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13/07/2023 What is self-care?

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Climate conversations 13 07 2023Download

What is self-care?

Self-care can be anything you do to take care of your own physical, emotional and mental health needs. It includes the basics like making sure you’re not thirsty, hungry or tired. But is also used to describe things you might do for relaxation or to lift your spirits.

For Dr. Panu Pihkala, self-care is about getting space from the climate crisis but in a constructive way.

What I mean with healthy distancing is a variety of methods to replenish one’s energies and to keep functional.

Dr Panu Pihkala1Wray, Britt. “How to Take Breaks from the Climate Crisis without Living in Denial.” Substack newsletter. Gen Dread (blog), January 25, 2023. https://gendread.substack.com/p/how-to-take-breaks-from-the-climate

Conversation starter:

Close your eyes (if that’s comfortable). What image or idea comes to mind when I say self-care?

  • a to-do list of daily habits like exercise
  • mindfulness and yoga
  • Mum being asked by a nurse if she is doing self-care
  • exercise in nature

Building our toolkit:

What do you do already that you think of as self-care?

Activity: We each made notes of the things that we do, or have done, as self-care, and what we get out of each one. Then we started pooling our lists, adding more ideas and arranging them into categories.

Here are the results:

Things I can be absorbed in

  1. Learning something new
  2. Going to a gig – I can forget what’s going on around and I feel so excited. Before, during and after.
  3. Sing
  4. Cook – it reduces anxiety a little
  5. Gardening
  6. Music – gigs and festivals
  7. Caring for someone else
  8. I go to the allotment – I feel happier
  9. Having a bath – to try and relax and be comfortable reading a book
  10. Reading a book

Emergency self-care

  1. Tablets
  2. Tidying up relaxes me
  3. Writing an action plan
  4. Take my tablets
  5. Making lists and set reminders – reduces anxiety and I can stop worrying about forgetting
  6. Having a bath
  7. I go to bed in the day – I feel more comfortable
  8. I lie down for 20 minutes – I feel refreshed
  9. Make lists – sometimes things are not as bad after all
  10. Doing puzzles

Things that feel energising

  1. I ride my bike – I feel happy
  2. I go for a walk – I feel refreshed
  3. Exercise
  4. Being with friends
  5. Cycling – it makes me feel that I’m using my physically fit body
  6. Laughing
  7. Constructive rest – I feel relaxed
  8. Time in green spaces
  9. Sing – it lifts spirits

Things I find relaxing

  1. I have a massage –especially feet. I feel calm and relaxed
  2. I do yoga – I feel that I can focus better
  3. Bath – relax
  4. Being teetotal – stopping harming myself with alcohol
  5. I do yoga – I feel calm
  6. Drinking
  7. Red wine – shift of mood
  8. Reading in bed
  9. Having a bath – to try and relax and read my book more comfortably

Looking after ourselves

  1. Taking my tablets – I feel less pain and nausea
  2. Cleaning my teeth – I don’t like doing it but I think that it’s important to look after my teeth
  3. I have a shower – I feel more human
  4. Exercise
  5. Yoga – I feel less stiff
  6. Cook – reduces anxiety
  7. Cook – you know that you are making something nutritious
  8. Music – gigs, festivals
  9. Having a bath – to clean myself and try to stop itching

Things I look forward to

  1. Having a massage
  2. I go to the allotment – I feel happier
  3. Coming to “ climate conversations”
  4. Holidays
  5. Gigs, theatre, cinema
  6. Plans with friends

Sources

Pihkala, Panu. 2022. ‘The Process of Eco-Anxiety and Ecological Grief: A Narrative Review and a New Proposal’. Sustainability 14 (24): 16628. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142416628.

Wray, Britt. 2023. ‘How to Take Breaks from the Climate Crisis without Living in Denial’. Substack newsletter. Gen Dread (blog). 25 January 2023. https://gendread.substack.com/p/how-to-take-breaks-from-the-climate.

Side by Side Research Consortium. 2017. ‘Developing Peer Support in the Community: A Toolkit’. Mind. https://www.mind.org.uk/media-a/4834/peer-support-toolkit-final.pdf.

Lorig, Kate. 2014. Self-Management of Long-Term Health Conditions: A Handbook for People with Chronic Disease. Third edition. Boulder, Colorado: Bull Publishing Company. Available from Manchester Libraries

Notes

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