Self Management
What is Self Management?
Self management is about all the things we ourselves can do to boost our wellbeing and cope with difficulties when we are living with a long-term condition of any sort (such as multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, ME / CFS, Long Covid, depression or anxiety) or when we are recovering from an illness, injury or loss.
Self management starts from the idea that we know best how we are affected and "what works for me". It helps us learn skills to find the best route to increase our wellbeing, working with our network of family, friends, volunteers, peers, teachers, or group leaders etc as well as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists or counsellors on the medical side.
Self management involves looking at the whole picture of mind, body and lifestyle to see what steps you can take to feel better or more in control. One of the most important things that you can do is get to know your own health and wellbeing. Understanding what your body needs to thrive will make such a difference to your day-to-day life. The wellbeing and food sections on this website explore some of these in more detail.
What can we do ourselves to improve our wellbeing?
There are lots of things we can do to improve our wellbeing. Here are a few:
​
-
Eating well
-
Getting enough sleep
-
Resting when we need to
-
Moving about as much as we can
-
Spending time outdoors
-
Doing things that make us feel good - having fun and laughter is important too **
-
Learning how to take a positive view
-
Understanding effective communication and active listening
​
​
** amazingly even faked laughter can improve our physical and mental wellbeing!
Self Management is for everyone
Self management is not just for people with a long-term condition themselves. If you have a friend or a relative who has a long-term condition, you can use self management skills to help them AND to help yourself. Many young people are young carers who help a family member and for anyone doing this, it is very important to look after your own health and wellbeing too. Self-care is essential to make it possible to continue to help them.
​
Looking after your health and wellbeing now will help you to keep well in the future and the self management skills you learn here will be ready to help you whenever you do find yourself unwell, injured or recovering from an operation. Start finding out what works best for you and sticking to it. Making sure it is enjoyable helps.
​
Our Self Management and Long Covid eLearning Courses
If you would like to explore more about self-management when you have looked through and tried the suggestions on this website, you can look at our elearning courses. Although they were not written specifically for young people, they will give you a bigger picture of all that self management can include, with more examples. The Long Covid portal places a different emphasis on some aspects of self management which are more appropriate for people who are on a Covid Recovery journey so choose the course that fits best for you.