24 September 2022
In families suffering addiction, those around the person with addictive behaviours tend to neglect self-care. Helping professionals also tend to neglect self-care, placing the welfare of others above self. In an earlier blog (Stages of Recovery II, https://understandings.ca/2022/07/27/stages-of-recovery-ii-repair/) I promised a blog on self-care. This is that blog.
Poor self-care is a cause of relapses in recovery (Melemis, 2015). It is also a known cause of compassion fatigue and burnout, both of which are running rampant in our pandemic, inflation, and war-riddled time. My intuitive sense is that good self-care could be a serious contributor to a less stressed healthcare system. That is, when a person helps herself, she also helps those around her. The definition of self-care makes this obvious.
Scott (2022, p. 1) defined self-care as “a multidimensional, multifaceted process of purposeful engagement in strategies that promote healthy functioning and enhance well-being.” Scott added that self-care is a conscious act i.e., a choice each of us makes (or doesn’t) about our own wellbeing. Wellbeing is divided into the five dimensions of spiritual, physical, intellectual, emotional, and social health, a list abbreviated as SPIES. After exploring each of those five issues, we’ll return to burnout and compassion fatigue and how they work in addictive families, next week.
Scott (2022) makes an excellent and understated point: we all have stressors, and we will continue to have stressors until our lives end because, that’s how life is (per the last blog). As such, acceptance of that fact, and arming yourself with resilience, are key to minimizing the role and impact of stress in your life. That’s another way of seeing self-care: the building of stress-busting resilience.
Spirituality, the first of the five dimensions, is concerned with the things that give you meaning, understanding and/or a deep sense of connection to life. Do I feel connected to the world? Why, how, or why not? What are some of the most beautiful experiences I’ve had? Can I foster more of those? What gives me a sense of meaningfulness in my life? Is it my work, my relationships, music, art, or nature? How do I build more of those experiences into my day-to-day life? Exploring your answers to those questions is a good start if your spiritual ship has run aground.
Physical self-care is the simplest to understand but not the easiest to faithfully practice. One of Scott’s premises is that keeping our bodies revving in a healthy zone also keeps our minds in a resilient place. The connection between physical activity and wellbeing has been confirmed in repeated studies. You already know all the parts: sleep, food, exercise, and maintenance, like medical check-ups, meds, and sunlight.
Intellectual self-care is a big part of therapy and recovery programs. How do you think and what effect does that thinking have on your wellness? Something as simple as the Serenity Prayer helps me keep things in perspective. Is the present stressor something I can change or something beyond my control? Do what you can and then let it be. Thinking that way is part of intellectual self-care.
Within the Serenity Prayer, and the questions that arise from it, is a concern with your self talk. If you believe you can control things beyond your grasp—like someone else’s behaviour—what are you likely to say to yourself? I have failed to bring my son to sobriety, so I’m a failure. First, none of us has the power to invest another human being with the desire for health—that comes from within, or it doesn’t show up at all. As such, judging yourself for failing to change another person, is a double indemnity: you’re mistaking the nature of life (reality) and you are investing yourself with the responsibility of possessing and using superhuman powers. Knowing and practicing that in daily life can only improve your health.
Emotional self-care, and its importance, are clear from that last example. Do you have ways to express what Scott (2022) called uncomfortable emotions like sadness, anger, and anxiety? Sharing these with a trusted friend is one way. A punching bag is another. Seriously. Running, fresh air walking, and temporary distraction can all help. Just watching an engaging movie can change your perspective, as can parking an issue for a day or a week. Other suggestions: schedule a couple minutes each day to run through this SPIES acronym asking yourself: how is my spirit, my physical self, my intellect, my emotions, and my social life? Pay attention to the answers and pay the price for improving your emotional health.
Social self-care requirements vary person to person. Scott (2022) recommended that each of us assess our present friendships to understand whether we feel well supported and well connected within a network of people who matter to you. The difficulty with social self-care is that we need it most when we have the least time to spend on it. When we’re busiest is the most likely time we’ll ignore self-care to get all those important things done. But here’s the thing: if you burn out, or find yourself in depression, you are of far less use to yourself or anyone else. In other words, all of those important things you need to get done—more than caring for yourself as your own most valuable resource—will drop to the ground like dead flies. Conversely, if you make a habit of putting effort into important relationships, like the one with yourself, you are much less likely to enter the burnout zone.
If you look at a problem and think of its impact in the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year, decade, or century, a different view emerges. We’re all on leased time—how much of that most precious resource do you want to forfeit to ungoverned stress? Building resilience and practicing the five parts of self-care, are the beginning of self-care 101. We’ll look a little deeper in the next blog.
Dan Chalykoff is working toward an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies. He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understandings of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.
References
Melemis, S. M. (2015). Relapse prevention and the five rules of recovery. Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 88, pp. 325-332.
Scott, E. (2022, May 23). Five self-care practices for every area of your life. VeryWell Mind.
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