Are you often around people (adults, children or young people) who seem distressed? Or people who behave in ways that can seem challenging or confusing? Do you want to do the ‘right thing’, yet find it difficult to work out what that might be? Everything you try seems to only work for a short amount of time, not work at all or make things worse? This is a common experience of those working with or around people who are experiencing intense emotions. Often, when we encounter this, a number of thoughts and feelings happen within us. As a result, we can feel uncertain, frustrated, chaotic or overwhelmed. Understanding psychology can be invaluable at these time.
Psychology consultations allow us to develop an understanding of the processes that can lead to someone thinking, feeling and behaving in these ways can help us to work out how to respond to them. Our response could then reduce the level of emotion in the situation and, therefore, lead to more effective communication. From here, you can develop a joint plan for progress with your client.
It can also help us to understand why, sometimes, progress is not possible. As well as acknowledging thoughts, feelings and behaviour that might continue, despite our best efforts. In these situations, we can use psychology to help us to know how to take care of ourselves and how to respond, despite what seems like little change being made.
There are three main methods by which I can help you to relate psychology to your clients and bring this understanding into your workplace.
Training
It is my experience that training is most effective when I have developed it in partnership with you. As such, I can bring my knowledge of psychology and relate it to your experience and your staff’s learning needs. Some examples of trainings I offer are:
- How do we take care of ourselves while doing our jobs?
- Understanding and responding to behaviour that we find challenging or confusing
- Understanding the effects of childhood trauma, neglect and abuse
- Listening for change
- Understanding the teenage brain
Reflective Spaces and Supervision
Working with people who are presenting high levels of emotion or are behaving in ways that we find worrying takes its toll. As a result, it is critical that we have a space to explore how this affects us and consider how we can take care of ourselves, as well as how we can understand the people we’re working with.
Reflective spaces and supervision offer a supportive and confidential space to ensure that we are caring for ourselves and offering our clients or students best practices. These can be groups or individual.
Psychology Consultation
You may have a particular client or student that you are struggling to understand or you may like to understand certain behavioural patterns in more depth. I can work with you to develop a picture of the person or people you are concerned about. From here, we can develop informed ideas about what might be going on and develop strategies for you to use in response.
My Experience of Training and Consultation
I have worked with many teams and individuals to help them to feel psychologically safer in their work. I use bespoke training and consultation, which facilitates your thinking around how to approach psychological distress and behaviour differently.
- Healthcare Staff
- Medical Professionals
- Mental Heath Staff
- Mentors
- Schools
- Social Workers and those working in social care
- Support Workers
- Youth Justice Workers
- Youth Workers
I also imagine that there are other professions that might benefit from developing their understanding of psychology, mental health and how to respond to high levels of distress or despair. These may include, and are not limited to:
- Religious Leaders
- Those working in the criminal justice system
- Those working in the housing system
- Volunteers
I am interested in developing projects that will help to support your practice, in order to keep you emotionally safe and to offer informed interventions to those with whom you come into contact. The aim is to help you to relate psychology to both yourself and your client group.
If you would like to know more about this, please do get in touch with me. Fees are negotiable. I am happy to travel to you and your team, in order to offer the most convenient support.