Self-Care: Figuring Out What Works For You

By Christine Murray, See the Triumph Co-Founder

All this month, we’ve focused on the importance of practicing self-care, whether you’re a survivor of an abusive relationship, if you work professionally with clients impacted by abuse and trauma, or if you’re someone who’s been touched by abuse in other ways, such as having a friend or family member who has been abused. As we wrap up this series, we want to emphasize that self-care can look very different for different people, so what’s most important is finding out what strategies work best for you.

To help inspire you to think of all the diverse ways that you might put self-care practices at work in your own life, below you’ll find a list of the various strategies that survivors of past abusive relationships who participated in our research have used to care for themselves:

• “Journal and keep records.  Develop a self-care routine.  Re-discover who YOU are and what YOU like, make time for YOU!”
  
• “Re-learn self-care, learn to talk about this instead of keeping it all inside of me, lots of daily prayer, work a safety plan and be constantly aware, rediscover myself, set goals, forgive myself.”
  
• “I relied on my healthy relationships more and allowed my supportive friends and family to be there for me and help me through it. This was a significant change from the ‘I can handle it all on my own’ mentality I had while in the relationship.”
  
• “I started wearing makeup again and changed my hair. I made new friends, and started a new relationship with one of them. I make a point to stand up for myself in this relationship, not that I need to. I know that I can take care of myself.”
  
• “Started meditation and took a course in DBT therapy. That was helpful. I have avoided getting close and intimacy and sex because they have been such triggers. I found a group for women with PTSD and history of domestic violence that I'm interested in joining.”
  
• “I am going to school, read self help books, began volunteering, got emotional help, I talked with family, I ended ties with those who don't support me.”
  
• “I surrounded myself with people who love and care for me. I have found useful work to do that helps others. I work very hard not to let this experience be what defines me. I moved away, I took up art, discovered I was good at it, found a wonderful therapist, found my faith again, have learned to be happy with the life that I have.”
  
• “I began practicing mindfulness meditation as a means of helping me cope with some of the difficult emotions I experienced.  Mindfulness has helped me be more mindful in my everyday life.  I am better able to accept myself and people as they are.”
  
• “I became more independent, surrounded myself with people who pushed me to be all that I could be. I moved away from the area I had lived in and/or built up a group of supportive friends through college, work, and church.”
  
• “I have always been very independent, but I realized that to overcome my experience I was going to need help.  My family has been amazing and my therapist really helped me to see the reality of my situation.”
  
• “If someone has great friends and family to see them through, lean on them.”
  
  

What I hope you’ll take away from this list, along with our entire series this month on self-care, is that there are a lot of ways that you can put self-care into practice in your life, and it’s worth taking the time to discover the strategies that will work best for you. Once you’ve figured out what will work for you, make it a priority to carve out time and space in your life to continue to engage in self-care in an ongoing, intentional way.

You’re worth it! You have an important contribution to make to the world, and you’ll be in the best position to make that contribution if you are consistently recharging, getting re-energized, and restoring your commitment to yourself and others by engaging in self-care!