AccessEAP wishes you all the best for the Festive Season. We appreciate the opportunity to be your pro-active mental health and wellbeing service and would like to thank you for continuing your partnership with us. Through utilising the service, you have helped make the lives of vulnerable children and families a little easier. As a profit-for-purpose organisation our surplus profits go to programs that support vulnerable women and children. For more information about the H.O.P.E. Program, see here.

Please be assured our counselling and onsite services are available 24/7, 365 days a year however our other business functions observe the Australian public holidays and a break from 26th December to 13th January 2023.

As we reach the end of the year, reset with our 12 Wellbeing Tips for the Festive Season. AccessEAP is here to support you through the festive season and into the new year. Call us on 1800 818 728.

Download a copy here.

The AccessEAP 2023 Wellbeing Calendar and Quarter 1 Pack has launched! Finding Balance within our personal and professional lives can be tricky so we have created the Quarter 1 Pack to help get you started. 

The theme for Quarter 1 is Finding Balance, highlighting the following key awareness days: 

• 24th January: International Day of Education 
• 13th February: Anniversary of National Apology Day 
• 8th March: International Women’s Day 
• 17th March: World Sleep Day 
• 21st March: Harmony Day

Download the Quarter 1 Pack - Finding Balance
Access the calendar and the Q1 Pack (Poster, Infographic & Activity) via the Employee Login Area - https://www.accesseap.com.au/employees/index.php

Email Template and Suggested Training & Services
The calendar along with leader resources and suggested training & services is available via the Employer Login- https://www.accesseap.com.au/employers/index.php 

We’ve all done it. It seemed like the right thing to say or do at the time – maybe we thought it would sound witty or be deeply appreciated. Or maybe it was a knee-jerk reaction. Whatever the circumstance, we have all experienced those moments when the outcome is so very different to what we imagined, and then when we ask ourselves “Why did I just do that?” we don’t have an answer… and we then criticise ourselves for acting in the way we did.

A lot of those moments come down to not paying thoughtful attention to our and others’ emotions. Emotional Intelligence is “The ability to monitor your own and others’ feelings, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions” (Salovey & Mayer, 1990).

Let’s unpack that.

First, it’s the ability to be aware that you or someone else is feeling something. We are always feeling something. Even feeling neutral about something is feeling something. So it’s the ability to recognise that feelings are always with us and to pay attention to this.

Second, it’s the ability to discriminate what you or someone else is feeling. You notice you are feeling something, and then you pause and ask yourself – what is that? Aim to put a label to it. Is that tightening in your stomach anger, anxiety or excitement? When we practice, we can get quite good at assigning labels to emotions. We might be able to label an emotion as ‘embarrassed anger’ or ‘nervous anxiety’ or ‘fearful excitement.’ Getting more fine-grained in identifying how we and others might be feeling helps us with the next step.

November 18th is White Ribbon Day. It's an opportunity to bring people together – in person or online - to raise awareness and commit to action to prevent violence against women. Learn more about the day and how you can keep the momentum going forward on the White Ribbon Website here.

On October 17^th State and Federal governments released the National Plan to end violence against women and children. This is a 10-year plan that includes a framework of actions to end violence against women and children in one generation. It highlights how all parts of society including governments, business and workplaces, media, schools, and communities must work together towards a shared vision of ending gender-based violence.

Read more about the plan and how AccessEAP can support you and your organisation in our article- Release of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-2032.

This November Support Act is partnering with triple j and the Australian Recording Industry Association for AusMusic T-Shirt Day. It's a great way to show support for Australian music - and the people who make it. The day will be held on Friday the 18th of November and will help raise funds to provide crisis relief and mental health services to artists, crew and music workers who are doing it tough.

"Ausmusic T-Shirt Day is an annual day of fun and awareness to celebrate Aussie music and raise urgently-needed funds for music workers in crisis. After the last few shocking years of bushfires, pandemic, floods and now the sky high cost of living, the music industry needs your help more than ever before." Visit the AusMusic T-shirt Day Website here.

The Support Act Wellbeing Helpline is a free, confidential counselling service that is available to anyone working in Australian music (all genres), or the Australian Performing Arts, who needs to talk to someone about any aspect of their wellbeing. It is delivered in partnership with AccessEAP, and is staffed by professional counsellors who offer expertise in all areas related to mental health (e.g. depression, anxiety, addiction) as well as issues which can be mental health-related (such as loneliness, relationship breakdown, financial worries, illness and workplace conflict).

The service is accessible 24 hours a day, 365 days per year by calling 1800 959 500 within Australia. Find out more information about the Support Act Wellbeing Helpline here.

