The Comprehensive Toolkit (East Suffolk Council)

How to work effectively with the human brain

• Learn how your brain makes sense of your experiences?
• Understand unconscious patterns in the brain
• Understand the fight-or-flight response
• Recognise the language of strong emotions
• Activate the relaxation response to reduce stress response
• Challenge negative thinking and self-talk
• Learn to recognise and re-frame the 3 Ps
• Maximise the effectiveness of your interventions with up-to-date knowledge

This session will help you understand the human brain and why we each react to things differently.

• Understand the mental health continuum in depth
• Gain knowledge of the signs, symptoms and medication for different mental health conditions
• Dispel myths and unhelpful beliefs around mental health
• Understand the overlap between mental health conditions
• Gain profound insights about the mental health continuum asleep and the REM Sleep

Gain advanced skills to connect with members of the public, clients, patients and team members. Listen out for unmet needs and calm distress. Develop knowledge and confidence around language to enable you to communicate effectively.

• Understand which language to use and which to avoid
• Learn essential skills to listen and re-frame with hope for the future
• Protect yourself from the spiral of negative metaphors and abstractions
• Learn how to stay clear-headed when speaking with people experiencing stress, confusion or anger
• Develop skills to help calm someone safely and effectively

A framework for supporting wellbeing

Bring your skills together with a coherent approach – The RIGAAR framework. This empowering and practical framework will guide conversations which:

• Take clients, patients or colleagues beyond mental ill health
• Support people through sickness and returning to work
• Help people find clarity and support with demands at home and at work
• Identify meaning and purpose to build resilience
• Enable recovery from severe mental ill health and addictions

In this session you will learn effective ways to:

• Fine-tune your rapport-building skills
• Gather concrete information to boost change
• Set collaborative goals which meet needs
• Access your client’s hidden resources
• Agree strategies which boost motivation for change

Use the Emotional Needs & Resources approach to better understand suicide and self-harm.

• Learn how you can offer support and act to keep people safe
• Recognise the links between suicide and self-harm
• Undo unhelpful common misconceptions
• Build your confidence in talking about and responding to suicide and self-harm
• Reflect on your own self care

The Cycle of Addiction

In this session you will gain an understanding of:

• Identify relationships between mental ill health and addiction
• Apply the three components of all successful recovery strategies
• Work with reward and punishment mechanisms in the brain
• Apply the motivational cycle of change
• Spot the addictive component of self-harm and eating disorders
• Understand why self-medicating is so prevalent
• Become more effective at supporting co-morbid conditions

Ethics & Wellbeing

Protect yourself and your organisation from stress and strong emotions which drive toxic attitudes and unhealthy behaviours. In this session you will cover:

• Why ethical practice is rooted in emotional wellbeing
• What an emotionally healthy organisation looks like
• The role of pattern-matching and perception in shaping culture
• How to access your observing self and increase awareness
• Spot the unconscious patterns which shape how we see ourselves and others