27/08/2026
Friday 21st of August had two of our volunteers attend a CORES Australia workshop on Understanding Mental Wellbeing for Effective Communication, held in the Devonport Library.
What an extraordinary day it was.
What follows are the take-homes from both our attendees:
Melissa:🌻What I’m taking with me from this workshop
During the Understanding Mental Wellbeing for Effective Communication workshop, I became really present to how much “noise” there can be in communication. All the stories, interpretations and assumptions we put around what happens.
It reminded me that what we send in communication is not necessarily what the other person receives. There is always another person, with their own experiences, stories and way of understanding.
But what stayed with me most was something I am currently practising: boundaries.
I realised that my wellbeing in communication is not only about being kind and understanding towards others. It is also about being present with myself while communicating with them.
I can care about someone's difficult situation without abandoning my own boundaries. I can be kind and still be clear. I can respect someone else's experience while respecting my own.
When I practised this recently, I noticed something simple but powerful: when my words were kind, straight and clear, I felt aligned.
So I left the workshop not feeling like I had “learned” something and finished it.
I left with a new practice — a piece of homework for my own wellbeing in communication. 🧡
Suz: I went into this day-long Kentish Regional Clinic course, with some consideration that I had done a lot of work myself on, and in, being an effective communicator.
And while I really get that there is always ground to take, I noticed my slightly dismissive assumption that there may not be a lot that would be new for me.
What occurred throughout the enquiry, and through interacting with Charlie our course leader, and the other participants, was that I gained an additional and much more nuanced understanding of the challenges we face in getting our thoughts, experiences and concepts across to another human being.
I understood that there are filters on both sides of a dialogue. Charlie shared a particular diagram with us that illustrated the “noise” that exists, and the weight of pre-existing history and experiences that our communication has to travel through — both in speaking and sending a communication, and in hearing and receiving one.
I hadn't realised how much that visual would have me re-experience a deep compassion for all of us: I was surprised that our communication gets through to each other at all!
It gave me a much greater appreciation of why communication sometimes doesn't get through, particularly in those moments when connecting with another human being is challenging.
It seemed a bit of a miracle that we can transfer any information when you consider all of those factors.
What else that was memorable for me was the experience I had when we explored what seemed like a simple topic: what, in fact, IS mental wellbeing, and what is mental illness?
I was suddenly taken back to an experience I had while watching a movie. My relationship to the main character altered completely between the moment she stood outside an institution and the moment she was admitted.
My rational brain could hear that whatever she was doing and saying hadn't changed. And yet, suddenly, because she was inside the walls of an institution, my relationship to her had automatically changed. I allowed 'those that (supposedly) know', the institution, to influence how I connected to her and I was shocked at my sudden abdication of my own relationship to her.
This experience came up as we were discussing the difference between mental wellbeing and mental illness.
I also saw something in myself: the automatic assumption that comes with the word “mental.”
As soon as that word entered the conversation, I noticed my own stigma around it — an assumption that this had something to do with someone who might be “slightly crazy”, and me wanting to distance myself from that.
And yet, the whole course was about mental wellbeing and communication.
I’m not sure I can fully communicate how profound that realisation was.
It had me wondering how much other people's opinions influence me in my relationships with people... and with myself.
I also saw that if I have this reaction to the words “mental wellbeing” — if I automatically collapse it into something to do with mental illness — then I, too, have confused or collapsed the definition of what it means to be mentally well.
And where, exactly, did I pick up that relationship?
My mental wellbeing is something I can all influence, just as I can influence my physical wellbeing.
Being physically fit is as important as my mental wellbeing - with one supporting the other. Yet the stigma attached to the word “mental” can load that word automatically, in my listening, even though intellectually I know that mental wellbeing is distinct from mental illness.
Running into my own biases was a surprise.
And it had me questioning: what other sacred cows do I hold?
The day was intimate and personal. (And what does THAT word evoke as you read it?)
The sharing was vulnerable and nurturing, under the very thoughtful leadership of Charlie from the Kentish Regional Clinic.
Once again, the Kentish Regional Clinic has crafted and delivered another valuable and powerful program in its' suite of programs designed to support all of us — if you are a human being! — in living well, being well, and developing supportive sensitivities towards those around us.
If you support a group of people supporting others, or are someone for whom your people skills is just part of who you are AND you want to know more......reach out to
CORES Australia
