Skills for Psychological Recovery

SKILLS FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL RECOVERY

Ipswich, 2023

Rita Fadieieva, for Suffolk Refugee Support

Early intervention principles

• Skills for psychological recovery aim to help people who endured traumatic events to gain skills to manage distress and cope with post-disaster stress and adversity.
• This approach utilizes skills-building components from mental health treatment that have been found helpful in a variety of post-trauma situations. Research suggests that a skills-building approach is more effective than supportive counseling.
• SPR is appropriate for developmental levels across the lifespan, and is culturally informed.

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Skills for psychological recovery: overview

• Gathering Information and Prioritizing Assistance helps survivors to identify their primary concerns and to pick the SPR strategy to focus on.
• Building Problem-Solving Skills teaches the tools to break problems down into more manageable chunks, identify a range of ways to respond, and create an action plan to move forward.
• Promoting Positive Activities guides survivors to increase meaningful and positive activities in their schedule, with the goal of building resilience and bringing more fulfillment and enjoyment into their life.
• Managing Reactions helps survivors to better manage distressing physical and emotional reactions by using such tools as breathing retraining, writing exercises, and identifying and planning for triggers and reminders.
• Promoting Helpful Thinking assists survivors learn how their thoughts influence their emotions, become more aware of what they are saying to themselves, and replace unhelpful with more helpful thoughts.
• Rebuilding Healthy Social Connections encourages survivors to access and enhance social and community supports.

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Gathering Information and Prioritizing Assistance

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• Gathering information and understanding needs
• Support adaptive strategies
• Connect with the other services if needed

• Reality check
• Support
• Emotional comfort

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Problem-solving skills: steps

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• Ongoing stress and constant pressure "to do something!" affects the person's ability to find effective solutions to the everyday problems.

• Having a systematic way of dealing with problems helps to be more effective, gain the feeling of self-efficacy and control.

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Problem-solving skills: steps

1. Identify the problem and its ownership. What's the problem? Whose problem is this? 2. Set the realistic goal. What do I want? 3. Brainstorm. What are the possible ways to achive this goal? 4. Choose the best route and implement the plan. What should be myfirst step?

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Positive activities

Thoughts

• When the negative experiences in life far outnumber the positive, they can cause and sustain hard feelings.

• Positive experiences tend to evoke positive emotions, while negative experiences evoke unpleasant emotions.

• To improve the mood, one needs to increase the number of positive experiences and decrease the number of negative ones.

Actions

Feelings

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Thoughts

Positive activities

• Might not work immediately but will improve mood over time.
• Choose an activity you used to enjoy but didn't perform for a while.
• Start with something small.
• Include both solitaire and social activities.

Managing reactions

• Anger and irritability
• Grief

• Trouble sleeping
• Post-traumatic reactions (avoidance, intrusion, hypervigiliance)
• Fear and anxiety

Managing reactions: soothing breathing

Managing reactions: practical strategies

Sleep schedule, healthy diet, and day-to-day structure

Positive activities

Writing practice

Spiritual practice

Social support

Constructive(helpful) thinking

Grounding

Calming techniques

Promoting Helpful Thinking

• Two features of helpful thinking: being realistic and providing emotional support.

• Thoughts affect feelings. Angry thoughts create angry feelings, anxious thoughts create anxiety, jopeless thoughts provoke hopelessness, and calming thoughts provide calm.

• Thoughts and feelings are not the same. Feelings are rooted in the body while thoughts are more like words and mental images in our mind.

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Promoting Helpful Thinking: steps

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1. Find unhelpful thoughts.
2. Find helpful thoughts.
3. Apply helpful thoughts to the situation.
4. Practice helpful thinking.

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Promoting Helpful Thinking : payoff matrix

• Advantages of keeping the thought

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• Disadvantages of keeping the thought

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• Advantages of changing the thought

• Disadvantages of changing the thought

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Rebuilding Healthy Social Connections

Constant changes and chronic stress might hinder an ability to create and mantain meaningful connections.Rebuilding healthy social connections helps:- to feel that you're not alone and not isolated;- to feel that you belong;- to feel capable of dealing with the current tasks;- to feel that other people are on your side;- to receive a good advice and support.

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Advice worker

GP

Mom

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Cat

Dad

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Son

Sister

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Rebuilding Healthy Social Connections

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- Who's your most important connections?- Who can you share your feelings with? - Who can provide you advice and support? -Who can help you with practical tasks? - Who needs your help right now? - What do you want to change in your social life? - With whom would you like to spend more time (or less time)? - What kind of support do you need? - What kind of support can you provide?

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THANK YOU!