Managing and Caring For The Self Essay

Reflection Paper on Self Care
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Reflection Paper on Self Care
Self-care is an important part of one's emotional, mental, and physical health. It entails any intentional actions taken by an individual to care for his or her mental, emotional, and physical health. Such actions are aimed at facilitating one to attain optimal mental and physical health. The term self-care is often used by the mental health professionals in reference to the ability of an individual to manage the activities of daily living (ADL) including putting on clean clothes, brushing teeth, taking a shower, and attending to any medical concerns (Goodtheraphy.org, 2016). Scholars contend that good self-care is problematic for some individuals especially those with mental illnesses and survivors of violence and abuse. While self-care is a critical aspect of the healing process, it is unique for each individual. Physical self-care entails food, exercise, sleep, and medical care. On the other hand, emotional self-care entails counseling, keeping a journal of one's feelings, and relaxation or meditation exercises. In this reflection paper, the author discusses the significance of practitioner self-care, the anticipated challenges within the mental health profession, building a small private practice, and the specific self-care strategies to be incorporated in the professional practice.
Importance of Practitioner Self Care
Practitioner self-care is of great significance to the mental health professionals. The mental health professionals must be healthy both physically and emotionally in order to be in a better position of helping others. They are expected to be healthy in order to avoid suffering from emotional difficulties that could result in widespread implications on their quality of life as well as that of their families. Emotional difficulties among the healthcare professionals might also compromise the quality of services offered to their clients. In this regard, self-care behaviors can assist mental health professionals to avoid developing compassion fatigue (Goodtheraphy.org, 2016). Such professionals are more likely to suffer from compassion fatigue because they work in environments that present emotional challenges. Particularly, they work with people with various mental illnesses who often present a challenge to the physical and emotional well-being.
In addition, practitioner self-care can also help them in preventing stress and burnout. The challenging nature of the mental health practitioners' work has been associated with burn out and high stress levels. While the terms compassion fatigue and burn out are often used interchangeably, there is a distinct difference between the two. In this case, burnout is associated with the daily job stressors while compassion fatigue is directly related to the mental health professionals' observations from their patients. It is thus important for the mental health practitioners to recognize the symptoms of burnout in order to seek the most effective intervention. Most importantly, such professionals should learn on how to develop as well as maintain a healthy balance between their personal life and professional work (North America Drama Therapy Asso...