Self-Care Activities for Psychologists: Mindfulness and Resilience

This report delves into the crucial aspects of self-care for psychologists, emphasizing the role of mindfulness in professional and personal wellbeing. It examines how mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can be applied to reduce stress, enhance relaxation, and improve time management, ultimately preventing burnout and fostering professional resilience. The report highlights the benefits of mindfulness in building resilience, enabling psychologists to cope with difficult situations and maintain a healthy work-life balance. Key self-care practices, including meditation, yoga, and stress-relieving activities, are discussed as essential components of a psychologist's routine. The report concludes that by integrating self-care practices, psychologists can mitigate emotional and mental imbalances, leading to a healthier and more fulfilling professional life, which in turn benefits their patients. The report also discusses how mindfulness can be used to build positive relationships and enhance the ability to make plans and resolve problems, which will improve the capacity to manage emotional disturbances.

Self-care activities for
psychologists –
MINDFULNESS

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
How Mindfulness works in professional life?............................................................................3
Improvements in psychotherapist’s self care activities...............................................................3
How can mindfulness build resilience in practice ?....................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Psychologist are the persons that studies normal and abnormal mind states of patients and
check how they react in certain situations. Their duty is to interpret, observe and record different
behaviours of patients and provide necessary counselling and prescribe appropriate treatment to
them. They also prescribe self care activities which can improve their mental ability and thus can
lead a normal and stress free life. These activities improves the goodwill in the person and they
get the strength to deal with their stress and other issues.
MAIN BODY
How Mindfulness works in professional life?
MINDFULNESS
It is a state when person pays attention in the present situation in order to experience their
thoughts or feelings without judging them as good or bad. This process helps a person to focus
mainly on current circumstances rather than thinking of past experiences and situation and
anticipating the future.
According to (Rayan and Ahmad, 2016),Mindfulness based interventions (MBIs) are
increasingly used by psychologists in the management of mental health conditions. As a
psychologists, I am treating patients by giving them this treatment so that they can emerge from
mental illness and can live a better and quality life. I also prefer Adjunctive mindfulness based
theory, which is another effective treatment for reducing depressive symptoms and increase the
willingness to live a healthy life. MBIs are cost effective, portable and safe to use and can be
recommended to patients as a standard care or self management strategy for major depression
and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
EXAMPLE:
Mindfulness is a great process to navigate relationship and expectations to get good
results. This process work greats in psychotherapist’s professional life as this assist psychologists
to treat major depressions and enabling person to focus in their present as compared to past and
future.
Improvements in psychotherapist’s self care activities
Psychotherapist’s practice are highly appreciable and rewarding as they improve
someone life by giving them necessary treatments and counselling. They make significant effort

to generate optimism in the life of others. This requires great emotional and mental connection
with patients in order to understand their situation an suggesting best to them. According to
(Wise, Hersh and Gibson, 2012), By practising psychotherapy, psychotherapist might feel
distress, emotional exhaustions, traumas, depression, etc. In order to maintain healthy life and
stress free life, psychotherapist can implement some self care practices (Self-Care Exercises and
Activities, 2018.). Following are some practices:
Reducing stress: There are numerous ways to reduce stress and some might take few
minutes to relieve stress. Psychotherapists can practice meditations, Yoga, etc. which are
considered as stress reliving boosters. They can improve their stress activities by understanding
the cause of stress and working in it ion order to remove that. Reducing stress will improve their
efficiency to deal with patients and will able to give good suggestions.
Relaxation: It is a vital part of self care routines. Without relaxing mind, psychotherapist
cannot work properly and wont be able to provide valuable suggestions and counselling to their
patients. In order to improve relaxation routine, they can adopt yoga, massages, etc. in their daily
routine and in some interval of time. This will increase their efficiency to treat mental conditions.
Time management: For a psychotherapist, it is necessary for them to get enough time to
relieve their stress and stretch their muscles and come back to treating emotionally disturbed
patients. This is a profession where there is continuous exertion on mind and long term routine
which can cause depression. So, it is necessary for them to give time to their self care and for
that they can involve meditation and some other practices that can make Psychotherapist feel
fresh and stress free.
Burnout: It is a term that describes emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and
decreased sense of achievement. Burnout occurs when a psychotherapist attend patients for long
hours. Depression and lethargy can occur when psychotherapist have no idea how to carry out
their work (Dealing with Burnout, 2018.). If Psychologist does not take at least one break, then
he will be the victim of mental and physical health problems. To improve this, they require to
take breaks in between long hours and help themselves out by meditating and stress relieving
activities.
Professional resilience: It is individual capacity to recover from significant situations of
severe pressure and depression. It involves recovering from significant challenges and
difficulties and using these as personal growth in workplace. The response an individual give to

particular situation is known as resilience. By building supportive relationships, individual can
tolerate severe stress and can manage it effectively. Another is, thinking in positive manner. This
reduces frustrations, anxiety and have more focus ion finding solution.
How can mindfulness build resilience in practice ?
Resilience is the ability to cope up with difficult situations or adversity. In other words, it
is bouncing back from difficulties (Does Mindfulness Really Make Us Resilient? 2018). The best
thing about resilience is that, it is not a type of personality trait. It basically involves paying
attention, thinking, analysing and behaving that can be learned by anyone.
MINDFULNESS
This involves direct and non-judgemental awareness of the present moment. It can take
the form of meditation whereas it can be given as general orientation to present experiences.
With mindfulness, psychotherapist is alive to each and every moment as it arrives, as it ends, etc.
Individuals having higher mindfulness have greater resilience, this increases their life
satisfaction.
According to (Stanley, 2014), mindfulness increases resilience, more mindfulness is
practised by individual, the mind become more resilient. There are several key aspects of
mindfulness, as it helps in building positive relationships, increases the ability to make plans and
resolve problems, enhances the capacity to manage emotional disturbances.
CONCLUSION
From the above report, it can be concluded that psychologists deals with patients that are
mentally and emotionally disturbed and require emotional support and care. Physiologists help
them to relieve their depression and stress so that they can live their life stress free. As they have
to deal with such emotional and mental situation, it is necessary for physiotherapists to pay
attention to their own well being and self care. As from above report, by implementing self care
practices in daily routine, they can cut out unnecessary stress and emotional imbalance and can
live a healthy life.

REFERENCES
Stanley, E.A., 2014. Mindfulness‐Based Mind Fitness Training: An Approach for Enhancing
Performance and Building Resilience in High‐Stress Contexts. The Wiley Blackwell
handbook of mindfulness. pp. 964-985.
Wise, E.H., Hersh, M.A. and Gibson, C.M., 2012. Ethics, self-care and well-being for
psychologists: Reenvisioning the stress-distress continuum. Professional Psychology:
Research and Practice. 43(5). p. 487.
Rayan, A. and Ahmad, M., 2016. Effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions on quality of
life and positive reappraisal coping among parents of children with autism spectrum
disorder. Research in developmental disabilities. 55. pp. 185-196.
Online
Evidence Mounts That Mindfulness Breeds Resilience. 2018. [Online]. Available through
<https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/evidence_mounts_that_mindfulness_breeds_resili
ence>
Self-Care Exercises and Activities. 2018. [Online]. Available through
<https://socialwork.buffalo.edu/resources/self-care-starter-kit/self-care-assessments-exercises/
exercises-and-activities.html>
Does Mindfulness Really Make Us Resilient? 2018. [Online]. Available through
<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-resilience/201510/does-mindfulness-
really-make-us-resilient>
Dealing with Burnout. 2018. [Online]. Available through
<https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/burnout>