Did you just earn a new badge??!! Let us know which badge, how you earned it & well give you a high five!
I just became a verified listener!
I understand we are not suppose to give advice, but can I share link of some inspiring speakers or talk that I think relevant and helpful for the caller?
@specialOrange2055
I did a mock chat very recently and the verified listener assessor actually recommended giving out external links that she thought were useful. So as far as I've been told by someone who should know - that is Caring Brit - that there's no issue with external links, i.e. no rule against it. She's one of the exemplars, so you can find her on the register and contact her to check for yourself if you'd like.
I had a concern that it was important to make sure that members and guests we speak to and offer links to also deserve to have an option to access the more planned and structured empirically sound self-training material here on 7 Cups, which also has some pretty good speakers, and is really well planned and set out, with real credible references for what gets taught. Some of these courses here at 7 Cups just aren't available at all anywhere near this standard, nor in such a wide range of specific topics outside specialist private hospitals which charge over $40 - $50 000 per month. These courses here at 7 Cups can save and change lives, and there's scientific evidence available and quoted on each one to back up that claim
Every short course has little videos and they are really good. The members who do the little courses here get badges just like us listeners, so there's another motivator as well. Sure, I've been told that it's okay to give out links, especially to material you've seen and been inspired by, but please kindly consider at least throwing in a link to access one of the 7 Cups courses as well for your member or guest.
Good on you for striving and for confirming before you took it on yourself. Can you maybe share the link? If you think it's good, it probably would be good for us too
Got my first Peer training badge today after finally finding out what I had to do to make the training courses show up on the "Training and Certification" page:
I needed to go to the "my settings" page on my personal profile and nominate the areas where I had lived experience and then click save, and exactly as promised there they all were waiting for me, Peer Training 1 - 12, just where the intern instructions had been telling me they would be from the outset.
Great logical practical training, not particularly confronting and definitely expect to be a much better listener after and due to this series. See below for the topics in Peer Training 1. I think 7 Cups should be so very proud of this course, and I want to thank you guys so very much for making those of us with lived experience this impressive and valuable training package. Decades of advertisements saying "go ahead and tell everybody about the fact that you've had mental health issues, we won't mind, and it'll be good for you to have everyone at work know" and so many lived-experience ironic and heartbreaking reasons to actually Bring Change to Mind*, but now finally after all these years an actual tangible reason to tell someone about a mental health history !!! . . . Because it means I get to do this training, which will make me an even better listener. With this training I've already been pointedly informed of mistakes I've made as long ago as yesterday. I even believe that this training is so good that someone out there without lived experience might even one day be jealous for a moment, of this training which seems so valuable and influential to developing listening skill advantages as a lived-experience listener (which one day, after I finish my degrees will end up being counselling skill advantages as well . . . if I ever live that long. ) This course seems so very likely to make me end up really good at this.
(I think maybe only others out there who also have lived-experience might fully appreciate the dark humour in someone without lived experience actually wishing they'd had personal experience with mental health issues so they could do a training course !!!) Face it, without this training advantage, it might be argued that the only reason for people to put their hand up and identify as having lived experience would be so that we could sit there doing impressions of Prunella Scales, who plays John Cleese's character Basil's wife Sybil in Fawlty Towers, and keeps making phone calls to her friends, saying the same thing over and again: "I know, I know, I kno. .o. ow . . " Even more ironically, the only people we'd actually be able to say that to as ethical listeners would be ourselves, anyway !!
More seriously, 7 Cups I want to express to you that you really do have my deepest thanks. This is the first time in 27 diagnosed years that I have felt "lucky" just because I'm a survivor. When I've finished this series of lessons, even if they're only half as good and practical as the first one, I might even end up proud of that lived-experience. God bless you people for this course, and double-bless you for allowing us listeners to use pseudonyms so that we can still breath easy and escape the bigotry which remains rife in parts of the world where Change has not Yet been Brought to Mind. . . ooh I could tell you such stories!
I know why I found out how to do get the access too. I happened to find the right answer straight after I'd given up and written to bother someone in the Intern admin by asking them the question I couldn't find the answer to. It's a Murphy's law thing. Cheers again, everyone: check out part one below . . .
Peer Training 1
Competency I: Engage peers in collaborative and caring relationships
Going through this training will not make you a peer specialist.
How do I build trust with someone Im supporting?
Competency 2: Listen to peers with careful attention to content & emotion being communicated
What do I need to do?
What does empathy sound like?
Be non-judgmental and supportive
What is the difference between empathy and sympathy?
Six ways to cultivate empathy
Cultivate curiosity about strangers.
Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities.
Try another persons life.
Listen hard — and open up.
Inspire mass action and social change.
Develop an ambitious imagination.
Identified barriers to empathy:
Holding tightly to a specific ideology
Not paying attention.
Our own feelings of uncertainty.
Disagreeing with the person you are supporting.
Competency 3: Reach out to engage peers across whole continuum of recovery process
Competency 4: Demonstrate genuine acceptance and respect
9 Principles about How to demonstrate Respect
Instead of judging people by their past, stand by them and help them build their future.
Listen with curiosity, speak with candor, and act with integrity.
Treat everyone with kindness.
Dont try to make yourself great by making someone else look small.
Remember, everyone has a story.
We dont meet people by accident.
The best teachers are those who dont tell you how to get there but show the way.
Never look down on someone unless you are helping them up.
Appreciate supporters, forgive those who have hurt you, help those who need you.
Competency 5: Demonstrates understanding of peers experiences & feelings
Understanding peoples feelings
Sharing peoples feelings
Your own response to peoples feelings
Emotional Regulation
Questions to help identify the message of an emotion:
Anxiety: What am I afraid of?
Sadness: What have I lost?
Anger: How have I or my values been attacked?
Happiness: What have I gained?
PS * Bring Change to Mind is a worldwide organisation to lobby for an end to stigma and discrimination for people with mental health issues. Write to subscribe at information@bringchange2mind.org, check out the website at https://bringchange2mind.org/
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I just earned my people of color badge! During this time, I feel that is so important to understand and educate yourself and others about racism and inequality. Educating and awareness is the key to change!
I earned my Five Steps badge today!
I earned the forgiveness batch. I realised there is still so much unforgiveness I am holding on to and how it is affecting me. Really grateful I read this and I can work on this and also help others.
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