Self-Care

Whether you are a student or a professional working in the field, we each bring our own beliefs, experiences, and feelings to our mental health work. Our ongoing commitment our clients, combined with a sense of urgency and deep caring, adds pressure and stress to our daily lives. The emotional impact of this work is real, therefore it is vital that we all practice self care to maintain our health and quality of life. Self-care has three primary functions for mental health professionals: (a) protection of the clinician by reducing occupational hazards such as burnout; (b) enhancement of client relationship by modeling healthy behavior; and (c) protection of the client by reducing risks of ethical violations. Although monitoring well-being is an ethical imperative of the counseling profession (ACA, 2005), learning how to stay well is ultimately the counselor’s responsibility. Fortunately, several well-established models of wellness suggest areas for counselor focus.

Each of the major models of wellness outlines several dimensions for personal wellness and seems to include some aspect of physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and relational wellness. Counselors are encouraged to attend broadly to these 112 J. Warren et al. multiple dimensions to maintain personal and professional health (Venart et al., 2007). An in-depth review of models and strategies for cultivating holistic wellness is beyond the scope of this article. Our purpose here is to articulate one strategy counselors may use to maintain emotional wellness. We encourage readers interested in a more detailed exploration of wellness to access Myers and Sweeney’s (2005) edited book on the subject, the Venart et al. (2007) article on counselor wellness, and an article by Roscoe (2009), who presents an integrated definition of wellness and an up-to-date review of instruments counselors may use to assess their own and clients’ wellness

As a student you are expected to balance your coursework, internships, work responsibilities, and home life. As a professional, you face many of these same expectations plus your professional responsibilities and professional development. Self-care is a practice that will help you limit the stresses and that you are bound to encounter in your academic and professional career and will help you improve your ability to cope with the existing ones. Self-care practices were also found to be associated with improvement in overall mental, physical, and spiritual well-being.

What is Self-Care?

Self-care refers to activities and practices we can engage in on a regular basis to reduce stress and maintain and enhance our health and wellbeing.

Practicing self-care will help you:

• Identify and manage the challenges that mental health professionals face, such as burnout & stress, and the lack of time for personal development and professional growth.

• 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 prioritizing the attention you pay to the different areas of your life and then focus on changing the things you are able to change and accepting the things that are not able to change.