# Transcript

SOPHIE TERRILL:

I’ve actually found cognitive behavioural therapy approaches really helpful, and it’s something which is brought up in the Learning Guide within the suggested readings. It’s a really helpful way of trying to manage my reactions and stress levels in a situation. I think particularly if you’ve had bad experiences and they’ve involved a particular situation or scenario, and you find yourself in something similar again, that’s really helpful to try and put into perspective what is fact and what is coming from your feelings. So, what maybe anxieties and worries you have going into a situation and how they’re causing you stress, so sometimes to try and step back and say actually, ‘do you know what, it’s a past situation that’s making me feel like that. It’s not worth responding like that in that situation and it causing me further stress’ and that can build your resilience because I think you’ve actually given yourself the time to step back and say, you know, ‘I can respond differently to this actually and there’s a different way for me to manage my stress within this.’ I think using supervision is a really really important tool in managing your stress levels and staying resilient as a social worker. If you’ve got good supervision, it gives you time to step back, look at your cases, see where you’re managing, where you’re perhaps not managing so well. So actually within that supervision, it’s also really important to be honest, which can be quite difficult as a newly qualified social worker where you’re trying, trying to make the best of your opportunities and you’re perhaps trying to give off the impression that you know what you’re doing when you don’t feel like that all the time, but it’s really important to be open and honest because if there is something which is causing you real worry, real stress, and you’re finding it’s getting to the point where you are not coping with it anymore, then it is something that you need to take higher and recognising that will help you build resilience and recognise in the future when you get to that point.