Finding Your Balance Series: Online

Are you supporting a loved one with a mental health or a substance use concern? Often times caregivers put their own needs last. In this course you will learn to take care of yourself by finding your own balance, creating a network of support, learning personal coping strategies, and gaining useful tools to support yourself with hope and acceptance. This course is open to all who are looking for support; siblings, children, parent (of a youth or adult child), friends, partners, grandparent, or aunts and uncles. This course is  made up of 7 sessions, you can take one of take them all. Below is a write up on each session;

(Part 1) Finding Balance: (Part 1)

This is the first session of the 8 week class of Finding Your Balance. In this class you will cover the basics of Recovery-Oriented Practice and Peer Support. You will also discuss surviving vs thriving, the importance of taking care of yourself and exploring available supports. This is part 1 of 7 classes

Understanding Our Relationship: (Part 2)

In this class we explore the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships, responsibility and commitment in regards to our relationships, the difference of being responsible for someone and responsible to them and the dignity of risk and our rights as caregivers. This is part 2 of 7.

Knowledge is Power: (Part 3)

We explore the role of the diagnosis in recovery. We discuss stigma, its impacts and how we can combat it. With this in mind we consider how to address the concerns of family and friends and how we can best go about talking about our loved one when they are or are not present. Lastly we explore ourselves and our loved one through a strength based focus and consider how we can separate our loved one from their behaviour. This is part 3 of 7.

Healthy Boundaries: (Part 4)

We will explore the topic of boundaries. We’ll define them, discuss the importance of them, exploring our barriers to setting and keeping healthy ones, we’ll learn the signs of weak and strong boundaries and examine various tips and tools for improving our boundaries in our relationships. This is part 4 of 7.

Finding Hope: (Part 5)

We will explore the importance of self-awareness along the recovery journey. They will be encouraged to pay attention to any adverse emotions they might feel and consider how they can process these emotions in a healthy way. Moving from adverse emotions in general to the concept of loss and grief for the caregiver, students consider if this is something they might be experiencing and if so, how they can support themselves through the process. Lastly we will finish off with the topic of hope and discuss strategies for building and renewing our hope. This is part 5 of 7.

Building Resiliency: (Part 6)

We will be discussing skills and tools that can help build our resiliency. We will do a few check-ins with our current situation and examine ways we might be able to make some changes toward a happier and healthier life in which we are taking care of ourselves well. We will discuss the stages of change to understand the process and to consider where we might be at in various changes we hope to make. We’ll also discus factors in resilience and how to build our resiliency up. This is part 6 of 7.

Moving Forward: (Part 7)

We do some thinking about and planning for the future. We pay it forward by writing words of encouragement to future participants, we consider our action plans and tips for travelling the road to recovery from here on out and we record the important information that we want to remember in the future from this course in a letter to our future selves.