Resilience for Professionals

Every day, our community's helping professionals face tremendous challenges related to compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and burnout. Often they suffer in silence as they navigate the landscape of mental, emotional, and physical stress. These challenges take a deep toll on work life, family life, and overall health.

Resilience for Professionals has been offered since 2018, providing tools and support to hundreds of helping professionals in the Grand Valley.

What is Resilience for Professionals?

• The program includes nine classes on Wednesday afternoons, 1 pm-4:30 pm, from MARCH 26 - MAY 21, 2025
• Limited scholarships are available – please email [email protected] for information
• Classes are facilitated by Sydney Elks, MA, LPC
• Combination of didactic and experiential activities based on current research
• Whole group, small group, and individual exploration
• Provides participants with a practical understanding of the neurobiology of stress
• Offers evidence-based tools to increase self-awareness, as well as mitigate and prevent negative effects of stress
• Participants learn and practice skills to foster responsiveness (vs. reactivity) in the face of stressors
• Participants develop strategies to address compassion fatigue and increase work satisfaction
• Long-term lifestyle changes allow for emotional regulation, improved relationships, and a deeper sense of well-being

This program is suitable for anyone in the community who is in a helping profession. Past participants have included individuals in the medical field, education, law enforcement, animal welfare, environmental conservation, social services, faith communities, mental health professionals, and more.

Light snacks are provided.

Attendance is limited to 15 participants.

Each class builds on the previous class, culminating in the creation of a personal resilience plan in the final class.

Resilience is not a quick fix and this course is not group therapy, nor is it a means to address organizational dysfunction. The course DOES encourage participants to know themselves better, shift perceptions regarding their stress, and feel empowered to affect lasting change and bring balance into their own lives.

If you have questions, feel free to call 970-462-7118.

Attendees continue to praise this program. Here are a couple examples from previous participants:

"Amazing. Every organization should send people. Benefits: Happy and understood employees perform better. Happy employees also STAY."

"This class was such a light to my soul. This is what I needed to fill in the holes in who I was and am becoming. MUCH appreciation and respect."

Host or Publisher Grand Valley Gives