When we think about self-care, it’s often most needed when life feels hectic, uncertain, or we're feeling stretched. Dealing with this kind of stress, having something to help us manage can make all the difference.
This is where the PPSS method comes in useful. PPSS stands for: Pause, Practice, Support, and Self-Control, and offers an easy way to take care of ourselves without it feeling like a chore.
Starting with Pause, this is about interrupting momentum long enough to notice what’s going on. In tough times, we tend to move quickly and reactively, often missing early signs of fatigue or strain. A pause here might mean taking a few minutes to check in with your energy, your mood, or your capacity for the next task. The aim is to have simple awareness of what's happening within us so we can know what to do next.
Example: Stepping away from your screen for five minutes after a period of study, noticing tension in your body and a drop in focus, and deliberately not moving straight into the next task.
Moving to Practice, this is where we shift from recognising what we need to doing something about it. That could include basic physical care like sleep, nutrition, and movement, or more structured steps such as seeking professional support or using simple coping strategies during the day. In difficult periods, it's helpful to build up a toolkit of easy exercises or practices that we can easily bring to mind.
Example: Choosing to eat a proper meal, getting to bed earlier than usual, or booking a counselling session after recognising that stress has been building to the point where it's difficult to manage.
Pro-tip: Click here for some activities and exercises you can include in your toolkit.
The third aspect, Support, extends self-care beyond ourselves. When things are tough, there’s often a tendency to withdraw from people, but that can create more problems than it solves. Support might come from friends, family, teachers, or therapists. It doesn’t always involve deep or heavy conversations; sometimes it’s about staying connected, sharing space, or getting a fresh perspective from someone. The key point here is to reduce isolation and allow other people to play a role in how you get through a difficult time.
Example: Messaging a friend to say the week feels heavy and asking for a short conversation or making a counselling appointment to talk about what's on your mind.
Finally, we have Self-Control. This doesn’t rely on strict discipline; it’s about putting a few simple exercises or practices in place and returning to them when things slip. When you miss a day or two, you simply restart the next one without criticising yourself.
Example: After missing a few days of practising habits that help, choosing to restart them the next day without turning that lapse into self-criticism, and keeping the structure in place even when motivation is low (e.g., going for a walk; eating one proper meal per day; connecting with friends).
What ties these stages together is that you’re not meant to go through Pause, Practice, Support, and Self-Control once and be done with them. You can return to whichever part you need as things change. That keeps self-care workable in real life, because you can adjust what you’re doing without feeling like you’ve failed or need to start again from the beginning.
The value of the PPSS cycle sits less in doing each stage well and more in recognising what you need in a given moment. That keeps self-care connected to what’s actually happening in your life rather than what you think it should look like.
