Resiliency and Self-Care
5 MINUTE READ • SELF CARE
It is impossible to understand resiliency without understanding trauma. The two are so intertwined that they can be hard to separate.
At its most basic level, trauma is a distressing or disturbing event and the response you have from it. Resiliency is your ability, healthy or not, to cope with the event and reaction you have from trauma. Resiliency helps you get the traumatic events off of you, or it makes them easier to carry.
Imagine, if you will, that you are driving a truck through life. When bad things happen, you throw a heavy box in the back. With every bad thing, you keep throwing more and more heavy boxes in the back of the truck. Some boxes are light; these may be less stressful things. Some are big and heavy; they could be death or abuse.
All these boxes and all this weight changes how you drive through life. Your truck may creak and move slowly. Your vehicle may be hard to stop, barreling through things it shouldn’t. All that weight also means that the truck can be hard to handle. Driving that truck would be an anxious experience, for sure.
Resiliency helps out though. Imagine you talk to some people at church; they can carry some of those boxes for you. Talk to a friend; they can carry a box. The more supports and factors for resiliency you have, the lighter the truck can be and the less likely you are to crash.
While significant trauma can be one event, resiliency is more than one thing for most of us. It will, at a minimum, include our social supports, our faith, our behaviors, and our health. Resiliency will often include our thoughts and coping mechanisms, things we use to reason and wrestle with big worries. It becomes easier for us to handle all the boxes of heavy stuff we have to carry around with each support.
Resiliency is something we learn and achieve over time. We can make friends who we talk to regularly, exercise, and eat healthy to keep our bodies and trucks operating at peak condition, practice mindfulness, or attend religious services. We can also pull that trauma truck over and take a break, by creating art, vacationing, listening to music, or finding other distractions that help relieve the stress of coping with life.
Areas of Self Care
Here are 5 major areas of self-care to consider:
Physical self-care - taking care of your body.
Social self-care - making time for close relationships.
Mental self-care - keeping your mind sharp.
Spiritual self-care - developing a deeper sense of meaning.
Emotional self-care - understanding the best way to process emotions.
Tips for Self Care
Prioritize sleep
Don’t be afraid to sweat. Being physically active nurtures your well-being.
Journal!
Throw on a clean pair of clothes. You won’t believe how much power there is in this!
Edit your social media feeds. Feel free to mute/delete anything that you deem negative.
Imagine you’re your best friend. What kind of words would you say to yourself? Say them to yourself in the mirror and let it sink in!
Adam Dregely
Adam Dregely is a certified special education teacher in Arizona and California. He holds a Master’s degree in Special Education and a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology. Mr. Dregely has taught high school and middle school in various educational settings across Arizona and California. He has been an administrator for both large and small charter schools, served as a Principal, and has been in charge of school finance and IT.