Self-Care and Self-Improvement

Self-care and self-improvement are worthy endeavors for anyone to strive towards. In this month’s blog, we’d like to take a moment to highlight the importance of two things: self-care for caregivers, and how advocacy for both you and others is key for self-improvement.

This month, specifically, is the perfect time to reflect on these ideas. September is Self-Care Awareness Month: a time to focus on taking care of ourselves – however that looks for each individual. And in addition, Self-Improvement Month is also observed in September, which encourages people to look inward and determine how they can improve their lives.

In our community, self-care is critical for everyone. But for caregivers, being able to take care of yourself along with those you are responsible for looking after is even more essential.

Self-Care for Caregivers

Even if you aren’t familiar with the meaning of the term “self-care,” it’s likely that everyone has their own go-to ways of caring for themselves. For some people, this can look like doing a favorite activity, taking a day to relax, engaging in a daily activity routine – like a walk, or simply being kind to themselves.

For people who have the responsibility of caring for others, taking the time to practice self-care can be a challenge. And it can look different from the ways that other people care for themselves.

Today, we’ll go over some suggestions of ways that caregivers can practice meaningful self-care.

Mindfulness

Trying to be more mindful in daily life is a common way that people can practice self-care. For caregivers, taking time to care for yourself by checking in with your thoughts, feelings, and needs is vital for maintaining both your mental and physical health.

A few examples of how caregivers can practice mindfulness include:

• • Take note of your thoughts and emotions: Caregivers are often busy with their external responsibilities, and any internal feelings that need attention might get unintentionally pushed aside. One of the main goals of mindfulness is to be more aware of how you’re feeling and recognize your emotions as important and significant.
  • Participate in a mind-body activity: If this aspect of mindfulness interests you, it can be very fulfilling to partake in. For example, yoga can be helpful for caregivers who value physical activity or want to practice more structured self-care. Plus, creating more structure around your self-care routine can help you recognize the value in it.

Physical Health

As humans, maintaining our physical health is necessary for leading happy lives. Caregivers are often responsible for someone else’s physical health alongside their own, and it can be a lot to handle.

Making time for exercise, healthy eating, and regular checkups are just as important for caregivers as they are for anyone else. We encourage anyone who provides care for someone else to extend the same level of intention and urgency to themselves when it comes to physical health.

Social Connection

One of the most important things that caregivers can do to practice self-care is to connect with others, whether that’s with other caregivers or people outside of that particular community. Caregiving can sometimes be an all-consuming task, and caregivers might forget that this role they take on is not the single-defining aspect of their lives.

It can be helpful for caregivers to find community with other people who have similar responsibilities. Social or support groups for caregivers can provide much-needed interactions with others who truly understand what it’s like to be a caregiver.

In addition to socializing with other caregivers, it’s important to take time to connect with others outside of that circle as well. Just like anyone else, a job is not the full extent of who you are, and having friends outside of work can help remind us of that.

One final resource: this page provides a short list of self-care practices for caregivers that are easy to keep in mind in day-to-day life.

Self-Improvement through Advocacy

As we mentioned earlier, in addition to Self-Care Awareness Month, September is also Self-Improvement Month. This brings us to our next topic for today’s blog.

Advocating for Yourself

Self-advocacy is crucial for any person to be able to live a fulfilling life, and we’ve been talking about what advocacy means and its significance in our community for a while now. We will revisit this topic below.

Advocating for yourself may be simple for some individuals, but for others, it can be a more complicated feat.

Regardless, knowing how to advocate for yourself – your needs and your wants – requires dedication and confidence. For people with disabilities, there are different challenges in practicing self-advocacy. But no matter what hurdles someone may face, self-advocacy has the same basic principles for everyone.

In short, self-advocacy involves:

• • Determining your needs and wants
  • Considering what types of support would help you the most
  • Conveying what you believe to others

Self-advocacy might seem simple in theory, but with differences in individuals’ circumstances or environments, finding success in self-advocacy can be harder than it seems. Confidence is key, but so is external support; in short, there are countless factors in the efficacy of self-advocacy.

Luckily, there are resources for people who want to become better self-advocates, including for people with disabilities. Here is a brief list:

• • An in-depth guide to all things self-advocacy
  • An online database for local self-advocacy groups
  • A broad list of general disability and self-advocacy resources

Self-advocacy and self-improvement go together in many ways. Often, you must work with others to achieve your goals and improve your circumstances. Having self-advocacy skills is an excellent way to jumpstart your self-improvement journey.

Advocating for Others

Finally, just as self-advocacy is important for individuals to shape their own lives, advocating for other people, especially those with disabilities, can be even more effective in improving lives.

It’s an unfortunate reality that people with disabilities have historically faced challenges in being allowed to advocate for themselves. While we have seen improvement with this in recent years, it is still undeniably helpful for people without disabilities to practice advocacy for the community and lift up disabled voices.

Though the wording of self-improvement might seem to imply that you should focus on improving your own life, advocating for others can often benefit everyone at the same time. Many people would likely agree that it just feels good to help others – it’s normal to want to make a difference in the world.

Some examples of how you can be an advocate for people with disabilities include:

• • Sharing helpful resources and support that they might benefit from
  • Spreading not only disability awareness but acceptance too.
  • Empowering people with disabilities to advocate for themselves (making the necessary space for that to happen is crucial for this)

Final Thoughts

At Adam’s Camp, we know how important self-care, self-improvement, and self-advocacy are for our community. This September, we encourage you to think about the ways in which you can practice self-care as well as advocate for others, improving their lives as well as your own.

The Adam’s Camp mission is to realize the potential and develop the strengths of children, youth, and adults with disabilities. We do this through unique adventure and therapy programs with the help of committed counselors, therapists, and volunteers who all work together to create a safe, fun, and supportive environment for people with disabilities.

We are always open to starting a conversation – please reach out to us with any questions you may have about what we went over today or how we support our community.