At FD Consultants we have been offering our Trademark half day ‘Stress Management and Resilience Building’ workshop for several years. Since the pandemic, this workshop is in great demand. We have offered these courses to organisations within, the humanitarian sector, emergency first responders, mental health charities, and tech companies (exposed to traumatic material), or any organisation where workload is stressful and intensive. Organisations have been navigating so much uncertainty over the last few years. As human beings we like to feel in control and prepared. The pandemic has made us all feel more stressed and that things are ‘out of our control’. Our workshop helps people manage uncertainty and focus on things we have control over. During the pandemic organisations are speaking more openly about mental health. We have found that organisations are reaching out for the preventative services (such as our training programmes), as well as our crisis support services. We would ideally recommend this stress management workshop for all staff as part of their induction. Staff need to be given the space at the very outset to build strategies for managing stress, and to recognise the signs in themselves and their colleagues. We want to encourage organisations to build into their framework preventative measures to best support their staff. Our workshop helps to create a healthy and resilient organisational culture. By giving staff the tools to recognise the signs of stress, trauma, burnout or compassion fatigue, we enable them to reach out for support when necessary. Research has shown that the earlier someone gets support, the quicker they will recover, and this can prevent long-term illness. “There is so much uncertainty, including returning to the workplace, juggling lots of responsibilities, and worrying about my health. This course provided me with techniques to recognise and manage my stress and anxiety better during this time.” Our half day stress management workshop enables participants to recognise the signs of stress, identifying stress triggers, understand the physiology and neuroscience of stress, and appreciate our survival response. We explore common thinking patterns of stress and the specific stress factors within each organisation. We offer our ‘RESPECT Resilience Model’ which has helped thousands of people to develop tools and techniques to manage stress and create a personal wellbeing plan. “The trainers are professional, knowledgeable and have a wealth of experience.” If you or your organisation would like more information on any of our courses, then do get in touch with us today. Check out our website www.fdconsultants.net or email us directly [email protected]
0 Comments
Having three sisters that are all teachers I hear a great deal about what is occurring in schools. All around the world schools are trying to get back to some normality, with various levels of success. My community carried out a project asking children what they will miss when the ‘coronavirus period’ ends. “Being with family and doing things as a whole family” “Cycling, walks and having shared meals” “Free time and lie ins” “Spending time being more creative” “More time to do drawing, playing games, baking cakes” Acknowledging the hardships many of us are experiencing through the Coronavirus period, (and at FD Consultants, our focus is to support anyone who is struggling psychologically), in this article we have decided to focus on the positive lessons Coronavirus has taught us as individuals and organisations. Creativity – I continue to be amazed at the creative ideas that have sprung up since Lockdown. At FD Consultants we facilitate a ‘Stress Management and Resilience Building’ workshop for organisations and individuals. We help participants to create a wellbeing plan referring to the RESPECT model of Resilience (Dunkley, 2018). Creativity is one of the factors we discuss to increase our resilience levels. The part of the brain that is activated when we are creative reduces the body’s stress response. As our social interactions have had to change dramatically people have tuned into online theatre, orchestra, and musical performances. People are learning instruments, languages, improving DIY or gardening skills. Individuals in our workshops have shared their resources such as, writing, photography, painting, sewing, cooking, dance off videos, and growing fruit and vegetables. Organisations are thinking creatively about how to stay productive in these unprecedented times. See if there is one thing you can include in your wellbeing plan that is a creative activity. Patience – I was walking down my high street last week reading over and again the signs in the shop windows, ‘closed until further notice’, often followed by messages of hope and pictures of rainbows. During the 2011 London riots I was living in west London. I remember carrying my bike down one road as it was littered with shards of glass from smashed shop windows. As I felt tears well up in my eyes, I read a sign on a boarded-up shop window, ‘We will be back, stronger and better’. I have kept a photo of that message and refer to it every time I need a boost of reassurance. It teaches me patience. We are a world that is operating at great speed, with a ferocious appetite for reduced cost and quick fixes, habitually throwing quality to the wind. Coronavirus has