Taking Care of Your Self – ‘This Is Your Story’ Workshop

Taking Care of Your Self – ‘This Is Your Story’ Workshop

Caring for your self is a vital part of helping a child, patient or partner recover from an eating disorder. In fact, science tells us that self-care is imperative for supporting carers in their efforts to cope with caregiving and help with their loved one’s recovery**.

The diary is an excellent tool to help you self-care. Come along to ‘This Is Your Story’ workshop, in Melbourne on Thursday, May 28th and find out how the simple book and pen can help you take care of yourself. I look forward to sharing my diary-writing experience and skills at this workshop in the lead up to the 2nd Australian conference for parents and family carers of people with an eating disorder. (See details of this and other pre-conference workshops here).

Interactive and hands-on

My workshop will be highly interactive and hands-on. All you need to bring is yourself,  a pen and notebook. If you have not written a word for years, don’t worry, this workshop is for you, too. I am always amazed at how often people say ‘I haven’t a story to tell’, ‘I haven’t written a word since I left school’, ‘I don’t know how to write about my feels’, and they proceed to release beautiful, insightful  stories that deserve preserving for generations to come. (Every carer has a story to tell – it is how you tell your story that makes all the difference).

In my view, everyone is a carer — you may be a parent, or grandparent, partner, sibling, friend, or adult child of a person with an eating disorder. Or you may be an adult with an eating disorder, living independently and therefore you are a self-carer (that is, like me, you are responsible for caring for your self). We all tend to have multiple roles and to operate at peak efficiency and live a fulfilling life, we all need to self-care…besides being a self-carer, I am a mother, grandmother, friend and writer, and quite a few other things besides! The diary is a friend that accompanies me, and can accompany you, everywhere, in your carer role.

Helping the healing process

Importantly, at our workshop, you will learn how the diary can assist in the healing process, and how to guard against the bully eating disorder (ED) outsmarting you. You will learn how the diary can be your pillow or sponge, your punching bag, your confidante, your debriefer supreme and your record keeper.

You will learn about role of the traditional diary, its adaption in today’s high-tech world, and how it can help enrich your role not only as a carer but also in everyday life.

You will acquire skills on getting in touch with your own self, and learn how this in turn can help you get in touch with, communicate with, the person who has an eating disorder.

Discussion will include:
* How keeping a diary can help enrich your role as a carer and your life as an individual
* How diary-writing can help you keep a healthy perspective on daily challenges
* How the diary can reduce the vulnerability of feeling blame and of feeling time-poor
* Ways the diary can help challenge the secrecy that goes with the illness
* Strategies to implement in identifying and disabling the eating disorder ‘voice’
* Using the diary to connect with and help the person with the eating disorder
* How the diary can help reduce the sense of isolation and stigmatisation.

What: Taking Care of Your Self – ‘This Is Your Story’ Workshop

When: Thursday, May 28th

Time: 9.30am – 12.30pm

Venue: The Mantra –Bell City, 215 Bell St, Preston.

Registration: From 8.30am.

Morning tea: 11am.

Details of Conference: click here

Note: This is a great opportunity to come along and listen to the wisdom of two highly-esteemed keynote speakers__Laura Collins Lyster Mensh and Carolyn Costin.

** Patel, S., Shafer, A., Brown, J., Bulik, C., & Zucker, N. (2014). Parents of Children With Eating Disorders: Developing Theory-Based Health Communication Messages to Promote Caregiver Well-Being. Journal of Health Communication, 19(5), 593-608. doi: 10.1080/10810730.2013.821559

Knowing others is wisdom; knowing the self is enlightenment. _ Tao Te Ching