Embedding link: https://vimeo.com/672144321

MYTH 1 - What about Confidentiality? Someone will find out, my boss and colleagues will know.

Although the EAP counselling sessions are paid for by your employer, the counsellors are independent and anything you discuss with a counsellor is confidential unless; there is a risk of harm to you or someone else or disclosure is required by law. While we do need to collect a few details from you when booking your first appointment, your personal information is kept confidential. AccessEAP has refused to work with organisations who cannot accept our confidentiality code of conduct. Your organisation respects the privacy and confidentiality of the services provided to you to improve your wellbeing.

MYTH 2 - If I have a problem my friends and family will talk/help me through it.

Although you may receive support from family and friends one difference between speaking with a counsellor and a close friend is that the counsellor has a broad knowledge and understanding of human behaviour. Sometimes it also just helps to speak with someone objective who isn’t emotionally involved with you or the situation.

The words ‘Self-Care’ are used to describe those things we do to sustain ourselves through difficulties and help us feel buoyant. A useful way to think of it is that we have various ways in which we can nourish ourselves. There’s the way that is most obvious – the food we eat.  And then there are other ways – the music we listen to, the books that we read, the artwork and scenery that we look at, the conversations that we engage in. All these activities feed us through our senses.

How to start:

1. Take a moment to remember a conversation or interaction that really nourished you. What were you talking about? Who were you with? Perhaps it was with close friends or colleagues talking about a topic that really mattered to all of you? Maybe you came away from it feeling calmer, or clearer, or more alive?
2. Then take a moment to remember a conversation or interaction that left you feeling drained – perhaps you felt somehow diminished by it.
3. You can apply this same exercise to the music you listen to, the books and articles that you read, what you spend time looking at (which can include what you wear), as well as, of course, the food that you eat.
4. Having made a mental (or actual) list of what nourishes you and what doesn’t – the next step can be to decide what a really healthy, sustaining way of living looks like for you – food, reading, conversations, music, what you look at, what you wear.

Nourishing ourselves like this helps us face and work with the inevitable difficulties of life and work. Rates of burnout and fatigue are rising in Australia. The latest ELMO survey of Australian workers (reported in April this year) found that almost half are feeling burnt out – a 10% increase on the same period last year. The increase is attributed to our increased workloads – 24% said they had taken more responsibilities in their jobs, and 32% feel overwhelmed with the amount of work they need to do. This is coupled with 44% of survey respondents saying they want things to change and are seeking greener pastures – they are planning to look for a different job this year.

Self-care is an activity we can do both individually and collectively as a whole organisation. As an individual you can ask yourself what ways of living nourish you. As a leader or manager, you can ask your employees how they are finding their workplace and workload, and what nourishes them.

Our Reconciliation Action Plan is an important part of our journey of cultural responsiveness and sensitivity, enabling us to sustainably and strategically take meaningful action to advance reconciliation.

We recognise the need to offer the opportunity to speak with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Counsellor or a Culturally Sensitive Counsellor. We have an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples Dedicated Support Line to facilitate a culturally safe referral for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. We partner with a range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Organisations and are currently offering EAP services to the staff of an Aboriginal community organisation, working with them to ensure our training is culturally appropriate and is being delivered by either an Indigenous facilitator or co-facilitator.

We are on this path with the guidance of Aunty Gail Daylight, a proud and strong Aboriginal woman from the Kamilaroi Nation.

 Aunty Gail is a proud and strong Aboriginal woman from the Kamilaroi Nation, is married and has 2 children and 2 grandchildren.

There are many different personal boundaries at work that, when acknowledged and respected, make for a fairer more equitable work environment. Here, we focus on the importance of respecting workload boundaries - an issue we are hearing more of.

What is a boundary? The dictionary definition is “a line which marks the limits of an area; a dividing line”. So inherent in the word boundary is knowing our own and other people’s limits.

Let’s look at two examples.

• After Jim said ‘yes, sure, I’ll take care of that’ to the sixth person that day, he realised he had a problem. How was he going to get all this done? There was still his own work to do, and he’d promised to help all these other people. Another late night…
• Sarah was great at strategy and planning – came as second nature to her. She had risen up the ranks fast. She liked working long hours, and expected others to do the same. It wasn’t unusual to receive an email from Sarah that had been sent after midnight asking for work to be completed that same day, regardless of the other work the person had planned.

