At some point in our life someone will have said to us “you’ve got to let it go”.  Well-meaning as the advice may be, the idea of “letting go” can seem challenging, even unrealistic, but letting go is an attitude that can be cultivated by all and doing so can be liberating.

The pandemic saw the removal of the certainties of life, leaving us with an experience akin to having the rug pulled from beneath our feet.  Everything was thrown up in the air and we had no idea how bumpy the eventual landing would be.  Every aspect of life – health, family, profession, finances and human interaction – was impacted.  Anxiety rose as we tried to navigate experiences that were troubling and beyond our control.

As the pandemic recedes we find ourselves facing many new uncertainties. Adapting to the new normal of hybrid working, the cost of living crisis and political unease are part of our landscape, a reality we naturally try to push back against.  But rather than helping, resisting our reality feeds an endless cycle of stress, rumination and even despair.

Recent experiences have magnified the inherent uncertainty of the human condition but amongst all the difficulty, they opened a door to a more progressive way of approaching these challenges. Perhaps it is time to “let go” of that which is beyond our control and get back on track.

When facing things beyond our control we can endlessly ruminate. This serves to increase stress without resolving anything. A more compassionate response is to train our minds to accept our reality and let go – to respond with choice and self-care.

It is important to clarify that “acceptance” and “letting go” are not passivity.  It is not a mental shrugging of the shoulders, but instead a more nuanced response to meeting difficulties.

When we face a challenge, we begin the process of acceptance and letting go by asking ourselves a simple question:

“Do I have any control over this situation?”

If the answer is “yes”, then you can decide how you want to respond, giving you a sense of engagement.

If the answer is “no”, then you can decide how you support yourself – to let go of that beyond our control. In doing so we do not give up on ambition, progress or affecting change, but we let go of those behaviours that compound stress and rumination, instead increasing our sense of equilibrium. 

“Letting Go” is an attitude that is cultivated.  Mindfulness, anxiety management and consciously shifting our mindset are all effective ways of practicing acceptance and letting go.  They allow us to observe rather than avoid our difficult experiences.  We nurture a stance that allows the difficult to arise without it triggering behaviours that sustain stress and unease. 

This is the bedrock of an approach to life that ultimately gives us more choice over how we meet demands and challenges.  Each time we encounter experience with this attitude, we create new habits, behaviourally and neurologically, that become second nature over time. In doing so we expand our comfort zones and increase our resilience to difficulty. Letting go means growth, not retreat and the implications are massive.

Wellbeing Partners are committed to helping people develop the techniques needed to cultivate “letting go” and offer a variety of workshops and courses that introduce and deepen these skills in a range of contexts.

Back on Track, Wellbeing in Hybrid Working and Recovery from Burnout look at developing resilience, choice and adapting in the professional context, whilst Mindfulness Sessions, Facing Anxiety and Flourishing and Managing Change look at the wider context of letting go and the emotional intelligence needed to find the strength to face uncertainty with courage and confidence.

If you would like more information on any of these sessions, please get in touch or enter your details below.

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) isnow a recommended treatment for relieving mental health issues, based on guidelines by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

• Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is a clinical form of mindfulness, similar to cognitive behavioural therapy but not the same

• The rollout of MBCT on a societal scale has the potential to revolutionise how we view and manage mental health issues

• MBCT is a non-drug treatment from the field of psychology, which helps to combat the unhelpful thinking patterns that feed many people’s mental health issues

Recently published NICE guidelines have placed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) at the forefront of improving mental health in society, with NHS GP’s set to recommend MBCT more widely as a front-line treatment for mental health issues. Though this will likely take several years to fully implement, MBCT has already been successfully used as a mental health treatment for several decades. Our fully qualified MBCT teachers at Wellbeing Partners explain:

MBCT, if you do not know of it already, is an acronym you will be hearing regularly in the very near future as the treatment is more widely rolled out across society, and as we embrace this novel and extraordinary approach to how we relate to our thoughts and feelings.

Most people know mindfulness as a relaxation tool but MBCT is something different. MBCT is a fusion of mindfulness and cognitive therapy developed to combat recurring depression and it has been shown to also have a positive impact on a variety of mental health issues, including anxiety. The treatment gives us a greater understanding of our own unhelpful thinking patterns and how it is these thoughts can make us feel stressed, anxious, alarmed, frightened, ashamed, guilty, paranoid, and can eventually lead to mental health issues.

