In this podcast episode I chat with Moira Hutton (Calan DVS Sexual Violence Service Manager), exploring the nuances of working in a trauma informed way. I also enjoyed the chance to hear the perspectives of two other amazing colleagues:
Ananya Reynolds is a qualified counsellor who offers one to one support at Calan’s inhouse sexual violence service, The Lotus Project.
Hazel Renouf is the Trauma Informed Systems Manager for the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board.
I’m really pleased that my article about working with St Mungos is the editor’s pick in the January 2021 edition of the BACP Workplace Journal.
Please feel free to email me at nathalie.counselling@gmail.com with any comments you have about the article.
If you are a BACP member, you should be able to access the Workplace Journal for free… and there’s an article in there by my colleague Una Cavanagh which is well worth the read… enjoy!
Having just returned to work after a long-ish break, I found it really interesting to look at the magnetic white board on the wall of my home practice room for the first time in three weeks.
I had found the white board outside someone’s house near the beginning of lockdown in April 2020 and, after sanitizing it thoroughly, I started writing on it the random bits of stimulating things that I would read or hear (usually on the Ten Percent Happier podcast) during the long days of working at home.
As you can see, some of the statements have question marks punctuating them, and these statements have served as reflective prompts for months now; the statements without any punctuation tend to serve as aspirational prompts, reminding me of how I would like to experience the world during these incredibly surreal times.
I’m loth to erase the board and start again, so I think I might stick a piece of flipchart paper on top, and start jotting down newer random bits of stimulating stuff that I read or hear over the next six months…
Public Health England (PHE) have issued guidance on the mental health and wellbeing implications of the current public health emergency: https://bit.ly/2UJrah4
Because of the speed with which new information and guidance becomes available, I tend to post useful articles and images (like the one above) to my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/nathaliegriffincounselling/
Please do ‘like’ my Facebook page so that you are notified of any updates I post.
We will get through this, but it may be a rough ride for many of us – please be gentle with yourselves…
I’m a great fan of therapeutic writing, which is one of the suggestions.
I’m also pleased that the article encourages us to embrace our bad moods without judging ourselves for having the bad moods: we are allowed to feel like crap. The key is to explore why we are feeling like crap – what are our emotions trying to tell us? And do we need to do anything about it? Maybe not… or, at least, not right now.
The author also proposes that if are skilled at labelling our emotions, we can soften their impact. We are encouraged to be more precise in how we identify our emotions, so I’ve included an image (below) based on Plutchick’s Wheel of Emotions, as a prompt to explore the different words for the way we feel.
An article from the Counselling Directory magazine ‘Happiful’ highlights that burn-out is now officially recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as a medical condition. These are four factors which the WHO identifies as characterising the condition:
feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
increased mental distance from one’s job
feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
A recent article about changing clinical supervisors is available in the June 2019 issue of Therapy Today (Bean, L. and Perkins, K. 2019. Time to Change? Therapy Today 30:5). The article is currently only available to BACP members but it is worth checking out as it provides a useful outline of what we can expect from our clinical supervisors and/or what we should be offering as clinical supervisors. I particularly liked this:
“A good enough supervisor:
has up-to-date skills, knowledge and expertise in our therapeutic modality
can speak about differences in thinking and approach in a spirit of enquiry and non-judgement (especially if from a different therapeutic modality)
validates our work and challenges both thinking and practice
conducts meetings in an atmosphere of respect, openness and curiosity that encourages our development1
demonstrates attunement to us
maintains boundaries and focus
canvasses for and accepts feedback.”
It also provides a handy list of BACP resources relating to supervision.
I was shown this image the other day… it feels so spot-on.
Please have a read of the Instagram poster’s words that accompany the image to gain some insight into why being called inspirational or strong or brave can sometimes achieve the opposite of what most people are hoping to achieve when saying these words…
It’s also worth browsing through the other images on this Instagram account!
As they say on the website: “Share your story with us and help us create change that help people have happier lives and policy that supports health well being, not punishment and stigmatization.”
The GDS is a valuable resource for people like me because I sometimes work with people struggling with alcohol and other drug use problems.
I also try to complete it every year, as it gives me a chance to reflect on my alcohol use, and also because it is an education in the new drugs that are out there.
If you’ve got the time and inclination, give it a go…
This article in the Guardian gives a snapshot view of the idea that the pursuit of material wealth in a time of economic uncertainty is having a negative impact on our individual and collective mental health:
I particularly like the conclusion:
“… it is high time for an inequality therapy that doesn’t fault people for being crushed by an inhumane marketplace – but instead recognizes that it is the system, not the self, that is broken.”
In therapy, we inevitably work on our ourselves as individuals, but I hope that we can also empower ourselves to address systemic and societal concerns that are contributing to our mental ill-health and general malaise.
