Often when learning something it’s easy to rulify things.
This helps to simplify the complex. When used in the right way, simple rules for practice can make a huge difference in developing our skillset and comfort level engaging compassionately with self awareness.
When used poorly, over simplification of rules or guidelines can really hurt connection.
In crisis support, when we make rules – especially with the safety flowchart – the help seeker can feel it, making it important to question the internal rules we use and update them regularly.
To illustrate, let’s look at the suicide question.
We put a lot of thought and context around the first safety question;
‘Sometimes when people have gone through x and y, they can get thoughts of suicide. Have you had thoughts of suicide recently?’
We normalise suicide before even asking about it. This shows a measured, compassionate and respectful approach to attending to safety.
However, when starting out we often fall into interrogation after receiving the answer.
‘… yes’
Heart starts racing, all thoughts fly out the window and now we’re trying to remember what’s important to remember.
‘Are you going to act on those thoughts today?’
‘probably’
‘What plans have you made to kill yourself?’
‘…’
What happened here? We went from a normalising, respectful question about suicide to interrogation mode in the space of a single exchange.
It’s a very common thing that many students face time after time. One thing we’ve found very helpful in the training room is to practice attending to both compassion and safety one after the other.
Give yourself this simple rule; when attending to safety attend to emotion also.
Like with a sports drill, it’s a simple way of balancing our own intentions and practicing with the right frame of mind for attending to both safety and connection.
For example, the suicide question paired with compassion and then safety might look exactly as we saw earlier. Normalise and then ask directly.
‘Sometimes when people have gone through family violence, they can get thoughts of suicide. Have you had thoughts of suicide recently?’
To explore imminence, normalising might feel a bit off twice in a row, so perhaps we can change it up and try something else, like a validating paraphrase.
‘It sounds like after all you’ve gone through and now losing your best friend, you feel you can’t cope any more. Are you intending to act on those thoughts of suicide tonight?’
Again, we want to remain compassionate in our exploration of the help seeker’s safety. This can be tough to do when battling our own tensions, maybe elevated heart rate, maybe distracting thoughts, maybe any of a bunch of different physiological responses to tension.
But it’s very important to keep the help seeker at the centre of what we do.
Remember that we’re not attending to safety alone, nor to suicide alone. We’re attending to a human being, who has complex needs.
To that end, let’s try to explore safety further while maintaining connection and compassion.
‘It’s clear how devastating it’s been for you these past few weeks, with things feeling like they’re never going to change. How are you planning to kill yourself tonight?’
As you can see in this illustration, it’s possible to hold on to our compassion throughout every step of the decision support flowchart.
If you’d like to practice this way of attending to both safety and emotion, here’s the most simple way to think of it; when attending to safety, use a small microskill first.
What kind of microskills can soften out a closed question? Which kind of microskills would be appropriate / inappropriate?
I’d love to hear your different ideas for how you can soften safety questions!
This post is written specifically for crisis support and mental health work, if you’d like to read more, click here.
I would really appreciate every stray thought and piece of feedback you have so please do reach out via socials if you’d like to chat.