Addiction to Internet, social media, video games, pornography, shopping, eating or gambling – are the most common behavioral addictions. These – according to WHO standards – are treated as diseases. One of successful tools against it proposed by Foundation for Family Planning is self coaching. It’s a novel method of behavioral addiction prevention based on being one’s own coach. That requires accurate knowledge of one’s capabilities, limitations, emotions and behavior. Put it shortly, self coaching is a valuable and important ability, worth learning and maintaining for one’s own development. Through learning of one’s own strong and weak sides, it’s easier to handle temptations and lead a balanced life.

In 2013 Foundation for Family Planning team fulfilled a pilot program “Self coaching – behavioral addiction prophylaxis”, mainly amongst middle-school students. In 2014, the project is mostly addressed to youngsters in correctional facilities, troubled neighborhood daycares and rehabilitation facilities.

Project’s objectives:

– enhance competencies for people professionally involved in correctional or educational work

– making the subject of behavioral addiction familiar to education workers and psychologists.

– making people aware of social and health consequences of behavioral addictions.

– creating a trend among teens for life without addiction

– increased vigilance of education workers and teachers for diagnosis of problems co-existing with behavioral addictions, as well as initial procedures in case of spotting a behavioral addiction.

– making coaching familiar as a method of correctional, preventative or psychological work

Project “Self coaching – behavioral addiction prophylaxis” is being fulfilled by Foundation for

Family Planning in Wroclaw from May 1st 2014 through December 31 2014 and is being

financed by Lower Silesia Marshall’s Office.

News:

22.10.2014

Another free of charge training project by Foundation for Family Planning in Wroclaw is drawing to a close. Ahead of us is the last session from the “Self Coaching – behavioral addiction prevention” project. In the first half of 2014, we trained employees of correctional and rehabilitation facilities, now our specialist staff is training psychology and pedagogics students from Lower Silesian Universities. We train groups of 15, however, if not for the project’s program, stressing intensive work in smaller groups, we could have easily doubled the number of seats, and still had people left out. That pleases us, since self-coaching is a relatively new method, requiring much engagement. During October and November training we intend to work hard on conveying broad knowledge on the topic of behavioral addiction prevention. And the knowledge is indeed broad, since rapid improvements in technology vastly increased the number of potential risks. It is the validity of the issues that attracts so many people.

Our last session this year, similar to the others before it, will focus primarily on how to deal with addiction to Internet, social networks, video games, pornography, shopping, eating or gambling. Through increased knowledge on our strengths and weaknesses we can learn how to live at peace with ourselves, how to overcome temptation, what kinds of defense mechanisms we should develop and use in everyday life. That’s what the innovative method of self-coaching is based on. At the training, students not only gain knowledge on behavioral addiction and coaching, but also benefit from free of charge individual coaching sessions, and develop their own scripts for classes.

We prepared broad and professional materials, generally praised by all participants. November session will probably be the last one this year, unless the number of inquiries will remain as high as it is now, in which case we’ll consider running an extra session in December.

28.11.2014

Another project is behind us. As usual, effective, satisfactory, attracting high levels of interest. The “Self Coaching – behavioral addiction prevention” project just ended. First half of 2014, we addressed it towards people from correctional or rehabilitation facilities, second part of the project, which just concluded, focused on future employees of such facilities, i.e. students of Lower Silesia Universities.

During training, which touched on such matters as coping with addiction to Internet, video games, social networks, pornography, shopping, eating or gambling, and was attended by well over a hundred people, out of which 90 were students working in groups of 15. The training sessions, which took over 150 hours were aimed to increase their ability to diagnose problems which often coincide with behavioral addiction and help them develop preliminary procedures in case they spotted such behaviors among their youngsters. For many of them much of the program was new, including self coaching, which is an innovative, but extremely effective, method. After completing the training, their alertness to behavioral addiction, which spreads amongst young people ever faster will increase, and acquired methods will allow them to react quickly.

During training with each group, we managed to create 10 scripts for classes with young people, which can be introduced in correctional or rehabilitation facilities. The training sessions were condensed in terms of information given, however, everyone left satisfied. They also stressed professionalism of the staff during training, which in its form was innovative, yet easy to digest, which made it a joy to attend.

Project summary:

Self coaching is an innovative method of behavioral addiction prevention, which is why the project, completed by Foundation for Family Planning, attracted such high interest. Over 120 people took part in our training sessions, whose topics included dealing with such dangers as addiction to Internet, video games, social networks, pornography, shopping, eating or gambling. The number of participants exceeded our expectation, thus, we needed to organize an extra training session in late November.

This year the program was aimed primarily at youngsters at various correctional or rehabilitation facilities, as well as employees of such facilities. After that, we trained students of social majors, future pedagogics and psychologists. In total over 120 people. We completed a total of over 150 hours of training in various facilities. It allowed us to directly involve around 300 people in the program, indirectly we reached a few thousand.

Similar to our other projects, this one required us to prepare information materials, leaflets, and, most importantly, comprehensive training material. We created 10 scripts for prophylaxis classes, we also managed to complete 80 hours of professional coaching sessions with participants of the project.

What’s most important are the results of that innovative method, which we achieved with participants of our training. Future pedagogics and psychologists familiarized themselves with the subject of behavioral addiction, which, especially with Internet and new media are very common, yet often overlooked or treated as harmless. Nonetheless, social and health repercussions are vast and everyone who took part in our training recognizes that fact. We promoted living addiction-free amongst teenagers, at the same time making them aware of modern threats. We also managed to introduce self coaching as a method which might be new, but achieves satisfactory results.

“Self Coaching – behavioral addiction prevention” was one of three large projects, that we concluded in 2014. We will surely propose this method of training in the future. All information on projects beginning in 2015 can be found on our website www.trr.info.pl or our facebook profile.