Archive for the ‘self-care’ Category

The web is an amazing space to build community, access resources, and find tools for both personal and professional development. It can also be a place to wander aimlessly, get overwhelmed with information, and waste time. I love it when other people recommend web tools and interesting sites – it helps me jump into the deep end of the web with a sense of purpose and direction!  

MacKenna Stevens has put together a great list of web tools for Social Workers (many of these tools will be useful to others too!) – this list gives you a quick reference guide to some great online resources and tools that can save you time and connect you with your peers, check it out at http://www.mastersinsocialwork.com/25-amazing-web-tools-for-social-workers/

If you have favourite web tools/sites – please post a comment and share your suggestions! 

To your well-being & success, Lynda

I write in my journal almost everyday.  I am always looking for new ideas and inspiration for mixing it up, exercises to do, journal writing prompts, etc.  I thought you might like these things too – so….drumroll please….

The Creative Wellness Blog is committed to being a hub of inspiration, support and community for your journal writing, self-caring and self-discovery journey.  

4 Journal Writing Tips & Prompts to Spark New Insights:  

1. Journal in nature - if you normally right indoors, take your journal outside.  Get in nature, by water, sit beside a tree, lay on the grass…let nature speak through you and onto the pages of your journal.  I write outside at least 1 x per week, it is amazing how many new insights nature has to offer us! (how it sparks something wise and true in our human nature)

2)  Use images – try to journal without using any words for the first 5-10 minutes, simply draw or attach images (from magazines, your own photos, etc.) to the pages of your journal.  Now look at the images, ask:  “If these images could speak, what do they have to say to me right now?”  This is a tool for tapping into your intuition (by using left and right brain – language and visual)

3) Write gratitudes – in Robert Holden’s book, Being Happy, he suggests writing a list of 100 things you are grateful for – try it!  Don’t stop – make your list all at one time, keep your pen moving.  This exercise raises your soul vibration (the essence part of you that longs to feel and spread joy in the world).

4)  Explore your resistances – is there some area of your life where you feel stuck or resistant?  Resistance provides us with great information!  Let resistance have a voice in your journal - simply start by writing “I notice I feel resistance, what is this all about?”  Let the answers and insights emerge through the writing.  

Please share your journaling prompts and tips here…leave a comment…let’s inspire one another on and off the page.  To the “write” stuff, Lynda

Professional burnout is serious and a prevalent occupational hazard within the health, human and social services.  Burnout involves many contributing factors, including such things as personal stress management styles (proactive or reactive), the presence of systemic and workplace stressors (for example, unrealistic expectations, role ambiguity, lack of control, high workload, lack of supervision, etc.), nature of the work (high levels of emotion, stress and trauma), prevelance of high stress overtime (without ebb and flow), etc.  Burnout negatively effects your physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health.

As a helping professional, it is important to be aware of the signs and symptoms of burnout, the three main indicators of burnout include:

1) emotional exhaustion – you feel tired all the time, you don’t feel like you care anymore (even about things, people and situations that you once cared for very much), you feel a lack of empathy towards others, this is sometimes referred to as “compassion fatigue”

2) growing sense of cynicism – you feel edgy, negative, pessimistic, and overall become very cynical about many aspects of life and work; there is a sense of depersonalization when working with clients (treating people more like objects or a diagnosis than as human beings) 

3) productivity goes way down – even if you feel busy, like you are working all the time, when a person is experiencing burnout their ability to truly concentrate, make decisions and think clearly is compromised and therefore productivity tends to significantly decrease; generally a person will feel less personal accomplishment

(Sources:  Christina Maslach, author of Burnout: The Cost of Caring; Joan Borysenko, author of Fried: Why You Burnout and How to Revive; and from my own Master’s project – Professional Burnout: A Conceptual Model)

There are online assessment tools to help you determine if you might be suffering from burnout, you can find one at http://www.mindtools.com/stress/Brn/BurnoutSelfTest.htm

If you are suffering from burnout, it is important to make empowering choices and take steps to turn things around so that you can experience health and happiness as a helper, as a human being. 

Creative Wellness coaching programs can help – including 1) Remembering YOU: A Self-Care and Wellness Program and 2) Life Source Writing™: A Reflective Wellness Practice for Helping Professionals.

I work with lots of people who are interested in starting to journal for themselves but are unsure where or how to get started.  I suggest start with exactly where you are in the moment.  Get your tools for journaling together – a fast moving pen, a favourite notebook (line or unlined) and create the time for your journaling date (15 minutes is good – make it amount of time that is doable within your current reality).

A blank page can feel like a daunting space for both new journal writers and seasoned writers alike – it can help to have a prompt, or way into the page.  Here are some easy prompts that are sentence starters (meaning write any of the prompts below at the beginning of your journal entry and dive in from there).  Keep your pen moving, don’t worry about creating high art, just write for yourself.  Tap into your feelings, your ideas, the moment, and breathe.  Breathe and keep your pen moving.  Enjoy the journaling journey, it can be the best ride of your life.

Journal Writing Prompts:

1.  In this moment I notice…

2.  I feel…

3.  The weather outside is making remember a time when…

4.  I wish I would have…

5.  I am so glad…

6.  I can hear the sound of…

Happy journaling!

If you are a social worker and a member of the BC Association of Social Workers (BCASW) - who is interested in learning how to use Life Source Writing - a five-step restorative journaling method - as a tool for personal and professional well-being and growth – you might be interested in an upcoming member only teleseminar that I am facilitating on March 22nd.

You can learn more here Restorative Journaling Teleseminar

I hope to “meet” you on the call.