When Dr Eddie Murphy takes to the stage at Irish Country Living’s Women & Agriculture Conference in Sligo on 24 October, 600 women will sit in the audience.

Of those 600 women, one 10th – 60 of those women – will have had or will know someone that has had a panic attack. One in four – 125 people – will have experienced mental health challenges or know someone that has.

“These aren’t random abstract statistics. These issues will be directly affecting the people sitting in that room,” explains Dr Eddie. “Being proactive about our mental health is more important than ever.”

Many readers know Dr Eddie for his straight talking yet compassionate role as the clinical psychologist on Operation Transformation. He is well known for listening to the participants, understanding where their issues lies and helping them to go – not just on a weight-loss journey – but a healing journey.

At our Women & Agriculture Conference, Dr Eddie will be listening once again; listening to all the speakers who will take to the stage throughout the day, pulling together all the key messages which will feed into his presentation on building resilience and overcoming adversity.

“How would you rate your resilience out of 100? – this is what I will be asking the audience to do in their head – now let’s see how we can increase that by 10. So many people know the tools to build our resilience-sleep, exercise, good nutrition but it’s about putting those tools into action. How can you enhance these different areas? Sometimes it could be fear holding us back.”

This is especially relevant to our “Second Chance Career”, a panel discussion where Mairead Lavery of the Irish Farmers Journal, Susan O’Sullivan from the Farmhouse Café in Dublin and Gerard Brickley, farmer and formerly of Bord Bia will tell their personal stories about not just changing their job, but changing their life.

“It is said that these days people can have up to seven career changes in their lifetime. Obviously, re-skilling or up-skilling can be an important element of that, but what is more important is the capacity for change. People can get stuck and want things to stay the same.

“However, if we tailor our life to embracing change as opposed to keeping it the same, then you’re into a space where you will see change as a good thing, and it helps you be more resilient on a day to day basis.”

Facing the fear

Change can also come in the form of fear and fear can hold us back. Dr Eddie will be asking the audience thought-provoking questions such as, what would you do if weren’t afraid? What would it propel you to do? Perhaps it’s travelling, taking up a course or maybe something much more life changing. How can we tune down our fears to enhance our resilience?

Trisha Lewis who featured in last week’s paper is a true example of what can be achieved when you face your fears. At 26 stone, she admits that she was fearful that she wouldn’t wake in the morning and that her weight had reached such a level that she didn’t think there was a way back.

“There were a few life-changing moments that Trisha will talk about at the conference, the moments that made her face her fears and start on her journey to lose 14 stone.

She is halfway there and I am sure she will admit at the conference that her fears became smaller and smaller, the more weight she lost.

“Because the thing I have learned on my years on Operation Transformation is that often it’s not about what the person is eating, but what is eating them. So I don’t get caught up on the numbers. Because if you get caught up with the numbers, it actually doesn’t always lead to sustainable weight loss. For some people, it’s overcoming the fear and getting to the root of the problem. It’s really about building better habits and choices, and consistency around that.”

Looking after yourself

Another key discussion that Dr Eddie will be drawing on is our session on “Caring for the Carer”. In this panel, chaired by Irish Country Living columnist Katherine O’Leary, three speakers will talk about the role of carers. Rosemary Kratschmar cares for her son Sammy who is a person with Down’s syndrome while Moira Skelly cares full time for her daughter Ciara (22), a person with autism and profound disabilities. Moira also cares for her mother Carmel who suffers from dementia.

Catherine Cox head of communications and carer engagement from Family Carers Ireland will talk about what carers can do mentally and physically to mind themselves.

Dr Eddie says: “Caring for a family member can often require real resilience. When you talk about stress management, a lot of advice is about changing the situation, changing how you think about the situation or increasing your coping mechanisms. In a situation where you are caring for someone, you often can’t change the situation, so you’re talking about self-care. And it goes back to the old example of putting on your own oxygen mask first before helping others. On a daily basis, we plug in our phones to charge them but what are we doing on a daily basis to charge ourselves?”

“There is also an element of managing our emotions and one emotion that carers often feel is anger – anger with the system, and rightfully so.

“They also feel exhaustion from fighting for resources and trying to find a solution. No matter where you are in life, I think this session on caring will strike a chord with many people and it will be a key one that I will be drawing on so the women at the conference go home with real, practical tools for building resilience in this area.”

Preparation

“Whether it’s my talk, or another session on the day, there will be a lot to take away from this. Because let’s be honest, as a group, women in agriculture are often better at looking out for the mental health of their son, daughter or partner.

"So ahead of the conference, I would like to give the attendants a challenge; ask yourself what would you like to achieve or gain from the day?

"And consider that it might not just be from stage. Days like this are critically important for building our resilience and reviving a healthy mindset.

“Even just introducing yourself to the person beside you could be a game changer. She too could be a woman living on a farm or working in agribusiness and understands your situation better than any professional on the stage.

"She could understand the day-to-day stresses of the beef crisis of recent weeks, the stresses of long working days and the unpredictability of weather. There is great validity in getting peer support, which makes days like this critically important. I look forward to seeing you all in Sligo.”