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3.1 - Self Care.pptx
- 1. SELF-CARE Mental Health, Psychosocial Support and Protection Department ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - AFGANISTAN
- 4. SAFETY FIRST Why is self-care important?
- 5. SELF-CARE Building resilience Taking care of our well-being Nurturing our resources
- 6. RESILIENCE What do you think resilience is? Have you ever faced a situation in life where you felt like you lost your resilience?
- 7. RESILIENT ATTITUDE Five immutable principles of life that we can increase our resilience by accepting it unconditionally: Nothing is stable; Everything changes and ends; Suffering is an integral part of life; Things do not always go the way we designed and expected; Life does not always behave fairly and justly; People are not always kind, friendly and loyal.
- 8. BENEFITS OF BEING RESILIENT Feeling connected and in touch with others Finding meaning and purpose in life Enjoy rich social relationships Look positively at yourself and others Look hopefully at your future and the fate of the community
- 9. TIPS TO IMPROVE YOUR RESILIENCE Get connected Make every day meaningful Learn from experience Remain hopeful Take care of yourself Be proactive
- 10. WHAT IS WELL-BEING? Five foundations: Body Mind Heart (Emotions) Spirit Work
- 11. STRESS Stress is a normal response to a physical or emotional challenge and occurs when demands are out of balance with resources for coping (an abnormal situation).
- 12. STRESS FACTORS IN THE HELPING PROFESSIONS
- 14. ABC METHOD Awareness: Be attuned to your needs, limits, emotions and resources. Practice self-acceptance. Look for early signs of secondary stress and trauma so you can focus on self-care to prevent further problems. Develop the habit of “checking yourself.” Balance: Maintain a healthy balance among your activities. Balance work, family life, rest and leisure. Remind yourself that you deserve to have a meaningful and enjoyable life outside of work. Connection: Maintain supportive relationships. Establish positive relationships with co-workers, friends and family to elicit support and avoid isolation. Communication with others breaks the silence of unacknowledged pain. Connections can also increase feelings of hope.
- 15. REDUCING STRESS What are your current coping mechanisms / what do you & your family & friends do to reduce stress… ? Practical examples: deep breathing, mindfulness, yoga, art, music, laughter, exercise, socialising, religion, spirituality (meditation)
- 16. REDUCING STRESS Don't overwork : Never take on more work than you can complete on your own. If you feel stretched, consider cutting down a task or two. Try to focus on the tasks that you think are the most important. Get enough sleep : Getting a good night's sleep keeps your body and mind in top form. Make sure you get six to eight hours of uninterrupted sleep. Getting enough sleep helps your body combat negative stressors Don't be a perfectionist : This expectation of yourself or others will only add to your stress level. Be realistic. Delegate tasks. If you do not delegate, then you may burnout because of the cumulative stress. Solve the little problems : Gives a sense of control. Avoiding them will only cause stress to accumulate. This
- 17. REDUCING STRESS Treat your body well : Your body is the canvas on which you paint your life. Treat it well. Experts agree that regular exercise helps combat stress. However, excessive or compulsive exercise routines can add to stress. Eat nutritious food rich in vitamins and minerals. Learn to relax : Do yoga or simple breathing exercises. Ensure your schedule is calmed down by making time for relaxing activities on a daily basis. When the body and mind rest, a relaxation response is triggered that can combat stress. Change your attitude: You are what you think. Change the way you view things around you. Treat setbacks as temporary problems. Believe that you'll achieve your goal if you work towards it. Your attitude, outlook, and thoughts influence the way you see and react to events around you.
- 18. LET’S BREAK!
- 19. SELF-COMPASSION
- 20. SELF -COMPASSION What do you think Self- Compassion is?
- 21. ELEMENTS OF SELF-COMPASSION Self-kindness Common humanity Mindfulness
- 22. THE FIVE COMPONENTS OF SELF- COMPASSION 1. Recognize and see the suffering of yourself and others; 2. Understand the human suffer is pervasiveness; 3. Paying attention (mentally or emotionally) to someone who is suffering; 4. Tolerating unpleasant feelings; 5. Motivation and willingness to take action to reduce suffering.
- 23. SELF-REFLECTION Think of a situation in which you made a mistake and blamed yourself for it: What pain did you experience while blaming yourself? Name your feeling! Are you the only person who has ever made this kind of mistake? Others have not made such mistakes? If someone else made such a mistake and came to you, how would you deal with them? And what did you tell them? Can you now try to give yourself the sympathetic answer that you recommended to your loved ones?
