Self-Care Planning

“Self-care refers to activities and practices that we can engage in on a regular basis to reduce stress and maintain and enhance our short- and longer-term health and well-being. Self-care is necessary for your effectiveness and success in honoring your professional and personal commitments.”

-University of Buffalo, School of Social Work

Practicing self-care will help you:

• Identify and manage the general challenges that all hard-working professionals face, such as the potential for stress and burnout or interpersonal difficulties.
• Be aware of your own personal vulnerabilities, such as the potential for retraumatization (if you have a trauma history), vicarious or secondary traumatization (if you work with individuals who report their own traumatic experiences), and compassion fatigue (which you can develop from a combination of burnout and vicarious traumatization).
• Achieve more balance in your life, by maintaining and enhancing the attention you pay to the different domains of your life in a way that makes sense to you.

Not sure how to create a self-care plan?

Take this Self-Care Assessment.

There is no “one-size-fits-all” self-care plan, but there is a common thread to all self-care plans: making a commitment to attend to all the domains of your life, including your physical and psychological health, emotional and spiritual needs, and relationships.

Use this Daily Self-Care Planning worksheet to help you craft a plan.

Emergency self-care is just as important as self-care planning, however, it is often an element that is forgotten about. Use your emergency self-care plan when your stress levels are very high, triggered, or you have high emotions.

Check out this Emergency Self-Care Planning worksheet.

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99 Coping