Why We Need ‘Emotional Switchboards’: A Workshop on Boundaries, Rest and Asking for Help

Imagine having a remote control or switchboard with five life-saving buttons. These life-saving buttons aren’t magical pills, but something like a lifeboat, a life jacket, or a float you can toss to yourself when you’re neck-deep in overwhelming situations.

These five life-saving buttons are Boundaries, Rest, Confidence, Asking for Help, and Saying No. But how do we know when to utilise these?

Why do we need our lifeboats?

Well, most of the time, as we’re so busy with work, household chores, parenting, basically everything that ‘adulting’ would entail, we end up feeling drained, craving some quiet time, especially in our heads, let alone the room at work or home.

Since we’re so short on time, we end up sweeping everything under the carpet with a mental note that we’ll get back to it later. And that ‘later’ probably never arrives, leaving us drained and fatigued (that’s us, by the way), resentful at times, hating our jobs and the commute; basically, almost everything around us.

And the worst part is, we seldom use any of our life-saving buttons because they seem silly, or because of what people would think. We may risk offending a teenage child, a boss, a relative, or a friend. We also risk going on a one-way guilt trip that sends us spiraling, and we end up more resentful toward others, situations, life, and, worst of all, ourselves.

Do we really need to be so harsh on ourselves?

We don’t need to put ourselves through so much mental, emotional and physical pain, as it is bound to affect those around us. We don’t have to make it so hard for us all the time. Remember, we fill our cup first. So how do we catch this before it gets worse?

How my workshops help

Well, we have workshops dedicated to situations just like this. Our workshops are curated to gently remind participants that we all have our life jackets and life boats, and we are free to use them wisely.

During these workshops, I work with homemakers, professionals, and students to give them a couple of hours of quiet-me time or downtime for a self-check-in.

We sit with these five life-saving buttons: Boundaries, Rest, Confidence, Asking for Help and Saying No and take a moment to reflect on why we aren’t using it already and when we can use it.

I first conducted the Super Power Switchboard with my W.I.N.G.S Program with children (Grades 3 and 5); of course, with age-appropriate buttons, not the adulting ones. After the breakthroughs and success, I ran another session with professionals and homemakers, and it was another brilliant session.

Workshop with F.O.L.K.S

I was fortunate to get an opportunity to conduct a snippet of my workshop for the F.O.L.K.S School of Facilitation and Learning, where trainers, coaches, consultants, HR professionals, creative artists, art therapists, and homemakers recently attended, and the results were absolutely heartwarming.

Many of the professionals shared their pain point: the ability to say ‘No’ at work or home when they feel overstretched and out of bandwidth.

Professionals especially noted that their biggest pain point was being unable to say ‘No’ at the right time.

The beauty of this exercise is that we don’t compel participants to share everything they would have jotted down during their reflective questions, and we don’t expect any immediate outcome either. Just the fact that they had their breakthroughs as to where they are stuck or what’s causing the stress- the entire process to awareness is what I facilitate.

With colours and art books, the participants from the F.O.L.K.S fraternity went back feeling more aware, centred, and grounded, with a promise to toss in their life jacket whenever the situation arose.

If you’re looking for practical, emotionally safe workshops that help people pause, reset and build healthier life skills, connect with us at The Write Compass. We’d love to collaborate. We’re happy to conduct our workshops for organisations (your teams), institutions (faculty, students and academic communities), and professional learning circles that value emotional wellbeing, reflective practices and creative self‑expression. Fill up this form and we’ll get in touch with you.

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