- 24. CLINICAL SUPERVISION Clinical supervisions are here to talk about your work and how it impacts you, not just to technical guidance This is a safe place for you to talk about things that you find difficult You will be encouraged to pay attention to what’s happening inside when you are with patients, your own emotions, reactions… We will work with this. You need to be aware of these things. Notice them, without judgement.
- 25. LET’S PRACTICE!
- 27. 54321 IN THE SAFE PLACE Go to your safe place and start providing yourself the butterfly hug and notice 5 things you can see there Notice 5 things your can hear Notice 5 things you can smell or feel Then notice 4 things your can see, some of them can be the same Notice 4 things you can hear Notice 4 Things you can smell or feel Do the same with 3 things, 2 things, one thing If at some point you loose track, just let you go and enjoy 10/23/2023 ACTION AGAINST HUNGER - MIDDLE EAST 27
- 28. 4 ELEMENTS : EARTH – WATER – AIR – FIRE To ground you when you are in a session : just the earth or water or air Earth = Grounding, Reality of Safety in the Present Moment Take a few moments to “land” where you are. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel the support of whatever is beneath you. Feel the contact that your skin makes with whatever it is touching. Open your eyes and look around the room to notice 3 things that you have not noticed before. Notice any sounds, smells, or tastes that might be present. Water = Turn on Relaxation Response Make saliva in your mouth and swallow a few times. If you have trouble doing this, you can take a sip of water or suck on a hard candy. When we enter Fight or Flight mode, the systems in our body that are not necessary for our immediate survival slow down. This includes the digestive system. Creating saliva turns on your digestive system, which in turn activates your body’s relaxation response. Air = Breathing for Centering With your eyes closed, place your hands on you belly. Imagine you have a balloon in your belly. When you breathe in, feel that balloon fill up with air. When you breathe out, feel the air in that balloon deflate. Try breathing in for the count of 4, holding your breath for the count of 6, and breathing out for the count of 8. Feel free to adjust these counts as needed, to something that is manageable, but slightly outside of your comfort zone. Fire or Light = Imagination Bring to mind a place or an activity where you feel safe, calm, and relaxed, or where you feel good about yourself. Bring all of your senses into this experience, so notice what you see, what you hear, what you taste, what you smell, and what you feel. Also notice what emotions you feel being in this safe, calm space.
- 29. DOING WHAT MATTERS IN TIME OF STRESS - WHO Manual available in English, Dari, Farsi, Urdu Audio exercises available in English, Dari, Farsi, Urdu
- 30. SELF-CARE AREAS Physical Self-Care eating healthy exercising medical care sleeping well taking time off Psychological Self-Care listen to my thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, feelings practice body-mind techniques (deep breathing, mindfulness, relaxation, etc.) Be curious Say “no” to extra responsibilities sometimes Emotional Self-Care spending time with company I enjoy stay in contact with important people in my life praise and love myself find things that make me laugh
- 31. SELF-CARE AREAS Relational Self-Care spend time with people we love make time to reply to personal emails and letters enlarge my social circle ask for help when I need it share a fear, hope, or secret with someone I trust Spiritual Self-Care spend time in nature cherish my optimism and hope be aware of non- material aspects of life be open to not knowing pray
- 32. SELF-CARE AREAS Workplace or Professional Self-Care take a break during the workday take time to chat with co-workers make quiet time to complete tasks set limits with clients and colleagues balance my caseload arrange workspace so it is comfortable and comforting get regular supervision or consultation negotiate for my needs have a peer support group.
- 34. THANK YOU!
Editor's Notes
- Group exercise (7 minutes) SAY: Before starting this module, let’s take a time for ourselves to arrive in this training session. Sit down in a comfortable chair, one where your feet reach the floor. Close your eyes and focus on your breath. Breathe in slowly for the count of three, then out slowly. Bring your mind’s focus to your body. How does your body feel sitting in that chair? Lean into the back of the seat so the whole length of your back is pressing into the back of the chair. Can you feel the contact between your body and the chair’s surface? If the chair has arms, touch it, is the material smooth or textured? Press your arms down the length of the chair arm, notice how your hands hang off the end. If your chair doesn’t have arms, touch the material on the seat, how does that feel? Next push your feet into the ground, imagine the energy draining down from your mind, down through your body and out through your feet into the ground. You can picture it as a color filling your body as it goes from top to toe (but this is your image so choose whatever you want your energy to look like). As the energy drains from your head, feel how heavy each body part becomes, your torso feels heavy and now your arms as you relax those muscles. Lastly, feel the heaviness go down your legs, through your feet and down into the ground. When you feel ready, you’re welcome to come back to the session and get ready to start!
