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Training and Workshops

Protecting staff and individuals working in high-stress environments.

Build Skills, Awareness,
and Resilience

Certain workplace environments are inherently high-stress environments for employees, and those working in areas such as emergency services, mental health charities, and the humanitarian sector understand this all too well. Our team at FD Consultants have over 10 years of experience in helping employees in these and other industries to identify and manage stress levels caused by highly stressful work environments. Through recognising an increasing need for such services, we have developed our training and workshops aimed towards assisting employees to build the skills, awareness, and resilience necessary to manage such stress.

Train Your Team with FD Consultants

Stress Management &
Resilience Building 

At FD Consultants our trademark Stress Management and Resilience Building training is our most popular workshop. This workshop aims to identify our stress cycle and to build our resources to manage our stress levels. This half day workshop includes practical exercises to reduce stress, including creating your own wellbeing plan using our own RESPECT resilience model (Dunkley, 2018). 

Trauma and Vicarious
Trauma Awareness

This workshop provides an overview of trauma symptoms to enhance understanding, and explains the physiology and neuroscience of trauma. Being able to recognise the signs of trauma in ourselves and others is a critical skill in the workplace, and one that cannot be taken lightly. This half day workshop allows you to gain skills to support someone who is traumatised.

Psychological First Aid (PFA) Peer Support [Mental Health First Aiders] 

Our Psychological First Aid workshop focuses on equipping peers with the basic knowledge and confidence necessary to provide psychological support for colleagues and team members. PFA Peer Support is an evidence-informed support workshop aimed specifically at equipping non-specialist personnel to offer basic mental health first aid. The goal of this workshop is to assist peers help their colleagues in distress in a way that promotes their coping strategies. We have setup robust peer support programmes in the U.K. and Europe; our most recent programmes are based in Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone.

Management and Leadership Training

We recommend a stepped approach to management and leadership training. Our trainings include, personal resilience, mental health awareness, conflict resolution and absence management. We also offer coaching and team building services. We believe that to create a healthy organisational culture managers need to be provided with the skills, confidence, and knowledge to support wellbeing and resilience in the workplace.

Management and Leadership Training

As a manager or team leader, you understand the importance of leading by example. By improving your own skills, you can improve both the mental health of your employees and the quality of the work they produce. 

Personal Resilience

This half day workshop encourages managers to lead by example. The Personal Resilience workshop provides tools and techniques for managers to build their personal resilience. It enables managers to feel competent when speaking about mental health, challenge stigma in the workplace and signpost staff to specialist support when necessary to encourage recovery.

Mental Health
Awareness

The Mental Health Awareness workshop is a one-day workshop, which can be divided into two half days. The workshop provides managers with the tools, knowledge and understanding of how to support the mental health of staff members and their teams. Embedding evidence-based techniques and models to support staff psychologically, we explore many of the common mental health disorders and share a sector specific model to develop a wellness action plan for staff.

Conflict Resolution

Our Conflict Resolution one-day workshop, which can also be divided into two half days, is based on best practice mediation skills. Participants will learn how to deal with strong emotions, difficult behaviours and challenging communication. We teach our Conflict Resolution SAFETY model (FD Consultants, 2021), enabling participants to create a safe space for conflict to be resolved quickly and effectively.

Absence Management

Absence Management is a half day workshop. FD Consultants are specialists in supporting organisations to improve absenteeism management, aiming to reduce staff absence and improve organisation culture. We teach skills and techniques to support managers with absenteeism and train managers to support their staff back into the workplace.

Crisis Management

This half day training workshop trains the Crisis Management Team or senior managers in how to respond to a critical incident and support their staff appropriately.

Wellbeing Webinars

We offer webinars (for all staff) on the following subjects:

  • Mental Health Awareness,
  • Stress management, Resilience,
  • Trauma Awareness,
  • Managing Uncertainty,
  • Mindfulness,
  • Psychologically Safe Management,
  • Post Traumatic Growth,
  • and other bespoke trainings.
This training is available for all staff, not just managers.

Training for Therapists

FD Consultants is also proud to offer additional training for therapists. These training sessions can revolve around issues such as traumatic grief, vicarious trauma, best use of supervision, and group facilitation. Being experts in the field we can offer bespoke training as requested, particularly in trauma and crisis management.

Our Goal

An accumulation of daily workloads and/or a particular incident or event can significantly impact employee mental health. To address this, we have created training and workshops to help colleagues and team members assist one another in the aftermath of such events. Our goal is to support individuals and organisations to improve resilience and mental health issues arising from highly stressful environments and situations. Using compassion, creativity, and collaboration, we aim to empower those experiencing mental health challenges by providing personalised help and support. 

Meet some of the Team

Our qualified, highly skilled, and highly experienced specialist trainers offer training and workshops when and where they’re needed most. Experienced in situations such as scaling up quickly in major incidents, our workshops and training sessions give colleagues and team members the tools to support each other when needed. This allows employees to return to work successfully, and improves wellbeing and individual, team, and organisation resilience. We also manage the fallout of Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs), where these programmes may have long waiting lists or end care at assessment stage. Additionally, many EAPs do not offer trauma specialist care, and often call on us for our expertise in this area.

