Self-Care Tools For Activists: Everything You Need
Self‑care is often understood simplistically - bubble baths, candles, spa retreats, etc. But especially for activists, self‑care must go deeper, be more planned, and more sincere. It’s not a luxury or reward; it’s a survival practice in today’s chaotic and modernized world. Self‑care for activists means caring for your inner world, your rough edges, your dreams and hopes, and your capacity to show up for your cause sustainably.
Recognizing Internalized Capitalism
Before we get into tools, one of the first and most important mindset shifts to make is to see how internalized capitalism has shaped our self‑care narratives. From kindergarten, we’re taught that time is money, that rest is indulgence, and that productivity is the magic key to the doorway of life satisfaction. That mindset creeps into activist spaces: “I should be doing more”, “I don’t deserve rest until I’ve achieved something”, “I should be working right now”. But that logic is part of the system we seek to transform.
I often say that the first essential step is to pause, become aware, and accept your current situation. Without stepping out of denial - “I can just push harder”, “I can carry on without stopping” - you can’t begin to restructure how you move. Self‑care starts with reclaiming your humanity while living in a societal context that tells you your worth is tied to output.
Self‑Care Is Reclaiming Your Life
Activism often asks you to give your life away in service of progressing your cause’s goals. Self‑care is the declarative act of reclaiming it. It’s to say: “I am more than my work”, “I am more than this cause that I’m passionate about”, “I have passions, dreams, presence, and boundaries that deserve to be honored”. It’s resisting the slow loss of self beneath the mantle of fight and action.
For activists, self‑care means carving out dedicated time to create “nothing” space, creative replenishment, and vulnerability repair. It’s refusing the myth that you must burn out to prove you care. Instead, self‑care is making choices that allow you to be better, stronger, more whole in the long run.
Activism We Can Healthily Keep Up With
Your activism lifespan matters. If you sprint and burn out, you may quit entirely, leaving long-lasting wounds in your spirit. Part of self‑care is orienting your activism as a marathon, not a sprint. Starting with practices, habits, and boundaries that allow for consistency.
This means investing not just in tasks or outputs but in your capacity, your relationships, your overall emotional container. It means occasionally stepping down or shifting focus, rather than keeping blinders on and pushing in perpetuity.
Back in 2021, before I was diagnosed with chronic depression and burnout, I wish someone had helped me organise and re-orient my approach to activism to be more self-caring and sustainable.
Tools to Navigate The Top Challenges of Self‑Care as Activists
Here are concrete tools and practices to help you protect your capacity, your boundaries, and your soul in the midst of urgent work:
• Organise Your Life
Chaos drains energy. One self‑care tool activists often overlook (to their own detriment!) is organising your external world: your schedule, your tasks, your systems. Use simple tools: a planner, a to‑do list, time blocking, and trigger reminders to stand up and just breathe for 5 minutes.
When your external life is more ordered, less chaotic, fewer surprises, and you don’t have to make as many decisions, your mind can be more comfortable resting. You reduce the mental load of “What am I forgetting? What’s next?”
• Regularly Take Mini‑Breaks
Mini‑breaks are a radical life intervention. They don’t have to be long or expensive. Five minutes to step outside, stretch, drink water, close your eyes, and breathe deeply. Even in meetings, pause for a second every now and then to re-ground yourself. Use transition moments to reset.
At the same time, taking weekly mini-breaks is also important. I personally thrive when I make sure to schedule a long weekend every month. This breaks my standard schedule and routine, and reminds me that I am in control of my life.
To start, I recommend rebuilding the basics first - if you can’t trust your internal direction, little breaks help you re-anchor to what you truly want. Move your body whenever possible (walk, dance for two minutes, jump up and down, skip, you get the idea). Try to close your stress cycle by laughing, crying, shaking, or moving in order to release built tension.
• Reconnect & Nourish Your Body
Activism often leads to a disconnect between mind and body. A critical self‑care practice (that sometimes is easier said than done) is regularly re-grounding and re-connecting to your body. This means prioritizing rest, good sleep, hydration, and nutritious food that supports resilience, movement, and mental clarity.
Trust me, I know really well how often activists deprioritize these basics - and once they slide, everything slides. Aim to rebuild these foundations and strengthen them to a point where you are able to do them easily (i.e. without trying too hard). This takes time! Don’t be hard on yourself if your progress isn’t linear (no one’s is!). But your health is worth it.
Also, creativity is nourishment: creative movement, choreographed dance, drawing, writing, and painting. After going through my own journey of depression and burn out in 2022, art-based practices and creative movement were the two biggest positive tools I used to heal.
