Why Self-Care Matters for ABA Professionals

• Proactively Identify Boundaries: Kindly share boundaries and limits with supervisors, coworkers, and even family members to promote channels of respect and healthy expectations.
• Avoid Canceling Leisure Time Activities: Maintain self-care routines or prior engagements and avoid canceling to replace them with work activities. Putting yourself first to engage in stress-relieving, self-care activities will promote productivity later in the week.
• Discern Opportunities and When to Share Your Time: It is difficult to pass up opportunities, but spreading yourself too thin will impact your mental health. Examples include accepting an additional case when your caseload is already full, volunteering for a development project, or agreeing to cover for someone around the holidays instead of spending time with your family. Saying “no” to an opportunity does not exclude you; rather, it prepares you to accept future opportunities with confidence.
• Affirmations: Use affirmations to remind yourself daily of how creating a healthy work/life balance will increase your success, productivity, quality, and efficiency for many years to come.

Organize Your Life: Calendar applications that sync with your phone and computer are one of the most practical strategies for time management. Schedule obligations with adequate blocks of time. Include weekly activities such as deadlines, reports, email triage, lunch, walking the dog, appointments, soccer games, and scheduled self-care activities. Time blocking allows us to schedule our weeks in terms of time vs. using to-do lists. To-do lists simply tell us what we need to do, not how much time we need to reserve. Time blocking for to-do lists on your calendar helps reduce procrastination, stress, and feelings of being overwhelmed. Time blocking will also increase your understanding of how much time is needed for activities, which assists with setting limits. Organization is key to successful self-care plans. Feel confident asking for help.

Avoid “putting off” communication with coworkers if you are falling behind. Instead of sending an email, reach out by phone to your direct support or stop in their office during office hours. Having face-to-face or phone conversations is more personable and helps ensure that the tone of the information is well received to avoid any misunderstandings. A follow-up email regarding agreed-upon accommodations is also advised so that expectations are clear and can be referenced if future modifications are needed. Communicating in advance will achieve the help you need and immediately reduce a great deal of stress by establishing an action plan. Be vulnerable and do not be afraid to ask. It is more courageous to ask than to avoid. Additionally, schedule time for the “unexpected.” In a perfect world, we go about our days systematically checking off each scheduled activity right on time. Unfortunately, the world is not perfect, so take preventative action by scheduling a block of time each day to handle the “unexpected.” If we are better about planning for unexpected and possibly time-consuming events, then we will feel less stressed and more equipped to handle difficult situations when they arise.