Occupational Clinician Hosts First Self-Care Saturday Event
By Ridimerb Diaz- Ramirez | Published on March 18, 2024
The first Self-Care Saturday event had an agenda that consisted of an introduction, the self-care categories, a touch on emotional/mental/physical/spiritual/professional self-care, barriers, and a self-care wheel.
Self-Care Saturday is an event that focuses on the things people should incorporate into their lives to take care of themselves.
Occupational clinician Krystle Rodriguez is one of the clinicians who form part of The Mental Health in Higher Education and Professional Development Grant, which provides services to Kean University.
Rodriguez touched on six self-care areas crucial to the perfect balance of self-care routine while leading the Self-Care Saturday event on March 9.
“The thing that was my favorite was that it was relatable,” Rodriguez said.
While the event was meant to help students better understand self-care and the areas that are most important, Rodriguez loved that she was able to speak to the students about a topic that she struggles with.
Rodriguez feels she could bring more to the table than “Oh, self-care is important; you need to do it, and there’s no obstacle.” Instead, she feels like she was able to bring more of the barriers since, according to her, “We are all humans.”
Self-care isn’t easy for many.
“Realistically it is not always easy to get it done,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez admits that absorbing all these different kinds of issues from her patients outside of Kean and any student at Kean that she works with can take a big emotional toll on her due to the individual needs and individual struggles that each may have, which is why she also focuses on taking care of herself, aka self-care.
“I try to do things to keep me censored and keep me like grounded like I try to take my breaks and actually use them as breaks. I try to, you know, implement my own version of self-care,” Rodriguez said while demonstrating how she incorporates self-care into her life routine with the struggles she deals with.
While this was Kean’s first Self-Care Saturday event, Rodriguez has hosted other events at Kean.
Rodriguez was surprised that 40-plus people attended the virtual event, but she loved the audience’s engagement most because it made it so encouraging.
“People were actually involved; people were participating in the chat,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez thinks the event went well based on the feedback she was receiving from students, such as “Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“I wanted it to be realistic when I presented,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez’s main goal was to help the audience understand that even professionals struggle with the same challenges, along with making the long presentation entertaining and exciting.
While using a personal example, Rodriguez touched on the importance of consistency in the areas in which the individual is already strong.
“Since having my baby I been trying to be consistent with like my physical self-care, so like exercising, eating healthy,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez admits that it is a hard task, but it is important.
“I may not get the meditation done as regularly as I would like, but I’mma still go to the gym though,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez stressed the importance of staying balanced and consistent with the tasks already in your routine in maintaining a good self-care routine.
Aliyah Robinson, a grant coordinator for Cougar Connections Center of Social Work, put together and hosted this self-care Saturday event alongside Rodriguez.
While this is not the first event the grant has funded, this is the first Self-Care event.
Robinson explained that the grant allows them to host six workshops on campus, one of which Rodriguez hosted was on time management.
During the time-management event, students requested to have more information provided about self-care, which prompted the grant officials to follow up with this event.
“One thing I love about the events, and I think it really gets students engaged and willing to sign on, is that Krystle is bilingual,” Robinson said.
A large portion of the students at Kean have Spanish as a first language, which Robinson believes encourages students to participate in and engage in these kinds of events.
While Robinson loved the event and feels that it went “really well,” she believes that they will work on promoting it more with more personal interactions for future events.