Workshop A

How to avoid burnout in Peer Counselling

❖ What is peer counselling?
➢ Lending a listening ear and a helping hand
■ Does not necessarily involve giving advice
➢ Forming connections
■ Connecting with others and forming human-to-human connections
■ Journeying together
■ Being fully present
➢ Empowering the other person
■ Help them understand themselves
■ About them not other things/ourselves
❖ Burn-out
➢ Being tired
➢ Becoming overwhelmed
❖ Common challenges faced by psls or peer support helpers
➢ Juggling both the duties of a peer support leader, as well as school work
➢ Coping with the negativity and shared/communal burden from those that pour
their troubles onto peer support leaders
➢ Not knowing when to draw healthy boundaries especially when listening to close
friends’ troubles
➢ Unsure of how to ask about one’s well-being in a tactful and non-direct manner
(word choice)
➢ Not knowing how to self-manage + self-motivate
❖ Understanding the psychological and practical issues involved in peer helping that could
lead to burnout
➢ Understanding what is a double bind, the limits of confidentiality,
de-enmeshment, vicarious traumatisation and how to cope
■ Double bind
● is when your friend tells you that he/she has a serious problem
that is potentially life threatening e.g. suicide ideation or suicide
attempt, self cutting or anorexia/bulimia
● But tells you not to tell anybody including parents, counsellors or
teachers
● Tells you not to betray him/her
● impact/effect: creates great anxiety and stress in the peer helper
■ Limits of confidentiality
● As a psl, you need to explain to your friend the limits of
confidentiality =- that because his/her life or well being is in
danger, you need to break confidentiality and inform a caring adult
olike his/her parent, counsellor or teacher
● To ensure he/she is sae because you care about your friend
 ●Although your friend may be temporarily upset with you, it is for
his/her own safety and he/she will eventually understand that after
calming down
■ Drawing healthy boundaries
● Your friend may try to contact you all the time with his/her
problems even very late at night eg. 1am or 2am
● You may feel very ‘sucked in’, overwhelmed and emotionally
drained by helping him/her
● It is important that you draw healthy boundaries by
◆ Centering and grounding yourself (Deep breathing and
positive self talk)
◆ Explaining that you cannot help him / her alone as you re
only a teenager and he/she should seek help from a
trusted adult or a professional like a counsellor
◆ Reassure him/her that you care about them as a friend
◆ Offer to go with him/her for the first counselling session
◆ Tell a trusted adult and seek advice how to cope
◆ Get emotional support for yourself so that you will not burn
out
■ De-enmeshment
● Enmeshed: no psychological separation between two people who
are very close
◆ Example: when your friend is very sad, you also feel sad
and cannot feel happy or centre yourself to go back to a
good place emotionally
● Solution
◆ Try not to get sucked into the problem completely
◆ Remember you and your friend are two separate people
◆ Empathise with your friend but do not become so heavily
burdened that you cannot cope and feel lousy or
depressed all the time
■ Vicarious traumatisation
● When you as a counsellor or peer helper listen to a story which
has elements of danger or threat to the client/counsellee eg your
friend is abused by parents, has self cutting or suicidal thoughts
etc and you feel traumatised and troubled and keep replaying the
images or scenario in your mind
● Solution: be aware that you may have vicarious traumatisation
speak to a counsellor
● Remind yourself your friend has strengths, resources and has
resilience
❖ How to cope when the problem is overwhelming or cannot be solved
➢ Just lending a listening ear and empathy is healing
 ➢ There may not be a solution to the problem but the person feels less alone after
sharing, release and catharsis of negative emotions
➢ Replace with relief and more positive emotions
➢ Be process oriented, not outcome or task oriented
➢ Ultimately the process of comfort and healing is more important than the actual
outcome of the situation
❖ Solution, healthy coping mechanisms and self care (remember you cannot pour from an
empty cup! = solve your own issues first before you take on others)
➢ Sleep 8 hours
■ Try for at least 7 hours!
■ Be realistic
● You need time to recharge
● Choose which issues you give ‘more’ to
● Anchor yourself - don’t go with the flow!
➢ Good nutrition
■ Healthy diet with variety of foods
● Pasta, walnuts, fruits and vegetables
➢ Exercise
➢ Serotonin and endorphins
■ Happy chemicals in brain
➢ Good time management
■ Prioritise your work and commitments
■ Talk to teachers if you feel like you’re not coping with the workload
➢ Make time for yourself and your own hobbies
■ Take part in activities outside of school that you enjoy
➢ Time for quiet
■ Relaxation
➢ Affirm yourself
■ Give yourself some appreciation and credit
● Empowers you and energises you
❖ Importance of reaching out to caring adults -- counsellors and teachers
❖ How PSLs coped when you find the students issues are triggering intense,
overwhelming feelings in us and we feel engulfed
➢ Eg student talks about depression, self cutting, suicidal thoughts etc
➢ Talk to a teacher or counsellor ou trust and feel is caring
➢ Talk to your parent
➢ Ask an adult for help
➢ Bring your friend to a caring adult for support
➢ Sometimes specialised intervention like seeing a doctor may help further
Workshop B
Brave Girl (​Not)​ Eating (Eating Disorders)
Topics Covered
- Social Media Influence
- Touched on how social media worsened her anorexia, but ironically also helped
her immensely in her recovery

- Eating Disorders
- Mentioned some rare types of eating disorders:
- How not all eating disorders receive enough care and how many people
do not know about these and assume it is the same.
- hypergymnasia​, characterized by excessive and compulsive exercise,
which often goes unnoticed until the illness is very serious to the point
where the person is malnutritioned, due to the fad of exercising and
eating healthy nowadays
- Eating disorders in boys​. Fun fact: eating disorders in boys are rising
twice as fast as girls

- Personal Journey
- Mentioned how during the recovery process, she only ate to please her mother,
which ultimately backfired because whenever she and her family had an
argument she no longer felt the need to eat, hence causing her to fall into relapse

- How to Peer Support those who are suffering from Eating Disorders
- Students shared some ways to reach out friend who is having an eating disorder
or how to identify and help a friend showing signs of anorexia
- Ways to Reach to Friends
- Direct Talk/ Face to Face communication would be better than
texting
- Approach to talk to friend in one-to-one way rather than a group so
that she feels more open in sharing
- Talking to friend without sugarcoating anything and yet at the
same time do not hurt her feelings
- Bring her food -- so that she feels obligated/ more inclined to eat.
It is a good start even though she may not want to eat at the start
if she feels obligated and starts eating she may really want to eat
- Suggest good instagram accounts/threads
- Tell her that she is beautiful just the way she is and she does not
need to be like a supermodel/Celebrity
- In the case of overeating: suggest healthier options that she can
replace her current food types with
- In the case where she is showing extreme signs, approach her
parents or any trusted adults.