Work with FD Consultants

If your organisation as a whole or its individual employees are experiencing mental health challenges or the effects of trauma, we’re here to help. At FD Consultants we deliver reliable, quick, and bespoke support systems across many industries, and personalise each approach to get the best results for all involved. To work with FD Consultants, contact our empathetic and experienced team today.

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Molly and the Two Pigeons (Audiobook ver)

Molly and the Two Pigeons is a short story for upper primary and lower secondary school children to teach them about Coronavirus in a fun and light-hearted way, and records a significant period of time in history. It could also be used as a teaching tool for parents or teachers.

A loveable puppy called Molly forms a friendship with two racing pigeons, Destiny and Grace, who live in a wooden hut in the adjacent garden. Grace is kind-hearted and takes a liking to Molly, Destiny is arrogant and is known as the fastest pigeon in the South, proven by his collection of medals. Their circle of friends expands to include Marv the wise Mandarin Duck, Flash Gordon the Goose, and Merlin the Mosquito.

This strange group of friends become united through one cause, to find a cure for the Coronavirus and help the people. Their adventures take them far and wide. They travel to China and learn about the origins of Coronavirus. They explore the Yangtze River, where they learn about the legend of the mountain peaks. They head to South Korea, where they learn about “Track and Trace” to prevent the spread of the virus. They also visit Oxford, England, where they explore how a vaccine is made. Their trip to Oxford coincides with a visit from Prince William, who Molly takes a great liking to and manages to get a royal stroke from.

Proceeds will be gifted to a charity to support the NHS and all those needing additional support from the impact of Coronavirus.

Trauma and counselling interview (Flirt Radio)

Mindfulness Exercise Series: Breathing & Relaxation

More than ever, people are talking about mindfulness. But what is it and how could it help you? Mindfulness can help you manage your wellbeing and mental health. It can enable you to:

✓ feel less overwhelmed
✓ improve your sleep quality
✓ positively change the way you think and feel about your experiences (especially stressful experiences)
✓ increase your ability to manage difficult situations
✓ make wiser choices
✓ reduce levels of anxiety
✓ reduce levels of depression
✓ reduce levels of stress
✓ reduce the amount you chew things over in your mind
✓ have greater self-compassion

Mindfulness is not fluffy nonsense nor is it a passing fad, there is a great deal of research evidencing that mindfulness changes the plasticity of our brain. But, it does take effort and work to develop mindfulness skills and time to practice them.

In this, the first series of mindfulness exercises I share some simple breathing and relaxation techniques to help you unwind and take some time for yourself.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

The Role of Community in Trauma Therapy Podcast

FIONA DUNKLEY is a trauma therapist and counsellor who has helped people and communities affected by war, terrorism and sexual violence. Drawing on experiences described in her new book – Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Aid Workers – in these podcasts she tells us about the importance of community and its values in helping people overcome trauma.

Mindfulness Exercise 6: Mountain Meditation

Meditation is the collective term for a number of techniques used to still the mind, relax the body and produce a state of inner harmony. It differs from sleep, hypnosis or other types of relaxation simply because your mind remains alert.

There are many ways to meditate. You can meditate while sitting, walking, or practising yoga, but it is easiest to learn by sitting comfortably in a quiet room for several minutes twice a day, every day. There are 2 basic steps: to focus on a single word or phrase (of your choice – perhaps “peace” or “one”, or a religious word) or simply to focus on your breath; and to ignore or disregard all other thoughts.

When we focus on a single word, thought or image, we produce a state of calm that increases mental alertness, while relaxing other body systems.

Meditating twice a day for 15-20 minutes has been shown to be the most effective. Make an effort to practice every day, even if it’s initially only for 5 minutes. You may find it’s easiest to meditate first thing in the morning and last thing at night.

One of our favourite meditations is “The Mountain Meditation” by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It encourages us to seek inner stability and peace, even in the face unpredictable change and chaos. Here is an adaptation of Kabat-Zinn’s classic guided meditation, we hope you enjoy it and find it useful.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Mindfulness Exercise 5:Healing Light Meditation

Healing Light meditation is a popular practice. You can use it almost anywhere to lift your mood. If you’ve got a few moments free throughout the day, I highly recommend learning this practice to fill some of those extra minutes with guided white light meditation.

Many people who meditate have had unusual encounters with healing light. They find the experience perplexing. There’s no logical source for this light; so where does it originate? Individuals experience this light in different ways. One meditator might see giant glowing white balls, while another one might see tiny comet-streaked white sparkles. Experiencing a light during meditation is common, but subjective. There are many benefits to following this healing light meditation, such as enhancing overall wellbeing, boosting self-esteem and feelings of connectedness and it can be used to help “clear” any painful emotions you may be experiencing.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Mindfulness Exercise 4: Body Scan Meditation

When you’re feeling stressed, it’s common to “carry stress in your body” in the form of tense shoulders, a stomach “in knots,” through shallow breathing, or in other ways. When people carry stress in their bodies, they’re often not even aware of it! When we’re really stressed, we may be feeling physical discomfort but not connect it with our emotions. A body scan meditation is a practice that can be performed daily or even several times a day and can help you learn to identify what you are feeling and where you’re feeling it, and learn to release the stress in your body and mind.

