Mental Health and Emotional Competencies

Resilience and Stress Management

Handling Challenges in Everyday Academia

Scientists are often exposed to high levels of psychological stress. Complex challenges with unpredictable difficulties and intense competitive pressure require strong perseverance and pronounced psychological adaptability. To remain successful and healthy in the long term, it is crucial to develop effective strategies for dealing with stress and to enhance one’s ability to cope with challenges.

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Content and Goals

In this workshop, participants will gain a deep understanding of resilience and effective stress management. Through a combination of expert input, participant interaction, and systemic coaching approaches, reflection processes are specifically stimulated, and effective coping strategies are developed. Practical exercises deepen the learned concepts and help participants to directly apply their newly acquired skills in dealing with stress and challenges.

This workshop will enhance participants’ resilience and stress management skills. Participants will:

Understand the basics of resilience and stress management and their importance for mental health.
Identify personal stressors and develop effective strategies for managing stress.
Learn techniques to promote emotional self-regulation and increase personal adaptability.
Explore methods for effective problem-solving and decision-making in stressful situations.

Affect Regulation Training

Effective Emotional Regulation for Everyday Academia

Affect Regulation Training

Emotional self-regulation is a key skill for effective self-management. It is an important component for maintaining mental health. The Affect Regulation Training (ART), developed by psychologist Prof. Matthias Berking, is an intensive program aimed at improving emotion regulation. It teaches seven skills that have been proven to be particularly effective in regulating distressing emotions.

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Content and Goals

In the training, the origins and functions of stress reactions and emotions are first explained theoretically. Then, the seven core skills (muscle and breath relaxation, non-judgmental awareness of one’s emotions, acceptance of one’s feelings, effective self-support, analysis of one’s emotions, and targeted emotion regulation) of ART are individually developed and practiced. Finally, the core skills are integrated into the so-called ART sequence. This sequence can be used to constructively deal with distressing feelings.

This training enhances emotion regulation skills. You will improve your ability to:

Understand the causes and regulatory mechanisms of emotions.
Recognize and accept your own feelings.
Deal constructively with distressing emotions.

Self-Confident and Convincing in Difficult Conversations

Improvisational Theater Techniques for Everyday Academia

A confident, authentic demeanor and a good sense of body language are key skills when dealing with colleagues, employees, and superiors. Techniques from improvisational theater can help develop these skills and successfully master difficult conversation situations.

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Content and Goals

This workshop provides training in techniques from improvisational theater for challenging communication situations. In this way, you will sharpen your perception of body language, train spontaneous and confident actions in unforeseen situations, and expand your options for handling difficult conversations.

This training will increase your communication skills. You will learn:

to recognize body language signals and interpret them correctly.
to handle unforeseen situations, e.g., in presentations and conversations, confidently.
to present yourself confidently, authentically, and convincingly.
to recognize spontaneous impulses and engage with them.

No prior acting experience is required. Comfortable clothing, suitable for theater exercises, is recommended.