Self-Care for Trauma Survivors: Enhancing Recovery & Wellbeing - Essay Sample

Introduction

Trauma is collective to more than fifty per cent of the population, with a large per cent of traumatic events leading to mental disorders such as PTSD, depression, as well as inter-relation problems (Dorothy, 2017). Due to the intensity of the consequences of trauma, individuals experiencing this ordeal are advised to practice self-care to enhance their wellbeing. Self-care improves recovery through enhancing positive relationships and interactions between the patient and care providers. The paper will evaluate strategies for self-care to individuals experiencing trauma.

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Self-Care Strategies

Self-care strategies can be grouped into three; physical, relational, plus cognitive (Patricia et al., 2013). Physical strategies include physical exercises such as running, dance, and yoga, among others. These strategies are aimed at providing progressive relaxation methods to enable the patients to focus on something different. During exercise, there is deep breathing, exhaustion, and relaxation of muscles which gives an individual a new experience of thoughts, besides the traumatic ones. If an individual does not like exercises, one can go shopping, cook, or having an undisturbed sleep. The practices help in dealing with intense feelings plus emotions.

Relational strategies involve building trusting relationships among friends, peers, workmates, romantic partners, supervisors, or therapist (Patricia et al., 2013). Genuine relationships provide physical, emotional, and cognitive support. When a traumatic individual is in a relationship, they trust the people with their fears by confiding their feelings and emotions. Some individuals can become closer to their pets and spend more time with them. When among friends, activities such as cooking or exercising together help the victim to become more aware of themselves to find the courage to face their ordeal. It is in such relationships that people find a reason to laugh and get rid of stressors. Reading, meditating, and doing assignment are some of the relational activities that can help an individual to move out of the norm. Cognitive strategies include the use of premeditated distractions like movies and listening to music to distract one’s mind from stressors. Cognitive strategies limit the mind from traumatic experiences (Patricia et al., 2013). When among friends, one can focus on different topics that are unrelated to traumatic experiences. Some individuals may prefer meditation practices to remain present and calm their mind from deep thoughts. Others focus on concentrating on the positive occurrences in life to cheer them up. Other individuals focus on prayers and worship for spiritual nourishment to enable them to stay positive.

The overall strategies can be combined into one common group of stress management. An individual with experience in trauma needs to exercise stress management to prevent relapse (Alexis et al., 2019). Such individuals can find where their strengths lie and focus on it to remain positive. The activities, as mentioned above, act as boosters for tolerance, relaxation of the mind and discharge of negative energy. One can quickly recover from the trauma, minimize the possibility of burnouts, and releasing excessive energy that can lead to stress.

Conclusion

Self-care is vital to healing from trauma. It is an individual effort to ensure that all stressors are eliminated to avoid traumatic experiences. An individual can use friends, relatives, coworkers, and partners to confide on their emotions and stressful feelings that might lead to trauma. For an active recovery, self-care is an impetus to therapy and self-recovery. As such, care providers should focus on self-care more than therapeutic activities to enhance positive feelings.

References

Alexis, G. et al. (2019). Integrating self-care into clinical practice with trauma clients. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 29(1): 48-56, doi:10.1080/10911359.2018.1473189

Dorothy, E. (2017). Optimizing Empathy: Physician self-care as a crucial component of trauma-informed treatment. Journal of Lifelong Learning Psychiatry, 15(4): 432-434. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6519522/

Patricia, J. et al. (2013). Developing Self-Care Practices in a Trauma Treatment Course. Journal of Social Work Education, 50(3): 440-453. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2014.917932