Category: Self Care

We all have coping strategies and various methods for dealing with difficult situations and stressors that wield their ugly heads without notice. The difficulty really comes with how long it takes for us to recover from those stressors. When we have negative coping strategies we delay our recovery or avoid it all together.

Negative coping strategies include high-risk behavior such as driving fast, acting out with violence, and putting yourself in dangerous situations. Other negative coping strategies are avoidance, substance abuse, and suppressing feelings.

The way to avoid these unhealthy and dangerous behaviors is to be proactive in your overall health. This is where self care becomes beneficial. When you address each area of your life proactively and prepare for difficult days you reduce the negative affects on your mind, body and emotions.

When you incorporate self care into your routine and lifestyle you will find your sympathetic nervous system becomes more balanced which relaxes your flight-or-fight (parasympathetic system) so you can meet stress in a more relaxed manner.

Exercise releases endorphins which improve your mood and eating healthy foods help you gain energy level and help improve sleep. Self care helps you process difficult emotions in a healthy manner which allows you to be more self aware. It also helps you feel good about yourself and helps you to be more connected to the people who are most important to you.

The idea of addressing so many areas of your life may feel overwhelming, but with a little support you can begin to address changes one at a time and in a short time start noticing the benefits of adding in a little care for your self.

If you search the internet for “self care” you will find innumerable posts and articles all claiming to define self care and discuss its underlying principles. All of them have value. However, if you read all of them you would probably never finish. In these posts I will give you the beginning framework and discuss each area building on each with examples and methods easy to fit into every day life.

I focus on five basic areas including spiritual, physical, emotional, mental and social. We interact in each of these areas in some manner each day. The question is whether you are satisfied with your life in each of these areas.

I believe spiritual wellness is the best area with which to begin. This is where we find identity and meaning for our lives. As Christians we find our identity in being a child of God, chosen and saved through Jesus. This is vitally important because we then can determine our values, morals and ethical principles for daily living.

The next area is physical wellness. While personal hygiene is an important aspect of physical wellness it goes much further than this. It includes our food, sleep, exercise and even medical intervention. As Christians we seek guiding principles from scripture for dealing with our health as well. We’ve all heard the expression, “At least you have your health.” This is not always true but there are concepts within physical wellness we can still apply when dealing with physical difficulties.

Next is emotional wellness. This includes how we deal with our emotions particularly how we prepare for times of stress, grief, anxiety and even depression. A framework of understanding and support is vital to dealing with these issues in a way which provides healing.

Mental wellness is the component of self care which deals in mental clarity and activities to keep your mind clear and engaged in positive activity. It includes how you speak to yourself and what you believe about what others say and do. This area benefits from boundaries of various forms.

Social wellness is the last area of self care and one in which there are many books and articles because it is how we interact with others. It includes the activities in which we participate as well as how we feel about interacting with others. Common issues in this area include social anxiety and social fatigue.

I will be including more information about each of these areas so you can begin to build a full understanding of self care and how you can use it in your life based on your faith and spirituality.