- SAY: What does this picture tell to you? On an airplane, the flight attendant always instructs passengers to put on their own oxygen mask before helping others. Why? Elicit the discussion and then ASK: why self care is important in our job? After collecting the inputs, SAY: Work in stressful environments and with trauma survivors place a heavy burden on MHPSS service providers’ (Burn-out, secondary/vicarious trauma) Self-care practices help to build resilience and the capacity to manage work stressors to help service providers sustain their own well-being in the midst of difficult work. Because the well-being of service providers can affect beneficiaries, self-care for service providers is a professional responsibility of both workers and organizations (not a luxury) Service providers may neglect their own well-being and fail to seek help. Why? Worry that difficulties indicate personal weakness Denial of any difficulties out of fear of losing status, respect, and the trust of their co-workers (stigma) Comparing own problems to those of clients – seem insignificant
- SAY: Self-care are the things that people do to take care of the various aspects of their wellbeing (physical, mental, psychosocial, etc.) Self-care is what you do to care for and promote your own wellbeing. Self-care builds our resilience and capacity to face the highs and lows of life. Self-care does not change our circumstances. Self-care changes: our responses to our circumstances, our flexibility to adapt to our circumstances, and our access to our resources of all kinds. Self-care is not about cheering yourself up. Self- care is about nurturing the resources you have, caring for your inner strength, and keeping your inner core healthy enough to travel whatever journey you’re on now.
- ASK: 1. What is resilience? 2. Have you ever faced a situation in life where you felt like you lost your resilience? SAY: Definition: Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. The process of coping well with adversity, trauma, tragedy, natural and unnatural disasters, threats or other important sources of stress is called resilience. Resilience helps us to cope after experiencing a trauma. It helps us to create and maintain a meaningful sense in life for yourself and take part in the lives of those around you. With resilience, people can succeed despite difficult circumstances.
- SAY: This ability is not inherited and genetic, but you can learned and developed it, by applying the main factors of resilience. If you'd like to become more resilient, consider these tips: Get connected. Building strong, positive relationships with loved ones and friends who can provide support, guidance and acceptance in good and bad times. Establish other important connections by volunteering or joining a faith or spiritual community. Make every day meaningful. Do something that gives you a sense of accomplishment and purpose every day. Set clear, achievable goals to help you look toward the future with meaning. Learn from experience. Think of how you've coped with hardships in the past. Consider the skills and strategies that helped you through difficult times. You might even write about past experiences in a journal to help you identify positive and negative behavior patterns — and guide your future behavior. Remain hopeful. You can't change the past, but you can always look toward the future. Accepting and even anticipating change makes it easier to adapt and view new challenges with less anxiety. Take care of yourself. Tend to your own needs and feelings. Participate in activities and hobbies you enjoy. Include physical activity in your daily routine. Get plenty of sleep and create consistent bedtime rituals. Eat a healthy diet. Practice stress management and relaxation techniques, such as yoga, meditation, guided imagery, deep breathing or prayer. Be proactive. Don't ignore your problems. Instead, figure out what needs to be done, make a plan and take action. Although it can take time to recover from a major setback, traumatic event or loss, know that your situation can improve if you work at it.
- SAY: Wellbeing can be understood as how people feel and how they function, both on a personal and a social level, and how they evaluate their lives as a whole. Well-being is holistic, and is a sense of wellbeing in every aspect of our being. Physical wellbeing (body) is about nutrition, physical activity, health; about keeping our bodies healthy and happy Mental health (mind well being) is defined as a state of well-being in which every individual realizes his or her own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to her or his community. Emotional wellbeing is a measure of our happiness and satisfaction with ourselves and our lives. Spiritual wellbeing acknowledges our search for deeper meaning in life and is reflected when our actions become more consistent with our beliefs and values. A healthy spiritual practice may include examples of volunteerism, social contributions, belonging to a group, fellowship, optimism, forgiveness and expressions of compassion. Workplace wellbeing relates to all aspects of working life, from the quality and safety of the physical environment, to how workers feel about their work, their working environment, the climate at work and work organization All these aspects of our well-being are interconnected and influence each other. It’s important that we actively maintain each area, as difficult as it might be.