The body scan meditation is effective in relieving stress not only because of the mind-clearing aspects present in all forms of meditation but because of the physical component as well. Research shows that there are physical and psychological benefits to relaxing the body and relieving tension. Relieving physical tension, for example, has been shown to lead to a decrease in psychological stress, even when no psychologically-based stress relief efforts are made. Tension relieved in the body can lead to lower stress levels and lower reactivity to future stress, which can, in turn, lead to less physical tension as a result of stress.

In this way, this meditation works to break the cycle of physical and psychological tension that can feed on itself. Because of this, the body scan meditation is a very useful and effective meditation that can help you to stay relaxed mentally and physically, and return to a relaxed state when you become too tense. You can try a body scan meditation right now by following this simple video exercise.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Mindfulness Exercise 3: Compassionate Mindfulness

This is an exercise in feeling compassion towards yourself. Self compassion often doesn’t come naturally – it is a skill you need to learn, practice and consciously engage in. Research has shown that these techniques can help improve our emotional well-being, improve our ability to cope with life’s challenges, lower levels of anxiety and depression, promote healthy habits such as diet and exercise, and lead to more satisfying personal relationships.

Cultivating self-compassion in this way can fundamentally shift how we relate to ourselves. Instead of meeting our imperfections and challenges with self-blame and criticism, we can bring a kind and mindful attention to our experiences (thoughts, emotions, and sensations) and a sense of love and care to ourselves, right in the midst of difficult situations. With practice, we can strengthen this inner quality of presence, connectedness, and kindness to improve emotional well-being and build resilience.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Mindfulness Exercise 2: Releasing Negative Energy

On a regular basis, we encounter a wide range of energies, both positive and negative, and since the negative energies we come in contact with have the power to drain, and make us feel tired and exhausted, it is very important to remove these energies.

Negative energy can be anger, anxiety, depression, resentment, jealousy, or any negative feeling and emotions that you have been holding on to. This guided meditation will help you remove any form of psychic attack or negative energies from your life and shield you from negativity.

Before you begin, remember to first, find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed for the next 15 minutes. Second, find a comfortable position to sit – it can be in a chair, crossed legged or on your knees, or lay down and when you’re ready, press play.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Mindfulness Exercise Series 1: 4-Step Breathing

4-Step breathing (also called square, tactical or Box breathing) is a simple and highly effective technique that you can practice for a few minutes anytime you need to boost your creativity or concentration, break free from scattered thinking, or interrupt an intense “fight or flight” response and return to a state of healing and peace. It is also an effective breath to use at the beginning of your mindfulness practice.

This centuries old breathing technique for meditation has re-surfaced in the past few years and is being used by athletes, performers, doctors, and even navy seals, as their most effective strategy for quickly entering a calm, centered state of mind and body; especially when they are in an intense situation where they need to be fully present and directly connected to their best self/highest self. Many people report that when breathing is used as part of their meditation it has a dramatic, positive impact on their inner and outer wellbeing.

If you like this exercise then please get in touch with FD Consultants today to find out about their mindfulness and wellbeing courses.

Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Aid Workers:
A Roadmap of Trauma and Critical Incident Care

Get your copy of Fiona’s book, Psychosocial Support for Humanitarian Aid Workers. It will appeal to all those working in the field of humanitarian aid, counsellors and psychotherapists, emergency first responders, as well as those who are looking to support themselves after surviving trauma.

Molly and the Two Pigeons

Molly and the Two Pigeons is a short story for upper primary and lower secondary school children to teach them about Coronavirus in a fun and light-hearted way, and records a significant period of time in history. It could also be used as a teaching tool for parents or teachers.

A loveable puppy called Molly forms a friendship with two racing pigeons, Destiny and Grace, who live in a wooden hut in the adjacent garden. Grace is kind-hearted and takes a liking to Molly, Destiny is arrogant and is known as the fastest pigeon in the South, proven by his collection of medals. Their circle of friends expands to include Marv the wise Mandarin Duck, Flash Gordon the Goose, and Merlin the Mosquito.

This strange group of friends become united through one cause, to find a cure for the Coronavirus and help the people. Their adventures take them far and wide. They travel to China and learn about the origins of Coronavirus. They explore the Yangtze River, where they learn about the legend of the mountain peaks. They head to South Korea, where they learn about “Track and Trace” to prevent the spread of the virus. They also visit Oxford, England, where they explore how a vaccine is made. Their trip to Oxford coincides with a visit from Prince William, who Molly takes a great liking to and manages to get a royal stroke from.

Proceeds will be gifted to a charity to support the NHS and all those needing additional support from the impact of Coronavirus.

Download the first chapter of the audiobook for free – click here