While there are many differences in their behaviours, one thing that is similar between these two people is their lack of acknowledgment of and respect for workload boundaries.  In Jim’s case, it’s lack of acknowledgement of his own boundaries. There is a saying that any strength, when taken to extremes, becomes a weakness. Jim’s wish to help others is commendable – we all like it when a colleague offers to assist us with something. But in Jim’s case, he is helping so much that his own work is suffering – and it’s quite possibly negatively affecting his own wellbeing.

In Sarah’s case, again, the ability to work long hours and bring others along for the ride can certainly help boost productivity and produce great results – but taken to extremes, it leads to others burning out, and perhaps becoming resentful that their own priorities are not being acknowledged.

It’s ok not to be ok. It’s even more ok than ever to not be ok through our current pandemic. When you find yourself consistently challenged in ways you’ve never really experienced before, over an extended period of time, it’s easy to feel drained. We are in a period of time that we can say is unique for most of us as our lives change and evolve in response to the pandemic. At the moment that you find yourself reading this take a pause and acknowledge that in spite of all the challenges you have done the best you can do, and that’s more than can be expected. Remember, “It’s ok not to be ok”.

If you need to prioritise your self-care download our Personal Tool for Keeping Mentally Healthy.

Support is available. Reach out to us here at AccessEAP on 1800 818 728.

The Mission Statement for R U OK? is to inspire and empower everyone to meaningfully connect with people around them and support anyone struggling with their life circumstances. R U OK? has resources to help create the skills for great conversations that are a normal part of your everyday check-ins with colleagues and friends. It was started by Gavin Larkin, whose father committed suicide in 1995. In 2009, Gavin chose to champion just one question - “are you OK?” - to honour his father and to try to protect other families from the pain of suicide. Working with Janina Nearn, the R U OK? movement was born.

Asking R U OK? is not just for R U OK? Day (held each year, nationally, in early September). It’s a habit for all of us to cultivate every day of the year. Checking in on someone when we notice they might not be OK assists people to feel connected, supported and hopefully prevents them from spiralling downwards.

In addition to us as individuals checking in on the people around us, we can help create an R U OK? workplace culture. An R U OK culture means that you feel comfortable asking your colleagues how they are every day - and mean it! Be ready to have a chat if they say they’re not ok – take the time to be with them to listen. Trust your gut instinct if you sense someone isn’t OK – reach out to them and have a chat.  It’s a workplace culture where leaders role model caring behaviours towards others, taking time to listen. An R U OK? culture is having time for each other and asking someone if they’re ok if you sense that they aren’t.

What are you doing to contribute to the creation of that sort of culture?

It might be that a colleague’s behaviour changes in some way. They may seem withdrawn, not their usual chatty self, they may have taken a few days off work unexpectedly, or seem irritable, and this change in behaviour continues for a week or two. It’s important to be aware that if these signs continue to be present for more than a couple of weeks it is advisable that someone see their GP or make contact with a counsellor (perhaps through their EAP program).

#WomensHealthWeek 5-11 September 2022

With the stress COVID has placed on everyone's lives, along with other challenges faced in 2022, it’s now more important than ever to look after your overall health and wellbeing. This September, Women’s Health Week will be a great reminder to take time out to check in on your health and to keep making positive changes that can last a lifetime.

For more information and resources visit the Jean Hailes' Women's Health Week Website. It's time to put your health first.

With so many competing demands and expectations, the struggle to keep up with both work and home commitments can be extremely stressful. When stress persists to a point that a person feels they aren’t coping, it can affect the functioning of their day-to-day life as well as their overall wellbeing. The stressors of too much ‘juggling’ together with trying to do things well and be ‘good’ at everything is impacting women and their ability to sleep, think clearly and make decisions.

If you would like to arrange an appointment for yourself call us on 1800 818 728. Find out more about our counselling service here.

Life is always unpredictable and to some degree, confusing. And for many of us, this is one of those times. With the ongoing pandemic, natural disasters and personal changes in our lives, it can be hard to find a way of being that doesn’t draw us into feelings of anxiety and uncertainty.

And this is where Positive Psychology comes in.

Positive Psychology is not about pretending that everything is OK, and it’s not “look on the bright side!” That sort of ‘positivity’ is not helpful and can be upsetting in certain situations. Positive Psychology is the scientific study of what helps us to flourish. And when we flourish, we are much more likely to be more creative and be better at solving complex problems and meeting adversity. The term ‘flourish’ is often used in positive psychology. It means more than just managing and getting through life. Martin Seligman, one of the founders of positive psychology, talks about flourishing as finding fulfilment in our lives, accomplishing meaningful and worthwhile tasks, and connecting with others at a deeper level.

