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Making the Most of Life

Start Date: 06/02/2025
End Date: 03/04/2025
Price: Free
Time: 4.30pm - 6.30pm
Venue: Online
Location: Weekly online sessions
To register your interest in this course, please complete a self-referral here

This course is available to people living in the East Sussex area.

Living with chronic health conditions can have a major impact on our lives. They can affect relationships, our social lives and the way we are at work.

This is an Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) course based on a programme called More to Life. The aim is to teach and encourage participants in a group situation to put in to practice ACT principles and exercises. In turn these skills can help people achieve their health and life goals to improve their quality of life.

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"ACT is one form of CBT which is one of the most widely used forms of psychological therapy, which has demonstrated a great deal of success in a wide variety of problems. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is about taking action to make our lives better. The physical symptoms of different conditions will vary, as well as the way you manage them. But the kinds of psychological stress the conditions bring are common to lots of long term health problems such as worry about the future, sadness about what has been lost, frustration at changes, guilt about being a burden, friction with family and friends. You can lose your sense of purpose and wonder "what's the point?" trapped in a war against your own illness every day is just about the battle and it can seem impossible to find achievement and fulfilment in life if the condition cannot be cured. It doesn't have to be like that. Using ACT which emphasises Mindfulness and Acceptance the course will show you how to live better despite your condition. It will teach you to spot the ways of coping that haven't been working for you, to make sure that troubling thoughts and unwanted feelings don’t run your life, how to make sense of the changes in your circumstances, how to make the most of today and work towards a future that includes more of the things that matter to you. If you stop fighting a losing battle, and instead learn how to live well with your condition, then - even with your condition - you'll find yourself not simply existing but really living again.

Ray Owen - taken from Living with the Enemy.

Crisis Support

If you are in crisis or need immediate support:

Samaritans: 116 123 or text "shout" to 85258

For support and information:

Sussex Mental Healthline: 0800 0309 500 open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

For more advice on coping with suicidal thoughts: 

https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/suicide/

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/suicidal-feelings/helping-yourself-now/