Flashbacks are upsetting memories that come back to you unexpectedly in vivid images, sounds, smells…
They can make you feel as if you are re-living the trauma. Dissociation can happen when you feel so overwhelmed by a traumatic experience that you may lose touch with where you are or may feel unreal. This PDF guides you through how to cope with both flashbacks and dissociation.
Controlled breathing, also called square breathing, can be helpful when feeling stressed, as it helps to
slow the breathing down.
This easy-to-read infographic from the Traumatic Stress Clinic guides you through practical steps to to control your breathing to help you cope when you feel stressed.
Our latest free interactive webinar!
We know that instances of aggressive behavior towards staff in health & social care have increased throughout the pandemic. KeepingWell NCL’s wellbeing webinar is an essential top-up for health & care staff. It builds staff and teams’ psychological understanding of why these incidents can occur, and what is needed for teams and individuals to manage these incidents when they do.
This interactive session builds practical strategies for prevention, de-escalation and support. We consider policy, reporting, peer support, and making time for discussion after incidents. It will also provide a reflective space to connect through discussion of shared experiences – of the varied interactions between patients, their carers, and health & care staff across North Central London.
This is a free event for all staff working in health & care in North Central London.
About the presenters:
Panos Vythoulkas is a KeepingWell Hub Senior Practitioner and Clinical Psychologist. After training abroad, Panos moved to the UK to work in the NHS. Over the past 5 years he has worked in various settings across North Central London in Adult Primary and Secondary Care Mental Health, including Perinatal Psychology Services. Panos started his NHS career in Forensic Mental Health, and has an interest workplace wellbeing and safety, and supporting staff and teams dealing with the immediate aftermath of an incident.
Dr Livia Ottisova is a Clinical Psychologist in the KeepingWell NCL Complex Trauma Pathway. She has specialised in working with survivors of trauma and human rights violations across varied settings. She previously worked with survivors of domestic violence and other human rights abuses in the Camden & Islington Traumatic Stress Clinic, and currently works as the Lead of the Waltham Forest Refugee Psychological Therapies Service alongside her role in the Complex Trauma Pathway. Since the Covid-19 pandemic she has been closely involved in research and training to support frontline health and social care professionals.
Free webinar for health & care staff: Looking after your wellbeing this winter. Click here to watch!
Feeling anxious or overwhelmed about winter pressures this year? Or simply want to be prepared to protect your wellbeing, and your team’s?
Watch KeepingWell NCL’s fifth wellbeing webinar, free for all staff across North Central London ICS. This interactive session provides reflection and guidance for health & care staff as they prepare for the specific challenges of this unique winter period.
Drawing on their experience working on physical and mental health wards, Occupational Therapist Emily Kenworthy and Lead Nurse Esther Sofela help staff to reflect in advance on the challenges we may face this year, and how we manage our approach and emotional response to these demands. Through supported discussion, Emily and Esther help attendees consider how they can practice self-compassion in this often tricky time, build coping strategies and habits in advance, and provide tips for day-to-day self- and team-care and further resources for support.
About the presenters:
Emily Kenworthy is a practitioner with the KeepingWell NCL Hub. Emily is an Occupational Therapist with experience working on acute physical health wards, as well as secondary and community settings. She is passionate about the intersection between physical and mental wellbeing at work and at home, and has recently pioneered a staff wellbeing walking group at the Tavistock & Portman.
Emily is joined by Esther Sofela, Physical Health Lead (Haringey) and Non-Medical Prescriber Lead for Mental Health for Barnet, Enfield and Haringey Mental Health Trust.
Watch our webinar where we discuss the existence of multicultural Britain over the centuries and how it lay hidden and barely visible before our modern age, due to injustices and racism towards communities deemed ‘foreign’ and / or ‘other.’
It is presented by Baffour Ababio, psychoanalytic intercultural psychotherapist at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre, which was founded in the 1980s by a small coalition of professionals of all colours.
He details the impact these injustices had on the mental health care of Britain’s black and ethnic minority communities, including the assumption that non-Europeans would not benefit from talking therapy. There is also reflections on how progress is being compromised by the persistence of racism, and a discussion on how these challenges might be overcome.
