Navigating the Storm - with Dr Ashlyn Firkins

Mast Cell Action is delighted to share a new session: Living well in the presence of MCAS: ideas from the field of clinical psychology to help navigate the storm.

Hosted by Dr Ashlyn Firkins, HCPC registered Clinical Psychologist and founder of Holding Hope Therapies. Ashlyn will share insights from evidenced based third wave CBT and compassion-based approaches, to explore how you can look after your emotional health while living with MCAS.

In this session, you can expect an introduction to key theoretical models in the physical health field. Alongside practical strategies designed to support you to more easily and skilfully navigate the difficult thoughts and feelings that are often tied to the onset of physical health difficulties like MCAS.

Join us virtually on Tuesday 20th August 7.30-9pm.

Your support means the world to us! As we strive to keep our virtual sessions accessible to all, your donations enable us to keep the lights on, and the virtual doors wide open for everyone eager to learn, connect, and grow with us. Every contribution, big or small, fuels our mission to deliver quality content and engage with our community in meaningful ways. If you are able to donate, please do give what you can.

Together, let's continue to nurture a space for our community. Your support paves the way for brighter futures for those living with MCAS.

Disclaimer

Whilst I hope that this group space, will offer up useful information and ideas. It is not intended to be a substitute for 1:1 psychological therapy, which is able to provide detailed, individually tailored advise. I recognise that once you have met one person with MCAS, you have met one person with MCAS and with this in mind there will likely be huge variation in aspects of the talk, that attendees derive value from. Please take what feels valuable for you and leave the rest. The speaker cannot accept any responsibility for how these ideas are taken forward after the event. Finally, please look after yourself during the session. The nature of the talk means that considering your own emotional response to MCAS may elevate emotions, please do what you need to keep yourself safe whilst attending and ensure you link in with your own personal and professional sources of support as required.

About Dr Ashlyn Firkins

Ashlyn is a HCPC registered Clinical Psychologist, with nearly a decade of experience offering psychological therapy within NHS services and settings. She specialises in supporting people with long-term health conditions, with a particular interest in persistent pain and has worked at two UK national specialist centres for chronic and disabling pain conditions. In 2022 Ashlyn set up a small private practice ‘Holding Hope Therapies’ to allow her to work in a more bespoke, personalised and creative way with clients. It was here that she was first introduced to MCAS. Ashlyn does not profess to be an expert on MCAS. What she believes to her bones is that living well alongside any physical health difficulties, particularly those which are poorly understood and not straightforwardly treated, is often incredibly difficult. Even for the strongest, most resilient and robust individual. Ashlyn wants to offer an invitation for you to join a supportive, compassionate welcoming space, where ideas from evidenced based psychological models that look to support people to live well in the presence of significant difficulty are shared. Alongside ideas on where you may be able to turn to for support, within the NHS and outside of it, should you need it. You can find out more about Ashlyn here.

What you need to know

We will be running these sessions virtually through Zoom, you are welcome to attend with your microphone and camera off if you feel more comfortable doing so. We will email out the Zoom link to join 1 hour before the session start time. Please check your spam folder if you can't find this link.

Please book a place for everyone who will be attending online, even if you'll be attending using the same device. This helps us keep the event running smoothly and safely and also helps us to decide what kind of events to organise in the future.

Please note: We will be taking a register so if there are a large number of participants, it may take a while – please be patient if you are in the waiting room. It will make the process of admitting people and taking the register much quicker if you could change your name before joining, to the name you used when booking. You can access a step by step on how to change your name here.

Please contact events@mastcellaction.org with any questions.

Attendance is free, although donations are much appreciated as this helps us to keep the lights on and to keep delivering essential support and services for people living with MCAS. If you are able to do so, there is an option to make a donation, when booking your spot.

Places are limited, so please do let us know if you change your mind or your plans change so we can offer the spot to someone else.

How Mast Cell Action Uses Your Data

We will collect the information you provide on Ticket Tailor to gather statistics about how many people attend our events and how many people return to our events and also demographic information about who is attending Mast Cell Action events. These statistics are vital to helping charities like Mast Cell Action demonstrate the impact of our work, and we use them to report to our funders and other groups to demonstrate the difference that funding support can make.

In our database, your name will be stored along with these statistics but identifying information is never included in reports. We don’t collect or store more information than needed to generate these statistics and have no access to any financial information you provide to Ticket Tailor.

All information is stored in line with our GDPR policy.

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