It will help to overcome the difficult period and not to fall apart.
What is a self-care plan and what is it for?
This is a kind of road map that will help you cope with stress, not fall into despair and not lose control if problems pile up. Such a plan should be created by you and especially for you, taking into account your characteristics.
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What is it for?
- To better understand yourself and your needs. The very process of drawing up a strategy, and then putting it into practice, will help you to know yourself and analyze what you want and what makes you feel better.
- In order not to get lost in a difficult situation. Everyone has difficult periods: fatigue, breakup, blockage at work, emotional burnout. At such moments, you don’t understand how to cope with this chaos and not lose your presence of mind. But if you already have a step-by-step plan ready, then it will become easier to take control of the situation.
- To take care of yourself regularly. And learn to take care of yourself. After all, if you do this every day and understand your needs well, then in times of crisis it will be easier for you to calm down and gather yourself. As they say, “I have me, and we can handle it.”
How to make a self-care plan
Step 1. Remember what helped you before
Analyze your past experience. Think about the things you did that made you feel a little better. It can be breathing practices, playing sports, sleeping, watching your favorite movie, talking with loved ones.
Make your list. Just try not to include things that can harm your body and mind: smoking, drinking alcohol, overeating, and so on.
Step 2. Think about what else could help you
Maybe you have come across some interesting tips, such as box breathing , which helps in a stressful situation. Or about how to arrange a three-day sleep marathon and bring yourself back to life after a hard week. Or maybe someone close to him said that he was literally saved by yoga or massage. Think of all the ideas that could add peace and joy to your life. Make a separate list of them.
Step 3. Divide life into spheres
Choose the ones that are important to you so that you can write a separate strategy for each of them. For example:
- Relationships with people.
- Body and physical activity.
- emotional stability.
Step 4: Think of a strategy
For each area, make a to-do list that will help you feel more stable. To do this, use the ideas written out in the first two steps. Be realistic: all actions should be easy to do. Here are some ideas for each of the areas.
Work
- During your lunch break, spend time alone: go for a walk , if possible – retire to read a book or just sit in silence.
- Take tasty and satisfying food to the office, buy aromatic tea or coffee.
- Decorate the workplace a little: bring a plant, photos of loved ones, a beautiful notebook.
- Buy a comfortable back pillow and an anti-stress toy.
- Work in chunks of 25-30 minutes and instead of one big break, take many small breaks.
- Listen to beautiful instrumental music with headphones (if it does not distract you).
- Discuss with your manager the possibility of at least occasionally working from home.
- Delegate some non-urgent tasks or postpone them until better times (if possible).
Relationships with people
- Talk to someone you trust by phone, video call, or in person.
- Get out with a friend to a new interesting place.
- Go to visit or invite guests to your place.
- Chat with friends in the chat.
- Seek advice from a psychologist.
- Write about your experiences in a group or on a forum aimed at help and support. Before doing this, pay attention to how other participants respond and consider whether it suits you.
Body and physical activity
- Go out for a run.
- Do stretching or yoga.
- Take a bath with oils, salt and foam.
- Go to the sauna.
- Run a sleep marathon.
- Go for a massage.
- Go to a good restaurant or cook a delicious dish according to a new recipe .
emotional stability
- To keep a diary.
- Engage in creativity, needlework.
- Watch movies and series.
- Light scented candles and read an interesting book.
- Listen to music.
- Do breathing exercises.
- Lie down on the sofa.
- For a couple of days, give up the Internet and gadgets.
- Every evening, write down in a notebook five reasons why you are doing well today.
If these ideas do not suit you, you can pick up your own. The main thing is that your list should include activities that energize and support you.
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Step 5. Recall the negative experience
We often try to alleviate our anxiety with less-healthy activities that don’t bring relief in the long run and only make us feel worse. Someone smokes or drinks alcohol, and then wakes up broken and with a headache. Someone gets stuck on the phone, endlessly flipping through the tape in social networks, and as a result, guilt for wasted time is added to the stress.
Write down all the destructive ways of coping with stress that you turn to and think about how to replace them. For example: “I will not hang out on social networks all day, because this activity makes me tired and even more nervous. Instead, if I feel like distracting myself, I’ll read a light book or watch a TV series. Here is a list of what I want to read and watch.
Step 6: Make a List of Trusted People
These can be friends, relatives, good acquaintances, whom you can turn to if you really want to talk. It is important that you trust these people and be sure that they will not criticize and devalue you.
Step 7. Use the plan
Now you have a large list of activities that will help you get together, recover, recuperate. It is divided into several categories, depending on your personal characteristics. You need to print it out or save it electronically so that you have it at your fingertips. If something bad happens or you just feel tired, you can turn to your plan and figure out quickly what to do.
By the way, such a plan can work not only in crisis situations. Agree with yourself that every day you will spend at least 30 minutes taking care of yourself, and make a note of this in your diary. PsychologistsconsiderSelf‑Care Isn’t Selfish or Superficialthat this habit helps you feel more stable, more harmonious and more resistant to stress .
Personal experience
I haven’t tried making a full-blown self-care plan, but I have a truncated version: a small to-do list that makes me feel better and empowered to solve problems. It includes, for example, keeping a diary. Writing practices help at least a little to cope with longing, fatigue, burnout, crises and many other problems.
And also on my list are reading, knitting, mint tea, meditation, scratching the belly of a cat, and, if possible, giving up the Internet and gadgets. If I’m not feeling very well and I need to get myself together, I just look in my notebook and choose things that can help me with this right now. And it works.
