Workshops and presentations are an efficient and beneficial way to decrease distress and promote well-being in your office, department, or community. Workshops run 1-2 hours, depending on your schedule, and are always tailored to your specific needs and concerns. Workshops can be a one-time event or run as a brief series to dive more deeply into a certain topic. Possible topics are listed below, or we are happy to work with you to create a new boutique workshop.
- Managing your Stress: We all live stressful lives, but we may not think about the impact it has on us or how to manage it more effectively. This workshop helps you better understand how stress affects your body, emotions, and mind. We explain the importance of the Sympathetic (SNS) and Parasympathetic Nervous Systems (PNS) and how engaging the PNS in actionable ways will allow you to more effectively lower your stress levels and improve your well-being.
- Improving Work-life Balance: We help you identify imbalances in your work and life and provide you with the tools to improve your work-life balance by containing work more effectively and enrich your life.
- Understanding and Preventing Burnout: Rates of burnout were increasing before the pandemic and have only continued to rise. In this workshop, we discuss what burnout is and how to assess your individual level. We explore the various symptoms of burnout so that you can identify burnout in yourself and others, and we then provide a variety of strategies that can help you prevent it.
- Understanding and Preventing Compassion Fatigue: Compassion fatigue is common in caring professions, such as those who care for animals or human patients. In this workshop, compassion fatigue will be explained and differentiated from burnout. A variety of individual and workplace strategies will be discussed to improve or prevent compassion fatigue in caregivers.
- How Leaders can Support their Staff and Help Prevent Compassion Fatigue: Leaders who support lab animal professionals can play an important role in protecting their staff from compassion fatigue. This workshop gives a brief overview of compassion fatigue and symptoms, so that leaders better understand the condition. Then a variety of strategies are discussed that leaders can easily implement to improve staff well-being, productivity, and retention.
- Understanding how Technology is Designed to be Addictive, the Impact it can Have on you, and how to Take Back Control: While many of us are often on our smartphones and computers, we may not think about why we are spending so much time on them. This workshop explains how our phones and social media are designed to be addictive and to take as much of our time and attention as possible. We look at the impact smartphones, apps, and social media have on our brains, attention, physical, and mental health The harm to youth from technology also can be discussed, if desired. Finally, this workshop provides pragmatic strategies and steps you can take to take back control from your technology and be more present and engaged in your life.
- Bringing more Mindfulness into your Real Life: Mindfulness is a term that is frequently used these days, but what does it really mean? This workshop explains what mindfulness is and how incorporating more into your life will benefit you. We then take participants through a variety of exercises to practice mindfulness in approachable simple ways.
- Increasing Resilience and Having a Growth Mindset: Life can be challenging, and tapping into your resilience can be beneficial for your well-being. In this workshop, we explain what resilience is and then discuss the 5 Resilience Factors you can engage to approach failures and setbacks with a more positive mindset and grow from these experiences.
- Combatting Impostor Syndrome: We teach you how to identify impostor syndrome in yourself and others, what contributes to it, what "type" of imposter syndrome you have, and clear steps and strategies to combat it
- Increasing Effective Communication: Talking to others in person can be uncomfortable, and many have more difficulties as technology has decreased our opportunities to practice these skills. This workshop will help you become a more effective and assertive communicator. We discuss common barriers to effective communication and then provide strategies to communicate more effectively verbally and non-verbally. Finally, we end with ways to calm and ground yourself before having a difficult conversation.
- Growing your Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand your own emotions and the emotions of others and to use your emotions effectively to guide thinking and action. This workshop will help you better understand what this is, assess your own skills, and help you improve your emotional intelligence regardless of your current level of ability.
- Incorporating Effective Self-care and Sleep Hygiene: This workshop will help you better understand what self-care is, how it includes good sleep, why it is important, and how to take better care of yourself so that you may more fully engage in your life and take care of others.
- Understanding and Addressing Moral Stress: Moral stress is common in most professions, but it can be prevalent in animal research. In this presentation, the concept of moral stress will be explained and factors that could lead to it will be addressed. Additionally, a variety of strategies to help protect oneself from moral stress at work will be discussed.
- Understanding Gender Identity: Transgender, non-binary, gender queer/fluid. This informative workshop demystifies these terms and provides you with the knowledge and language to better support these individuals in your community.
- Everything I Need to Know I Learned Doing a Spartan: This autobiographical workshop teaches you the lessons around growth, persistence, support, and resilience that I learned from my journey of overcoming a personal challenge.
