Everyone Need Self-Care
As part of National Mental Health Awareness Month, Happier Living’s Director of Clinician Experience Dr. Alexis Weisinger is sharing her insights on an often overlooked group when it comes to self-care: those who take care of others’ mental health.
“Checking in with oneself about one's own mental health is particularly important when you are responsible for the mental health of others,” says Dr. Weisinger.
“Whether you are a clinician or client, when an uncomfortable feeling arises it can be highly useful to one, identify the feeling, and two, link it with a precipitating event or trigger,” she says. “While neither of these steps will eradicate the bad feeling, identifying the emotion can help us to figure out how to address it, and connecting the emotion to an event or trigger can provide clues about where and how to start.” Taking this approach also tends to lessen the associated anxiety. “Free-floating anxiety is always a greater source of discomfort than an anxiety we can enumerate,” says Dr. Weisinger.
From there, it can be useful to ask the question, 'What do I need right now?' suggests Dr. Weisinger. “Sometimes it's as simple as attending to our basic needs for food, sleep, exercise or fresh air. Often, however, this question can also connect us to our interpersonal needs,” she says. “For instance, if you are a highly social person who has been mired in work and tasks, you may realize that your need for connection with others has not been met. Spending time with friends, family or simply in a social setting could be just the thing to recharge your battery. On the other hand, taking people in all day can be onerous work, leaving one depleted and without additional resources to spare for loved ones who seek it out at the end of a long work day. In this case, some quiet time for reflection and introspection by oneself could be just what the doctor ordered!”
Clinicians tell their clients that they should never be afraid to ask for help; the same should go for their own needs, says Dr. Weisinger.
“Vicarious traumatization and compassion fatigue are real things that do not make us bad clinicians, but rather, fellow human beings. Seeking out supervision, peer or otherwise, or one's own psychotherapy are germane to good self-care. We are only as useful to others as we can be to ourselves.”
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