Social Work Commons^™

Reconsidering Self Care, Sara Bressi, Elizabeth R. Vaden

Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research Faculty Research and Scholarship

In light of diminishing resources in service settings, and the subsequent high risk for worker burnout, self care remains an important vehicle for promoting worker well-being. However, traditional definitions of self care are based in formulations about the nature of the self that don’t reflect paradigmatic shifts in social work practice that place increased emphasis on the multiplicity of workers’ selves, use of self and a collaborative frame for the worker–client relationship. Thus, a reconsidered definition of self care is proposed that reflects intersubjective, relational, and recovery-oriented frames for practice and posits strategies for self care that make the self …