#Basic needs self care checklist professional
This Self-Care Checkup breaks self-care down into physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and professional self-care. Awareness raising and self-compassion (Neff, 2004), then, are the central features of self-care.Ī solid starting point for embarking on a self-care journey is to take an inventory of how good we are at it already. To take better care of ourselves, we need to work on cultivating a kinder, more compassionate voice. For there is nothing more energy draining and destructive than our inner critic, the bullying voice that tells us we are lacking. Riegel and colleagues (2017) rightly highlights the importance of adjusting our self-talk as a crucial component of self-care. The second core part of self-care is about managing the way we talk to ourselves. Our key task is to stimulate our clients to reflect on what it is that they need – their own unique and special sets of self-care activities. What does and does not restore us differs substantially from person to person, depending on our tastes and preferences. The true essence of self-care is twofold: it involves self-knowledge and positive self-talk.įirst and foremost, we need to understand our true needs. Often, self-care advice takes the form of prescribing specific relaxation activities to clients.
As the saying goes: ‘from an empty cup, we cannot pour.’ The worse we take care of ourselves, the less we will have to give. We will be unable to decompress or find outlets for our stressors. If we do not practice basic self-care, we may quite simply burn out. These detailed, science-based exercises will not only help you increase the compassion and kindness you show yourself, but will also give you the tools to help your clients, students, or employees show more compassion to themselves.
#Basic needs self care checklist download
But it also entails looking after our minds and emotions, which can take the form of setting time aside for activities that nourish our spirits and learning to understand how we can best replenish our energies.īefore you continue, we thought you might like to download our three Self-Compassion Exercises for free. It includes taking good care of our physical health, most notably by eating healthily, exercising, and sleeping well. Self-care is a sustainable and holistic investment in our minds and bodies. Qigong, meditation, and yoga are all techniques designed to restore our inner balance and prevent us from burning out.Ĭombining self-soothing and relaxation with resilience-enhancing strategies, Western-style self-care, too, promotes a proactive approach to our physical and mental wellbeing (Skovholt & Trotter-Mathison, 2011). The therapeutics of Traditional Chinese medicine, for example, revolve around preventing the exhaustion or blockage of “qi,” our vital life energy. Marked by a preventive rather than reactive approach to health, many Asian cultures seek to manage our energy economies before they become depleted. Though a relatively new phenomenon in the West, self-care has a much older tradition in Eastern cultures, reaching back to antiquity. Self-care continues to be a popular buzzword.īut while it persistently grabs headlines, it also remains a fuzzy concept.
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