- SAY: Stress is a shared human experience that takes place if situations change and things happen for which people are not prepared, their physical, mental and/or social well-being is threatened, and they feel that they cannot manage and control the situation. The stress experience depends on situational (severity, length and frequency of stressful conditions; access to material and social resources) and personal variables (competence and control perception, personal philosophy, education, skills and knowledge, gender, health).
- SAY: Helping professional may be exposed to different stressors given the nature of their profession. Not responding to or not preventing stress increase the risk of developing stress related consequences. Let’s go through these definitions: Compassion Satisfaction: positive cognitive and emotional consequences as a result of feeling empathy. These consequences include feeling strengthened by having been able to help. Compassion Fatigue: When someone who regularly hears/witnesses very difficult and traumatic stories begins to lose their ability to feel empathy for their clients, loved ones and co-workers. This deep physical and emotional exhaustion has been described as “having nothing left to give”. Vicarious Trauma/Secondary Trauma: the emotional residue of exposure that helping professionals have from working with people as they are hearing their trauma stories and become witnesses to the pain, fear, and terror that trauma survivors have endured. secondary trauma can happen suddenly, in one session, while vicarious trauma is a response to an accumulation of exposure to the pain of others Burnout: Feeling of physical and emotional exhaustion, due to stress from working under difficult or demanding conditions. The extreme end of Compassion Fatigue. Both compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma can lead to burnout. It means that symptoms have been happening on a regular basis for a long time and longer term support will likely be necessary to recover.
- SAY: Awareness means being mindful of your own needs, limits, emotions, reactions, resources. It means to accept them, to keep mind and body in same place. Balance between work and private life helps to create enough space out of the work environment to take care of yourself. Rest, play, go home at the end of the shift, spend time laughing with friends! Connection to oneself, others, something larger decreases isolation and increases validation and hope. An essential part of spiritual connection is to find one’s own path to connecting with a sense of awe, joy, purpose, meaning, and hope and visiting it frequently.
- ASK: Are you able to apply these tips in your daily work?
- ASK: Are you able to apply these tips in your daily work?
- WATCH the video. Then, ASK: 1. What was this video about?
- SAY: Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect? Self-compassion involves responding in the same supportive and understanding way you would do with a good friend when you have a difficult time, fail, or notice something you don’t like about yourself.
- SAY: 1. Self-kindness vs. Self-judgment. Self-compassion entails being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail, or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism. Self-compassionate people recognize that being imperfect, failing, and experiencing life difficulties is inevitable, so they tend to be gentle with themselves when confronted with painful experiences rather than getting angry when life falls short of set ideals. People cannot always be or get exactly what they want. When this reality is denied or fought against suffering increases in the form of stress, frustration and self-criticism. When this reality is accepted with sympathy and kindness, greater emotional equanimity is experienced. 2. Common humanity vs. Isolation. Frustration at not having things exactly as we want is often accompanied by an irrational but pervasive sense of isolation – as if “I” were the only person suffering or making mistakes. All humans suffer, however. The very definition of being “human” means that one is mortal, vulnerable and imperfect. Therefore, self-compassion involves recognizing that suffering and personal inadequacy is part of the shared human experience – something that we all go through rather than being something that happens to “me” alone. 3. Mindfulness vs. Over-identification. Self-compassion also requires taking a balanced approach to our negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. This equilibrated stance stems from the process of relating personal experiences to those of others who are also suffering, thus putting our own situation into a larger perspective. It also stems from the willingness to observe our negative thoughts and emotions with openness and clarity, so that they are held in mindful awareness. Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. At the same time, mindfulness requires that we not be “over-identified” with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negative reactivity.
- SAY: I am going to ask you some self reflection questions that relate to self-compassion in the face of perfectionism. Think of a situation in which you made a mistake and blamed yourself for it: What pain did you experience while blaming yourself? Name your feeling! Are you the only person who has ever made this kind of mistake? Others have not made such mistakes? If someone else made such a mistake and came to you, how would you deal with them? And what did you tell them? Can you now try to give yourself the sympathetic answer that you recommended to your loved ones?
