Manage Your Mental Health in the Workplace

Despite an increased focus on employee mental health, and well-being and efforts by employers to offer support and services, employees continue to struggle. Recently released State of the Global Workplace 2022 report, identified that “60% of people are emotionally detached at work and 19% are miserable.” A quick search on any internet platform will identify mental health and well-being as a main priority for employers and another quick search can find a long list of ways to improve employees’ mental well-being. However, despite this increased focus on employee mental health, and well-being and efforts by employers to offer support and services, employees continue to struggle. The question to each of us across all leadership roles in business needs to be: Why? Why, despite these efforts, are employees continuing to remain emotionally detached in record numbers?

We have developed a six-lesson online course to help you manage your mental health in the workplace, in this post we are going to delve into one of these lessons Accurate Thinking.

Are you your own worst enemy?

There’s an old saying about learning to play poker that goes “Be afraid of the person sitting in your seat.” This means that your thinking and decisions are more likely to impede your success than anything another player, the cards, or even bad luck can do. In short, someone learning the skill of good poker playing must be aware that they are likely to be their own worst enemy. If only this problem was limited to the game of poker.

 

When it comes to better mental well-being, a person is most often their own worst enemy when it comes to their natural self-talk. Specifically, it’s the overwhelmingly negative and harshly critical type of thinking that nearly everyone is prone to. Thoughts like I’m not smart enough, they don’t like me, or I’ll never get the job are so common for most of us that we don’t even question them, but we absolutely should because negative self-talk is a harmful, vicious cycle. For most people, it works like this. Negative – or inaccurate – self-talk invariably leads to emotional reactions. Making decisions based on emotional reactions instead of clear thinking frequently leads to unfavourable outcomes. And, of course, the more unfavourable outcomes you experience the more it reinforces future negative self-talk. In this lesson, we’ll discuss how accurate thinking allows you to more effectively direct your thoughts and behaviours, breaking this cycle. Developing the skill of accurate thinking will build your confidence, give you more emotional control, and help keep burnout at bay.

Break the cycle with a new perspective.

So what’s the first thing a successful poker player does at the start of a hand? They separate the good hands (the ones that they should play) from the bad hands (the ones they should ignore and discard.) This is precisely what someone learning accurate thinking must do, as well. In any situation, your own negative self-talk is likely to be the first and most powerful thought you have. It’s unfortunate that this is basic human nature, but that also means it’s nothing to feel bad about – it happens to everyoneIn order to change this, you must learn to identify what is factual, relevant, and useful (a good poker hand) versus what is false, irrelevant, and should be ignored (a bad poker hand.) This is crucial because once you learn to assess situations based on the relevant facts it becomes much easier to ignore that harmful self-talk which can lead to bad outcomes.

The 3 C’s: a “trick” to more Accurate Thinking.

Breaking out of ingrained thought patterns isn’t necessarily easy, of course, but thankfully there is a trick for remembering what to do. It’s called The 3 C’s and it stands for Catch, Challenge, and Change. When you’re in a potentially difficult situation and that first invasive thought pops in – “I’ll never get the job!” – you must remember to catch it before it takes hold. This disrupts your hardwired emotion-based way of assessing a problem and helps make you aware of just how often negative (and almost always inaccurate) self-talk derails you. Now that you’ve broken the previously iron grip of that first invasive thought, you’ll be able to challenge it. Ask yourself if there’s any real evidence that your self-talk is true. It may not feel natural at first, but if you can be honest and fair to yourself, you’ll probably discover that your negative self-talk isn’t true. Or helpful. Or necessary.Once you’ve realised that your characteristic self-talk isn’t supported by facts you can then begin to change your behaviour. Almost immediately you’ll feel less anxious, your self-doubt will begin to fade, and you’ll feel more in control of yourself and your life.

To access this course and enjoy a free sample lesson https://courses.childrensmentalwellbeing.ie/courses/avoid-burnout/

With Thanks to our guest blogger Mike Parker.

 

 

Beta Testers Required

We are excited to be launching one of our new online courses very soon, however, we need twenty people of all ages and walks of life to beta test it, in other words, find any mistakes or spot what we have missed.

What will you get?

You will get 8 weeks of access to all six modules free of charge, worth fifty euros. You will get access to all the downloadable resources to keep as your toolkit going forward.

What Do you Have To Do?

Enjoy this informative evidence-based online course, tell us about your experience and leave an honest review.

How Do I Sign Up?

Fill in this form

Beta Tester

We look forward to hearing from you.

Sam

Primary School Mental Health Program

Child with painted hands

 

In light of this year’s annual INTO Congress, is it not evident that the insufficient and outdated mental health program “Friends for Life” currently on the curriculum is not meeting the emerging needs of our children?

Teachers have condemned the lack of mental health support for primary school students, as research shows that one in three children are likely to have experienced some type of mental health disorder by the age of 13. Delegates at the INTO Congress 2022 passed a motion yesterday calling for increased funding for children’s mental health services, in particular for on-site supports and counselling for primary students.

Primary teachers say the number of pupils with anxiety and mental health difficulties has soared since the pandemic disrupted children’s education.Dublin-based teacher Órlaith Ní Fhoghlúsaid a lack of early intervention means that young children with less serious issues may often present with more acute problems as older adolescents.

INTO President Joe McKeown said mental health problems among young people had been exacerbated by Covid.“Covid-19 has had an immeasurable impact on the lives of every child in the country, but it has especially affected children in receipt of additional supports,” he said.“Schools must be provided with appropriate professional supports and services for children presenting with mental health issues in a timely manner to meet their ongoing needs.”

We have the solution, an online, cost-effective, early intervention, evidence-based, eight module children’s mental wellbeing program. This program is for primary school teachers, it takes them approximately 3 hours to complete and has 65+ downloadable resources to design their own lesson plan and then teach the children in their classroom. The cost to deliver these essential early intervention skills, for as little as €2 per child. It has been beta tested by 85 teachers and the feedback is incredible.

We have modelled our program on early intervention is key. Please find below the modules for this program designed by:

 Michelle O Brien, BSc(Tons)Psych:H.Dip, Coun: MIAP

Module 1: How to Manage Anxiety in Children

Module 2: Understanding Root Causes of Anger in Children

Module 3: Promote Independent Thinking and Reduce Worry

Module 4: Enable Children to be Emotionally Intelligent and Mange their Feelings

Module 5: Accepting and Celebrating the Differences in Ourselves and Others

Module 6: How to Make a Difference, One Small act of Kindness at a Time

Module 7: How To bounce back and Learn From Past Experiences

Module 8: Fostering Friendships

After completing our program, children learn how positive qualities such as kindness and compassion feel in their bodies. We explore what exclusion feels like in our bodies – and we discuss how inclusion makes us feel. We teach kids to notice how others are feeling on the inside by the clues they give on the outside.

For More Information