Self Care?
It's not that complex
Basic Self-Care Components
Start here
Self Care Awareness
Approximately 50% of the population of the United States will be diagnosed with a mental illness at any given point in their life. By practicing mental self-care, it becomes easier to process information and experiences from our daily lives, and this eventually leads to developing a growth mindset. Read more
Nutrition is vital for development for those in all ages. Maintaining healthy eating habits can improve the productivity of the brain. Read more
Mental
Mental self-care involves your psychological and cognitive thinking and your mind’s ability to understand and process information and experience. Not only do mental self-care practices help to stimulate the mind and improve brain functionality but they also help you to develop a growth mindset. A proper and healthy mindset helps us process information more easily and in a non-distorted manner.
Mental self-care activities include:
- Learning a new skill or language
- Setting big intentional goals or mini personal ones
- Reading self-help or personal growth books
- Journaling
- Practicing gratitude
- Doing a social media detox
- Engaging in a game of chess
- Practicing positive thinking
Physical
Physical self-care includes basic nutrition, hydration, and exercise practices. A healthy body responds to the unavoidable stress in life better than an unhealthy body (Davis et al. 2008 ). Nutrition and hydration self-care practices include eating a healthy amount of nourishing foods and engaging in the planning needed to make that happen (Cook-Cottone 2015b ; Story et al. 2008 ).
Social
Psychologists talk about social health in terms of child development. It is a child’s ability to form secure relationships with others and develop trust so that they can feel safe to explore and learn. This ability is closely connected to their emotional regulation skills.
For adults, social health also includes the networks and social support structures we have around us. Social health boils down to two main factors:
- Your ability to build healthy relationships. This includes platonic friends, romantic partners, family members, and professional relationships.
- The quality of those relationships. as measured by their duration and your ability to connect meaningfully with other people.
Our social relationships contribute to our overall health and quality of life. Having strong interpersonal relationships and a strong support system indicate good social health. Good social health supports better mental and physical health.
Research also shows that the ongoing loneliness and chronic stress of poor social health is linked to many physical health problems. Research shows that strong social connections are linked to longer life, reduced stress, and improved heart health.
In fact, cultivating human connections is just as important as eating healthy food or physical activity. Poor social skills harm our health. Low social health puts us at risk of social isolation, low self-esteem, anxiety, depression, and other mental health disorders.
Nutritional
In times of stress it is important to reflect back on what you need and participate in self care. Without it, we can quickly become overwhelmed with what is going on and spiral down into depression and/or anxiety. As I have talked about before, there are many different ways to practice self care.
How one person chooses to relax, reflect and recharge might be completely opposite from someone else. That’s why it’s important to not just look at a list online telling you how to do self care, but to actually dig deep within yourself and find out what it is that helps you positively refresh and reconnect.
In addition, there are different areas in which someone might choose to practice self care, including physically, nutritionally, emotionally, spiritually, socially, psychologically, environmentally, and even financially. As this is a nutrition focused blog, today I am sharing 5 ways to practice self care through nutrition.
Emotional
Emotional health is a state of positive psychological functioning. It can be thought of as an extension of mental health; it’s the “optimal functioning” end of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that make up both our inner and outer worlds. It includes an overall experience of wellness in what we think, feel, and do through both the highs and lows of life.
In a successful attempt to provide a definition of emotional health, the organization BelongTo.org (n.d.) quotes the Mental Health Foundation: emotional health is “a positive state of wellbeing which enables an individual to be able to function in society and meet the demands of everyday life.”
Financial
Financial health is a composite measurement of an individual’s financial life. Unlike narrow metrics such as credit scores, financial health assesses whether people are spending, saving, borrowing, and planning in ways that will enable them to be resilient and pursue opportunities.
Individuals who are Financially Healthy are able to manage their day-to-day expenses, absorb financial shocks, and progress toward meeting their long-term financial goals. Approximately two-thirds of people in America are classified as Financially Coping (struggling with some aspects of their financial lives) or Financially Vulnerable (struggling with almost all aspects of their financial lives).