Self-care Tips to Follow During Campaigns

This tip might sound obvious, but it’s crucial: you won’t get through this alone. Strengthen your support networks and build circles of trust. That way, you’ll have people to lean on during moments of stress and anxiety, and you’ll also reduce conflict and burnout.

This applies to your family and, especially, to your campaign team. After all, they’re the people you’ll be spending most of your time with during these intense weeks on the trail.

One of Bruna’s recommendations is to introduce check-in and check-out exercises with your team. What does that mean? Setting aside time (before starting the day) to talk about how everyone is starting the day, feeling, their expectations, and their needs at that specific moment. At the end of the day, repeat the exercise to reflect on how people are ending the day, feeling and what the day’s main challenges were.

Building this team (even if it’s a small one) should be intentional. Surround yourself with people who align with your values and whom you also feel aligned with. That makes it easier to open up, build trust, and fully commit to the campaign without fear.

Your own expectations, and other people’s expectations of you, are major anxiety triggers. But what is anxiety, exactly? According to Bruna, it’s a temporal distortion: suffering either over something in the past that you can no longer change, or something in the future that hasn’t happened yet. We’ve all been there.

So how do you deal with it? The healthiest approach is to reconnect with the present moment, focusing on your values and on the actions that are actually possible right now. You know that saying, “What can’t be fixed, must be accepted”? Lean into that.

Here are a few of Bruna’s practical tips, little gems to keep close when anxiety hits:

• Writing exercises can be a powerful form of emotional release. Take a piece of paper and, without judging yourself, write down everything that’s bothering you. Try to identify what’s grounded in reality and what’s rooted in imagination or projection. This helps clarify what you can act on and reduces anxiety about what’s beyond your control.
• Practise conscious breathing exercises (even for just one minute, simply paying attention to your breath).
• Have psychological support or at least one person who listens to you genuinely and without judgement. Everyone needs a safe space to express fears, struggles, and doubts – especially during a campaign.

Stress is part of campaigning, that’s a fact. A candidate often juggles two or three work shifts a day, and that pace can exhaust both body and mind.

Learning how to manage stress is essential if you want to make it to the end of this long process in good shape. The core advice here is simple: be kind to yourself. Bruna suggests a few small but powerful habits to help reduce and manage stress:

• Maintain a regular routine for meals and hydration.
• Don’t neglect your sleep. Seriously, it’s sacred.
• Keep notes or reminders that support your workflow and help you recognise how productive and meaningful your day has been.
• Take short breaks whenever possible: listen to music, read a few pages, pause to breathe or reflect, anything that helps you recharge.

Whenever you can, keep the answer to this question written somewhere visible: What motivates you to be on this journey? Staying connected to your purpose fuels creativity and strengthens your ability to face challenges head-on.

It’s very common for candidates to grow distant from family and friends during election periods due to the intense workload, especially when those people aren’t directly involved in the campaign.

That’s why recognising and nurturing your support network is so important. Ask yourself: who are the people supporting me on this journey? According to Bruna, this network is what sustains us and helps us understand that it’s possible to maintain meaningful relationships, even with less time and physical distance.

Every relationship is a two-way street. Use whatever free time you have (however limited) for a call, a message, or a video chat, fully present with the person you want to stay connected to, even in the eye of the storm. But watch out not to be so hard on yourself, this should not be a point of pressure, but of release.

If you feel guilty, for example, about overburdening your partner with daily tasks or not being as present as you’d like for your children, one way to assess whether that guilt is valid is to truly listen – to yourself and to them.

“Reflect on whether you’re acting in ways that conflict with your values and purpose, or whether you’re being overly self-critical, comparing yourself to others, or trying to meet external expectations. Once you recognise this, you can create new strategies that are more aligned with who you are.”

Bruna Perillo, psychologist

Regardless of how involved your family and friends are, they need to feel part of the process. We also offer a great video class with Thais Ferreira on how to involve family (especially children) in the campaign journey.

Money can be a major source of stress, and you don’t need extra headaches during a campaign. Keeping your personal finances organised is also a form of self-care. Setting realistic goals for a healthier relationship with money is part of taking care of yourself, believe it.

Understanding and addressing your financial situation can help you avoid overspending during the campaign, taking on debt you can’t afford, or draining your personal savings.

We hope these tips help you recognise the importance of prioritising self-care, and of being kind to your team, your family, and, most importantly, yourself. We don’t want campaigns to end in trauma, but to be meaningful learning experiences that strengthen you for the long run.