These are ways of living that we can pursue, whatever is happening around us. Ways to move towards flourishing are summed up in the PERMAH model. You can read about PERMAH and other ways of living that help us live a full and meaningful life in our Positive Psychology tip sheet (access through the AccessMyEAP App).

Along with cultivating flourishing, it is also important to be kind to ourselves. All of us will, at times, face adversity. By cultivating self-kindness, self-forgiveness, and self-compassion, we are better able to handle and recover from adversity, and we are better able to practice kindness, forgiveness and compassion towards others. These, together with pursuing a flourishing life, can create a sturdy raft on which we can navigate unpredictable and confusing times.

Exercise 

• Exercise provides a mood boost and a more energised outlook on life thanks to the release of endorphins. Exercise can help to lift low mood.
• Exercising with a buddy, provides a sense of belonging through the sharing of common interests. It also helps motivate and keep you on track toward your health goal.
• Participating in a sport or reaching a personal physical goal promotes a sense of mastery, accomplishment and increases self–esteem. Set yourself a physical goal no matter what your current fitness level is. Remember tackling small ‘chunks’ of a larger goal will see you mastering your chosen activity in no time! For example, commit to a 20-minute power walk each morning and increase this by 10 min increments each week until you are walking an hour a day.
• Exercise improves cognitive function. It has been proven decision-making and problem-solving ability improves after exercise. We all know the feeling of going out for a walk and coming back with a ‘clear’ mind. Some may even choose to use their lunch break as an hour to hit the gym, go for a jog, walk or train in a group.

Sleep

• A good night's sleep helps foster both mental and emotional resilience. Chronic sleep disruptions set the stage for negative thinking, depression, anxiety and emotional vulnerability. Being physically active throughout the day can help you get a restful sleep. See here for more tips to sleep well. 

Nutrition 

• There is a growing body of evidence to demonstrate that the food we eat affects our mental health. For example, dietary changes have been successfully trialled in the treatment of clinical depression. The positive effects of good gut health also extend to improved mental performance, something to think about!

• AccessEAP offers the opportunity to receive a consultation with a nutritionist for advice about dietary changes to better support wellbeing. One nutrition consultation is part of your EAP session entitlement.

We know we need sleep but how do we get a good night's sleep? 

It's important to have sufficient, regular, good quality sleep so we can function effectively in our busy lives and help to maintain strong, robust immune systems. Nine hours a day is the standard health professionals suggest while realising that for many people, because of multiple competing demands, this is often difficult to achieve. The importance of short “nana naps” cannot be underestimated, as well as short, still “zone out times” during the day to help us to refresh our brains and bodies. If we review our sleep pattern there are probably some small things we can do to make our routine healthier – and we’re likely to then be surprised by the difference they make.

Some Useful Tips

• Aim to go to bed at a similar time as often as you can so you can have enough hours to help repair and heal the body from the stressors of the previous day.
• Spend a quiet period immediately prior to turning in to help your body and mind settle.
• A warm bath or shower before bed can trick the body into calming down, loosening.
• Get to know your body and the effects of alcohol, spicy food and other stimulants too close to your bedtime.
• It is preferable to keep your bedroom as distraction-free zones - no phones, TVs, iPads etc.
• Darkening the room so your body automatically prepares itself for rest can be helpful.
• If listening to music, keep the volume low enough and the type of music soothing enough, so you are likely to drift off.
• If you regularly wake up during the night and have difficulty falling back to sleep, remember that it may help to get up, have some water or a soothing tea, sit and quietly breathe, rather than lying in bed tense and frustrated that you are awake. Once we notice you are feeling more soothed and settled return to bed.
• Some people find it helps to read for a while or have a shower before trying again. It is to do with interrupting the pattern of tension and trying something different that may help to soothe your mind and body.

It is worth formulating your own list of practical, healthy, accessible, common sense ways to soothe your body and mind, so you can get optimised times of rest and rejuvenation.

We’re kind to friends and our colleagues. We encourage our children to be kind. So why is it hard to turn that lens of kindness back onto ourselves? Are we are being selfish, wasting time with self-care? We know how hard it can be, especially during a pandemic, to be nice to ourselves but if we drive ourselves on relentlessly, something will give.

At AccessEAP, we talk to a lot of people about their ‘stress signature’. How do you know if you’re stressed? Stress shows up in our bodies (headaches, racing heart, insomnia), in our thoughts (excessive worry and catastrophising), behaviours (drinking to relax, not sleeping well) and relationships (being snappy with people, reactive to situations that normally slide right past us). 

