Education

Who are these workshops for?

Dr. Ciara Quigney & Dr. Vicky Matthews (Senior Clinical Psychologists, Adult CF service) are offering these workshops to anyone attending the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Day Care Centre. You don’t need to be struggling with anything in particular to attend. You might just like to add another few skills for dealing with life’s challenges to your pre-existing toolkit.

Workshop topics:

Below is a list of proposed workshops:

• Mindfulness skills for everyday life – Mindfulness helps us to focus more on the present, which has been demonstrated to improve out psychological wellbeing. This workshop introduces you to mindfulness and how you can incorporate it into everyday life.
• Managing anxiety using self-compassion – Treating ourselves with compassion has been shown to have a big impact on the quality of our lives and how we deal with difficult emotions such as anxiety and worry. This workshop focuses on how we can build self-compassion using imagery, self-talk and self-soothing strategies.
• Navigating the tricky mind – Our mind is amazing. It enables us plan, imagine, and create and so on. However, it often works against us causing distress. This workshop teaches you how your mind works and how you can begin to take more control using strategies to stop your mind making things more difficult for you.
• Living a meaningful life with CF – This workshop aims to help you figure out what’s really important to you in life and how you can get on the road to living a life that you value despite the barriers posed by CF and life in general.
• Interpersonal effectiveness skills – Good interpersonal effectiveness skills have been shown to be linked to healthy, meaningful and long lasting relationships. However, interactions and relationships with others are not always easy. It can be hard to figure out the best way to assert ourselves and maintain healthy relationships be that at work, home, etc. This workshops aims to help you learn skills to foster self-respect and relationships.
• Improving your mood – Life can be challenging at the best of times and it’s common for people managing a chronic illness like CF to sometimes feel low in mood. This workshop explores how we can understand low mood from a cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) perspective. From there we will explore evidence based strategies for improving mood.
• Improving Sleep – Do you struggle to get to sleep or keep waking up at night? Do you find it hard to switch off and find your sleep suffers as a result? If so, you may benefit from our Improving Sleep workshop, where we’ll teach you some handy tools and evidence-based techniques to help you get a better night's sleep.

How often will the workshops happen?

We plan to run these workshops once every month on the first Monday of the month.

How long will they run for?

Each workshop will run for 90 mins.

Do I have to attend all of them?

No. You can attend as many or little of them as you like.

Will I have to talk during the workshops?

There’s no pressure to talk during the workshops. They are skills based so it will typically be the facilitators talking. Of course, you may ask questions or chip in if you like, but you can also stay silent throughout if you prefer.

What will happen to any information I provide during the workshop?

We do not record appointments and no patient information will be stored by us. However, we cannot guarantee that the calls will be 100% secure and thus advise that no personal information of a sensitive nature is shared during the workshops.

Similar to appointments we offer in person, these sessions are confidential. However, there are some limits of confidentiality that apply. These include disclosures relating to a risk of harm to self or others, or the reporting of abuse, neglect or a crime. While we do not foresee a situation in which such disclosures would be made during these workshops, you should be aware that we may need to take further action if such disclosures are made. In an emergency, we may need to contact your GP, emergency services, or TUSLA.

How do I express my interest in the workshops?

You can self-refer to any of these workshops. If you would like to attend any of our workshops, your email address will be required so that we can send you a link to the online platform from which the workshop will be held.

If you choose to provide your email address, we will send you an email to invite you to each upcoming workshop with the relevant dates and times. You can choose whichever workshops that you would like to attend.

Click here to provide your email address.

If you do not wish to be contacted about these workshops, simply ignore this information and do not provide your email address.