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What is Resiliency? Resiliency is the ability to spring back from and successfully adapt to adversity. An increasing body of research from the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology is showing that most people–including young people–can bounce back from risks, stress, crises, and trauma and experience life success. ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: "In the event that oxygen masks may be needed, place the mask over your own face before assisting others." 1. Self-care is not an "emergency response plan" to be activated when stress becomes overwhelming. Instead, healthy self-care is an intentional way of living by which our values, attitudes, and actions are integrated into our day-to-day routines. The need for "emergency care" should be an exception to usual practice. 3. Self-care is not about doing more, or adding more tasks to an already overflowing "to do" list. Instead, healthy self-care is as much about "letting go" as it is about taking action. It has to do with taking time to be a human being as well as a human doing. It is about letting go of frenzied schedules and meaningless pursuits. It is also about letting go of detrimental attitudes and behaviors. Self-care has been conceptualized in three related domains — awareness, balance, and connection — the "ABC’s" of self-care. It may be useful to reflect on the status of your own self-care in these realms. AWARENESS: Self-care begins in stillness. By quieting our busy lives and entering into a space of solitude, we can develop an awareness of our own true needs, and then act accordingly. This is the contemplative way of the desert, rather than the constant activity of the city. Thomas Merton suggests that the busyness of our lives can be a form of "violence" that robs us of inner wisdom. Too often we act first without true understanding and then wonder why we feel more burdened, and not relieved. Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak suggests reflection on the following question: "Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?" BALANCE: Self-care is a balancing act. It includes balancing action and mindfulness. Balance guides decisions about embracing or relinquishing certain activities, behaviors, or attitudes. It also informs the degree to which we give attention to the physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social aspects of our being or, in other words, how much time we spend working, playing, and resting. Recently I heard it suggested that a helpful prescription for balanced daily living includes eight hours of work, eight hours of play, and eight hours of rest! CONNECTION: Healthy self-care cannot take place solely within oneself. It involves being connected in meaningful ways with others and to something larger. We are decidedly interdependent and social beings. We grow and thrive through our connections that occur in friendships, family, social groups, nature, recreational activities, spiritual practices, therapy, and myriad other ways. Often times, our most renewing connections can be found right in our midst in the workplace, with co-workers and with the individuals to whom we provide care. There is no formula, of course, for self-care. Each of our "self-care plans" will be unique and change over time. We must listen well to our own bodies, hearts and minds, as well as to the counsel of trusted friends, as we seek resiliency and renewal in our lives and work. CARING FOR YOURSELF, YOUR SOUL, YOUR SANITY Self Care (Mind)
Healthy Lifestyle (Body)
Spiritual Care (Spirit)
Stress and Work (Warning Signs!)
Strategies for Self Care at Work
Lisa Cunningham Roberts, MA, NCC From www.nhchc.org ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: In Price Pritchett’s (1996), New Work Habits for a Radically Changing World, the author takes a realistic look at the changes that have been happening over the past years and speaks candidly about new choices we as mental health counselors can make. Take a look at his following 13 ground rules for job success:
Building Your Resiliency Building your resiliency to stress is a way of dealing with stressful situations in such a way that it also helps you take the next step in your own growth as a person. Building your resiliency raises your tolerance so that as you grow, things that stressed you out in the past no longer have the same hold on you that they once did. So, what exactly is resiliency?
Already, you can probably see the connection of this concept with stress management. Life does the bending, stretching and compressing of us in our daily experiences, testing our resiliency. How well we weather the storm depends on how resilient we are. Statements about resiliency:
So, how we handle the storm not only reveals our current level of resiliency, it also can build it up. Building Resiliency Generally, building resiliency involves doing two difficult things simultaneously in a stressful situation: self-soothing and self-confronting. Self-Soothing: Self-soothing is taking deliberate steps to calm oneself while facing a stressful situation. Often this can involve traditional stress management techniques such as relaxation, deep breathing or healthy self-talk. Besides just the goal of outwardly handling a situation appropriately, self-soothing has a deeper purpose that can be different from traditional stress management: to calm oneself enough in the anxious situation in order to do the self-confronting. Self-Confronting: The idea here is to ask yourself why you are upset and learn what this tells you about yourself. Specifically, what is your growth issue in this situation? One example of this can be, "Am I depending on someone else to validate my sense of self-worth?", "Do I have my sense of myself too heavily invested in this situation, so that when it changes I may lose myself?". Once you've identified where you need to grow, the next step is to figure out what the "hard thing" is that you need to do to grow, and make yourself do it. Make yourself respond to the situation in accordance with your core values and beliefs and depend on those for your self validation. Things to Remember Focusing on building your resiliency does NOT mean that whatever is going on around you is okay or that you should accept it, because maybe your growth issue involves saying no or setting a boundary where you've been afraid to in the past. From University of Arizona Life&Work Connections |
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