Stress can be pretty awful, but it has reasons for putting us on edge. That surge of adrenaline when we are in danger tells our heart to pump blood to our limbs. Non-essential systems like digestion shut down (hence that sinking feeling in our gut when we are scared). This allows us to fight our way out of danger, or flee. Which is good when confronted with something dangerous but not so useful in our day-to-day lives. If we are constantly on edge, our fight or flight status leaves us exhausted. The stress hormone, cortisol, is key to this defence system but long-term it plays havoc with our bodies – blood sugar and blood pressure skyrocket, memory is affected, higher levels at night create insomnia.

By identifying our personal stress signatures, we can try and intervene to minimise the short and long term impacts on our lives. This can be as simple as taking a lunch break (not working while you eat), or making sure you have a real weekend with people you care with (not always checking emails). We all know the concept of self-care; eat well, exercise, relax, social connection, get enough sleep. It’s hard to fit what feels like downtime into our busy lives, but the benefit is huge in terms of our health, sanity, quality time with family and friends, and increased clear thinking, which means higher productivity.

For more tips on Self-care and managing stress during the pandemic, click here.

Sunday 24^th July 2022 is Stress Down Day, a fun and easy initiative designed to reduce stress and raise vital funds for Lifeline Australia. Stress Down Day promotes happiness, encourages help seeking and raises awareness of suicide prevention through raising funds for Lifeline's crisis support services. For more information, check out the Lifeline Website.

"Research shows that 90% of Australians feel stressed - with 74% of people reporting being stressed from work. This Stress Down Day we are asking you to 'task yourself with 30 minutes of movement' in recognition of the importance of taking some time out to relax your mind and body and give yourself a break:

• 30 minutes of yoga
• A walk around the block or along the beach
• Swim
• Ride
• Dance

Whatever form of movement makes your body feel good!" Stress Down Day.

Self-care and managing stress during the COVID-19 pandemic

For more information or to arrange an appointment, please contact us on 1800 818 728.

Productive conversations take time. They contain personal reflection and emotional self-management, perhaps also preparation. They certainly utilise active listening, a desire to be clear, to collaborate and to follow-up. Rushing is the enemy of a constructive conversation.

Yet conversational skills are almost never taught in schools, and are actively being eroded with the ever increasing modalities available to us to communicate in short-hand – texting, emailing, instant chat (often with auto-suggest). Actively building your conversational skills, and taking time with others to have these conversations, takes effort. But it’s effort well spent. It says ‘I want to understand you and build ideas and ways forward with you, it’s important to me, and I’m willing to invest the time to do it.’ As a leader, the way you converse with those around you lets people know the degree to which you value them (or not).

There are important elements in a constructive conversation. Here are some of our top tips-

Most important is the ability to listen. Listening is not just something we do as we impatiently wait our turn to speak next. Active listening is something that feeds our understanding of the other person and the situation they are describing. We listen with our ears and eyes – not jumping to conclusions, and not being busy in our mind creating the next thing we are going to say. We are curious and patient. As the saying goes, active listening is not listening to respond. It’s listening to understand.

Empathy and compassion are important. Empathy is our ability to take the perspective and feel the emotions of another – to stand in another’s shoes. Compassion is when those feelings and thoughts include the desire to help. A constructive conversation has within it the wish to help the other person express themselves clearly. Perhaps we ask questions to help this process, perhaps we check our understanding of what the other person is saying and feeling – for example, “it sounds like you are disappointed because...”, or perhaps we simply stay silent and listen without judgement.

There is no doubt that COVID has had a wide-ranging impact on all of us. We know that one thing people often worry about is their financial situation. Financial worry is normal. Financial security, job security and a steady income are important basic things we require to provide for our loved ones, to feel safe and secure. Financial security supports our wellbeing, such as leisure time and activities. The loss of that security creates uncertainty and anxiety. If we are not careful to manage our thoughts and emotions, financial stress can dominate our thoughts 24/7 and impact on our health and wellbeing.

The way we view our financial situation can shape our thoughts and feelings more generally. Financial challenges can occur at many times during our lives – getting married or separated, buying or selling a home, illness, reduced work hours or redundancy. Understanding financial concepts can be confusing, but getting your finances in order will help reduce stress and get you back on track. Remember, you are not alone, and there is help available.

Here are some basic tips on reducing finance-related stress:

1) Learn to budget: If your financial situation is causing you stress, it’s vital to create a budget. Record all income and expenditure and know exactly what you spend on non-essential items. Be critical of what you are spending and cut down on any unessential items if necessary.

2) Pay off debt: Review and consolidate loans to help get them under control. Pay off your credit card debt and remember to start with the credit card with the highest interest rate.