  Eventually as I learned to trust, I believed them and I took a break.

3.  I realized that when I participated in self-care, I was way less anxious.  I could do my work with less stress and less fear of failure.  
Suggestion:  Try it.  See how you feel after taking a whole day or a whole weekend off.  Or taking off enough time that you feel like you can work again.

So clearly I had a battle even getting to the point that I was willing to admit that self-care was a real thing and was not going to prevent me from finishing all of my tasks.  Now I approach self-care like I approach most of my life as a budding social worker: through assessment, treatment planning, and progress assessment.

University of Buffalo has my favorite tools for making a self-care plan.  It takes into account the many facets of the individual: mind, spirit, body, work, emotions, and relationships.  It also helps you prepare for emergencies when your self-care bucket is empty and your stress bucket is over-flowing.  Check it out here: https://socialwork.buffalo.edu/resources/self-care-starter-kit.html.  

The only thing I've added is a worry/ re-frame t-chart.  Do you have worries that come up all the time and you find yourself and your friends/spouse/support system talking through a million times?  I do!  I'm trying to avoid this anxiety deja vu by writing out my worries and worst-case scenarios and then writing a response to myself to help me re-frame the situation.  Here's an example:

Worry: I will get a poor grade on this paper.  

Re-frame/ Response:  Number one: no one cares what grades you get anymore.  No one will ever see these grades.  Number two: you work your best when you are fearless.  Be fearless.  You might get a poor grade.  That is good practice for paper rejections.  Just write.  Believe what you've always believed - that you have important ideas that will help people and you need to get them out.  This paper is a small step on the road to being able to do that.  You can take the step, and you can miss a step and still get to the destination.  It will be okay.  Just write something.  

So yeah - a bit corny, but definitely what my husband would say if I asked him.  Which I have.  Many times.  And he's tired of repeating it.  So writing it down will help both of us.

Last step.  Share your plan.  Share it with your partners in life, so they can remind you about it when you are stressed or feeling guilty about taking a break.

Take care,
Kess