Self-care during difficult times

 

Over the last couple of years, we’ve produced a few self-care guides. Our current self-care guide is one of the most popular handouts we’ve created.

Self-care is anything you do with the specific purpose of looking after your physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual health.

It includes actions taken in the present to look after yourself now, but also into the future. For example, physical exercise is beneficial to you now (improved concentration, memory, energy levels) but also in the future (e.g. reduced risk of illness).

Recently, the counselling team was reflecting on the fact that our current self-care guide is written with the underlying assumption that the person who is reading it is in a reasonably stable life situation and therefore has the capacity to consider making life improvements.

But many of the students we see here at the health service are going through difficult times: loss, grief, crises. Their main goal is just to try and get through, day by day.

We wanted to write a guide for those students.

So I present to you our ‘Self-care during difficult times‘ guide.

Unlike our other self-care guide, this guide is focused on the small things you can do when you are feeling distressed and overwhelmed. It covers the range of experiences people have during highly stressful periods, the coping strategies that work the best, and guidance on when to seek help.

Hard copies can be found at HCD (Level 3, Student Centre) on the wall outside reception.

Digital copy below.

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