Sliding Scale Self Care: A Resource for When Self Care Feels Hard (Now with a SPOOKY edit)

Moving, nourishing ourselves, spending time outdoors, ¹ connecting with others, ² and caring for our home are shown in research to support both physical and mental health. ³ But for many of us, well-intended advice to “go for a hike!” or “meal prep on Sundays” can feel paralyzingly overwhelming.

Enter: this sliding scale for self-care:

Self-care isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s a spectrum, with goals that can be really easy for the average person on one end and require really high functioning executive function on the other end of the spectrum. Even “easy” tasks can feel out of reach when we’re dealing with depression, burnout, grief, etc. This resource recognizes that sometimes, even a simple task like brushing teeth might feel like a really significant act.

The resource is kind a way of blending self care tasks with a healthcare concept called Activities of Daily Living (ADLs). ADL is a term for the ordinary things we do to keep our bodies clean, dressed, fed, etc. The concept can be useful, but in mental health care therapists are usually more curious about how difficult those things feel, and what things might function as a bridge to better and better self care.

Below, you can download the Sliding Scale Self-Care grid in color and black and white. Because this range is likely to be different for every individual, you’ll also find a blank worksheet version to print and use as a custom fill-in-the-blank chart.

It’s one thing to tell someone, “You’ll feel better if you eat better, you just need to meal prep!” and another thing to consider just how much effort and executive function are required to plan for, shop for, prepare, store, and reheat a meal before the food expires. This resource acknowledges that, hey, maybe a small snack and a grocery delivery app are the goals that might provide the dopamine to reinforce a pattern.

I drafted the art for this scale for self-care a long time ago, but only finished it in September. Then, one night in mid-October, I got struck with the sudden idea to make a spooky version! I grabbed my pen and worked way past my bedroom to get it down while I was feeling inspired! I borrowed the same playful language that inspired my Spooky Feelings Wheel (I love that we have a whole meta-language to describe ordinary things in dark or spooky ways) and made a sliding-scale self-care chart inspired by witches, vampires, ghosts, and other Halloween lore.

Playfully engaging with psychoeducational material like this can help us understand and work with concepts that might feel dry, boring, or easy to reject in their usual form. A little humor and imagination can make room for curiosity. Play helps us learn! And, research says, sometimes fear can be fun!

1. Twohig-Bennett, C., & Jones, A. (2018). The health benefits of the great outdoors: A systematic review and meta-analysis of greenspace exposure and health outcomes. Environmental Research, 166, 628–637. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2018.06.030 [↩]
2. Holt-Lunstad, J., Smith, T. B., & Layton, J. B. (2010). Social relationships and mortality risk: A meta-analytic review. PLOS Medicine, 7(7), e1000316. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000316[↩]
3. Firth, J., Solmi, M., Wootton, R. E., Vancampfort, D., Schuch, F. B., Hoare, E., Gilbody, S., Torous, J., Teasdale, S. B., Jackson, S. E., Smith, L., Eaton, M., Jacka, F. N., Veronese, N., Marx, W., Ashdown-Franks, G., Siskind, D., Sarris, J., Rosenbaum, S., … Stubbs, B. (2020). A meta-review of “lifestyle psychiatry”: The role of exercise, smoking, diet and sleep in the prevention and treatment of mental disorders. World Psychiatry, 19(3), 360–380. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20773 [↩]