Workshops For Real Life provides research-backed training in burnout prevention and coping
skills through interactive self-care events.
Your workshop facilitator is a licensed psychotherapist with a passion for adapting therapy concepts into more accessible self-care practices for everyday life.
Workshops For Real Life invites you to help build a culture of coping by equipping your community with strategic self-care supports.
Burnout Prevention | Community Building | Mindfulness | Relaxation Skills | Design-Your-Own Self-Care Event
Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW, LICSW founded Therapy For Real Life and Workshops For Real Life to make burnout prevention concepts more accessible to everyone. Anna uses her training as a licensed psychotherapist to adapt burnout prevention strategies from researched-backed therapies, such as Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), mindfulness, motivational enhancement, trauma-recovery, and relationship science. Anna designs workshops to expand non-therapy option to folks who want to immediate access to effective self-care ideas outside of the therapy space. Anna hosts the Therapy For Real Life Podcast in addition to her workplace programs to make self-care fun and engaging for everyday life.
Plan your self care event with Founder Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW, LICSW.
Workshops For Real Life brings self care to you.
Workshops For Real Life has presented on burnout prevention and community building at the last three SXSW conferences in Austin, TX. Each year brings new creativity to these self-care events as participants engage with research-backed self-care skills and make them their own.
Learn more about
Workshops For Real Life at SXSW:
SXSW 2023
Burnout Prevention For Changemakers
SXSWEDU 2024
Burnout Prevention Meetup For Educators
SXSW 2025
Anti-Loneliness Meetup
Workshops For Real Life partnered with Community Foundation of Ohio
Valley in 2022 to offer burnout prevention skills training to community leaders and helping professionals from across 8 counties and two states.
Together we maximized our social impact by putting research-backed burnout prevention skills to our own use. We make plans to carry these skills forward to make our community-based efforts even more
sustainable.
Participants reflected on how rare it is to have a space specifically designed to support caregivers.
Hundreds of child advocates gathered during the Building Hope For Children conference in 2022 to exchange widsom, training, and encouragement after long periods of stress during the
pandemic.
Anna Lindberg Cedar led these helping professionals and leaders through rare experiences of respite, reflection, and self-care planning. The group discussed themes of burnout prevention,
mindfulness, relationship care skills, and boundary setting in a series of four interactive workshops.
Participants left feeling recharged and energized!
The problem we know all too well.
Professional burnout is recognized by
the World Health Organization to be a costly occupational hazard caused by chronic work stress. Managers and HR professionals witness the effects of
burnout as team members complain of fatigue and exhaustion, poor work performance, and negative feelings about the work environment.
The United States is currently facing a mental health crisis and a
shortage of mental health responders. Estimates show that nearly 1 in 5 adults in
the U.S. is experiencing a mental health condition at any given time -- on top of the daily stresses of their job.
Participation in traditional Employee Assistance Programs is
very low (~ 3-5%) despite the high need for
services. Many individuals do not even know that these supports exist or how helpful they can
be.
Upsetting news reports can trigger stress, anxiety, and depression on the job and make it difficult for teams to remain effective. More and more Americans
are reporting that they feel distracted
by thoughts of painful political events while at work.
Managers often feel uncomfortable and ill equipped to talk about emotional wellness in the workplace -- even though they very much want to discuss the topic. Managers and leaders are looking for tools to support their team’s emotional needs (including their own), but do not know how to get started.
Burnout Prevention Hack-A-Thon (*Most Popular*) :
Understand and interrupt the body’s stress response
Recognize stress vs. burnout vs. anxiety vs. depression… What’s the difference?
Personalize research-backed self-care skills for stress: DBT’s 4 Solution Analysis
Mental Health Awareness and Communication Skills as a Manager
How to recognize stress vs. burnout vs. anxiety vs. depression on the job.
How to model self-care as a manager while balancing productivity expectations.
Communication skills for supporting the mental health needs of your staff.
Mindfulness Skills for Busy Professionals:
How to use a present-focus to clarify priorities in a multi-tasking world.
