Self-Care for Caregivers

November 26, 2025

By: Esme Nicanor, Care­giv­er Specialist

What is Self-Care?

Self-care has become a trend­ing top­ic in recent years, with an increase in not only the use of the word but an increase in the need for self-care itself. That being said, self-care has also become sen­sa­tion­al­ized, an indus­try in and of itself. When peo­ple think of self-care they imag­ine lux­u­ry spas, mas­sages, and extrav­a­gant resorts. ​“Self-care” and ​“invest­ment” have become synonymous. 

How­ev­er, no pur­chase is nec­es­sary for gen­uine self-care. Self-care is any­thing that will improve an aspect of your well­be­ing. Self-care can be sched­ul­ing time for fil­ing your tax­es and pay­ing bills, pray­ing, or play­ing music that you enjoy. Self- care can also be less ​“pro­duc­tive”; tak­ing a nap or a day off can be self-care in the form of recharg­ing your bat­tery. Accord­ing to the Sub­stance Abuse and Men­tal Health Ser­vices Admin­is­tra­tion (SAMH­SA), there are a total of eight dimen­sions of well­ness (SAMH­SA pdf source). They include:

1. Emo­tion­al wellness
2. Envi­ron­men­tal wellness
3. Finan­cial wellness
4. Intel­lec­tu­al wellness
5. Occu­pa­tion­al wellness
6. Phys­i­cal wellness
7. Social well­ness
8. Spir­i­tu­al wellness

For exam­ple, sched­ul­ing a doc­tor or den­tist appoint­ment is car­ing for your phys­i­cal well­ness and clean­ing your house is envi­ron­men­tal well­ness. So, while we often think of self-care as a prac­tice that is time con­sum­ing or expen­sive, there are lit­tle day tasks that fall into dif­fer­ent aspects of well­ness and are there­fore self-care.

Why is Self-Care Important?

In mak­ing the active choice to begin see­ing these actions as self-care, one can begin engag­ing in these activ­i­ties in a more mind­ful and inten­tion­al way. This increase in mind­ful engage­ment with the every­day tasks one already com­pletes can assist in emo­tion­al reg­u­la­tion and change the way we inter­act with the world and oth­er people. 

How Does Self-Care Apply to Caregivers?

For care­givers, engag­ing in self-care is espe­cial­ly impor­tant. Care­giv­ing requires giv­ing your time and ener­gy to the ben­e­fit of anoth­er per­son, mak­ing it impor­tant that you as the care­giv­er have time and ener­gy to give in the first place. 

There is a very pop­u­lar anal­o­gy for this notion, when you’re on a plane they instruct you to secure your own oxy­gen mask before help­ing oth­ers secure theirs. Self-care as a care­giv­er is the action of putting on your own oxy­gen mask first and then being bet­ter equipped to secure the mask on your loved one, ensur­ing that your loved one is receiv­ing qual­i­ty care. 

Engag­ing in self-care as a care­giv­er also reduces the risk of burnout. In tak­ing a step back and refram­ing the way we think about self-care it will become eas­i­er to begin engag­ing in it on the day-to-day, and it will be less like­ly that we’ll reach the point of exhaustion. 

Where Can I Get More Help or Information?

Ken­neth Young offers self-care class­es in which we teach tools that touch on the mul­ti­ple dimen­sions of well­ness list­ed above. Stay tuned for an upcom­ing arti­cle where we will dis­cuss these class­es in more depth. Be sure to fol­low us on social media to find out when we will offer our next class!

Sources

Why is Self-Care Impor­tant? | SNHU

Pro­mot­ing Well­ness Guide

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