Here are some of the main tools and techniques we can learn from Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy:

MBCT teaches us to relate to our thoughts differently: “Thoughts are not facts”

The greatest gift that MBCT gives people is the ability to relate to thoughts differently.

Many of us can get into the habit of “overthinking” a lot of the time – perhaps anxiously fantasising about how our work or personal life might go wrong, criticising ourselves or others for not being good enough, or feeling like things in our life will never improve. And because our thoughts are our inner voice which speaks to us, these thoughts can seem like the truth. We may spend time and energy battling these thoughts, or giving into them, increasing our unhappiness and anxiety as we try.

MBCT teaches us to recognise that our thoughts are our opinions, and we can choose how to respond to these opinions, or perhaps let them go. This technique is both a mindset shift and a skill that is learned over a number of sessions with a qualified and experienced MBCT teacher.

Emotional Intelligence: “How am I feeling?”

Emotional intelligence is a coveted but elusive skill, one that is important for our professional and personal lives. MBCT is a doorway into better understanding of how we are feeling and gives us the tools to use our emotions intelligently. Unless prompted, we are rarely conscious of how we are feeling and how our emotions are shaping our behaviour, and this can sometimes have unfortunate consequences. 

Emotions like fear, anger, frustration, shame, guilt, resentment can build up over hours, days, weeks, months even years. These emotions are often wrongly-labelled as “bad” feelings, or negative emotions that should be avoided or swallowed. But emotions are neither good nor bad, just a bunch of signals in the amygdala part of the brain that are designed to help us navigate life.

Taking actions purely based on these emotions can sometimes have a bad outcome, but emotions themselves can be looked at differently, reframed, as important information for us to pay attention to. By focusing our attention on our current emotional experience, MBCT allows a greater knowledge of how we are feeling in real time, which regulates our emotional energy if we are stressed and gives us a chance to choose how to respond to situations, experiences and people in a more informed way.  Again, this is a skill that is learned as a part of a MBCT course over a number of sessions with a qualified teacher. The outcome of a greater understanding of our emotional state is a more robust sense of calm and equilibrium, one that MBCT teaches us to cultivate and to be able to call upon when required.

Recognising the Good

Much of the conversation around MBCT concerns mental health issues. However, there is another side to MBCT which is equally important and that is how it connects us to the good in life.

Humans evolved to have a “negativity bias”, meaning we find it easier to focus on that which we find threatening or difficult.  MBCT helps create balance by teaching us to pay attention to the good, the richness and variety of life, those little moments of joy that might otherwise be missed when we are caught up in ruminative thinking patterns.  The sound of a loved one’s voice, the exquisite tase of our favourite food, the beautiful skyline or anything else that comes through the senses.

Being in the present moment helps us experience these small moments of joy as they are happening, enjoying the emotions that these moments create.  And these small moments add up.  Psychologist Rick Hanson calls this “hardwiring happiness”, the process of training ourselves to focus on what makes us calm and content, what brings us happiness, especially the smaller moments that we might not usually notice or value.

A multi-faceted approach

MBCT provides a subtle but multi-faceted approach to understanding how our mind works, and how we can accept and manage our thoughts, and the energy from our emotions, in a healthier and more positive way.

For more information, or to book an MBCT session or group course for your organisation, please contact us at Wellbeing Partners – [email protected]

The Framework for Supportive Conversations

If a colleague, team member or indeed a friend or loved one is struggling with their mental health or has a personal life issue or crisis that they have disclosed to us, we can easily be drawn into those conversations and find ourselves offering advice, trying to fix them or rescue their situation, or perhaps we become overly involved in their issues, or end up giving them anecdotes about our own experiences in the hope that it will somehow be supportive for them.

But the truth is, none of these things are actually helpful to someone who is struggling with their mental health or a personal life crisis. Giving advice, trying to fix or rescue or self-disclosing our own issues is more likely to be damaging, disempowering and not really what the other person wants or needs. Especially within the workplace, where the added dimension of hierarchies can come in to play and fears of delayed career progression can be an actual or perceived danger for someone who discloses mental health issues.

So how should we navigate supportive conversations in a psychologically safe way? What are the right and wrong things to say and do if someone discloses to us that they have a mental health issue, is struggling, or is in crisis or distress?

