Angie, Peer Support Worker - PICS program
My name is Angie I am a Peer Support Worker for the PICS program in Central Eastern Sydney. I have been working for One Door for 1 year now and the time has flown by so quickly. My work background in Events management and hospitality didn’t fit well with my lived experience of mental distress, if you’ve ever organised a big event or made 100 coffees in a Saturday morning café rush you’ll know what I’m talking about. Having the opportunity to work part time as a peer worker has allowed me to maintain more of a work life balance. I am so grateful to work for One Door Mental Health, where my lived experience is valued and where there is so much support around maintaining our mental health at work. To know that your employer knows about your mental health issues is such a weight off my shoulders and it helps me enormously in my recovery.
The most fulfilling parts of my job:
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Getting to know the people I support and hear their incredible stories of resilience which inspires me everyday
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Building a rapport and hearing lovely feedback from my peers that our time together is so valuable and making a difference to their lives
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Not working at a desk all day and getting to connect with so many interesting people in the community and such a diverse range of colleagues
What has peer work taught me about life:
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People want to be seen and heard – most of the time they don’t want advice or for you to come and try to fix it or make them see the positives, they want someone to listen and for some space to be held for their pain
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Silence is underrated – sometimes just being there with someone with whatever it is they are feeling without saying a word is more powerful than saying 1000 words
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The peer relationship is built on trust, shared experience and reciprocity, being authentic is a key part of this as is role modelling and boundary setting
What has helped me most in my recovery:
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Nutrition – I eat a wholefoods diet and avoid inflammatory foods as much as I can (sugar, gluten, dairy and processed foods), this has helped greatly with balancing my mood
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Movement – any form of movement to shift energy around the body and for the endorphins
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Peer work – having a job that gives me a purpose and fulfillment
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Time in nature – walks in the park, sitting near the ocean or under a tree
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Psych Education – reading books on self healing and listening to podcasts
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Dialectal Behaviour therapy – includes learning skills in interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, emotional regulation and distress tolerance
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Talk therapy
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Self care – including journaling, meditation and daily time for self reflection
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Opposite action (DBT skill) where you do something that is the opposite to the emotion you are feeling E.g you a feeling sad and you feel like isolating, instead you go to see a friend and it ends up lifting your mood and changing your emotion.