06/14/2022
WHAT WOULD WELLBEING AND RESILIENCE COACHING FOR MYSELF, AS A PARENT OR CAREGIVER OF A CHILD WITH SPECIAL NEEDS, LOOK LIKE?
I can work with you individually, or I can work with anyone else who shares your caregiving responsibilities with the neurodivergent child or grown up that you support.
Together, we would explore different simple skills for recovering and supporting your wellbeing and resilience in your caregiving role. With these new skills you may start to see shifts from your caregiving work being mostly depleting to occasionally depleting, from joyless to moments of joy, from constantly hard on yourself to moments of kindness towards yourself.
I try to create a restorative space for you to learn new wellbeing and resilience skills for supporting yourself in your amazing caregiving work. What skills you learn are based on your strengths, needs, and hopes.
I invest a lot of time and care to working with you. I prepare to be able to teach you new individualized skills before every session. I record the guided exercises and send them to you, so that you can use the recordings to practice the skills on your own. I track what skills you’ve learned and share a final report of your skills training at the end of our work together. I take notes on the many aspects of your wellbeing and resilience in your caregiving work, so that we can really focus in on what’s most important to you and the skills that can best support you.
Overall, the coaching is meant to put you on a path to supporting your wellbeing and resilience over the long-term, so that you can provide quality support in your caregiver role for many years to come. The wellbeing and resilience skills you use to support yourself will help the neurodivergent children and grown ups you support to flourish as well.
Our work together can take be a more organic form of skills coaching, where it is based on things like strengthening the wellbeing and resilience skills you already have or learning new skills from a range of skill sources to meet your particular situation, or it could follow a specific curriculum of wellbeing and resilience skills.
I aim to make each training session deeply restorative and supportive. I understand that every second of your day is in high demand.
*The Children’s Long-Term Support (CLTS) waiver program in Dane County covers this service for unpaid caregivers. I could likely get a contract to provide this service in any other Wisconsin county. Make an appointment and we can start that process for your county.
CENTRAL SOURCES FOR WELLBEING AND RESILIENCE SKILLS
Training with me is personalized and based on your unique challenges and goals using the training resources and curriculums summarized below
Mindful living (based on my decade of teaching mindfulness, and the caregiver’s individual interests and needs)
“Mindfulness is a natural part of being human, can be easily accessed, and can greatly improve one’s quality of life. Mindfulness can be key to resilience, especially in the face of personally challenging work, like caregiving.” https://mykindnesstherapy.com/mindfulness
Self-Compassion (based on the Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook)
“Research shows that self-compassion is one of the most powerful tools we have at our disposal to create health and happiness. Self-compassion motivates us to achieve our goals, cope with adversity, take responsibility for our actions, and care for others in a sustainable way.” https://self-compassion.org
Emotion Regulation (based on an adaptation of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy designed for people with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers)
“The Skills System is a user-friendly set of emotion regulation skills, designed to help people of various ages and abilities, manage emotions. Learning how to regulate emotions enables us to be present in the moment and be more effective–even in stressful situations.” https://skillssystem.com
Character Strengths (training based on the VIA Institute Character Strengths assessment and resources)
“If we are conscious of our own strengths, we are more likely to recognize strengths in others, leading to more harmonious relationships which are especially needed during these challenging times.” https://www.viacharacter.org