That’s why I started the well and began supporting others through workshops and programs. I saw first-hand how hard it can be to get started on your own and I don’t want that for you:
• Prioritize Meeting Your Needs First
Activists often put others first - constituents, movements, communities - while neglecting their own needs. But there’s a paradox there: you just can’t pour from an empty cup. So one great practice is reversing the logic: you deserve care too.
Map your needs - emotional, spiritual, physical - and treat them like non‑negotiables (because they are!). If your activism demands that you work 100 hours a week, that’s a structure to renegotiate, not a badge of honor. Boundaries, “no”, and being able to comfortably say “I need rest” are critical.
If you don’t honor your self-expression needs, the system will take from you as much as it can.
• Schedule Joy
Joy isn’t frivolous - it’s regenerative. Yet we often relegate it to “if I finish everything else”. One tool: put joy in your calendar as essential, not optional.
Do things that are not about activism. Feed your soul in mediums outside politics. Read fantasy, dance in your living room, hang out with people not tied to the cause, or schedule art nights, photography walks, dancing to music, knitting, scrapbooking, frolicking, a game of kickball, roller rink night, game night, etc. These acts remind you of your full humanity.
They also seed resilience, reminding you why you fight, because they give space to the cause and your work. I often highlight how regularly doing creative practices and having spaces that aren’t about deliverables helped save me when I was recovering from burnout.
• Build Resilience
Resilience is not about endless grit; it's about boundaries, recovery, community, and shifting perspectives.
Tools to build resilience:
Peer support & sharing: Connect with other activists, share stories, and normalize non-judgmental vulnerability.
Coaching or mentorship: Having a guide or mentor to help you navigate the challenges of activism.
Reflective practice: Journaling, practicing embodiment, and start to do nourishing daily, weekly, and monthly reflection rituals.
Creative tension: Allocate 20 minutes a week to actively hold the tension between hope and grief; use it as a place of resilience, not collapse or degeneration.
Breathing & mindfulness tools: Use simple breathwork practices, meditations, and grounding practices (I recommend this one!).
Novel rest: Think quarterly breaks, sabbaticals, and nature retreats.
Affirmations: Even if you feel silly saying affirmations, there’s actual science behind its effectiveness! I recommend choosing 3 to 5 affirming statements (e.g. “I’m capable of handling whatever comes my way”) and repeat them to yourself every single day. Do this for 3 months and tell me you don’t feel a difference.
How to Balance Your Activism With Other Life Priorities
Balance is not perfect symmetry - please don’t put pressure on yourself to achieve perfect work-life balance. Even as an activist who’s been doing this work for many years, I even sometimes struggle with balancing work and my other priorities. It’s hard! You’re not alone! My advice is to take small steps, giving yourself grace for when things fall short, and staying flexible when things go a different way than you had planned.
Here are guiding principles and tools to keep your activism in harmony with the rest of you:
Clarify what is yours to do
One of the most potent acts of self-care is choosing where to focus. Not everything deserves your energy. I emphasize that knowing your boundary of responsibility lets you focus rather than spread yourself thin.
Read:
Essentialism by Greg McKeown
Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Use seasonality & cycles
Accept that there are seasons of deep work and seasons of rest. In high-intensity times, plan for recovery phases. In slower seasons, deepen nourishment.
Align activism & personal actions
Let your activism guide your everyday decisions - not be completely separate. Let your values guide what you take on. When something drains you, it’s probably misaligned and should be reconsidered or reevaluated.
Co‑work with accountability partners
Find a friend, mentor, or peer who holds both your work ethic and dedication. Meet at your guys’ favorite local coffee shop or library. Mutually share your limits, get feedback, check in on overextension, and hold each other accountable.
Integrate rest into activism
Even in your busy activist schedule, embed occasional pauses, debriefs, check-ins, and collective care practices. Don’t wait until everything is done to rest! When you do that, all your energy has been spent already and little, if any, is leftover for any self-care practices.
Accept imperfection & course‑correction
You will misstep! And that’s ok! You will make mistakes. You will overcommit. But self-care includes forgiving and recalibrating. This journey isn’t linear - trust me. The reality is you’ll do all of the recommended boundaries, schedules, mini-breaks, acts of joy, and you’ll still inevitably mess up or feel bad about something. That’s perfectly normal and expected. You can do this! You deserve to show up to your work as your best self!
Read:
The Perfectionist’s Guide to Losing Control by Katherine Morgan Schafler