Baffour shares how Nafsiyat have challenged these assumptions and how they’ve worked through the barriers of fear and stigma to incorporate a wealth of cultural affirming practices into their unique model to inspire therapy provision and engagement across cultural and ‘racial’ borders.
Presenter details:
Baffour Ababio grew up in Ghana, he is a psychoanalytic intercultural psychotherapist and clinical supervisor in private practice and at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre. Baffour completed his training at University College London and the Guild of Psychotherapists and is a member of UKCP and BAPPS (British Association for Psychoanalytic and Psychodynamic Supervision). Alongside his clinical role Baffour developed a career in managing mental health services integrating a community-based response to support recovery from a broad range of mental health problems. With Roland Littlewood he has co-edited a volume on intercultural psychotherapy entitled ‘Ababio, B. and Littlewood, R. (eds) (2019) Intercultural Therapy: Challenges, Insights and Developments. London: Routledge.
Kulbir Sandhu, Communications Lead for the Keeping Well NCL Hub, shares his thoughts as part of World Mental Health Day, which takes place on Sunday 10 October. He talks about his lockdown experience over the past year and how he’s navigated this testing time.
Are you feeling stressed or anxious about the return to school? Do you feel overwhelmed about juggling care responsibilities at work and at home?
This webinar invites you to consider the transition back to school after Covid-19 related lockdowns and home-schooling. Ola Ajala, family therapist from The Keeping Well NCL Hub and Sam Parker, systemic family therapist, provide a space to explore and reflect on the impact on both young people and yourself, and offer advice and guidance on how to navigate this time.
Overall, this session is relevant for staff, parents, and guardians working or interacting with young people. The session centres around the experiences of health and social care staff, particularly the idea of needing to care for others both at work and at home.
Because this webinar focused on the impact of lockdown on family and school life, some of the discussion may feel less relevant now. However, we know that many of us are still managing the impact of the pandemic and lockdowns in our daily life. You can watch the full webinar and access the resources if you think this may be helpful.
Alternatively, the Hub team has distilled some of the most relevant information from this webinar into a short, 4-mintue clip, ‘Creating opportunities for communication at home’.
Ola Ajala is a registered psychiatric nurse and systemic family therapist who trained in the UK. Since qualifying as a nurse in 2008, she has worked across various settings including inpatients, CAMHS, EIS and a perinatal service. She qualified as a systemic family therapist in 2019. In addition to her clinical practice, Ola has provided clinical support, training and supervision to other health and social care professionals within the NHS.
Sam Parker is a family therapist currently working at Bethlem adolescent unit in SLAM. His role includes supporting teenagers and those who care for them to recover from crises and manage transitions. Sam also likes talking and sharing ideas, and is a proud father of twin boys.
Nancy Barnes is an Assistant Psychologist within the Keeping Well NCL Hub. Nancy shares her own experience of living with long Covid while working in the NHS as well as her experience of making a full recovery
A podcast on how we can re-establish routines as a way of coping with change and managing uncertainty, including reflections and practical guidance on how we can implement this. Debbie Bell is an Assistant Psychologist within the Keeping Well NCL Hub. She is also a competitive powerlifter and enjoys having a routine to keep on top of things. Here she shares some of her experiences of the past year, reflecting on how difficult it has been to manage uncertainty and how she has changed and adjusted routines to help cope with some of the change she has experienced.
We would like to help you to manage your wellbeing in and out of work. This personal wellbeing plan, although it belongs to you, is a tool to help you and your manager have open conversations about things that are important for your health and wellbeing.
This document looks at things that you can do or change to help you feel well and also helps your manager know if there are things they can support you with that could improve your wellbeing. You can use it to aid discussions about those areas which are important to you and that may impact on your health and wellbeing.
The things you record in your plan are to help facilitate open conversations with your manager. This document is yours to own and should not be kept on your personal file.
Keeping Well NCL is a wellbeing and mental health project that connects and supports the North Central London health and social care workforce during the Coronavirus outbreak.
