About RadSec

welcome to radsec

making self-care a priority

The Radical Self-Care course is based on pilot courses of Mindful Self-Care at Mind, City Hackney and Waltham Forest (CHWF) and the NHS.

The findings encouraged the LGBTQ+ practitioners at both Mind CHWF and Mind in Salford (MiS) to develop the approach in the context of a Rainbow Mind funded project. The approach is founded on evidence-based mindfulness and compassion focused methodologies.

The RadSec course was then contextualised into the LGBTQ+ with lived experience of gender and sexual relationships diversity, as well as the foundational principle of intersectional approach to working with participants.

Since the initiation in 2019 RadSec courses have been run in other contexts. Such as general mental health support, carers support and substance misuse, and Black and minority ethnic specific courses.

The programme contextualises mental and emotional health in the wide context of societal, cultural, and family related challenges to acceptance of ourselves as we are. Often people live in contexts and environments that do not feel safe, secure or accepting.

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence.
It is self-preservation."

Audre Lorde

Testimonials

It’s changed so much for me. Practicing the exercises has given me tools to be more self compassionate and and I’ve even began training to lead a RadSec course myself!
RadSec Participant
I am much more able now to notice my tone to self and, where previously I'd have been quite critical and berating, I now meet myself with a lot more compassion and acceptance. The RadSec tools and techniques have become even more important during C-19/lockdown. I've been mindful to keep taking in the good. I hope to continue to be a better friend to myself, and to others.
RadSec Participant
The Radical Self Care course was very helpful in improving my mental health and wellbeing. It has taught me to be a better friend to myself. The mindfulness exercises I have been taught have helped to ground me and reduce anxiety. The course was well run and supported with excellent weekly handouts and online content.
RadSec Participant
The course enabled me to reconnect with a sense of wholeness and in doing so actively relax and release stress. I noticed that attending the meetings I felt more relaxed, more calm and more centred. Being able to access compassionate self care in the LGBTQ context has been especially valuable.
RadSec Participant

For example, LGBTQ+ individuals and practitioners, often experience societal legacy of shame compounded by internalised homo-, bisexual, or transgender negativity. These terrains are often complex and intersecting with many aspects of our identities and areas of our lives. The RadSec approach emphasises that all parts of participants’ identities are welcome.

The Radical Self-Care model has been initiated and brought into being as a way of centering something seemingly as simple as caring. Bringing the concept of care centre stage in our intentions for wellness for individuals, communities and the planet.

This Radical Self-Care approach honours the strong historical connection that self-care has had as an essential aspect of wellbeing enabling the rejuvenation of individuals and movements in the face of discrimination and oppression, such as the civil rights movements some decades ago.

At present day, we draw strength from this historical connection as we expand access to the Radical Self-Care model in line with our values of anti-racism and principles of intersectional working that invites all engaged in the work to honour, respect and care for all parts of their own and others’ intersectional identities (intersectionality definition by Oxford dictionary).

Radical Self-Care, within its wider Radical Caring framework, aims to strengthen individuals and communities as we seek to survive and address the health and other inequalities exposed by the current pandemics.

Radical Self-Care owes its name to the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s, and to all those who saw the need for self-care as essential to survival in cultural contexts that discriminate and devalue. And with the rising of mental health challenges in these times radical self-caring is still as urgent and relevant today as it was for marginalised communities some decades ago.

 

The ‘Radical’ in this model refers to our human ‘birthright’, to exist as we are, with all aspects of our intersectional identities. In addition, we view placing something as ‘everyday’ as caring centre stage in our lives as radical in today’s society. Not just caring for others, but U-turning that care towards ourselves too as a necessity.

The quote below from Audre Lorde, a leading proponent of self-care, has inspired the development of RadSec:

“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation…” Audre Lorde