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looking after your own wellbeing

 

Why is self-care important?

The definition of a carer is ‘can the person you are looking after manage without you ‘

When you have a young person with an eating disorder you are being more than a parent, you are their carer. We hear regularly from carers that their priorities are looking after their unwell child, caring for other family members, coping with work and that its difficult to even consider their own wellbeing, let alone make time for it.

What we know is that an exhausted carer is not an effective carer. To give your young person the best chance to recover, you need to be looking after your own wellbeing so you can remain being an effective carer. It doesn’t have to be big days out , even just a few minutes is beneficial.  E.g. stand in the garden for 5 minutes, spending a minute to do deep breaths, sitting in the car before driving somewhere with a favourite song. The goal is to start to building self-care into your daily routine.

Below is a link to some self-care reminders.

It is a list of lots of small ideas of things you can do to look after yourself. We know it can be hard when somebody says take a take a break for 5 minutes, and then you  and are unsure what to do. It may be helpful to print this picture out and leave it somewhere visible to give you reminders when you most need it. Add your own other ideas and include other family members to generate ideas.  You can even do some activities together.

Modelling self-care to your young person is so important- showing them that it is okay to care for yourself/ themselves and prioritise your/ their wellbeing. If you can’t do it for yourself, remember you are also doing it to teach them.

Click here to view self-care reminders
The wider team.

The wider team is useful to think about in the context of self-care.

  • Who else is there?
  • Who else can help you?

It may be useful to spend some time to think about and map out who is in your support network. It might be:

  • Family members.
  • Friends
  • Professionals
  • Organisations that you belong to
  • Support organisations

All families are different so everybody’s support network will look different.

Everyone in a team has different strengths. Some may be very practical, some may be better at supporting other children and some may be good at taking you out for a drink! It may be helpful to think about your support network as a Russian doll: your young person is the very middle, you are the next Russian doll, and your support network builds the rest.

This does take practice. Using the analogy of a rugby team, they train for hours and hours and hours so they can just throw back the ball and they know the right person will be in the right spot to catch it. It may be helpful to think about who you can pass things back to.

 

Registering as a carer

It is useful to

  • register as a carer at your GP.
  • let your workplace know so they can support you.

The link below will take you to a page detailing organisations that have more detail about the laws and legislations around carers, their rights and financial assistance if appropriate.

Click here to view further support for carers
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