forced us to slow down, press the brake pedal and take a deep breath. I have witnessed clients arrive in my counselling room stating that they feel they haven’t breathed properly for years. I have experienced participants attending our workshops rushing from one meeting, and as soon as the workshop finishes, rushing to another. Where is the pause button? If you don’t have one, create one, give yourself permission to book in pause moments between meetings, take some deep breaths, and experience the healing power of good quality breathing. Staying connected – I am logging into family get togethers and social nights with friends via Zoom. I have family all over the world, but we haven’t connected on this level before, and perhaps this is something we will continue to do after this period. My social nights have included, pampering nights (group of girlfriends wearing facemasks), wine tasting, sharing music, silly performances (trying to teach my puppy to jump through a Hola hoop - unsuccessful as yet!), and face painting, to name a few. My street has setup a WhatsApp group, and I now feel a sense of community that I hadn’t felt before. Social connections are another factor we discuss in our RESPECT resilience model (Dunkley, 2018). As a therapist I am most concerned about an individual who is becoming isolated. Watch out for your local neighbours, colleagues, or friends who may be disconnecting. Acts of Kindness – This month at FD Consultants we are focusing on Acts of Kindness and sharing some of the projects we have been involved in since the Coronavirus period began. Research shows that ‘kindness’ is good for us. It gives us a sense of purpose, increases our empathy and self-worth. Some research has even suggested it keeps us young and reduces our stress levels. Kindness stimulates the production of serotonin, endorphin and oxytocin, our feel-good hormones. It heightens feelings of compassion, consideration and warmth. Some of the acts of kindness we have witnessed over the last few months include, care packages to the vulnerable, donating produce to food banks, knitting hearts and rainbows for the NHS, and promoting small local businesses. Kindness also relates to being kind to ourselves. There is a mindfulness exercise you can download on our website to practice self-compassion called ‘compassionate mindfulness’. If you wish to practice it use the following link: https://tinyurl.com/yabvvsue Flexible Working – Many organisations didn’t believe working from home would be productive. In some circumstances the Coronavirus period has proved otherwise. A great deal of work has been successfully adapted to online and remote home working for staff. Another benefit of working from home is the reduction in travel time to work and, for some, more flexibility to juggle childcare with workload. As organisations plan to return to the workplace and develop risk assessments, flexible working may become part of the new normal. As individuals we have all had to learn to adapt and become more flexible, in our work and home lives. Continue to build on these skills as research states that one of the virtues of resilience is being adaptable. Open Leadership – As therapists we have been challenged in a way that we have never been before, we are living and breathing the crisis that we are supporting our clients with. This has led us to share more of how we are personally impacted, with an attitude that we are all in this together. At FD Consultants we offer consultancy to leadership and senior management teams. We have found good leadership refers to, not just emotional intelligence, but being able to translate ‘emotion as intelligence’ (Dunkley, 2018). This means listening to the emotional voice of staff within an organisation and having the skills to translate this into intelligence about the work and the organisational culture. Additionally, good management includes relational skills and being able to share something of ourselves. As Brene Brown states in her video ‘sympathy verses empathy’, to be truly empathic we need to connect to a similar feeling within ourselves to connect with the other; empathy “is feeling with people”. This type of leadership is built on strength rather than power and creates a more resilient workforce. Appreciation – At this time, displays of gratitude for key workers has been unparalleled. Gratitude improves our wellbeing, empathy for others, creates a sense of community (we are all in this together), and increases our resilience. Many people have stated how much their appreciation for the smaller things in life has improved, including, a smile, being in nature, and the beauty of our environment. Note down all the smaller things in life that you have learnt to appreciate over the last few months. For organisations looking for employee psychological support, FD Consultants are the trauma specialists and well-being service who will best deliver a reliable, quick, and bespoke support system in the workplace. FD Consultant’s team of accredited specialists will offer ongoing support to help manage stress, prevent burnout and provide specialist trauma care where required, enabling your staff with the tools to cope, and recover more quickly. Get in touch today It’s odd. Very odd. Sitting in South Africa, in the Global South, and watching how the Global North responds to the coronavirus. I am from the UK, born