Supporting People through the Holidays

The holiday season can bring excitement, connection, and celebration—but it can also intensify loneliness, stress, grief, family conflict, financial pressure, difficult memories, and challenges to a person’s recovery and emotional wellness.

Peers have a unique opportunity to walk alongside people during these experiences. Through lived experience, mutuality, supportive communication, and a recovery-focused approach, peers can help individuals recognize their own strengths, identify resources, and make choices that support their wellness throughout the holiday season.

At the same time, supporting others during an emotionally demanding season can take a toll. Supporting People Through the Holidays will equip Peers with practical strategies for supporting others while remaining aware of their own wellness, boundaries, and recovery.

Learning Objectives

Participants will:

• Identify six common emotional “triggers” that may affect mental health, recovery, relationships, and overall wellness during the holiday season.
• Explore five peer-support strategies for walking alongside individuals experiencing stress, loneliness, grief, conflict, or other holiday-related challenges.
• Practice using lived experience and appropriate self-disclosure to build mutuality, connection, and hope without taking over another person’s recovery process.
• Use perspective-shifting questions and communication strategies that help individuals recognize strengths, explore choices, and identify their own resources for navigating challenging holiday situations.
• Recognize holiday-related triggers and practice peer-supportive responses that promote safety, self-awareness, resilience, and personal choice while remaining within the Peer’s scope of practice.
• Develop communication tools for approaching difficult or “tough” conversations while maintaining respect, curiosity, personal autonomy, and healthy boundaries.
• Identify strategies Peers can use to maintain their own wellness, boundaries, and recovery while supporting others through emotionally challenging situations.

About the Trainer

Chuck Hendrix is a Certified Peer Support Specialist, Certified Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, and Board-Certified Hypnotherapist. He has studied personal growth, communication, and personal change for more than 25 years and develops specialized trainings designed to expand the practical tools Peer Support Specialists and Recovery Coaches can bring to their work.

Chuck combines practical skills, lived experience, interactive learning, and humor to create trainings that are engaging, applicable, and focused on helping peer professionals strengthen the impact they have with the people they serve.

Eligible for 4.5 virtual MDHHS Continuing Education credits.

Registration: Please register below (on this site) using a credit or debit card, which is the quickest way to confirm your attendance.

Only if you need to pay by check, please complete this form (click here) and email it to: registration@mipeers.org. Do not use this form if you are paying by credit/debit card. Please note that this form takes up to 5 business days for processing, and registration is not assured until we receive the check, and you receive a confirmation of your registration.

Cancellation Policy: Registrations may be transferred to another employee of the same agency upon written request to registration@mipeers.org. Cancellations must be received in writing at least 12 days prior to the date of the training. Failure to cancel registration within the allotted time will result in registration fees being forfeited. For questions, e-mail registration@mipeers.org.

Attendance Policy: You must attend the entire training. If you are more than 10 minutes late you will not be allowed to attend as part of the CE requirements. Please note there is absolutely NO driving during the training. If you are driving while attending the training, you will be removed from the training for your own safety. Training guidelines must be read, signed, and returned back to the office before a zoom link is sent to the participant. Attendees must follow the training guidelines.