Overwhelmed. Tearful. Irritable. Angry. Rageful. Upset. Grief. Desperate. Isolated. Anxious. Fearful. On high alert. Tense. Pain. Tired. Exhausted. Helpless. Hopeless.

These are all understandable experiences when we are struggling while trying to cope with challenging times. Those challenging times could be individual life experiences such as break ups, difficulties at work and health concerns, systemic issues or holding awareness of the polycrises facing humans and the world right now.

We can turn the news off, avoid the news apps, curate our social media feeds to be a stream of cute animal videos and acts of kindness. And that can help. But when we re-engage with the things that are important to us or the news or conversations at work, family gatherings or catch ups with friends, we can find the overwhelm sneaks back in. Such a cycle of withdrawal, calming our nervous system, then re-engaging gets repeated over and over.

This isn’t sustainable and, more importantly, it’s not kind to ourselves.

Learning to be kind to ourselves and embrace our humanity enables us to find sustainable ways of balancing being actively involved in spaces, conversations and dynamics that are important to us with managing our emotional state.

The learning intentions of this workshop are:

• Explore the difference between emotional avoidance, emotion regulation and managing our state,

• Identify a variety of ways we can manage during challenging times such as this,

• Consider how to put these into practice in our daily lives.