Interact Workshops now on Better Connected
We have been giving online interactive workshops over the course of this year on the subject of relationships: to explore what relationships are, how to manage them, emotions within relationships, and how to keep ourselves safe.
Primarily provided for people with a learning disability or autism who want to develop their skills and self-confidence in relationships, the latest workshops have recently been added to the Better Connected programme. We have also discovered how the workshops can potentially benefit people with mental health conditions, parents and their teenagers transitioning into adulthood, and much more.
Nearly all the participants of this course have expressed how they feel that they have learned more about themselves since taking part. Most of the clients said they gained more confidence due to the skills and self-help tools that they have learned.
One of the course participants was Gemma. The course coordinator Amber tells us about her feedback:
During the course
When I first met Gemma, she appeared shy and anxious about group situations, and she seemed to struggle to express how she was feeling.
As the course progressed Gemma slowly began to find her voice within the group and she was able to engage on a deeper level – through doing this she appeared to gain confidence.
As Gemma contributed more, it shifted the group’s dynamic, and enhanced the group’s overall peer-to-peer sharing. This appeared to enable other clients to in turn engage with each other in a deeper reflective manor, and enabled them to become more cohesive.
Improving emotional control
After the course finished Gemma spoke about how she felt more in control of her emotions due to understanding them and herself better.
She explained how the workshops on understanding emotions and self-esteem helped her to reflect deeply on her emotional triggers, what causes her to feel certain emotions, and how to rebalance herself when she feels overwhelmed.
Understanding self-esteem
When reflecting on the self-esteem workshop Gemma explained how she often feels that she can have a mixture of low and high self-esteem due to her conflicting emotions.
She said “I do often feel that I am in-between self-esteem levels as my emotions and thoughts about myself flit around all the time due to my anxious thoughts”. This comment enabled the whole group to reflect deeply on the link between their self-esteem and their emotions.
New friends and new skills
Overall, Gemma expressed how she has gained new friends through the Fearless project, how she has learned new social skills through conversations, games, ice breaker questions and interacting with new people. She has gained valuable self-help knowledge about internet safety and mate crime and relevant information for where she can go to gain extra support.
