Workshop Series: Morning Mindfulness: "Mind full or Mindful?"
Drs. Diana Singh and Jessica Rizk will discuss the topic of stressors and stress responses, including research that supports why it’s important to build healthier strategies.
Online Workshop Tool: The Planner | “From surviving to thriving”
Great West Life | Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace
(A resource developed in partnership with McMaster University)
Presenters:
Dr. Diana Singh is a postdoctoral research fellow at McMaster University in Hamilton, ON. She is a mental health researcher who specializes in emotional labour and work stress. She is currently working on various projects that centre around emotional resiliency and psychological distress amongst service workers.
Dr. Jessica Rizk is a researcher at the Higher Education Quality Council of Canada, and an Ontario-Certified teacher. She specializes in the area of education, digital technology, and social inequality. Her research has examined the integration of educational technology in classrooms among Ontario students (K-12), and its impact on student engagement and student well-being. She also has research interest in the area of mental health and education and has recently joined the ABMF team.
Workshop 1: Recognizing your Personal and Automatic Response to Stressors
Individuals select from a list:
- Physical Responses
- Behaviour Responses
- Emotional Responses
The list is based on current personal and automatic Responses.
Workshop 2: Choosing Healthier Strategies
Individuals select as many healthy responses that speak to them personally, from a broad list.
For example, options include: Mindfulness and meditation; spirituality, ask for help and support, exercise, talk therapy, gratitude, cost/benefit analyses, etc.
Workshop 3: Recognizing and Exploring your Current Stressors
Individuals check any items that they are coping with right now or know they will in the very near future.
For example, individuals choose from triggers that fall under the category:
Social
Physical/Mental Health
Financial
Work
Emotional
Workshop 4: Balancing your Support Network
Resilience involves acknowledging our need to connect with each other. This section asks us to reflect on this.
Individuals will think about family, friends, associates, neighbours, or services they could reach out to for help.
Workshop 5: Examining Options and Making Good Decisions
Individuals will reflect on choices and their personal sense of power in this section. We all have choices when it comes to dealing with stress and adversity. These choices can usually be classified as one of the four A’s: Accept, Avoid, Alter, or Adapt.
The strategies in this section are adapted from https://wellness.uchicago.edu/page/changing-situation-oryour-reaction.
Workshop 6: Committing to Thriving
Individuals are asked to self-reflect and personally commit to themselves and others to the path to thriving and make a three-week plan to do so.