The making of our Managing Anxiety Training

Posted 3 years ago

56% of adults have reported feeling anxious as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Office of National Statistics. But even before the pandemic, anxiety has been a debilitating part of many people lives. Experiencing minor or infrequent anxious thoughts and feelings is normal and manageable, but for many people, these thoughts and feelings are frequent and/or intrusive, which impacts someone’s ability to live their life as fully and freely as they want to.

Which is why it felt so important to all of us at iHasco to provide a Managing Anxiety Training Course that offers employees simple, practical tools for them to use so they can control and reduce their feelings of unease and worry. Our course also enables employers to use it as a facilitator for some open conversations on the subject of anxiety, which can lead to some very positive improvements in their workplace and their staff’s wellbeing.

The scriptwriter (Lottie Galvin) and animator (Charlotte Cottrell) of this amazing course have given us an insight into how and why they created this training in the way they have…

Before I even started my research for this course, I knew that simply raising awareness of anxiety was not enough – this course needed to be practical. It felt important to offer our learners a course that will not only educate them, but also empower them. With anxiety management, it really is about keeping your approach as simple as possible – the tools you use need to make sense and they need to be realistic, doable and undaunting.

I drew upon my existing knowledge and experience as both a Mental Health First Aider and a person who experiences anxiety, and I conducted thorough research on both CBT techniques and mindfulness – and thus our Managing Anxiety course was born.

I wanted to remind our learners of how much they can do for themselves when they have the right tools. The bundle of ideas and techniques that we offer can provide immediate and longer term relief for people in those moments of unease, worry or fear – and our learners need no more than the willingness to try them out.

Not to mention – it’s been beautifully animated by our Loco Cottrell – it’s a work of art as much as it is a practical resource! Investing 28 minutes of your time into this training will be time very well spent.

I am very proud of the course that we have produced. Lottie has written a beautiful, sensitive script and I knew that it was important that my animations matched that. We came up with this idea of representing anxiety as a literal elephant in the room. The idea behind it being that anxiety can feel like a big obstacle in people’s lives. I hand animated it in Photoshop so that I could get a rough, drawn effect. By animating this elephant by hand it gives the lines a slight ‘wobble’ effect – this is called boiling. A lot of animators will spend hours and hours on ‘clean up’ so that they can reduce the amount of boiling in their animations, but for this project, I wanted to make the course look like a personal sketchbook or journal.

To go back to the elephant – he’s big, he gets in the way sometimes and he can make your day harder, but when I designed and animated him, it was so important that he didn’t appear or feel malicious. He isn’t a scary monster or a demon that you have to fight and conquer. He represents our anxieties – anxieties that we can manage. They feel big and scary, but really – they are the parts of us that need a little bit of TLC.

You can also see Charlotte talking about her work on this beautiful course in our Quarterly Vlog from 2020. While the whole Vlog gives a fantastic insight into the new updates and projects, including a virtual film shoot, Brexit & GDPR, Food Safety and our new team members from April 2020… if you want to hear more about how Charlotte took on the Managing Anxiety Course, check out the video below!

Managing Anxiety Training

If you would like to know more about what anxiety is, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and ideas and tools to manage anxiety then our IOSH Approved Managing Anxiety Training is the perfect tool for employers to provide employees with. Anxiety can affect each person differently, so it’s important that staff are provided with a range of ways to handle those feelings that suits them best…

Get started with your free no-obligation trial today!

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