FREE - Self-Care and Resiliency During COVID-19: Helping Professionals' Online Trauma-informed Wellness Groups

One of the things we do have some control over right now is how well we take care of ourselves. Any opportunities we have to safely connect with others are invaluable. A group experience offers both.

These five-week psycho-educational support groups are an intentional opportunity for mental health and social service providers (i.e., therapists, counselors, advocates, social workers, wellness coaches) to unite strengths, strategies and resources; receive coaching and consultation on life/work balance and COVID-19 self-care; share concerns and wisdom, and stay connected.

We need extra fortification and intention to balance the traumatic and uncertain nature of these times, and to also maintain our professional and personal wellness.

When:

~ Monday, May 18 - June 22, 2020 @ 5-630p CST

Fee includes COVID-19 Self-Care Assessment Survey, handouts, resources, and worksheets, CEUs where applicable.

Fee: No one is turned away for inability to pay!!! Welcome. Discount: 5 group meetings = $200 ($40/session; $20 discount ). Full fee: 5 group meetings = $300 ($60/session)

Each group is limited to 10 people per group.

Continuing Education Units (CEUs): Because these groups will include a combination of professional psycho-education, training, helping professional self-care strategy-building, ethics, and consultation, as well as support, you may be able to receive CEU credits. Check with your state’s board to assure CEU coverage. At the end of your five-week rotation, I will provide a certificate of completion for submission to your board.

| I also work with non-profit organizations to assess and support their staff. COVID-Services offered by Irene Greene |

Details:

As helping professionals we are adjusting to new work routines. If working at home, we did our best to arrange comfortable and confidential office spaces in our homes. We may be juggling work/home/self, child or elder care. We may still be working out the transition to ethical telehealth or telemedicine systems. We may be dealing with eye strain or muscle stiffness.

If working on site, we have been adjusting policies and procedures to fit a COVID-19 world, i.e., masks, gloves, distancing. We are needing to be creative in our searches for scarcer services for our clients. We are helping clients, patients and residents adjust to different ways of connecting with us and we with them. We are trying to calm and reassure them as they navigate their feelings and challenges in these trying times of so many unknowns.

Whether in private practice or working within an agency, whether in Minneapolis or another part of the state, country or world, we are hoping our clients, patients and residents will be able to continue accessing and receiving the care they need. We are hoping they will stay healthy. We know some of them and their family members will fall ill, or already have, or will die.

Personally we, just like our clients, are trying to adjust to this seemingly daily changing “new normal” of ambiguity that is driven by COVID-19. We have our own fears, worries, loss, and anxieties about the psychological and emotional wellness, financial security, and physical health of ourselves, our families, our colleagues, our communities, and the state of the world. We will know, if we don't already, someone who will fall ill, or already has, or will die.

As whole beings, especially during such uncertain times, it may become increasingly more exhausting for us to try to authentically compartmentalize our personal worries and fears from our professional stressors. Now more than ever, our collective risk of burnout, vicarious trauma, moral injury, and compassion fatigue may be at an all-time high.

• Through this surreal long haul, we want to remain psychologically, emotionally and physically resilient.
• We want to provide ethical and good service that adjusts to whatever challenges are yet to come.
• We want to proactively minimize our professional loneliness and isolation.
• We want to maintain compassionate and realistic expectations for ourselves, and honor our limitations and needs for replenishment.
• We want to remain connected to our clients, ourselves, our family, our friends and our communities.

Caring for ourselves in a sustainable way means that we need to heed the advice we give to our clients every day.

• Our needs are important.
• Our self-care is essential.
• It is imperative we take good, consistent, intentional care of ourselves.
• It is crucial we stay connected to each other.

Topics & Themes:

• Balance Work-Family-Self when working from home

• Practice letting go of our perfectionism and what we can not control
• Address anxiety and worry about the uncertainty of the times
• Identify fears around reduced income and loved ones getting sick
• Express the grief and loss from illness and death of clients, colleagues, community, family

• Celebrate the positives of working at home
• Gain strength and solace from connecting with others

• Receive coaching and strategies to stay emotionally and physically resilient

• Learn how to identify and sooth our own moral injury
• Identify professional boundaries and ethics when practicing from home
• Receive consultation about telehealth ethical dilemmas

Takeaways:

• Concrete strategies for working at home or as an “essential” provider
• Complete your own COVID-19 Professional and Personal Mental and Physical Wellness Assessment. (Designed by Irene.)
• Gain resource lists, worksheets and handouts

I offer similar wellness group options to non-profit organizations and agencies and their staff. Contact me, Irene Greene, for more info.

Logistics: We will use ZoomPro.

About the Facilitator: Irene Greene MSED (of Greene Growth & Training in Minneapolis) has over 30 years as a group facilitator, counselor, wellness coach, educator and professional consultant. Her specialty areas include trauma-informed care, addressing and curbing compassion fatigue, oppression fatigue, political trauma stress, burnout and stress.

Irene approaches all of her work from a holistic backdrop that adheres to a fundamental consciousness for how the layers of cultural and systematic oppression and trauma influence personal, interpersonal and community health. And, conversely, how healing, empowerment, wellness and wellbeing are nurtured by human connection that is grounded in humanity, justice and equity (More information below.)

Contact Irene at irene@irenegreene.com | irenegreene.com

Other groups Irene is offering:

Use Your Words and Colors: A COVID-19 Resiliency & Trauma-Informed Creative Expression Support Group for LGBTQAI+ Health and Wellness Professionals. ~ May 14, 2020 - July 23, 2020 | 10 Thursdays, 4-530p CST

Self-Care and Resiliency During COVID-19 and Beyond: Bodyworkers and Healers’ Online Trauma-informed Psychoeducational 5-week Support Group ~ Tuesdays, May 12 – June 8, 2020 @ 10-1130a CST