Self care and resilience

We’re looking at why self care is important. It’s useful to take time to do things that help improve your physical and mental health. These are a wide range of things that you can do in this process. Employing self care strategies can really help manage your stress, will definitely lower risk of illness, and increase your energy levels. Some of the key strategies that have been used to address self care has been – first one, initially, is to eat healthily. That means regular meals, staying hydrated, and having a healthy balanced diet.

One of the key factors in this also is making sleep a priority. One of the challenges in policing is that sleep is often a challenge, often a difficulty, often there are difficulties with sleeping. And what we know, that without good quality sleep we can have a hugely negative impact on our ability to function, psychologically specifically, and sometimes physically too. So the focus on – one of the biggest changes and the biggest positive impacts you can make on your wellbeing is to focus on sleep and do something about problems that you do have with sleep. It’s hugely impactful on our functioning, it allows us – it stops us from having good recall, memory issues, fogginess of thinking, and recall is a big challenge with a lack of sleep.

So being very connected to sleep – if you do struggle and have problems with sleep, seek support, seek help, find ways of engaging with that, and that’s one of the biggest things that you can do that will have a hugely impact or positive impact on your ability to function. Regular physical exercise, it goes without saying really, if your body’s in a physically fit state, psychologically that will often follow. Release of whole range of endorphins can give your body a much needed boost and ultimately keep you feeling well.

So another strategy is setting goals and priorities. In relation to this, what we’re talking about I suppose is that you have a focus, that you have an ability to engage with goals that you’ve set for yourself, that you prioritise certain elements. This gives a psychological and a mental focus, and in that it can help us keep more balanced in our self care. Engaging in relaxing activities is another strategy that has been seen to be really useful. With the onset of huge numbers of wellness apps now on your phones and computers it’s very easy to access meditation, muscle relaxation, breathing exercises. All of these create a physical state of relaxation, and as a result of that, physically you feel much better, but psychologically you are more relaxed to.

A focus on positivity. In the world that we work in, in policing, it can sometimes be difficult to be fully focused on positivity because there’s often lots of negative things that we face. But it’s identifying challenge and negative thoughts. If you can identify those, you can focus on those and you can engage in a more positive process in relation to them. It has massive positive effects. Staying connected, probably one of the most powerful things. And we know from all the things that create resilience and encourage resilience, having a strong support network, staying connected with family, friends who can help provide practical and emotional support when needed. Self care is different for everybody, there’s no one way that works for each person, and you’ll find your own particular way. But that you find a way and that you’re active in your self care is really, really important.