Centring the body on our way to healing

Social work can be emotive as the issues impacting service users are complex. Humans are hardwired for connection so it’s natural and normal for you to be impacted by the work you do. The social work system is complex, and our nervous systems usually reflect the systems we inhabit if we are not aware of our own nervous system’s needs. Being a human being in a culture of endless doing adds another layer of complexity. As such it is essential for social workers to have healthy boundaries. These are essential for good service delivery, a general sense of well-being and to reduce the likelihood of burnout. 

We often talk about boundaries like they are abstract, linear, and logical. Most of the time this is not the case. Boundaries are very emotional/emotive - our emotions live throughout our bodies. As we live in a culture that aspires to logical positivism, we unconsciously learn that emotions and our bodies are untrustworthy and unreliable. Consequently, we don’t learn how to create the boundaries we need to feel safe and whole. Rebuilding a trusting relationship with your emotions means rebuilding a trusting relationship with your body. Your body keeps the score after all! 

In this fun and interactive session, you will learn:

• What the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is and how it works?
• How are you affected by the 3 branches of the ANS?
• How do the 3 branches of the ANS inform your boundaries?
• Why understanding your ANS helps you understand the needs of your service users better? 

Tamu Thomas is a social worker, an emotional well-being coach, writer, workshop facilitator, podcaster and Non-Linear Movement practitioner who helps over-functioning, overworking, high achieving women fall in love with themselves so they can make powerful choices about how they live, love and work. Tamu’s work combines somatics, social work and spirituality with science and soulful systems. She is person-centred, evidence-based, trauma-informed, human-paced, nurturing, intuitive, loving, and playful. Tamu’s holistic approach to supporting the bodies, minds and experiences of her clients makes her work nurturing, deep and unique – just like her. 

Tamu’s work is informed by her background of sixteen years in social work, somatic coach training, her love of behavioural neuroscience and polyvagal theory, positive psychology, spirituality and joy. Tamu combines these modalities to create a multifaceted body of work that helps her clients stop using anxiety as a productivity tool and stop normalising burnout. Tamu’s work helps her clients understand who they are so they may begin to tend to their needs, feel safe in their bodies, befriend themselves and begin to enjoy who they are. Tamu supports her clients and workshop attendees understand themselves as valuable and worthy of caring for themselves. This enables them to prioritise their well-being and life satisfaction alongside success and achievement. Her mission is to help women enhance how they live, love and work by recovering from their addiction to toxic productivity.

Nearly one in five people in the UK self-identify as having a visible difference or disfigurement. Changing Faces, the UK’s leading charity for visible difference defines this as a scar, mark or condition affecting the face or body – whether it is present from birth (congenital) or acquired at some point over their life. We will look at how having a physical appearance which is outside of the “norm” can impact people on an individual, relational, and social level. We will also aim to explore our reactions to encountering “different” bodies, our associations, and the potential impact of unconscious bias.

Rebecca Wilson Green is the Service Manager and Clinical lead for the Changing Faces wellbeing services. Rebecca is a body-oriented psychotherapist (MA Dance Movement Psychotherapy, University of Roehampton) with further training in the impact of living with and beyond cancer (PgCert Cancer Survivorship, University of Salford). In her role with Changing Faces, Rebecca oversees the range of well-being services for children, young people, parents, and adults living with a visible difference – including information resources, peer support programmes, psychoeducation workshops, social & emotional support, and 1-to-1 counselling.

During this session, you will learn:

• How to tap into your emotional resilience and improve your personal and professional performance
• The stress spectrum and the link between stressful emotions, health, wellbeing and performance.
• An introduction to Havening Techniques® and the neuroscience underpinning it
• How to create calm in the brain and nervous system and reduce in-moment mental stress through Self-Havening.
• How to let go of unhelpful emotions and grow positive emotional states into traits through Havening.
• The potential benefits for social work practice.

Jan Carpenter is an Adult Social Worker of 20 years with Advanced Practitioner experience up to Safeguarding Team Manager. He is a certified executive and personal coach applying these skills as a practice lead across multiple Adult Social Care teams and as a Professional Supervisor, providing 1-2-1 coaching-oriented supervision and group reflective supervision.  

Jan has experience as a practice educator facilitator, as well as a group coach for the LGA funded Return to Social Work programme multiple times. He has been delivering training on social work skills, coaching and resilience/wellbeing for social workers for around 10 years and is the founder of Turn Over a New Leaf. Jan has overcome his traumatic stress using Havening Techniques and has since become a certified Havening Techniques Practitioner and Trainer, applying these skills to Social Workers for resilience and trauma recovery. Jan is co-author of a book called Winning Mindsets, authoring the chapter ‘Empowered Action Changes Things’. Jan applies many of such learnings in his role as an active husband and father of 2 teenage children.