Spring 2022

A holistic approach to self-care is an essential component to living a long and heathy life. A holistic framework allows you to care for yourself as a whole rather than focusing on one piece too narrowly. In other words, “Not being able to see the forest for the trees.” A holistic and comprehensive self-care plan contains all components of wellbeing including physical, psychological, spiritual, social, emotional, personal, and professional. Self-Care has many health benefits such as reducing anxiety and depression, reducing stress, increasing energy, improving interpersonal relationships, reducing burn-out and improving overall happiness. When creating a personalized self-care plan that fits your needs within a holistic perspective, you take one step closer to achieving a meaningful work-life balance.

This type of self-care can look as simple as attending events with family and friends and going out for coffee with a friend.

Emotional Care

Emotional self-care means understanding and nurturing your feelings, taking control of your conscious inner state, and processing internal emotions. Being mindful of your mood and behaviours will allow you to assess the need for changes and prompt you to practice self-care activities when you start feeling stressed or a little down. These practices can include deep breathing, listening to music, spending time in nature, journaling or practicing mindfulness. The benefits of maintaining good emotional care include stress reduction, improved self-regulation, increase in productivity and emotional stability.

Professional Care

Workplace or professional self-care is critical. We often practice self-care outside of work given the nature and convenience of self-care activities. However, for many people, work is intertwined with their life routines particularly given the new stressors from COVID-19. Even before the pandemic, burnout was on the rise because of increased job demands and workplace stress that was not successfully managed. According to the World Health Organization (2019), burnout is characterized by three dimensions; feelings of energy exhaustion or depletion; increased mental distance from one’s job or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy. To counteract the possibility of burnout set work-life boundaries, reach out for support from colleagues, leadership, or your EAP Therapist, take exercise breaks, or even change the set-up of your workspace office to improve the overall feeling of the space.

3. Self-Care Slide Warning Signs

There are common warning signs that surface when your self-care practices start to decline. These warning signs include lowered ability to focus, lowered memory recall, becoming easily irritable, decreasing motivation, burnout, fatigue, and physical or mental health problems. When these signs appear there has been a self-care slide. It’s important that you allow yourself to notice these warnings signs and then re-visit and implement an improved self-care plan.

4. Strategies to counter self-care slide

To reduce the risk of a self-care slide, you can do things such as regular selfcare check-ins or maintenance, create accountability with close friends or family members, adjust self-care plan when needed, ensure that the self-care plan is realistic to current lifestyle, and lastly, act as soon as you notice a selfcare slide to avoid a detrimental total loss of self-care practices. Improving self-awareness and mindfulness throughout your self-care plan will help prevent a self-care slide. Self-care is about keeping yourself well, so it is essential that you are prioritize your self-care plan to maintain good health and well-being

Bobbi-Jo Kelly, M.A., RP(Q) is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) who provides services through the EAP and privately. Bobbi-Jo’s areas of strength include psychotherapy to address trauma, stress and anxiety, strengthening relationships, and enhancing existing life skills. Bobbi-Jo has a particular interest in working with depression, eating disorders and family conflict.

Be open and talk with them about mental health.

Make sure you are open to conversations about mental health with your children. If your child feels they can talk to you about their feelings, it will make it easier to help them when they are experiencing challenging emotions. Seeing and feeling you being comfortable with mental health discussion will show your child it is okay to discuss their mental health with you when needed.

Have realistic expectations of where your child should be developmentally for emotions

Take time to research what, for your child’s age, are reasonable expectations for emotional regulation capabilities and emotional intelligence. Also understand that every child is going to take their own individual time and path. Having unrealistic expectations when raising a child can cause disappointment, frustration, and impatience. Having realistic expectations for your child, and being patient, will create a positive learning environment, and enable managing behaviours in a positive and healthy way.

Seek outside help for yourself and/or child if needed.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by emotions or stressful situations or seeing that your child is struggling and needs extra support, feel free to seek out outside help. Family, friends, or your EAP Counsellor are always useful resources.

Taylor Willis, M.A. RP(Q) is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) who works with presenting issues such as anxiety, stress, depression, body image, communication, and post partum depression. She also provides family sessions to address parent-child and family conflict.

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