-
10 Ways Suicide Prevention Work Will Hurt You
1 >> Comfort. If the comfort zone is where you want to stay, suicide prevention work will challenge that! 2 >> Avoidance. If you don’t want to feel expanded and laid bare to self awareness, suicide prevention work will challenge that! 3 >> Attachment. If you value your attachments to stuff like ego, a saviour…
-
I Found It Much Easier To Show Kindness To Others Than Myself
I still remember the first call I ever answered. At the end, I let out a huge sigh of defeat. My coach asked me to reflect on how it went. I unleashed a torrent. ‘I messed this part up, failed to do this, wish I’d not said that’. It went on and on until finally…
-
3 Ways To Support In The Present Moment
Years of suicide support has shown me trauma finds relief in the present moment. These are the best tips I have to help you relieve people in distress. 1 >> Listen To Apply Your Imagination If I can’t picture what someone’s life is like, right now, I’m not doing it right. Maybe I’ve heard about…
-
3 Lessons For Younger Me To Keep Writing & Keep Trying
1 >> Starting again is the proof, both now and later. Drifting off course or quitting might feel disheartening, but that pain will lead you to know yourself. Knowledge compounds. The more times you start again, the more you learn. The more you write, the better you get. The better you get, the more rewarding…
-
Understand These 2 Modes To Be Better In A Crisis
Urgency requires response, but triggers reaction. Reactions like: Your heart rate spikes Your breathing gets shorter Your stomach plummets Your thoughts start racing (oh shit is this really happening right now) After many years, my heart rate still jumps when urgency comes knocking. I have to remind myself it’s ok! These feelings are there to…
-
I Burnt Out Providing Suicide Support For These 3 Lessons
1. Self care gets easier the more you increase your self worth. To start with, self care was hard to justify! Sitting in a group supervision or with my trainer, talking about self care was easy. Yes, of course I see how important it is. Easy to talk about, not so easy to follow up.…
-
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:…
-
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…
-
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…
-
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…
