TRAINING.

At TNN, we believe in the power of connection, compassion, community and commonality.

Since 2018, The New Normal have provided more than 100,000 minutes of free grief and mental health peer support across more than a thousand meetings. And now, we want to help you.

Over these past six years, we have been developing a style of holding space, which gives people the chance to create deeper empathetic capacity within themselves, through connecting and listening to others.

This has led to our now established Building Supportive Communities community peer support project and our recently launched Compassionate Communities workplace training package. 

Compassionate Communities.

The New Normal have developed this workplace training to empower your organisation with the transformative power of compassionate community

This is a unique opportunity to foster empathy, vulnerability, and openness within your workforce, with a bespoke training program that paves the way for a new workplace culture where authenticity flourishes and well-being is centred.

We don’t believe in isolated interventions – our approach focuses on proactively building skills that integrate with the psychosocial aspects of all roles within your company.

Compassion at work builds trust, mutual connections and reciprocation. It is the bedrock for collaborative teams. Teams who show compassion to one another see an increase in overall morale, leading to a happier more engaged workplace.

Our training adapts seamlessly to various industries, every workplace can benefit from compassionate communities. 

I really liked how everyone had to share personal experiences to begin with which created a comfortable, safe space. I also found the case studies and discussions afterwards very useful.
I feel more confident to deal with grief in the work place and holding a space for my colleagues.
— AWIN Trainee

meet our trainer 

This offering is delivered personally by The New Normal co-Founder, Benjamin May, who has five years of experience delivering peer support facilitation and empathy, vulnerability and openness training.

Ben has spoken about suicide prevention, grief, and men’s mental health in national media and events, including Sky, MTV, BBC Radio 4, GoodHabitz and Mr Porter.

He has been invited to speak at government events such as National Suicide Prevention Conferences 2023 & 2024, and the Mental Health Crisis Services Conference 2024.

Ben also serves as an Expert by Experience with Rethink Mental Illness’ Suicide Prevention team.

get in touch.

Get in touch to find out how we can work with your organisation to create compassionate workplaces together.

Please click below to make an enquiry, or email ben@thenewnormalcharity.org for more information and to arrange a time to speak.

Building Supportive Communities.

Creating community is not all that we do: we believe in the importance, power and impact of co-production with existing communities.

The cornerstone of this project is sharing our learning, tools and experience with a diverse range of communities so they can co-produce relevant, sustainable and accessible peer support that is reactive to the nuances and needs of their community.

The Project, funded since 2023 by Rethink Mental Illness and the NW London Integrated Care System, allows us to help communities, charities, non-profits and individuals in NW London at no cost.

Over 8 weeks, we share how to hold space with empathy and non-judgementally, how to facilitate sessions and manage those difficult conversations, safeguarding and risk awareness e-learning, and providing Suicide First Aid (Lite) training. We can help participants to plan, set-up and promote their created peer support spaces, and with ongoing guidance.

We want to interrupt the narrative: to change how we (don’t) talk about mental health and grief, to provide empathetic space, to build community and contribute to making suicide prevention sustainable, impactful, appropriate and work for those who need it most, ultimately resulting in suicide reduction.

If you are living, working or supporting in NW London (see flyer for full eligibility requirements) and are interested in finding out how this support could work for you and your community please contact us or email hollie@thenewnormalcharity.org.

(If you are interested but are based outside of the 8 funded boroughs of NW London, please still get in touch. We are currently sourcing further funding to provide this support across England and the UK. )

In truth, my expectation was that the training was going to be text based with learning the theory behind mental health awareness. What was delivered was so much more - all sessions were engaging, all sessions created a safe space to talk and to be listened to. It’s the first time I’ve been in such a setting and I found it to be hugely beneficial.
— Building Supportive Communities Trainee