Program Description.
Therapeutic Mentoring Resilience Training sessions conducted near or in the waves. Some people learn and develop goals and strategies mainly through talk. But some people learn better by doing things. Waves: Resilience Training offers both - talk+experience
Waves Resilience Training sessions include talk but are also experiential, being done near or in the waves.. at the beach.
What is involved in the Experiential Component?
Participants will set their own experience and their own goals:
If they want to try surfing… they can have a go in these sessions
If they want to try body boarding or just being in the waves, they can do that too.
If they want to just be near the water… go for a walk on the sand… the waves themselves are a fantastic resource for thinking about resilience… and offer all the positive mental health benefits of being outside, in the fresh air… moving around and letting the rhythms of the water give perspective and enhance mindfulness.
Being in or near the waves can provide the experience of, or imagery to discuss bounce, courage, creativity, flow, connection, harmony and tenacity.
For people who have experienced trauma their nervous systems can be stuck in a narrow band of fight or flight. Being in or near the waves and setting themselves resilience goals can give their bodies and neural network the opportunity to practice extending that narrow band or circle of tolerance. The feelings associated with that broadening can assist as a kind of rehearsal mode when they want to develop resilience in situations away from the waves. The feelings and learnings become a resource, part of the kit, to draw on.
What is involved in the Talk component of Waves Sessions?
What is resilience? What does resilience look like? What does a lack of resilience look like? Low resilience might manifest as fight or flight? What are situations where the participant might experience a lack of resilience? Create a Personal Resilience Kit: a list of strategies and resources based on strengths of the participants in the face of obstacles. Identify strategies from Resilience Kit that could be used in specific situations where resilience is low.
Informed by Christine Padesky’s (PhD) four steps to build resilience these sessions will:
Search – for strengths and skills in something the client really enjoys that is not linked to the problem area, for example, hobbies and interests, relationships, and everyday activities the client never misses. Then ask questions to identify the things the client does to persist and show that these behaviours occur in the presence of problems.
Construct – the Personal Resilience Kit. Use basic counselling skills to make summaries and validate the client. Elicit client stories, metaphors, icon and symbols to bridge the experiential and analytical minds.
Apply – the Resilience Kit to the problem. Help the client pick a problem and set a goal to be more resilient in the face of that problem. Identify strategies to use, behaviours to try, and identify feelings desired.
Practice – being resilient. Identify challenges and principles for persistence, construct behavioural experiments and debrief through the resilience lens with the client.
Each follow up session includes a review of how those strategies played out in the intervening period. And then reviewing the situations where they experience a lack of resilience, the Resilience Kit and the strategies identified to improve resilience in that situation.
Possible problem area suggestions: relationships with authority, family communication, negative self talk, school/work problems, school attendance issues, peer relationships, drug and alcohol issues, feelings, behavioural issues, communication issues, sportsmanship, stress management, empathy, anxiety, depression.
Each participant controls what area of resilience they want to consider and the process focuses on identifying and drawing on strengths.
Each participant’s Resilience Kit would be available to them on their own mobile device so that they can refer to it as they need.
Lead Mentor/Facilitator
Phil Crawford
Diploma of Mental Health
OSSCA (Ocean Safety Surf Coach Award – Annual Proficiency Certificate)
Current First Aid Certificate
30 + years of work as youth and community worker.
Change is always possible.
Everybody has strengths and skills to be discovered.
Everybody has the capacity to self-right, to be knocked down and stand up again.
Waves: Resilience Training can be conducted as one on one sessions or in small groups of 1 – 3 depending on skills, interests and abilities. For people or all abilities aged 8+.
Parents/carers and children/young people could participate in Waves Resilience Training sessions together and help each other understand how to build resilience and understanding in families/households.
Waves Resilience Training is conducted on the homelands of the Dharawal, Ellowrie and Wadi Wadi peoples and we acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we live. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and acknowledge that this land was and always will be Aboriginal land.
