In honor of Self-Care Month, we are continuing our series on the various aspects of self-care. I sat down with Barney Davis, M.D., one of the founders of Valeo, to get a physician’s perspective on physical self-care. Over the years he has served global workers in many locations, both in person and via videoconference, and has unique insight on the challenges faced in caring for oneself in a cross-cultural setting.

As early as the American Civil War, we have record of awareness that some individuals developed physical and emotional symptoms in response to wartime stress exposure . Over time, the terms changed, but were still primarily connected to some form of combat trauma; “soldier’s heart,” “shell shock,” and “combat fatigue” were a few of the terms offered to describe the cluster of physical symptoms that resembled sudden feelings of impending doom, panic, and overwhelming anxiety. All of these implied that there was something internally “wrong” with the person that would lead them to respond in an excessive way.