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Putting Yourself First: Understanding Self-Care

How your thoughts and feelings can affect your overall mental health

Course overview:

Have you ever wondered why you feel the way you do? Why you get upset about things that others may not even notice? Putting Yourself First: Understanding Self-Care is a 4-week course intended to help you better understand and make sense of your thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

Together, we will explore the course material through the eyes of a fictional character named Sam. We will begin to understand Sam’s struggles and work together to find ways we can help him develop self-belief and compassion for himself. We will then learn how to apply the same principles to ourselves, if we wish. You will not be asked to share your own personal experiences, however you can draw upon these for the benefit of Sam.

Topics covered in Putting Yourself First: Understanding Self-Care include:

  • Our emotional regulation system

  • How the brain stores information

  • How our beliefs about ourselves develop

  • How to manage our emotions

  • Recognising our triggers

  • Managing our negative thoughts

  • Developing confidence

  • Self-care, compassion, and more

“The course deals with many tools and techniques which I have found very useful, and have used now on many occasions. There were some very good tools and techniques that were given to us and many of them I have used over the period of the course, e.g. mindfulness, grounding.”
— Previous participant on the course

Course format:

Putting Yourself First: Understanding Self-Care is a four-week course consisting of 4 x 2-hour sessions (one per week). The course is hosted by our Recovery Practitioner staff, who will guide attendees through presentations focused on the core topics above. Each session will include elements of group discussion and will allow time for questions.

This course costs £5 to attend, which is required upfront when registering to join. This small fee helps support our continued sustainability in delivering courses.

Upcoming course dates:

  • Session dates and times:

    Session 1: Friday 3 July 2026, 10:00am — 12 noon

    Session 2: Friday 10 July 2026, 10:00am — 12 noon

    Session 3: Friday 17 July 2026, 10:00am — 12 noon

    Session 4: Friday 24 July 2026, 10:00am — 12 noon

    Location:

    Central Park Hub, 16 Mayflower Dr, Plymouth PL2 3DG (map)

Register for the course:

You can sign up for any course date starting within the next 6-weeks. If the course date is later than that, please check the dates above for more information about when sign-ups will be going live. Registrations will close 1-week before the course start date or sooner when full.

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Frequently asked questions:

Check out the answers to some common questions below. If you want to ask something else, please contact us.

  • Putting Yourself First: Understanding Self-Care costs £5 to attend. Register to secure your place on the course.

  • Anyone in Devon aged 18 years or over is welcome to register for the course.

  • In order to get the most value from the course, and to ensure no one misses out on a place, we highly recommend that you attend all 4 sessions. If you fail to attend 2 sessions in a row, we may suggest that you sign up for the next course in order to gain the full benefit of the programme.

  • Attendance varies, but to keep everyone comfortable we aim for a group size of up to 12. At times this may be slightly less or more dependent on various factors, including room size, available facilitators, and demand for the course.

  • Any future dates for this course will be added to this webpage as soon as they are confirmed. We also recommend signing up to our email newsletter and following us on social media to keep up with new course and workshop dates!

  • Yes, all locations we use for our courses are accessible for wheelchair users. Please indicate on your registration form if you require wheelchair access so that we can ensure we make your arrival as easy as possible.