Six Dimensions of Self-Care

Mindful Wellness Self-Care Guide

The most common pillars of self-care include:

◦ Physical

◦ Mental

◦ Emotional

◦ Spiritual

◦ Environmental

◦ Recreational

◦ Social

Physical Self-Care

Physical self-care is a way to maintain your physical well-being by prating healthy habits to promote that. Regular exercise improves your mood, reduces risk of diseases and clears your head. Healthy nutrition helps provide the body with fuel it needs to function. Hydration helps the body regulate temperature, lubricate joints, and prevent infections. Sleep is essential for physical and mental health. When you sleep, your body repairs itself and you should wake up feeling stronger. Meditation is good for your physical body and mental health because it involves deep breathing, and we all know breath is the energy life-force.  Other forms of physical self-care include grounding exercises, gardening, volunteerism, and getting regular checkups with your doctors, increasing your water intake, going to the gym, prioritize a healthy diet, stretching throughout the day, getting a massage, walk in nature and experience the awe moments, take up a hobby, learn a new skill or a new language, hiking, and enjoy the water in every form. 

Mental Self-Care

Mental self-care involves any activity that will keep your mind sharp and improve psychological well-being.  Mental self-care is designed to keep the mind healthy by encouraging the practice of brain-stimulating activities and healthy behaviors.  It’s a way to treat yourself gently and reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Mental self-care can help improve concentration, energy, and overall well-being.

Prioritizing sleep (resting at least 7-8 hours a night), eating well, exercising, practicing gratitude, staying connected with healthy relationships, taking a break during the day (a five-minute nap does wonders to rejuvenate your energy level and mental sharpness), journaling your thoughts and feelings can help clear your mind.   In addition, regulate emotions (self-regulation is discipline), set goals and create a plan to accomplish them (create new goals often), be kind and gentle with yourself (don’t ignore your feelings, speak your truth), find activities you enjoy (things to stimulate laughter and a sense of ease), practice giving (acts of kindness can help improve your mental well-being), and manage your stress levels (stress is your body’s reaction to a challenge or demand).

“There are three main kinds of stress: acute, episodic acute and chronic.”

Three Types of Stress

Acute Stress is short-term stress that comes and goes quickly.  It can be positive or negative depending on the situation.  It’s the feeling you get when you’re riding on a rollercoaster or having a fight with a close friend or family member.  Everyone experiences acute stress from time to time.

Episodic acute stress is when you experience acute stress on a regular basis.  With this type of stress, you don’t ever get the time you need to return to a calm, relaxed state.  Episodic stress typically affects people working in certain high-stress professions like healthcare providers, social workers, or police officers.

Chronic stress is long-term stress that goes on for weeks, months, or even years.  You may experience chronic stress due to marriage difficulties, complex financial problems, and parenting.  Chronic stress can lead to health problems if not addressed, so it is important to check in with your body, mind, and soul often.

Emotional Self-Care

Emotional self-care is the practice of understanding, processing, and regulating your emotions in a healthy way. It can help you build resilience, improve your relationships, and live a more balanced lifestyle.

Acknowledge your feelings (accept that it’s normal to feel a range of emotions, such as sadness, fear, frustration, anger, or feeling overwhelmed); practice self-compassion (be gentle with yourself and others); set clear boundaries for your time and energy; practice mindfulness (be aware of what’s happening in the present, both inside and around you without disconnecting from your body; spend time with people you care about, take care of your body, take breaks aways from the news and social media; laugh out loud (find humor in everyday life, laugh at yourself in a light-hearted way).

Spiritual Self-Care

Spiritual self-care (not to be confused with religion) is strengthening your connection to the Divine; the capacity to find meaning in what we experience in life; its connecting to something that is Karger than ourselves, like having strong faith and communion with God, divine energy-life force, spending time in nature, self-reflection and meditation. In my counseling service I typically address three spheres of human experience when facing a crisis or illness: existential, transcendental, and emotional spiritual care. There are several major constructs of spiritual needs with patients/clients, they are belonging, meaning, hope, the sacred, morality, beauty, and acceptance.

Environmental Self-Care

Environmental self-care entails intentional attention and detail to creating a space where you will feel safe, secure, and at peace.  It’s a proactive way to enhance the quality of your life.  Your environment should be a space in which you are motivated and inspired by, not overwhelmed with; it is creative, lively, de-cluttered, and promotes wellness.  Your environment is created by implementing small daily practices and larger strategic actions that will collectively add to a more sustainable lifestyle.

Social Self-Care

Social self-care is nurturing your family and social connections by spending quality time with them, setting healthy boundaries, being aware of others’ feelings and emotions, and being fully present.  Social self-care allows you to feel supported, safe, and connected to those who care about your well-being.  Research shows that when you are connected to people it has positive effects on your health. These people can be loved-ones, intimate partners, neighbors, co-workers, or extended families, they all can influence your well-being. So whether its going out into the community and helping with clean-up efforts or spending time at your neighborhood pool, there are many health benefits derived from social connections.

Recreational Self-Care

Okay, let’s face it, this one is easy!  Recreational self-care is simply having as much fun as possible.  This is your opportunity to become a child again, remembering all the many ways you used to explore and elicit laughter into your world.  Being spontaneous and enjoying the moment can be liberating amongst everything else.  The joy comes from stepping outside the box and stimulating that inner-child-like qualities we all have, and just release all that tension build-up collected on a day-to-day basis.  Remember self-care is about the mindset, practices, habits and activities that we cultivate to prevent stress, mental health disorders, illnesses, and all types of negative emotions.