Taking Good Care of Yourself
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What does taking “good” care of yourself mean to you?
What is getting in the way?
“I need to remember that my problems are as important as anyone else’s”
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What do people think of this quote?
o Do you believe your problems are as important as anyone else’s?
o Do your actions live up to this?
Self-care
o What does self-care mean to you?
Self-care questionnaire
o Explore how well you take care of yourself
o What did learn from the questionnaire?
o Was there anything that stuck out to you?
o Did any feelings come up?
o Was there anything not listed on the questionnaire?
o Did people notice a lot or self-care areas of improvement?
Self-Care as attaining safety in one’s life
o Self-care is a way of treating oneself with respect, valuing your body and yourself, and
attending to your needs
o Are you able to take good care of yourself on your own?
 Do you rely on others to attend to your needs?
 Family, partners, friends, treaters?
o Why is self-care important in recovery?
 Listening to needs you may have previously ignored or avoided
 Being attuned with your needs can help prevent against relapse, burnout, and
mental collapse
o PTSD and substance abuse
 Almost always leads to deficits in self-care or self-neglect
 Why do you think PTSD and substance abuse are associated with selfneglect/self-care problems?
 PTSD
 Self-neglect
o Trauma nay have led you to believe your needs were not
important
 “if no one else cares, why should I?
 It’s difficult to care about yourself, anyone, or anything
o Self-neglect can present as suicidal thinking, self-blame, guilt
 “I didn’t deserve to survive when others died.”
 It feels bad or uncomfortable to be nice or
compassionate to ourselves
o Listening to our needs to break the cycle of self-neglect
 Substance use
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Downward spiral
o One after another your positive connections with the world are
lost
 Lose job, money, family, friends, physical health, home
o Does substance use make it difficult to listen to our needs?
o Does substance use make it difficult to attend to those needs?
 Abandoning self-care
o “F-it” mentality. “I’m done caring”
o Impulses take over
o Poor role-models of self-care
 Did you have anyone in your life to model taking good self-care?
 Do you know anyone who takes good care of themselves?
 How do you know they are taking good care of themselves?
 What can you learn from that person about self-care?
Vulnerability to revictimization
o PTSD and substance use
 Putting self in dangerous situations
 Driving a car at high speed, starting fights with others, engaging in
hostile relationships
 Wishing to die or not caring if you die, but without having to kill oneself
directly
o Extreme self-neglect and disregard for oneself
o Ignoring an avoiding one’s needs
Self-care questionnaire
o Pick one or two self-care areas or problems to attend to
o Be realistic: Start with one or two problems to try and remedy
 What is in your control now or in the near future?
 Be careful to not try to remedy too many things at once
 There can be a “push” to fix everything you can as fast as you can
o Sets you up for failure and guilt
 Start small
o Being realistic about your self-care problems is self-care!
o Taking “good” care of yourself means doing things with in your
means and being mindful to not overload yourself
 What are some self-care problems you want to remedy? How will you do this?