I had the assessment today for the Mental Health First Aider course I was on last week and I’m pleased to be able to say that I passed.
I of course spent most of the morning beforehand in an anxious read and re-read of the course materials and nearly set off an anxiety attack with my brain catastrophising wildly.
Gentle breathing exercises and customer enquiries to distract me kept me going, but I’m now exhausted. Who knows what’s in store for tomorrow…
Somewhat fittingly I’m currently quietly stressing about the assessment tomorrow afternoon for the First Aid for Mental Health certificate. I’ve every confidence in my ability as its basically what I regularly do for staff and customers every day – I just worry about acronyms and jargon.
I know it’s just my brain pulling its usually tricks, all will be well. Even if I don’t pass I’ll still be supporting people as ever.
Oh, and I applied for a thing speculatively in the restructure but I’m not expecting to hear anything on that front. Still a minor stress to throw into the mix but there you go.
Today was pretty intense with a concentrated combined learning approach to teaching mental health first aid. I should specify it was me getting trained rather than imparting my wisdom to the masses.
As a technical note, the course is the FAA Level 2 Award in First Aid for Mental Health and so there will be a formal assessment on Thursday before I can earn the qualification. Essentially the training is in how to be the initial response and advocate when mental health needs addressing – and formalises the sort of general pastoral support I do with staff and public as well as friends and family.
Most of it is common sense and appropriate signposting and de-escalation, but it’s still been heavy going with a lot of my own issues raked up in the process. Still, if it means I can help people it’s worth it.
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