Simple breathing techniques and relaxation skills for quick coping on the job.
How to use mindfulness to clarify and set important boundaries for work / life balance.
Relationship Skills for Effective Team Building:
Understand how research into predictors of “relationship demise” can help you identify and interrupt toxic relationships at work.
Learn research-backed “antidotes” to harmful relationship patterns (eg. Gottman, DBT skills) to help you reduce conflict and improve morale.
Learn essential leadership skills to remain effective in your work, such as identifying your boundaries, asking for what you want, better understanding your peers, and practicing self-care during heated conflict.
Leadership Self-Care Tool Kit:
Mindfulness + emotional labor skills for strategic leadership.
Cognitive empowerment skills for overcoming imposter syndrome.
Coping with demanding environments: Acceptance and self-validation skills.
Finding Value in Self-Care:
Learn how identifying your values can improve your self-care routine.
Practice strategies in psychological flexibility to better align your self-care routine.
Brainstorm self-care ideas as a group and personalize your Self-Care Strategic Plan.
Mood Hacks and Motivational Enhancement Strategies:
Understand the body’s stress response and research behind behavior change.
Practice quick tips for bio-mood hacking that can be used anywhere.
Learn behavioral skills to change your mood quickly and boost motivation over time.
90 min presentation, including 5-6 audience participation activities for improved experiential learning in the chosen
emotional wellness topic.
Expert facilitation (and sense of humor) from a behavior change and motivational enhancement expert.
Concepts are drawn from evidence-based therapies (such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, relationship research,
and mindfulness concepts) and adapted into self-care strategies for use on the job.
30 min Q & A is available after each presentation for audience questions, care coordination, or additional programming tailored
to each workshop.
Each workshop is adapted for the specific culture of each workplace, and includes a 20 min planning call to clarify goals and metrics for success of the
self-care event.
Choose from topics, such as Understanding Burnout, Motivational Enhancement, Mindfulness Skills for Busy Professionals, Stress Management at Work, or Relationship Skills for Effective Teams.
Ideal for: team meetings, guest speaker series, executive strategy sessions, or wellness events.
This option is recommended for maximum culture change and improved learning. Combine a self-care skills workshop with a team-building workshop to help your team take care of themselves and each other. Or, combine a workshop on recognizing burnout with an overview of stress management skills to both inform and empower your staff to interrupt burnout.
Combining multiple workshops allow the different self-care skillsets to compliment each other and help important concepts solidify with extended practice.
Ideal for: staff retreats, team building events, workplace benefits, staff perks and rewards.
Webinars allow managers to reach the largest audience possible to make burnout prevention efforts even more inclusive. Webinars and all-staff trainings are recommended for large-scale culture-change efforts involving “universal precautions” for burnout prevention.
Ideal for: Large scale burnout prevention efforts, team building for virtual teams, pairing with other employee supports and benefits, or as part of a large-scale crisis response (eg. coping with #metoo triggers, political instability/violence, grief, chronic stress, and suicide prevention).
Four, six, or eight-week Employee Burnout Prevention group series covering self-care topics, such as:
How to Recognize and Interrupt Burnout
Tiny Self-Care Strategies for the Workplace
Team-Based Self-Care and How to Ask for What You Want
Mood Boosters and Strategies to Make Change
Acceptance and Compassion-Based Strategies for the workplace
Burnout Prevention Keynote Speaker for annual retreats, motivational staff events, leadership strategy planning sessions, celebratory
occasions, or specific burnout prevention and mental health awareness building events.
Anna Lindberg Cedar, MPA, LCSW, LICSW is an experienced panelist available to share her expertise with communities discussing themes of mental
health awareness, behavioral health promotion, mental health program design, population-based care, and adapting therapy concepts into actionable and community-based self-care. Check out the
Therapy For Real Life podcast for samples of some of Anna's recent mood hacking
trainings and other interviews.
Project-specific consulting. Get in touch.