It’s been a long and stressful week of election results, waiting to determine the President of the United States for the next four years, as well as the winners of other local and national races. There’s been a lot of emotion surrounding our current political climate: fear, anxiety, anger, passion, joy, relief, and more. Whether you supported a certain candidate, or have just been bombarded with political news, it’s time now to take a step back and focus on your own self-care. CSN Libraries is here to help!
If you type “self-care strategies” into one of the library’s article search bars, you may find a lot of articles about care for patients, since CSN has a large population of nursing and health sciences students. Today we’re talking about self-care for the general population, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get tips from articles geared toward specific groups.
For example, the Nursing Forum journal in our ProQuest database has a 2000 article about Yoga as a self-care strategy, indicating yoga is a time-honored approach to dealing with stress.
“Yoga practitioners often describe having more energy, vitality, and balanced emotions” the article states, discussing both relaxation poses and breath training as calming techniques (Herrick and Ainsworth 32).
A 2015 article in the Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping journal describes seven self-care strategies, such as exercise, altruism, social action, and more (Miller 52).
And an article published in Psychology Today as recently as September/October 2020 addresses the “experience of undergoing adversity without suffering debilitating effects” (Shpancer 44). Between the election and the pandemic, most of us have faced some kind of adverse effects this year. But author Shpancer argues that “those who are good at keeping their cool, keeping their friends, and keeping their word are more likely to survive adversity” (49).
It’s reassuring to hear psychology research say that humans’ default mode in adverse conditions is “resilience” (Shpancer 46). Which means we are sturdy and strong. So whether we focus on breathing, trying a new form of exercise, or just staying social by communicating with friends, we can reap the benefits of self-care and stay a little more calm during trying times.
If you need more in-depth or specific psychological services, CSN’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) offers a variety of confidential assistance that is free to currently enrolled students.
For more information about self-care research, check out our library databases or ask a librarian for help!
Works Cited
Herrick, Colette M., and Allan D. Ainsworth. "Invest in Yourself: Yoga as a Self-Care Strategy." Nursing Forum, vol. 35, no. 2, 2000, pp. 32-6. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/195015936?accountid=27953, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6198.2000.tb00996.x.
Miller, Joshua. "Seven Self-Care Strategies." Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, vol. 21, no. 1, 2015, pp. 52-58. ProQuest, http://ezproxy.library.csn.edu/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1792217197?accountid=27953.
Shpancer, Noam. “Designed for Success.” Psychology Today, vol. 53, no. 5, Sept. 2020, pp. 44–2. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hxh&AN=145177066&site=ehost-live.