Tag: anxiety

28 March 2023
anxiety • employee mental health • mental health • mental health awareness week • mhaw •

ANXIETY – the theme of Mental Health Awareness Week 15th to 21st May

If you’ve noticed that you’re more anxious recently, then you are not alone.  The last three years have seen a global rise in anxiety and anxiety disorders, and this is hardly surprising.  Our daily life has been infused with uncertainty, with the fallout of the pandemic, war in Europe, cost of living crisis and ongoing environmental issues all placing an endless strain on our resilience and resources.

For many, anxiety has begun to play a larger role in their lives.  The emotional side of anxiety – feelings of fear, sadness, frustration and isolation amongst others – increasingly shape our decisions, thought processes and emotional responses.  And the impact is not only personal, as it can spill over into our professional lives, affecting our ability to focus and work effectively.  The added pressure of struggling to meet our professional responsibilities can feed into and exacerbate the anxiety.

It is imperative, for our own mental wellbeing and for our ability to engage professionally, to find effective ways to reduce anxiety. But this can be both daunting and challenging. When we are anxious, our response is often to engage in a struggle with it, a struggle that includes various understandable but unsatisfactory responses such as distraction, suppression and denial.  This struggle can leave us feeling exhausted and even make the anxiety worse.

Although it may seem counter intuitive, to manage anxiety, we have to get to know it better, to understand what it is trying to tell us.  Psychologist Prof. Mark Williams argues that we must “befriend our anxiety”, seeing it not as the enemy to defeat, but something that wants attention, to be cared for.  This approach can give us back a sense of agency and control in the face of the overwhelm that anxiety brings with it.

Managing anxiety can be challenging so getting professional support is a good step. Counselling, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy are all clinically proven ways of managing and reducing anxiety. With professional support we can discover how to relate differently to the emotions, sensations and thoughts that shape and sustain our anxiety. We can learn how to ride out the waves of anxiety rather than be pulled under by them, and over time we learn to develop the resilience we need to calm down more easily from anxiety.

These three tips can help you begin your journey of facing anxiety and flourishing.

1. Talk: Anxiety can make us feel isolated, creating the sort of social and behavioural retreat that deepens the experience of anxiety. Communicating about how you are feeling, particularly the emotions that are triggering the anxiety such as fear, anger, frustration, shame, guilt, confusion etc, can often help us to “contain” the anxiety more easily. If you have a friend or loved one who is a good listener, they could be a helpful person to talk to. Professional support is also really helpful – Try your organisation’s counselling support service.

2. Thoughts are not facts: Anxiety is often fuelled by negative thoughts like “catastrophising” or abusive self-talk – thoughts that can keep us locked into mental scenarios that serve only to make us feel worse. If we can take a mental step back and see our thoughts as just opinions rather than facts, it can help us be less caught up in the thought processes that sustain our anxiety. A professional can help you to understand how your thoughts might be triggering your anxiety, and teach you to relate to your thoughts in a less alarming way.

3. The breath is your ally: When anxiety strikes, we can feel overwhelmed.  A simple tip to slow the “stress response” is to consciously focus full attention on the breath. Concentrate your breath on the area of your body where you feel the anxiety most intensely (eg chest, belly, shoulders) and for a few moments, purposely slow and deepen both the in breath and the out breath. Doing so stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system, sending a “stand-down” signal to the alert centre of the brain!

Anxiety workshops, courses and sessions for your employees:

From Anxious to Calm workshop – 60 minute group workshop

Mindfulness for Anxiety workshop – 60 minute group workshop

Facing Anxiety and Flourishing course – 4 x 60 minute group course

Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy course – 8 x 60 minute group course

Confidential One to One Counselling – Anxiety counselling with our specialist mental health therapists

Book us to run an anxiety workshop, course or session

If you’d like to book us to run a workshop, course or session please enter your details below or contact us for more information.

29 March 2021
anxiety • behavioural science • employee mental health • employee wellbeing • mental health • navigating the new normal • New Normal • return to work anxiety •

Navigating the New Normal

The New Normal offers us many challenges. The reality is that we are still living and working in an ongoing global pandemic.

With lockdown gradually lifting and organisations starting to plan a return to the workplace, a huge number of employees are anxious and uncertain about how to navigate the new normal. According to research:

  • 65% of people are anxious about returning to the workplace
  • 70% of people are anxious about using public transport

A very large number of people across the country are also concerned about returning to a frantic pace of life, are anxious about socialising after a long period of isolation, and many are worried about potential changes in social etiquette.

