Janette’s story

Having my eyes opened…something we should all attend

This week I had the pleasure of attending one of our face-to-face courses, ‘An Introduction to Personality Disorder’.  As I am usually working from home it was like a breath of fresh air to get out there into the community and meet up with some lovely people, our students and one of our facilitators, Hannah.

My busy role with the Recovery College is based around administration, and I don’t always get the chance to attend as many of our courses that I would like to, however, I’m really pleased I had the opportunity to join this one.

By attending the course, it made me realise that there is nothing like listening first-hand to the experiences and views of some of our students, some living with the condition, to give you a clearer picture of their experiences and struggles they deal with daily.  Along with the professional input from Hannah, and the discussions held in the group, I now have a much better understanding of the myths and stigmas some of our service users/students must deal with everyday whilst living with this condition.

I would encourage anyone out there, including staff from the Trust and other services to take up the opportunity of attending any of our free, informative courses or workshops.  I am confident they will provide you with the added knowledge and skills to help you understand more around the lived experience of our service users/students, which in turn will help you support them through their recovery journey.

I would like to thank the students on this course for sharing their experiences by being open and honest, I realise for some this wasn’t an easy thing to do.  Also, to Hannah, our facilitator who has a vast understanding of the condition and clearly simplified the presentation around what our students wanted to know.

Best wishes

Janette