Calling all mental health professionals!
Do you work in mental health? If so, we need your help with a little something we’re cooking up, to help all you good people trying to change the system from the inside.
Also in this issue - my Big Feels co-pilot Honor Eastly is gracing the pages of a major magazine. Plus the next Big Feels live event is happening, and it’s not in Melbourne! Details of where it is and how to book your spot below.
What’s it like to work in mental health *and* have big feelings?
Do you work in mental health? Do you also have your own mental health stuff going on?
We'd love to hear about your experience.
We’re currently developing an online training program for mental health professionals who have big feels of their own, but we need your help to make sure it hits the mark.
Both Honor and I know how uniquely challenging it can be to work in mental health when you also have occasion to use those services yourself. Whether you’re a psychologist, a nurse, a peer worker, or working in policy and management, having ‘a foot in both camps’ can raise all kinds of curly questions.
Do you tell your colleagues or clients about your personal history?
How do you keep your job when you’re having a really hard time of the feelings variety?
What do you do when the expectations of your role don’t sit quite right, given your own personal experience?
The truth is, we need people like you in there, doing your best to change things from the inside. So we want to try to at least make it a little easier to wrestle with these sorts of big questions.
This project is funded by a small innovation grant from Victoria’s Department of Health and Human Services, who are interested in learning how we could better support mental health professionals with personal experience of crisis and distress.
Help us make this a useful thing!
To make sure we make something useful, we’re asking mental health professionals with big feels what it’s actually like out there - starting with a wee survey.
We’d love to hear from you even if you’ve never told your colleagues or clients about your own mental health experiences. And while the resource we make will be mainly focused on Victorian workers, it will be available far and wide, so we're keen on hearing from people all over the globe.
You can do the survey completely anonymously if you like. Even if you choose to share your contact details with us, only Honor and I will know your identity.
Click that big pink button to take the 7-minute survey. It will be *extremely* useful for us.
Honor is in Elle Magazine!
What’s that? Honor has been named in a fancy magazine’s inaugural yearly list of “next-gen game changers to watch”??
Eek!
She’s even one of the main featured people! Along with such modern luminaries as Egg Boy! Check it out!
The feature gives a great shout-out to both Big Feels and No Feeling Is Final. Speaking of No Feeling (our ABC podcast about what it’s like to feel like life isn’t worth living) expect some cool news about that shortly, in the 'fancy people think we made a good thing' bucket. More on that when I can actually tell you.
OooooOOOooooo.
Meanwhile, the next Big Feels live event is in...
*nervous drum roll*
SYDNEY!
Our next Big Feels event will be in Sydney on October 16, once again at the magnificent Green Square Library.
The topic for this one is ‘How do you make and grow great friendships as a sensitive cat?’
This one’s a free event, thanks to the City of Sydney and Green Square Library bringing us over.
Woo!
You gotta register though, so click here to nab your spot. *Spots will be limited.*
Also: if there’s enough interest, we might put this on in Melbourne too - most likely as a ticketed event like last time (around $25) with the usual card-carrying member discount. Melbourne and Melbourne-adjacent feelers, please indicate your keenness for this hypothetical Melbourne event via this straw poll.
Heck yeah I'd come to that Melbourne event! I'd be there with bells on!
Or...
I regret to inform you I do not currently have any bells. As such I will not be attending.
One more thing coming your way soon
Remember how we said we’d record the last Melbourne event and make it a podcast?
Well we did record it, but the sound quality was terr-i-ble.
Luckily we made a separate recording with our resident sage-on-the-feelings-mountain Gareth while he was over here. Now that the dust has finally settled on the accelerator and the first run of Kinder Mind, I’ve cut it together for the long-awaited third episode of the Big Feels Club Podcast.
Wait what? You still have a podcast??
(Look. Technically releasing one episode a year is still “regular”. Right??)
I’m actually really excited about releasing this episode. I think it’s our best yet.
Card-carrying members, you’ll get it first (watch out for the next Patreon post.)
Everyone else, subscribe to our podcast feed to get it hot off the press. Click here to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, or search “Big Feels Club” in your podcast player.
