Helping the Helpers Through Mindful Self-Care
Publication Date
October 2023
Document Type
Popular Press
Publication Title
Psychology Today
Abstract
Self-care is crucial for helping professionals facing burnout and vicarious trauma. Mindfulness-based self-care offers a promising path for self-reflection. The study (Choi & Hyun, 2023) underscores the critical importance of self-care for helping professionals. As participants voiced their sense of empowerment and eagerness to create and deliver workshops for their families and communities, they demonstrated that self-care is integral to social and cultural advocacy. This shift from a deficit-based to a strengths-based self-identity aligns with the role of helping professionals, who must critically assess dominant cultural influences and their impact on their own racial identity development, power dynamics, privilege, and oppression within educational settings (Mitchell & Binkley, 2021). Before effectively addressing systemic oppression and power imbalances, helping professionals must embrace themselves holistically and consider their own agency as a tool for advocating for those in need. When serving diverse individuals and communities, self-care extends beyond relaxation and self-awareness—it encompasses the reclamation of power in all aspects of one's being: physical, emotional, spiritual, and cultural.
Keywords
Self-care, helping professionals, Mindfulness
Recommended Citation
Kyoung Choi. "Helping the Helpers Through Mindful Self-Care" Psychology Today (2023).
