Look after your body. Caring can sometimes put a lot of pressure on you body. It can be exhausting, you may have lots of lifting to do and your sleep might bet disturbed. You may also have times when you worry a lot about your family member or just have really hectic, long days. Try to make sure that you eating well, get enough sleep, do some regular exercise and time-out and have regular checkups with your doctor.

Acknowledge your feelings. There are lots of different feelings we can experience in every day life and even more connected with the role of being a young carer. These feelings can range from feeling proud, protective, supportive and loving to angry, frustrated, trapped and resentful. There can also be lots of sadness and grief about the situation. Whatever the feelings are they are OK. Some feelings might be uncomfortable or painful to experience but we need to recognise what is going on inside us.

Get it out! It’s best not to bottle things up inside and find ways to express them in ways that are safe. It’s OK to cry if you need to, have a big laugh, write stuff down, paint it or talk it through with someone. What ever helps! Getting stuff out looks after our mental health and helps avoid and manage things like depression and anxiety.

Feel proud about what you do. It’s easy to forget as you do it all the time, but being a young carer takes commitment, courage, organisation and love and young people who take on this role are a very important and valuable part of our community.

Spend 10 minutes a day looking after your self. Have a bath, day dream, play with your pet (if you have one), listen to music, write in your diary. This helps you recharge and stay in balance and helps keep up your energy levels.

Spend time doing things you like, even if you can’t be involved all the time. Keeping up outside interests help you stay recharged and reduce the chances of you starting you feel tired and resentful. Activities such as being in a drama group, going to see bands, going for a skate, reading (even if it is just 10 minutes at night before you fall asleep), window shopping, rummaging in op shops, going to an exercise class or a run after school.

It is important to ask for help and support before you feel like you’re about to fall apart. Being a young carer can be really demanding at times and it’s natural to sometimes need extra practical help or just someone to talk to outside your family. (see Support for Young Carers Facts Sheet for more details)

Monitor your use of drugs and alcohol. If you have started drinking sometimes or experimenting with drugs like pot or ecstasy. Make sure you get informed about the effects. As you spend so much of your time caring for others and taking on extra responsibilities, getting smashed can be a tempting way to have some “time out” but you may also find that when you do drink or take drugs, you get “messy”, spin out or have a tendency to go hard. It’s normal to want to try new things and have fun with your friends but stay safe while you do it and learn to recognise your limits.

Enjoy your time with your family member. If you are helping to care for your mum or dad or brother or sister, find stuff you can both share such as starting a journal together, watching a favourite TV show or a DVD, surfing the net, start a cactus garden, make collages with photos. Get really creative and brainstorm together stuff you can do together with some of the time you share.