The importance of self-care for caregivers is a reality Heather Johnson has learned to deal with in her own life. She shared that story In Part 1 of this series. Today she finishes the series with specific, practical ideas for caregivers like you and me.

In February, I wrote about a lesson learned from fighting conchs washed up on the shore, desperate for compassionate, gentle care. As caregivers for family with special needs, it’s easy to neglect our own mental, physical, and relational needs—something that is detrimental for all.

Over the twenty-five years of raising three kids with invisible disabilities, I’ve learned the importance of self-care for caregivers. These mental, physical, and relational self-care practices are helpful to me. I hope they can help you too.

Mental Health

• Challenge your thoughts. Is what you’re saying to yourself or another true? Regardless of feelings, focus on truth because truth sets us free.
• Be gentle with self-talk. Perhaps thoughts or actions need adjustment, but judgment is not only unnecessary, it’s unhealthy for us and others.
• Avoid the poison of comparison. Everyone has their own path, and every life is precious.
• If you need help, get help. Self-advocacy for mental health is a sign of strength, not weakness. Depression and anxiety have many root causes. There’s no need to feel shame. (You can use my motto, if it’ll help: Others’ opinions of me are none of my business.) It’s true!
• Practice gratitude. Focus on what you do have more than on what you don’t

Physical Health

• Eat healthy. Eat whole foods as much as possible. Minimize refined sugar, processed foods, and ingredients that cause stress on our systems.
• Exercise daily in ways you love. Regular exercise offers positive mental health benefits.
• Go outside. Fresh air in your lungs and sunshine on your face are good for you.
• Practice gratitude. Yes, gratitude has positive effects on physical health too.

Relational Health

• Spend time with someone you trust. Someone who can empathize, someone who can listen without offering advice. Sometimes having a shoulder to cry on and an ear to hear is the best self-care of all.
• Treat others as you would want to be treated. You are precious and have a combination of strengths and weaknesses. So does everyone else. If you want others to treat you gently without judgment, offer others the same. Even if they don’t respond well, your mental and physical health will benefit and the possibility of others’ hard shells softening increases substantially.
• Practice gratitude. Everyone can annoy us at times. But we are free to focus on annoyances or something positive about every person. What we feed our minds about others affects our relationships with others, both positively and negatively. Find and focus on the good and you will gain.

All life is precious and deserves compassionate care. If we recognize the importance of self-care for caregivers and practice it in simple ways every day, we are able to offer our loved ones the best care. What do you do to practice self-care? Let us know in the comments below. We can all benefit by learning from each other.

The Importance of Self-Care for Caregivers, Part 1

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The importance of self-care for caregivers is a reality Heather Johnson lives with. In this post she tells how her efforts to save fighting conchs on the beach reminded her of the importance of self-care for caregivers.

As I walked along Marco Island’s shore, I saw hundreds of fighting conchs brought in by the tide with life inside their shells. I knew I couldn’t save them all, but I scooped up all my hands could hold. All had special needs.

You see, fighting conchs try their best to survive being beached. Sometimes they try to claw themselves closer to the water where high tide will take them home. But sometimes they are washed up with their shell openings facing up. Only a sweep of high tide might save. Or someone might notice and help.

Had I simply thrown the fighting conchs back into the sea, they would mostly likely have died from the impact. Fighting conchs are fragile creatures despite their hard exteriors. They must be placed gently onto their soft seabed to recover their strength.

Cradling them in my cupped hands, I stepped into the salty water, past the surf’s pushing and pulling, and placed them where they would not just survive but thrive.

After turning and walking back to the beach, I thought about the three children my husband and I scooped up in our arms and carried gently to their new home far from the Russian orphanage near the Bay of Finland’s shore.

Our quarter-century family journey has had its ebbs and flows, its crashing and calm as I’m sure all families have. Within a couple years, however, our family had files full of testing reports with numerous diagnoses—all three kids had invisible, permanent disabilities stemming from fetal alcohol exposure. Specialists and therapies became a permanent part of our family. Many still help us today, now that our kids are adults.

But our kids aren’t the only ones with special needs. Trying my best to take care of our kids, I neglected my own needs and developed my own disability—debilitating depression with agonizing anxiety. My brain defied me. I felt washed up, desperate, and vulnerable as a fighting conch unable to claw its way back to sea. I’m thankful for the compassionate care of family and friends along with medication and therapy that brought me gently back to health. And I learned the importance of prioritizing self-care so I’m able to offer the best care long-term to those I love.

Where are you today with self-care? Swimming along just fine, living well with the stress of life? Or are you washed up, in desperate need of compassionate care from yourself and others? If you’re anything like me, sometimes it’s hard to let people see beyond your shiny shell to care for your sometimes fragile soul. Might I gently encourage you to take care of you?

Be kind to yourself by taking care of yourself. Seek health in all forms—mental, physical, and relational. You work so hard at helping others. Do them the best favor by giving yourself the same compassionate care.

For tips on specific ways to improve self-care mentally, physically, and relationally, see The Importance of Self-Care for Caregivers, Part 2.

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