📹 Self Care for Activists with Stevie Boebi
I talk activist self care with LGBT sex ed YouTuber (and all-round babe) Stevie Boebi – including disability, recovery, and the …
What are the 7 pillars of self-care?
Self-care is crucial, especially during the holiday season, and can be practiced through various methods such as exercise, eating well, meditation, and therapy. These methods fit into the seven pillars: mental, emotional, physical, environmental, spiritual, recreational, and social. A well-balanced self-care routine should include each pillar, avoiding limiting oneself to just one or two.
Mental self-care involves creating a healthy mindset through mindfulness and curiosity, such as journaling, meditation, and taking breaks from screen time. Emotional self-care involves creating healthy coping strategies for daily stress, such as watching movies, listening to music, writing positive affirmations, asking for help, and setting boundaries to protect oneself and one’s heart.
Why is it so important to do self-care for the professional?
It is imperative that individuals engage in self-care activities to mitigate the adverse effects of work-related stress and achieve a state of equilibrium. This approach not only alleviates the overall stressors associated with one’s career but also fosters a sense of fulfillment and well-being at work.
Why is self-care so important?
Self-care is a crucial aspect of maintaining physical and mental health, as it helps manage stress, reduces the risk of illness, and boosts energy levels. Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, and is essential for overall health and quality of life. Self-care can support treatment and recovery for mental illnesses. Various resources, such as the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), MedlinePlus, CDC, and SAMHSA, offer strategies for improving emotional and social health.
The NIH Wellness Toolkits, MedlinePlus, CDC, and SAMHSA offer resources to help individuals improve their mental health and cope with stress. The information on the NIMH website and publications is in the public domain and may be reused or copied without permission. However, images should be cited as the source.
Why is self-care important for activists?
Acknowledging and honoring emotions is crucial for student advocates and activists to heal and cope with feelings of isolation, loss, and trauma. Paying tribute to difficult losses in a healthy way, such as painting a picture, writing a poem, or making a collage, can be therapeutic. Celebrating small successes, such as calling to local government or attending a protest, can help improve the cause and lead to big changes. Keep a journal of these successes, including quotes or experiences that build you up.
Remind yourself that most movements and big changes are the result of several small successes. If spiritual connection is important, create time for spiritual connection, such as attending a yoga class, religious service, or reflecting on the world’s beauty. Find something meaningful that feels good to your spirit and make it a practice.
Why self-care is a necessity?
Self-care is a vital aspect of overall well-being, offering numerous benefits such as improved physical health, enhanced mental and emotional well-being, increased productivity and focus, better relationships, increased self-esteem and self-worth, and prevention of burnout. Clinically proven to reduce anxiety, depression, stress, and improve concentration, self-care can also help reduce heart disease, stroke, and cancer. It also helps maintain spiritual connection and help individuals realize their purpose in life.
Regular exercise, sleep, and nutritious meals can enhance physical health, boost energy levels, and strengthen the immune system. Mental health is crucial, and self-care can help reduce stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms. Prioritizing self-care allows for more emotional resources to invest in relationships, preventing burnout and enabling individuals to present their best selves in interactions with others.
In addition, self-care practices can boost self-esteem and self-worth by recognizing one’s needs and engaging in activities that make you feel good. Regular self-care can also help prevent burnout, a state of physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion caused by prolonged stress. This is especially important for those working in the helping professions.
Why should we care about activism?
People may engage in activism due to personal stories of injustices or to identify with specific struggles and social movements that align with their relationship with social and economic structures. They may also engage in activism due to personal experiences with stigma and discrimination, shifting their focus from individual needs to re-centering on the voices and work of individuals facing violence from intersecting identities. This perspective comes from a working-class background and a social worker in France.
What are the origins of self-care and why activists and advocates need to practice it?
During the women’s and civil rights movements, self-care became a pivotal political act for transformative activism. Marginalized groups employed it as a means of reclaiming autonomy over their health, challenging the racist and patriarchal medical establishment.
Why is self-care empowering?
Initially, you might wonder what self-care has to do with empowerment. Actually, they’re inextricably related. Like empowerment, self-care is a process of increasing strengths and developing influence toward improving one’s circumstances. Self-care is a wholistic lifestyle that promotes one’s well-being. As such, it’s an ongoing process that accesses strengths to cultivate approaches, resources, and competencies to positively influence one’s own circumstances.
In social work, “empowerment” typically refers externally to clients, causes, and communities. We neglect applying it to ourselves. As the above definition connotes, empowerment of individuals, with attention to the personal, is a primary entry point for effecting change. This point applies to practitioners, too. Without serious attention to practitioner self-care, efforts to inspire action and lead change are stymied. Inattention to this essential micro-aspect of systemic empowerment—i. e., self-care—leads to exponential human harm, professional losses, and diminished impact.
Em-POWER-ment: Reframing and Reclaiming Our POWER-Fullness. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker.
How to use activism as self-care?
Activism is a powerful tool for sharing values and taking action for causes you care about. It helps reduce feelings of loneliness and depression by increasing social connection and a sense of purpose. A helper’s high can contribute to a greater sense of well-being and a more positive outlook on life. Teens and young adults across the country have reported the benefits of activism on their mental health.
For instance, Jenna Landau, 18, from Lincolnshire, Illinois, found outlets in her high school clubs, such as the Feminism Club, which marched against abortion rights in Chicago after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. This experience provided her with a sense of voice and a sense of belonging.
Why are self-care practices important?
Self-care is a crucial aspect of maintaining physical and mental health, as it helps manage stress, reduces the risk of illness, and boosts energy levels. Mental health encompasses emotional, psychological, and social well-being, and is essential for overall health and quality of life. Self-care can support treatment and recovery for mental illnesses. Various resources, such as the National Institute of Mental Health (NIH), MedlinePlus, CDC, and SAMHSA, offer strategies for improving emotional and social health.
The NIH Wellness Toolkits, MedlinePlus, CDC, and SAMHSA offer resources to help individuals improve their mental health and cope with stress. The information on the NIMH website and publications is in the public domain and may be reused or copied without permission. However, images should be cited as the source.
📹 Ep 48: Self-Care for Change Agents and Activists
Dr. Thema honors those who work on both inner change and improving the larger society. She explores the psychological …
looove that point about taking care of yourself not equating to abandoning what you’re advocating for- i felt that a bit when i stopped making articles on race/ethnicity to take care of myself for a while, and even now i have some level of guilt that i haven’t gotten back to it, cause it’s something i feel really passionately about, but its exactly what you said if i’m taking this step back for myself that doesn’t mean i’m ‘failing’ or something like that
Whoah, for someone who is completely over-analytical of myself and often believe myself to be pretty self-aware in regards to my mental health/trauma and how they affect my actions, for some reason it never really clicked how the feeling of being undeserving of self-care could be linked to child abuse. Ugh, thanks for speaking on that, Stevie!
With all the stuff happening with Glasgow Pride this week I had to take a bit of a step back because the feelings of hopelessness for the situation were creeping in. Earlier on in the week I found writing down all my thoughts on the issues very helpful. This is not something I usually do I’m not much of a writer but it helped me stop being in my head too much and running through things. Now I’m facing the predicament of realising some of the stuff I wrote is quite important and if I could get these ideas out there it would be helpful to the situation but the process of putting the words down on paper was a far more emotional personal process than I’m used to so it makes me feel a tad vulrable.
This was such a nice chat, I didn’t know Stevie was a CSA survivor or disabled! What she said about looking after yourself so you can participate resonated a lot with me, building yourself back up from intense fatigue is hard, especially if you know that when you’re feeling better you will want to do activism that can be difficult and stressful.