- SAY: As we discussed in the supervision module, supervision is a safe place where get supported from you work group. Remember the ground rules: kindness and non-judgmental attitude!
- Destress meditation (10 minutes) Welcome to this meditation on distressing. I want to emphasize the importance of this being effortless for you. You don’t have to perform and you can do it in your own way: you can lean on a wall, seat on the floor, on a chair, on a sofa, you can be wherever you want. You can decide to close your eyes or leave them open. Now let your breath naturally flow and listen to the words I am saying to you. You have made the decision to join me and to devote time to distress your mind and your body. Your awareness of the need to stop a moment, your decision to detox: this is powerful. Inhale…...Exhale. The essence of the mind is thought. We cannot change the essence of the mind. But we can observe the essence of the mind and realize that we are not the mind. We can witness thoughts, without reaction to them. We can observe emotions, without needing to source them. LET WHATEVER COMES, COME. AND THEN LET IT PASS. Inhale….Exhale. As you allow thoughts to come and to pass without attachment to them or reaction from them, you allow your mind and your body to release stress. Inhale….Exhale. As you allow, you release resistance. Inhale…..Exhale. Stress is the greatest threat to our wellbeing. Right now there is a global stress epidemic in addition to our own big or small daily challenges. There is a lack of awareness to recognize when we are becoming too stressed. A lack of awareness of knowing how to sufficiently recover from stress when we do have it. We normalize high levels of stress. We make stress a natural part of our life. We are here, in this moment, to develop awareness. We are here to stop. Inhale...Exhale. The more you take time to stop, the more you take time to let it go, you naturally begin to distress. You will allow emotions and experiences that have built up and stored in your body and in your mind to be released. Allow them to move through you. Allow them to completely move through you. And then allow them to leave your body. Inhale...Exhale. When we pause, when we stop like we are doing now, we create space in our nervous system to slow. In slowing down our body, we slow issues, sensations, thoughts and emotions. Inhale…..Exhale. Through this moment we are trying to change the quality of our thoughts. Inhale…..Exhale. It’s impossible to change the existence of thoughts themselves but we can recognize there is an awareness behind our thoughts. We can see our thoughts as a buy product of stress release. Let go any expectation or outcome. And simply be. Allow yourself to drop into be. Inhale…..Exhale (x3) For the next few moments allow yourself to experience the feeling of being. And as thoughts start to arrive let them come and pass. Observe them. Witness them. Don’t try to change them. Just let your breath flow. Stay with your breath, I will let you know when it’s time to come out. Noticing if your mind is wandering around and if it has, gently bring it back to observe your thoughts. Witnessing them. No reaction and no response to them. Feel your breath as easy and effortless. If you’re struggling to stay focused, pose your hands one on your belly and one on your heart. This will help you to feel your breath. Now begin to lengthen your inhale breathing much deeper and completely release all the breath on the exhale. Another deep inhale and completely release in the exhale. One more like this. Breathing deeply...and exhaling completely. And start to bring movement back to the feet, the legs, the neck, keeping your eyes closed as you do this. Thank yourself for having allowed yourself to pause a moment..and create space. Inhale….Exhale. When you feel ready you can slowly open your eyes and bring yourself in the “here and now” moment. Please remind yourself to pause, to stop from time to time. Have all a calm day.
- SAY: We practiced the Safe Place exercise in the supervision module. Who does remember it? The safe place is a space to go whenever you need to feel comfortable and release stress.
- SAY: This is another stress release exercise to practice also with your beneficiaries.
- SAY: “Doing what matter in time of stress” by WHO is a very important manual that all MHPSS providers should know. It’s a manual that equips us to face stress and help our clients aquiring tools to cope with the daily life stressors.
- SAY: Take your time to go through the Self Care Areas, we’ll use them in a moment!
- SAY: Take your time to go through the Self Care Areas, we’ll use them in a moment!
- SAY: Take your time to go through the Self Care Areas, we’ll use them in a moment!
- Key Notes: Distribute the handout among participants. SAY: Now that we discussed the different self care areas and strategies, it’s time to start looking after ourselves! Write on the handout the areas you would like to focus on and include your Self Care Plan. Note for the facilitator: Let the participants share their plans if they feel comfortable to. Finally, ask them for a buddy, somebody they can team up with, so they can remind each other of their goals and plans.
- KEY POINTS Thank participants for their attendance, openness and collaboration Welcome them to contact you for further questions as needed