COMPASSION. AWARENESS. ACCEPTANCE. VALIDATION. EMPOWERMENT.
Self-CAAVE can help you connect with yourself in a caring and nurturing way. While CAAVE doesn't make life's challenges disappear, it can help you settle your mind, your body, and heart. It’s a great way for us to take care of ourselves and it’s applicable to any difficult experiences that might arise in our lives.
SELF-COMPASSION
The ability to direct care, love, and concern towards ourselves when we’re experiencing difficulty.
- Treat yourself as you would treat a friend.
- Show yourself kindness, patience, and forgiveness when you're going through a tough time.
- Take steps to care for yourself (what that looks like is really up to you).
SELF-AWARENESS
This is the practice of checking-in with yourself.
- Take time when you wake, mid-day, and before you sleep to check-in with yourself.
- What are your thoughts? Your emotions? Your physical sensations? Notice what patterns you’re in, and are they serving you?
- It's really important not to judge yourself. Just notice with a sense of curiosity. There are no right or wrongs here.
SELF-ACCEPTANCE
Accepting life on life’s terms.
- Pain is an inevitable part of life. Our reactions, our thoughts, and feelings are our current reality.
- We don’t have to like it; just accept our current experience.
- When we accept, we open the way to see the choices that are available to us.
*Do not be confused, accepting your experience is not complacency nor does it mean you cannot advocate for yourself when things that are happening aren’t okay.
SELF-VALIDATION
The skill of recognizing what you are feeling with non-judgmental awareness and acceptance.
- Take yourself seriously, just as a friend would.
- Tell yourself that you are allowed to feel scared, angry, sad, hurt, helpless, and guilty or whatever it may be.
- Remember your inner-wisdom and inner-knowing, that’s part of why the feelings can be so big sometimes.
- Practice positive self-talk. Break any habits that involve belittling yourself, minimizing your feelings, or neglecting your needs.
SELF-EMPOWERMENT
You have personal power and agency.
- We have some control over how we take care of ourselves.
- Ask yourself, what do you need emotionally, physically, socially, or spiritually in this phase of your life?
- Advocate for yourself when your boundaries are crossed. Fighting for what is right or fair is allowed. You do not need to accept abuse or “isms."
Remember that we are wired to be social - to seek connection and to empathize with one another.
We’re driven to cooperate, to be generous, and to be helpful. And, in order to be at our best, we have to take care of ourselves.
So here are the tips you may have been waiting for…Nourish and hydrate your body, get some fresh air, monitor how much news and social media you take in, balance your time by engaging in pleasurable activities, connect with the people you care about, and please do your best to get quality rest. We all need time to rest and re-charge.
Please use self-compassion, self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-validation, and self-empowerment to cope and to practice deep care for yourself.
CAAVE is a relationally-focused framework for connection whose pillars (Compassion, Awareness, Acceptance, Validation, and Empowerment) support better engagement of service workers in helping relationships with their clients, ultimately leading to better youth outcomes. At the heart of CAAVE is the idea that social connection is a core determinant of well-being across the lifespan. Humans need other humans to live meaningful lives and to remain resilient when challenges arise. CAAVE recognizes that positive relationships are especially important for adolescents and young adults who are developmentally tasked with identity formation, value appraisal, exploration, and social engagement. We’ve also learned that CAAVE can apply to every person at every age, and we want you to self-caave.
Credits:
Created with images by Prostock-studio