I was introduced to Self Care Catalysts when I attended ePharma back in March. I really had a great time speaking with the SCC team and am extremely happy to say that I will be participating in their Self Care Mvmt at the end of June in Toronto!
O, Canada!
There is some great buzz out there already on Twitter using the tag #selfcaremvmt. The movement centers around how important it is to care for ourselves as patients with chronic illnesses and to celebrate the moments where we have been able to care for ourselves.
For the next few weeks, I’ll be posting on some self-care topics as a part of the lead up to this awesome event – and my foray into world travel.
It is important to mention that I am being compensated for these blog posts and my involvement in the Self Care Mvmt. However, all thoughts below are my own and have not been influenced by said compensation.
Today’s topic is Psychological and Emotional Self-Care.
Self-care is hard. When it comes to physical self-care, we can write it off as needing to do maintenance like oil changes so our bodies don’t fall apart.
Mental, psychological, and emotional self-care, however, cannot be handled so easily.
In order to take care of our minds and souls, we have to discover what helps us individually to a further extent than physical self-care. Fulfillment and enjoyment are at the root of this type of self-care.
Personally, there are many things that I find help with this type of self-care. Meditation and mindfulness help me immensely as I discussed with Rohan Gunatillake for his book This is Happening:
The app Rohan created, Buddhify, helps so much.
Therapy helps me as well. My therapist is AMAZING and she does such a great job of helping me to think through things, even if I don’t see her as often as I could.
As I touched on in my last post on spiritual self-care, being in nature and/or with loved ones truly helps me to re-energize.
Laughter is key as well. Without laughing at my hands when they don’t work or at myself when I slip and harm myself due to the lack of strength I once possessed… I would cry. I have learned that crying isn’t bad but merely a release of emotions. Still, I don’t enjoy it. It feels more harmful than helpful and isn’t conducive to my overall health.
I can track my moods through the Health Storylines app which helps me to practice self-care more earnestly.
One of the things that I enjoy from the Health Storylines app from Self Care Catalysts is how easy it can be to gather wisdom and thoughts for the day:
There are also portions of journaling (which I don’t necessarily utilize because I write here!) but is a great set-up:
It isn’t always easy to figure out what things to write, so these are great prompts for those new to journaling.
What are some ways that you practice self-care for the emotional and psychological parts of you?