“Capacity Building Programme on Stress Management’’
The Learning objectives was to enable the facilitators to understand the meaning, need and importance of Stress Management, identify its three basic categories and to equip them with the skills and knowledge of designing strategies that can be used to transit the life in better form.
Ms. Akriti handed over the training module to the facilitators and the session began with experience sharing among the facilitators. They were asked to share the instances when they had experienced stress and how did they cope with it. After that it was highlighted that everyone attending the workshop mentioned only about the negative stress and no one shared any experience related to the positive stress a.k.a.Eustress, as our brain is inclined to think of stress in a negative manner only.
Teachers were made to realize the importance of active learning and learning the strategies of inculcating the Stress management Skills amongst ourselves. Along with fulfilling the roles and responsibilities ascribed and prescribed to us, one should never forget to pay attention on our ownself.
The benefits of experiential learning was emphasized wherein teachers had to choose any one technique out of -discussion, role play, story telling, case studies, drama, games etc. to explain that how it can be used to enhance management skills along with imparting our knowledge to others. Emphasis was laid upon the development of self-awareness, problem solving skills, decision making skills , critical and creative thinking skills; building and enhancing interpersonal relationships and empathy amongst others; working out strategies to help ourselves and others to manage emotions and cope up with stress.
Ms. Pooja then explained some of the stress management strategies which are as follows:
- Seeking help
- Procrastination
- Self Motivation
- Praying
- Counting from 1-10
- Engaging in any recreational activity like painting, dancing etc.
All the facilitators across different schools were also made to realize the importance of TEA i.e Thought Emotion and Action. Wherein thought means automatic and non automatic aspects, emotion is affective aspect and Action is Behavioural or cognitive aspect of a human being. She then clarified some of the myths related to stress and further explained how stress develops i.e.
- T: An individual first gives a Thought to any situation
- E: This thought then develops into an Emotion
- A: The emotion gets transformed into an Action.
To follow it further teachers where also distributed in 7 groups and were made to enact, role- play on the case studies mentioned in Handout 4A and were expected to do detail analysis of the subject discussed which are as follows.
Case Study 1: Mohit’s struggle with examination anxiety eventually leads to his failure.
Case study 2: A women entrepreneur was unable to maintain a work life balance, and was struggling to give time to her seven months old baby.
Case Study 3: This case study depicted the classic case of helicopter parenting wherein the parents did not provide ample exposure to their child which led to the development of social awkwardness and lack of confidence in him.
Case Study 4: An experienced teacher was not ready to lend ear to her co teacher (who was new to the school). She could not guide the parents of a child showing deviant beahviours in the school, she lacked listening skills and attacked the parents with the complaints and eventualy created a stressful situation for her coteacher as the parents of the same child filed a complaint against the teacher and the school.
Case Study 5: Ayaan’s parents were imposing their own dreams on the child, pressurizing him to prepare for medical. However, the child wanted to be a chef, which led to lack of job satisfaction when he became a doctor and social aloofness.
Case Study 6: Depicted the struggles of a woman who wants to please everyone at home and at workplace but she eventually ends up exhausting herself.
Case Study 7: A family discord leads to an impact on the child’s mental health though the child is academically strong but still feels unmotivated.
A strong brainstorming session was carried out followed by the personal qualities needed to help others. All the stress management techniques were discussed in detail so that the facilitators could find the effective ways to handle the stress causing situations.
At 1:30 pm facilitators were called for a lunch break.
Ms. Pooja took over the session after lunch and enquired about each facilitator’s individual coping strategies. She then asked to give a pictorial representation of whatever comes to the mind when the word stress is heard so that the facilitators are in a position to comprehend their thoughts in a concrete manner. She then took up a 20 minutes meditation session with the facilitators to help them attain peace and calmness and get the opportunity to vent out their negativity. The meditation session began with light warm up and then pre- recorded meditational instructions were played for the facilitators to follow and perform. To balance the effect of the energy meditation session was concluded with mild warm up exercise again.
At the end of the session facilitators were asked to fill their feedback forms and submit them, and the Resource Persons were shown gratitude with a vote of thanks.
Session was closed with the distribution of participation certificates.
