Negative thoughts and emotions are draining.
Whether it’s aimed at someone else or yourself, harboring negativity can have adverse consequences — both tangible and intangible.
To help eradicate some of those negative emotions, Helen Zimniewicz has spent a year leading courses with The Enrichment Academy, teaching others how to be more compassionate with themselves and others.
Zimniewicz teaches three courses, including “Building a Compassionate Relationship with Yourself,” “Building a Balanced Relationship with Others,” and her newest course, “Handling Difficult Situations.”
Serving as a social worker for the past 18 years, Zimniewicz said hearing questions like, “How am I supposed to handle so many things that I never expected” or even “How do I make friends?”
Answering those questions influenced her decision to start teaching the courses, hoping to increase compassion in the community.
“Compassion is the feeling that comes up when you are faced with another’s suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering. Compassion is about seeing ourselves or others through a lens of understanding and support rather than judgement,” Zimniewicz said.
During the courses, participants learn how to build compassionate relationships through mindfulness, self-kindness and connectedness.
By being mindful, one can recognize struggles without being judgmental; by practicing self-kindness, one can be more understanding when going through a difficult time rather than be self-critical and by practicing connectedness, one can acknowledge that we are human and make mistakes.
This “compassion practice” allows people to learn to recognize how their thoughts, feelings and behaviors influence their self-image and brain function.
“Past stories are reviewed and understood from a compassionate perspective, emotions are made partners rather than enemies, and many coping tools and behaviors are shared during the course to relieve the burden of self-judgement,” Zimniewicz said.
Throughout the courses and learning how to make the mind stronger, Zimniewicz said it’s important for participants to realize that there is no “one-size fits all” method when it comes to compassionate perspective.
“The course does not define the best or balanced relationship, it offers tools and awareness for a person to make healthy choices when dealing with others,” Zimniewicz said. “Each person gets to choose how to use these tools to create the life that works best for them.”
Learning how to build a balanced relationship with others and how to handle difficult situations, leads students of the courses to learn how to achieve resilience in difficult situations — depending on the situation.
Anyone can take steps to achieve resilience by becoming calm, finding clarity, feeling confident, and being willing to connect with resources. Practicing these skills can help one be in control of their own mind.
“Even though there are no dinosaurs around, our brain and nervous system can quickly react as if there are. Understanding how this takes place allows a person to be more conscious and use grounding and calming skills to better assess situations and respond rather than react,” Zimniewicz said. “Life is much better if one can see an issue as something that can be worked through rather than reacting as if one is being chased by a meat-eating dinosaur.”
Having taught the TEA classes and other similar courses for years, Zimniewicz said that she really enjoys helping people see life from a new perspective.
At the end of her TEA courses, Zimniewicz has heard feedback from students on how they are handling situations better, are being kinder to themselves, or have more compassion because of the information shared during the course.
“I heard several people say that they wished they had had this information much sooner in their life and even took the handouts to their family members to help them grow as well,” she said. “Many times, gaining self-understanding allows a person to grow into a healthier mindset.”
Zimniewicz will be teaching the courses at the start of 2025, beginning with the five-day course, “Building a Compassionate Relationship with Yourself,” happening at 1 to 2:30 p.m. every Wednesday from Jan. 15 to Feb. 12 at Lake Miona Recreation, 1480 Buena Vista Blvd., The Villages.
The fee to participate for Villages residents is $50 and $56 for non-residents.
The “Building A Balanced Relationship with Others” course will run from 1 to 2:30 p.m. every Wednesday from Feb. 26 to March. 19 at Lake Miona Recreation.
The “Handling Difficult Situations” course will be from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Feb. 28 to March. 21 from 1 to 2:30 p.m. at Lake Miona Recreation. Villagers pay $40 to participate in the courses and non-residents pay $46.
For more information about the class or to register, visit theenrichmentacademy.org.
Staff writer Brea Jones can be reached at 352-753-1119, ext. 5414, or brea.jones@thevillagesmedia.com.
