Skills For Building Healthy Relationships - 8 Week Online Course (29 April -17 June 2025)

About the event

Communication is a skill that you can learn. It's like riding a bicycle or typing. If you're willing to work at it, you can rapidly improve the quality of every part of your life. Brian Tracy

This online course is for you if you'd like to: 

• develop skills for building healthy relationships (with yourself and others), 
• develop awareness of why and how you communicate and what your triggers are, 
• understand how to ask for what you want and what stops you from doing that,
• explore what boundaries mean for you,
• practice saying and hearing "no",
• experiment with repairing after ruptures in relationships, 
• practice alternative ways to engage in communication and connection with those you are in relationship with.

Why participate in these workshops?

This course is borne out of our belief that having healthy relationships is a skill set - and one that we all can learn. These workshops will look at skills across all kinds of relationships - intimate partnerships, friendships, work relationships...

This course is for those who want to invest in their relationships, before, during and after fault lines and conflicts happen.

Some topics we explore:

- Learn what empathy is and what it is not; 

- Practice accessing self-empathy when you’re triggered; 

- Explore how empathy can transform even the most challenging moments in relationships;

- Explore the differences between requests, demands and threats; 

- Notice what happens when your requests are met with a “no”.

- Identify forms of rupture and how this experience plays out in your nervous system; 

- Learn why repair is such an important practice in healthy relationships; 

- Explore what stands in the way of making repairs; 

- Practise how to come back from relational ruptures stronger; 

- Learn the elements of repair that serve relationships (and those that don’t).

Some skills you will learn:

• distinguishing between an observation and a judgment (and why it matters);
• making bold requests - asking for what we really want;
• saying "yes" and "no" when you mean it;
• coming back to repair the relationship after a rupture - and the elements of good repair;
• making requests and setting boundaries - and what the difference is between the two;
• NVC and mindfulness-based tools for staying grounded in yourself and not running away from hard conversations.

We meet weekly on Zoom for two hours (7:00-9:00 NZST), for 8 weeks, starting on April 29th 2025.

Your facilitators:

Anna Banas is a communication coach, focusing on relationships and parenting. Anna holds a PhD in sociolinguistics, has done research on belonging, communication and conflict; she is an NVC trainer, and has been working in one-to-one and group settings supporting people to develop communication that connects. Anna's mission is to create spaces where people can laugh, cry and feel less alone in this world.

For more info on Anna and her work go to: www.annabanas.co.nz

Helen Williams is a trainings facilitator, mindfulness teacher and mindset coach. She's also a mum, artist and former lawyer. Helen's passion is to support people to live wholehearted, conscious and connected lives.

For more information about Helen and her work go to: www.helenwilliams.co.nz

Payment options:

Early bird: $460-$520 scale before March 1st 2025

Regular price: $520-$880

"Bring a friend": buy a ticket for two people for $900 

When registering please choose an amount that takes into consideration your financial comfort and ours. Your payments allow us to do the work we both love. If you'd like more clarity about our financial siuation before you make your decision, please get in touch, we are happy to discuss it!

Previous attendees say:

The workshop with Anna and Helen on building healthy relationships really filled me with so many insights about myself, about my growth, my views, the stories I tell myself... And how to make sense out of it. They have an incredible way to create a safe space for you to feel heard and seen, and for you to realise that what you think and feel matters.  They are very unique professionals in their own fields. (Dani, Wellington participant)

Payment plans are available and we have limited number of scholarship placements. Get in touch with Anna to discuss.