Confidence Support Services
exists to serve members of the community who need personalised support when facing stressful situations in life. Clients include NDIS participants who are living in the Sydney community, and self-managing their mental health condition at home; as well as tertiary students who are experiencing essay anxiety or PhD stress and need a helping hand to finish an essay. Founder Bridget Spinks is a passionate advocate for personalism, the power of vulnerability and the importance of holistic mental health care.
Bridget Pretty, Founder
Bridget Pretty (1985 – ) founded Confidence Support Services at the start of Covid-19. She had an instinct that that there were lonely and isolated individuals in the inner-west of Sydney who could do with some support. With previous experience supporting NDIS participants with their mental health and with supporting tertiary students finding it hard to finish assignments under a cloud of academic anxiety, Bridget decided to start her own business to offer support services within a Personalist framework.
Bridget is equipped to handle any academic writing need as she holds Bachelors degrees in Journalism and International Studies from UTS, as well as a Masters degree in Philosophical Studies from the University of Notre Dame Australia. She is equipped to support clients with their mental health as she has 8+ years lived experience of managing her own mental health within a network of support services. In 2022, she completed her Certificate IV in Mental Health.
My Mission
At the heart of my mission is the way I treat everyone I meet as a person worthy of my respect and time. My work is about ministering to the person in the midst of their stress, anxiety and/or emotional pain. As a Personalist, my mission is to ensure that every single client I meet feels that they are the most important person in the world to me when we are together. I see it as my job to accompany each of my clients on their journey in life in such a way so that they come to appreciate themselves for who they are as persons of goodness and dignity.
My mission is also to promote and encourage clients/friends to have holistic quality mental health care. This might begin with accessing the government subsidised psychology visits under a personal Mental Health Care plan. If they are still facing stress, they need to seek professional psychiatric support. Sometimes medication is an important adjunct in working with a long term mental health condition.
Mental health begins with self-awareness and is maintained in conjunction with other health and wellbeing strategies. Other types of support can also help like chiropractic care, nutritional support and probiotics, colon hydrotherapy and/or equine assisted psychotherapy.
One of the best ways to recover is to be vulnerable with close friends about your struggles and ask for their support. Let them know what you need. Ask for non-judgemental support and cheerleading. We get well when we are in a community with others who can share our pain and our joys. There are so many creative ways to learn to accept and love the body God gave you, with all its wounds and wins.
My Personalist Vision & Values
- Each person is to be treated with care, respect, reverence and dignity.
- Each person is unique, unrepeatable and irreplaceable.
- Each person has a name, a history of experiences, a future yet to be determined and a huge potential for growth and change.
- Each person has their own personal challenges, which can become their greatest victories.
- Each person has likes and dislikes unique to them, as well as work and preferred recreations that are unique to them.
- Each person needs to have informed choice and control over what they do in life.
- Each person is of inestimable value and worthy of my full support and attention.
About Personalism
Personalism is any philosophy that begins with and is centered in the human person. It sees the human person as a dynamic unity of body and soul, where each person has a free and rational soul, and is a ‘being in community.’ This means that each person is made for communion with other beings and hence has the gift of language and communication. We are designed for dialogue, intimacy, companionship, love and friendship. We are most fulfilled and happy when we are getting along with others, as well as doing good things for and with others.
Society in the early twentieth century was in crisis physically, culturally, socially and intellectually. It was out of this chaos and crisis that the beautiful Personalist vision of the human person was born. Key thinkers include Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Gabriel Marcel, Edmund Husserl, Karol Wojtyla/Pope John Paul II, Edith Stein, Alice von Hildebrand and Dietrich von Hildebrand.
Personalism is the tonic for our times. This contemporary philosophy is so current that the Internet Encyclopedia of Personalism is regularly being updated. The Hildebrand Project is the world’s leading organisation dedicated to the presentation and exploration of the thought and witness of Dietrich von Hildebrand. I am privileged to be in dialogue with Hildebrand Project scholars as I develop my Personalist philosophical ideas, which underpin Confidence Support Services.