We will play a game of Jenga or Uno and discuss the pressures we face as young adults. Afterwards, we will discuss what our favourite activities are and what we do to balance the pressures in our life.

We will do a quick ‘pub quiz’ round, identifying fictional characters from TV and film, in order to start a discussion around stress.

We will then learn about the ‘hot cross bun’ theory of stress, looking at how our feelings, thoughts, behaviours and body are affected by stress. We will also look at the ‘window of tolerance’ in order to get a greater understanding of how prolonged stress or trauma can alter our stress responses, and how we can gradually build our window of tolerance back up.

We will do a couple of minute long ‘thought experiments’ to get us thinking about thinking!

We will then look further at ‘Thinking traps’ and the types of automatic negative thought patterns we get trapped in when under stress. We will look at techniques of how to challenge these thought processes.

Using a ball of wool, we will look at how we are all interconnected by our experiences.

We will then do a creative activity using pens, paint, glitter and colours to explore our support circles, identifying who our trusted people are and exploring the ways in which we can reach out to others most effectively.

We will play a game of ‘articulate’, with a particular focus on strengths. We will then think about people we admire and the strengths that they have. We will then think about our own strengths and the strengths of the other people we have met in the group.