Self-Care Counseling – Therapists and Counselors in Hanover, VA

In recent years, there has been a lot of information spread about the importance of self-care and how it plays a significant role in mental health. The ability to carve out designated time to pour into one’s own life is the beginning of balance in other areas of our lives. Self-care deepens your ability to care for others and broadens your capacity to love. You can’t adequately care for others well if you don’t care for yourself first.

Self-care can include the following:

• Nutrition, appropriate sleep patterns, and exercise
• Establishing healthy boundaries for yourself
• Self-love and praise
• Nourishing activities like massages, acupuncture, or reflexology
• Meditation
• Listening to music

Self-care helps improve our emotional capacity and is important for your overall health. Emotional self-care can be done by processing and expressing feelings with trusted friends, family members, or a therapist. It also helps to avoid situations and people that cause you distress. Setting boundaries and learning to be in touch with your thoughts and feelings by expressing your emotions can help you move through painful experiences that may otherwise cause you to suffer.

Many of us lead busy lives where we’re consumed with taking care of others and conditioned to putting their needs before ours. While caring for others is a wonderful trait, too little self-care leaves us emotionally exhausted and not much good to anyone else, especially ourselves.

Here are several ways to make self-care a priority in your life:

1. Set early alarms and be intentional. How you begin your day will impact how you finish in most cases. We can choose to be lazy or choose to be productive. Early risers tend to have a more proactive lifestyle and lead less stressful lives because they have more time to get tasks done. Practice sleep training if you have difficulty getting up early.
2. Control your thoughts. We are what we think, and those thoughts impact our actions. Thoughts play a huge role in our emotional wellbeing. Being mindful of what controls our thoughts is how we ultimately take control back on how we feel. When we are in control of our thoughts, we tend to govern our emotional feelings and reactions much better. The goal is to manage your thoughts to ensure your thoughts don’t manage you.
3. Physical activity is always going to improve your overall health. The recommendation is to get twenty minutes of exercise at least three times per week to ensure that the body does not remain sedentary. This is increasingly important as many Americans work in employment environments that include primarily sitting down in front of a computer. Make time for physical activity in order to increase productivity and creativity throughout the day.
4. Setting boundaries are the key to self-care and peace. Setting limits on your time and resources helps create balance and leaves room for the things or activities you truly enjoy.
5. Connect with someone you love. Humans require connectivity and it can decrease feelings of loneliness which has been shown to have a negative impact on mental health. By creating meaningful connections is can help us reduce stress, improve our health, and add value to overall wellbeing.

Success is the constant repetition of many tiny habits, which together soothe you and make sure you’re at your best emotionally, physically, and mentally. The best way to do this is to implement tiny self-care habits every day. Regularly a little bit of love and attention for your own body, mind, and soul.

Practicing self-care in all aspects of your life can help you avoid neglecting yourself in the midst of responsibilities that include putting so many other’s needs before your own. Self-care increases our ability to be self-aware and creates the space for us to have meaningful interactions and relationships with others.