The Framework for Supportive Conversations is Wellbeing Partners’ easy to understand, simple to follow “conversation map” that provides clear boundaries and skills for holding any type of discussion around mental health, distress, crisis or personal life issues, or even emotionally charged conversations around work matters.

The Framework for Supportive Conversation provides clear guidance around what to say, what not to say, key questions to ask, and explains how to navigate these conversations successfully and skilfully so that they remain appropriate and helpful, and lead to appropriate support where required. The Framework gives clear guidance so that no-one becomes “enmeshed”, makes unhelpful comments, provides unqualified advice or gets overly-involved in colleagues’ or team members’ mental health issues or personal life difficulties.

The Framework for Supportive Conversations is one of the core elements of many of our short training courses, including Mental Health Training for Managers (2 hours), our Wellbeing for HR Course (90 minutes), and our Talking Mental Health Course for all employees (90 minutes).

The Framework provides the boundaries for supportive conversations, and includes:

• Preparing for a supportive conversation – Where, For How Long, and When
• How to Initiative a supportive conversation, simply and safely
• Listening Skills – less is more
• Validating – not advising or rescuing
• Explore – key questions to ask
• How and where to signpost for further support if appropriate
• Closing the conversation – simply and skilfully

The training includes practical activities and exercises and all delegates come away feeling confident and relieved at the simplicity of holding a supportive conversation, and knowing the skills for navigating these often difficult discussions.

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about the Framework for Supportive Conversations, Mental Health Training for Managers, Wellbeing for HR or Talking Mental Health for all employees.

The topic of this year’s event is “Loneliness”

Our new wellbeing workshop for employees – Building Connection and Belonging – provides relevant and timely methods and ideas for helping your employees to overcome isolation and loneliness

Loneliness is part of the human condition, and it is something that we all will experience in our lives.  However, humans are a social species, one that has evolved to crave connection and prolonged periods of separation and loneliness have been shown to have a detrimental effect on our mental and physical health.

Living through a global pandemic has meant increased isolation for many as lockdowns and changing rules have limited interaction with others.  Protracted home working has normalised disconnection and research has shown that this has caused unfortunate side-effects including increases in stress, anxiety, rumination and burnout.  Loneliness is not something to be taken lightly and is affecting employees not only in the UK but across the globe.

The Mental Health Awareness Week theme for 2022 is Loneliness, and it provides a timely opportunity to support your employees to rebuild a sense of belonging and reduce feelings of isolation that are so pervasive across society at this time.

In our new one hour wellbeing workshop for employees – Building Connection and Belonging – we look at how we can change the narrative around loneliness, and rebuild a sense of connection through incremental, empowering changes. We explore how we can increase and improve the social bonds that are essential for our personal and professional lives. 

The session looks at:

• The importance of human connection
• Research on the impact of loneliness on our physical and mental health
• How to rebuild bonds and boost social confidence through intentional connection activities
• Using self-care to build the self-esteem and resilience to manage periods of loneliness
• How to use social media effectively to undermine loneliness and build in person connection
• Effective ways of processing difficult emotions and boosting positive emotions
• Guidance on seeking further professional support

Contact [email protected] or complete the form below for more information or to book the Building Connection and Belonging wellbeing workshop for your employees

We do occasionally bring in new highly qualified and experienced specialists to join our team.

We are currently seeking a fully qualified mental health professional to join our mental health team.

In order to apply for the role, you must meet the following essential criteria:

• Fully qualified counsellor / psychotherapist, BACP or UKCP registered, or qualified clinical psychologist, with a minimum 10 years continuous experience working clinically
• skills, experience and confidence in training, presenting, teaching or workshopping to groups, both in-person and on zoom/other online platform.
• experience of working in a corporate environment – either in current role, or prior to training as a mental health professional. Previous experience in line management would be ideal.
• A strong working knowledge of overall wellbeing. Able to confidently discuss examples of evidence-based tools that improve overall health and contribute positively to mental wellbeing.

Highly desirable:

• a qualification in an evidence based form of mindfulness, such as MBSR or MBCT experience in teaching mindfulness to individuals or groups
• Certified Mental Health First Aider
• Instructor member of MHFA England.

The role will initially be on a freelance basis, with potential to develop into a permanent position.

If you meet the above criteria, please forward a covering letter explaining why you feel you’d be a good match for our company, and a current CV highlighting where you match the above criteria, to [email protected]

All applications will be handled confidentially

We welcome applications from across the spectrums of diversity, particularly those underrepresented in mental health care.