The good news is that there are many steps we can take to meet the varied challenges and flourish, both professionally and personally.  Our behavioural science team have created a one hour interactive workshop for employees called Navigating the New Normal:

  • Understanding the New Normal
  • Managing the Stress Response
  • How to Cope with:
    • Transport
    • Office / Workplace
    • Socialising
  • Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction
  • Techniques for reducing anxiety: Labelling and Grounding
  • Professional support
  • Self Care Action Plan
  • Communication Tips

For more information and to book the workshop for your employees, contact [email protected]

www.wellbeing.partners

16 March 2021
anxiety • employee mental health • managing change • navigating the new normal •

Employee Mental Health Update

Whilst things seem to be feeling more positive for many people right now, there is evidence of a growing wave of mental health problems that have come as a consequence of the pandemic and life in lockdown. This supports our experience gained from running confidential employee counselling and wellness sessions with organisations across the country, where we also notice large numbers of employees experiencing extreme levels of work-related stress, rising numbers who are very anxious about the future and many who are worried about returning to the workplace.

There are two important mental health events on the horizon which present an opportunity for organisations to support the mental health and wellbeing of employees:

  • Stress Awareness Month: April 2021
  • Mental Health Awareness Week: 10-16 May 2021

Here are our five top sessions that dovetail with these important events to keep your employees healthy, productive, focused and creative over the coming months:

  • ‘Managing Change’: this 60 minute session looks at the inevitability of change in our professional and personal lives and explores how change can cause uncertainty and stress, how this is a normal reaction and how we can rise to the challenges of change, not only to manage, but to flourish
  • ‘From Anxious to Calm’: with anxiety disorders becoming ever more prevalent this 60 minute session provides employees with an in-depth understanding of anxiety, the most common triggers and tips and techniques for managing the mental and physical symptoms, including how to calm the mind and take good care of the nervous system.
  • ‘Reducing Stress and Enhancing Resilience’: this interactive 60 minute workshop provides practical tips and techniques for enhancing resilience to both short and long-term stress. Looking at the biochemistry of the stress response system, it introduces the concept of the ‘stress container’ to aid understanding of how to manage pressured situations more effectively.
  • ‘How to Improve your Mental Health’: drawing on evidence-based strategies and techniques, this 60 minute solutions focused session provides employees with practical steps, tips and advice to enhance all aspects of their mental health.
  • ‘Facing Anxiety and Flourishing’: this 4 week course, one hour a week, utilises a blend of practices from Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, resilience training, stress reduction, self-compassion, mindfulness, and emotional intelligence to give participants a distinctive set of tools to help them respond to anxiety skilfully and with confidence. The course can be run either in-house or people can join as part of an open course.

By way of introduction, Wellbeing Partners is the mental and physical wellbeing specialist, providing whole-person health programmes to organisations across the UK and around the world. We are a leading provider of stress management and full-service employee mental health services ( https://wellbeing.partners ) and have a full suite of integrated wellbeing solutions that focus on awareness, prevention and remedy. Our sessions are all live, interactive and on the online platform of your choice (currently) or in a bespoke pre-recorded Video Podcast format.

If you’d like to hear more about any of our sessions and master classes for any mental health and wellbeing initiatives or events you might be thinking of or planning for, please get in touch at [email protected] or call Nick Winfield on 07773 767248

5 April 2016
absenteeism • anxiety • mental health • mental health at work • mindfulness • presenteeism • stress • stress audit • workplace • workshops •

Mental Health in the Workplace

February 2016 – According to a new report on mental health of employees from Business in the Community, only a third of employees would admit to stress, anxiety or depression as the genuine reason for taking time off work, despite mental health issues being the leading cause of absenteeism and presenteeism in the workplace.

70 million days of work are lost each year across the UK due to workers suffering from stress, depression and other mental health issues. Silence on the issue from employees is both crippling for the individuals and increasingly costly for employers. The Centre for Mental Health calculates that absenteeism alone costs the UK economy £8.4 billion per annum.

Is it time for your company to consider a stress & anxiety management programme to reduce the burden of work-related stress issues in your workplace?

Even in companies where there is no clear indication of workplace stress or anxiety issues, we often come across employees who are suffering in silence from stress-related illness, using unhealthy coping strategies such as alcohol abuse, substance abuse, self harm and eating disorders. These lead to absenteeism and the resulting loss of productivity. With presenteeism also on the rise, employees are coming to work disengaged, tired, unmotivated and too stressed to work.

Wellbeing Partners Ltd provides an affordable range of stress and anxiety management services which offer both preventative and remedial care for your employees. From our very popular 45 minute workshops – Reducing Your Stress & Anxiety Workshop, the Introduction to Mindfulness Workshop – plus weekly 20-minute Mindfulness Sessions in your office, on-site Counselling & Psychotherapy for Individuals, Stress & Anxiety Management Sessions for Individuals, and Individual Mindfulness Tuition for Individuals. We also provide a full programme of Healthy Eating Workshops, Reducing Sugar From Your Diet Workshops, Fitness Instructors, Pilates, Yoga & Massage Services – all in your workplace.

A Confidential Company Stress Audit by an independent and highly qualified provider such as Wellbeing Partners can help you to understand the hidden emotional burden of stress, anxiety and mental health issues on your employees and the commensurate financial and productivity burden on your organisation.

Please email [email protected] or call Nick Winfield on 07773 767248 for more information and prices on our preventative and remedial stress & anxiety management services, mindfulness services, nutrition services and physical wellbeing services.

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