in England, and all my family are there. Everyone apart from my mum, a renegade, who is under lockdown in a youth hostel in New Zealand, having packed up her life and set off on a bicycle. But everyone else is in Europe, at the epicentre of the virus outbreak. Speaking to my family, reading the BBC, it’s like looking into a dystopian future. I watch as the run on the health system begins, as people queue outside of supermarkets. I chat to my friend who is on lockdown with a tiny baby and she wryly tells me about her efforts to “get back to work”. I am working remotely from South Africa. Part of my day involves speaking to French professionals. Since March, my calls have become therapeutic interventions. “How are you managing during the lockdown?” “Do you have a garden?” “How are the children?” Here in South Africa, we have been on total lockdown since the early hours of the morning of Friday 27th March. They are calling it a “ruthlessly efficient fight” against coronavirus[1]. We are not allowed to walk the dogs, there is no “hour for exercise.” The South African response was swift, and brutal. We shut down our public spaces with a rapidity that a dictatorship would boast of. Ramaphosa, the president, has been applauded. South Africa shut down when we had only registered 400 cases. Since then, we have trained 10,000 field workers to carry out the most testing in all of Africa. Compared to the rest of the continent, we are strides ahead in our fight against the virus. And it is a fight, Ramaphosa has told us in no uncertain terms that we are at war with an invisible enemy. I mean for goodness sakes, we stopped the sale of cigarettes and alcohol. I am not quite sure for the rationale behind that – maybe public health – drunk people break rules? Or perhaps a rare insight into a puritanical streak in the underlying social norms of the country. And yet, if this is a war, what is the price that we will pay? And who pays most? South Africa is one of the most unequal countries in the world. When you look at the 6.6 million people filing for unemployment in America, I have a real sense that this will pale into comparison to the economic impact of coronavirus in South Africa. The economy has already been downgraded to “junk” status. At home, I sit on my laptop and support my little South African family; my husband, his sister and her husband and our three year old niece, everyone now unemployed. I have worked in the HIV response for many years and my LinkedIn is a smorgasbord of responses from the HIV sector; UNAIDS has been circulating an image of lessons that we can learn from the HIV response. It talks about the importance of involving communities in the coronavirus response and of removing the barriers to action – barriers such as insecure housing status, healthcare costs or the fear of unemployment. It talks about how we should be kind to one another and address fear and stigma. (see image) Yet even with the HIV response, we haven’t really learned these lessons. HIV remains an extremely stigmatised disease, often affecting the already dispossessed. When we look at the impact of coronavirus in Africa, the stark wealth and power disparities will only exacerbate the issue for those least able to respond. A recent study by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine looking at the impact of coronavirus in low income countries[2] made for sobering reading: modelling predictions looking at high-income countries suggested there would be a substantial excess mortality rate with un-controlled or partly controlled coronavirus measures. Yet the virus’ impact on people living in low-income settings or affected by humanitarian crises would be even more severe. This is partly because of more social mixing, higher existing rates of co-morbidities, including a population living with unsuppressed HIV or TB, and intrinsic weaknesses in national healthcare systems. In South Africa, 7.7 million people live with HIV, and yet only 62% of those people are on treatment. 2.9 million people living with HIV are not on treatment and are therefore susceptible to coronavirus mortality. In South Africa, it is our most vulnerable – those in urban slums, those without access to water, our homeless populations, those with multi-drug resistant TB – that will suffer most. It is no surprise that the government acted rapidly. While these sobering facts resound around my computer screen, I try and carry on as normal. I look at my future, the European reality, and I try to carry on working. If I were in the UK, I could volunteer with the NHS. In South Africa, I am on a tourist visa, not recognised by the Health Professions Council of South Africa. I fire off emails to Medicins Sans Frontiers, maybe they need me? As the world seems to stop, I try to find meaning. Am I living right? Am I doing enough? Sometimes I spend the day in bed. My story is not that of an individual. It may be personal, but in reality it is a global story. How many other people are there like me, who are sat at home? How many of us are struggling to remain upbeat, and struggling to be resilient? How many of us, who work in the humanitarian and development sectors, feel impotent? Some days I worry about my own mortality. My phone flashes as I go to bed, “13 year old dead in London from coronavirus. No underlying conditions.” Other days I shrug it off. For goodness sakes, I