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Staff courses and workshops from the Counselling Service

12 Oct 2009

Skills, tools and techniques to improve your well-being

This term, the Counselling Service is offering the following courses and workshops to staff:

  • Actively managing your mood
  • Managing anxiety
  • Mindfulness meditation
  • Mindfulness-based stress reduction

Do you find you are losing concentration or having difficulty prioritising? Are you feeling overloaded? Worried about work? Would you like some strategies for learning about and managing stress and mood swings?

All of these workshops and courses are available for staff and are an enjoyable opportunity to explore skills, tools and techniques to improve wellbeing. You will learn how stress helps and hinders, how the body reacts during times of stress, and how to build effective coping strategies.

You will be able to find out more about:

  • Stress and how it affects you; how you respond to pressure of work and home; relaxation techniques and other strategies for coping with stress.
  • Identifying negative and self-defeating thought patterns: learning to think in a more balanced and realistic manner; how to influence our beliefs about ourselves.
  • Knowing where your stress comes from.
  • Identifying your negative thought processes.
  • Challenging your negative thought processes.
  • How to stop bullying yourself and change the way you relate to yourself.
  • Gaining perspective.
  • Learning ways of preventing anxiety from becoming unmanageable.
  • Making a difference - what is within our control?
  • Learning to relax more and to engage in more pleasant events.
  • Looking at the effects of diet, exercise, sleep habits, caffeine and drugs and alcohol.
  • Thinking about the mind/body link.

The emphasis is on brief exercises that can be integrated into daily life to prevent stress and exhaustion and increase energy and focus. We will be using various mind and body practices to give the calmness and vitality needed to manage stress.

The techniques you will learn affect people in different ways: restless people learn relaxation; busy high-achievers learn how to use calm energy to become more efficient, people with low energy and vitality learn how to invigorate and encourage themselves.

If you are interested in joining one or more of the above groups or would like further details: