Tools for Psychological and Emotional Self-Care

This is a post by Kirsten on Not Standing Still's Disease.

Today's topic is Psychological and Emotional Self-Care.

Self-care is hard. When it comes to physical self-care, we can write it off as needing to do maintenance like oil changes so our bodies don't fall apart.

Mental, psychological, and emotional self-care, however, cannot be handled so easily.

In order to take care of our minds and souls, we have to discover what helps us individually to a further extent than physical self-care. Fulfillment and enjoyment are at the root of this type of self-care. 

Personally, there are many things that I find help with this type of self-care. Meditation and mindfulness help me immensely as I discussed with Rohan Gunatillake for his book This is Happening:

The app Rohan created, Buddhify, helps so much.

Therapy helps me as well. My therapist is AMAZING and she does such a great job of helping me to think through things, even if I don't see her as often as I could. 

As I touched on in my last post on spiritual self-care, being in nature and/or with loved ones truly helps me to re-energize.

Laughter is key as well. Without laughing at my hands when they don't work or at myself when I slip and harm myself due to the lack of strength I once possessed... I would cry. I have learned that crying isn't bad but merely a release of emotions. Still, I don't enjoy it. It feels more harmful than helpful and isn't conducive to my overall health.

I can track my moods through the Health Storylines app which helps me to practice self-care more earnestly.

One of the things that I enjoy from the Health Storylines app from Self Care Catalysts is how easy it can be to gather wisdom and thoughts for the day:

There are also portions of journaling (which I don't necessarily utilize because I write here!) but is a great set-up:

It isn't always easy to figure out what things to write, so these are great prompts for those new to journaling.

What are some ways that you practice self-care for the emotional and psychological parts of you?