work in infectious diseases. What on earth do I have to be scared about – death? Yes, well, we all die one day. I am twenty eight and a model of physical fitness. Well, OK, not a model, but I am trying out yoga once a day – that has to count right? The point is, I know I am not alone. I am you and you are me. We are together at this time, facing the same challenges, and we are struggling to find the same meaning. In West Africa they say “on est ensemble.” We are together. Today more than ever, that is a global truth. At FD Consultants, we use a trauma informed model based on the term RESPECT, coined by Fiona Dunkley in her book, “Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Aid Workers: A Roadmap of Trauma and Critical Incident Care.” RESPECT is a resilience toolkit, it’s an individualised way of how to look after ourselves during this time. It’s a way of building positive coping mechanisms to manage the impact of trauma, so that we can continue to find meaning and make a difference during this time. As Ramaphosa told us, we are at war. We are at war with an invisible enemy, and war is by its very nature a traumatic event. RESPECT gives us tools to foster our individual resilience in face of this trauma:
I read to unlock my relaxation, and I learn about how this crises affects my personal growth. I am in touch with my family daily, sending silly memes or laughing through Zoom calls. I ground myself through yoga, I get my cardio through dancing to Disney film scores, dangling my butt-naked niece on my hip, “under the seeeeeea”. I feed my creativity, drawing in chalk on the fence outside. And I challenge myself to turn off my phone when the social media becomes too much to manage. I breathe RESPECT and I take control. I will find meaning. If you are interested in any of the services that FD Consultants can provide, including remote support services, please contact us today. By Yasmin Dunkley, Independent Business Development Strategist with FD Consultants HIV and Sexual Health service provision specialist [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52125713 [2] https://www.lshtm.ac.uk/research/centres/health-humanitarian-crises-centre/news/102976#.XoWV8UOHVhk.linkedin By Claire Pooley, BACP (Snr Accred) pluralist therapist, traumatologist and EMDR practitioner Although this book is mainly aimed at the humanitarian sector, I would also highly recommend it to counsellors, therapists, psychiatrists and emergency first responders, who are likely to be, or are already, working in an arena where a traumatic incident could take place. The workplace setting means that our clients will often be exposed to primary or secondary trauma and can all experience trauma as a one-off event or an accumulation over time. The book offers the reader an insight into their own risks of vicarious trauma while working with the trauma of others. Fiona Dunkley captures some thought-provoking vignettes of real-life experiences, with several chapters guiding organisations through a systematic approach, including how to support staff in caring roles such as the police, how to manage a critical incident and how organisations can implement a Trauma Management Programme into their critical incident plan. The book also considers the various treatment pathways, from the preventative to recovery from trauma and PTSD. The book comprehensively covers the need for a cohesive screening process pre deployment, the attention required during deployment, and the monitoring, assessment and subsequent trauma-specific treatment options post deployment, considered from many cultural perspectives. I found the author’s explanation of the neuroscience of the traumatised brain simple and easy to explain to clients, thus normalising their responses to their own traumatic experiences. For example, she covers how the brain responds to a traumatic experience, the natural responses of fight, flight, freeze and appease, and how this may need re-adjusting to return to its natural balanced state. The text also explores some recognised stabilisation techniques to help restore an individual to that state, before therapy can resume. Dunkley bravely interweaves her own experiences of trauma, including what happened, and how she reacted, both at the time and subsequently. Her common reactions to the trauma and her eventual diagnosis of PTSD bring the book to life, and touched a few areas for me, of similar reactions to trauma while working abroad. In doing so, I think this book raises the importance of an effective pathway from prevention to treatment and care, which could help ensure that those working with the trauma of others are safely and professionally cared for too. Get your copy of the book today from Amazon. I had the honour to present at a recent BACP Conference in relation to caring for the carer and discussing support methods for those who are impacted by trauma, either first hand or vicariously. Building resilience is about learning to respect and take care of yourself, I have created a resilience toolkit acronym using the word RESPECT. I recommend accumulating a good balance of resources that cover the following areas: Relaxation, Education, Social, Physical, Exercise, Creativity and Thinking.
I hope you enjoy the presentation (please note this is a very short section from a longer presentation). |
CONTACTArchives
April 2022
Categories
All
|