Said With Courage

Category: Atomic Essay

  • Save Lives With Better Support By Responding Not Reacting

    Save Lives With Better Support By Responding Not Reacting

    ‘Signals’ come from the person we’re helping – ‘noise’ comes from within. Years in crisis support has shown me suicide prevention is less about what I say and more about what I hear. This may seem obvious but I used to find it super challenging! Reason being: ‘noise’ is very convincing. You can probably relate:…

  • Simplify Suicide Support With The Scientist / Friend Model

    Simplify Suicide Support With The Scientist / Friend Model

    Validation is surprisingly easy to overlook when learning non-judgement! I kept getting told collusion can be really dangerous in anonymous support, now I get why. Anonymity means as a listener I have to navigate lack of culpability! Collusion has to be consciously resisted or else I can do harm. When I first started I often…

  • Here’s Why Your Compliments Get Ignored – Or Worse

    Here’s Why Your Compliments Get Ignored – Or Worse

    What does every message have in common? Messages come in three parts: what you think you send, what you actually send & what they receive. Let’s ignore the first two as we have only 220 words left. In my early days of anonymous crisis support I’d try show people what strength they had. I’d do…

  • How To Avoid The Dreaded F Word In Suicide Support

    How To Avoid The Dreaded F Word In Suicide Support

    ⚠ How does that make you FEEL? ⚠ The most common phrase used when taking the mickey out of therapists everywhere. It’s spicy territory! When I first started in anonymous support work, older men would hang up on me all the time. We’d be talking about things that happened, grief, loss, health issues, and get…

  • A Sneaky Way To Compliment Someone Suicidal

    A Sneaky Way To Compliment Someone Suicidal

    Have you ever given a compliment to someone only to have them deflect it – or worse? When I first started in suicide prevention I learned about ‘reaffirming strengths’ and quickly got stars in my eyes. ? ‘You mean… making people feel good is a SKILL SET?!’ I was off like a firecracker. Ready to…

  • 2 Obvious Burnout Signs I Completely Missed

    2 Obvious Burnout Signs I Completely Missed

    I didn’t realise I was burnt out until it was too late. Everything was going fine… until it wasn’t. My whole life had blown up at once, it wasn’t just that I stopped showing up for shift… I’d also started self destructing again. Old habits, long put to rest had resurfaced and I was on…

  • 3 Tips To Ease Your Journey Into Mental Health Work

    3 Tips To Ease Your Journey Into Mental Health Work

    1. Forge time for self care – support work does not reward sacrifice, it rewards boundaries. We are caregivers, that’s why we’re here. However if we don’t figure out how to give to ourselves first, we wont be here for long. Your organisation, or pro health network, your workplace or place of worship, at the…

  • Boost Suicide Prevention Skills With 3 Sentence Stem Tips

    Boost Suicide Prevention Skills With 3 Sentence Stem Tips

    1. Write down reflections to slow thinking and speed up results. My crisis support skills always developed at the speed of my self awareness. Put another way, my growth was as slow as my ability to reflect and learn about myself. If you don’t write reflectively it might be for the following reasons: Can’t be…

  • Here’s How Writing Sentence Stems Can Save Lives

    Here’s How Writing Sentence Stems Can Save Lives

    In suicide prevention, you can’t control outcomes but you can improve your skill set. After many hours of crisis support the toughest part was by far feeling like I’d failed someone. If I got hung up on or worse, I’d beat myself up and feel terrible. On one hand I know I can only do…

  • A Formula To Help People Feel Seen And Heard

    A Formula To Help People Feel Seen And Heard

    Your presence is the most important gift you can give someone in crisis. In suicide support I used to struggle not to give my opinions, values, judgements or beliefs. Thousands of crisis calls have shown me when I’m truly present with someone I can tune out all the ‘noise’ and listen to what matters to…