Introduction
These 3 videos introduce skills to work through common challenges around self-care:
- limited time;
- feeling guilty; and
- not actually working to nourish or support ourselves.
How fascinating that we are so different and unique, and yet also how we all share very common basic psychological and physical needs?
We share the need for food, water, shelter & safety, but equally we have psychological needs for love, approval, and appreciation. While our emotions range in intensity, duration and sensitivity, we all share the basic core emotions.
Naturally our emotional experiences vary and are based on our childhood development and learning in adult life, yet all of us need skills for regulating how we feel and for taking care of ourselves. Our minds, emotions, bodies and self are intricately interconnected and influencing each other.
Getting to know the art of self-care involves getting to know yourself, making yourself familiar with what your needs may be at any particular moment. The understanding of this art is that it is full of opposites, where both are sometimes true and needed! And we go between them like a see-saw, moving fluidly and flexibly as our needs shift and change.
The intention here is to share, to increase your self-care care factor, and to inspire you to tune in, listen, understand how you feel and give yourself what you need.
The following videos are offered to inspire you to embed a culture of self-care into your life. They draw on psychological therapies and skills including mindfulness, compassion, dialectics, cognitive and behaviour therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitement therapy (ACT) and more.
Naturally these skills are not a substitute for therapy or advice. The idea is that we need a range of skills to support us in life, and sometimes a skill will be helpful in one situation, or at one time in life, and not others.
This is the art of self-care; to be flexible in trying different things and attuned to what it is you might need in any given moment.
These three videos introduce some skills to work through the most common challenges we face around self-care:
- Time factor (lack of time in our busy days)
- Guilt factor (that we feel unproductive, selfish, or indulgent)
- Needs factor (not actually working to nourish or support ourselves).
Self care can be something that doesn’t have to compete with our daily demands, that isn’t another chore or pressure and is not something we feel we ‘should’ be doing.
It is a fundamental approach to living that gives us opportunity to experience the natural benefits that flow.
Watch Videos
Timeless Self Care
Guilt free Self Care
Meeting your Needs in Self Care
Explore Further
- Balance or Burnout? by Sophy Banks
- How Do We Keep Going? Activist Burnout and Personal Sustainability in Social Movements by Laurence Cox
- Stress Management and Burnout Prevention by Pt’chang
- Personal Sustainability for Activists by Aidan Ricketts
- Sustaining Ourselves as Activists by Helen Cox
- How To Stay Sane in ‘Always On’ Digital Campaigning Environment by Jessica Mawson
- Group Strategies to Avoid Stress and Burnout by Pt’Chang
- Hope and Activist Burnout by Holly Hammond
- Sustainable Activism and Self Care by Amnesty Australia
- 10 Great Resources on Activist Wellbeing
- How self-compassion can help activists deal with stress
- Browse the Wellbeing topic on the Commons Library