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How To Finally Stop Asking ‘Why’ To People In Crisis
‘Why do you think he lied to me?’ she asked yet again, as though we hadn’t covered it a hundred times this week. My eyes wanted to roll as far back into my head as they could, I didn’t let them. I’d been here so many times in my life, with my mum, my exes,…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Offering the Five Senses Grounding Technique
Grounding techniques can make an enormous difference for the well-being of your client, colleague or help seeker, offering an opportunity to reconnect to ones senses and release distress. It’s an incredible feeling to know that you’ve helped someone down from the heights of distress and well worth the discomfort of learning a new skillset! However,…
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Edit Less, Impact More with Sentence Stem Workshopping
Why to Practice Workshopping Sentences When you’re in the hotseat and providing support to someone in crisis, you don’t have time to edit. You’ve got their words waiting for you on the screen, or their voice waiting for you over the phone. You don’t have the luxury of crafting a perfect reply if they’re waiting!…
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Afraid To Interrupt During Crisis Support?
When starting out supporting people in mental health, students often get caught in cyclic minimal encouragers. This is particularly easy the more the help seeker talks. As you can imagine… This can become problematic. Multiply passive crisis support listening skills by non-stop help seeker rambling skills and you have the formula for… a very ineffective…
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Contextualising the 5 Senses Grounding Technique
Intention Offering the five senses grounding technique has a bit of an art to it, for today let’s look at what to do when someone has already agreed they want to give it a try. By the time we’re done, you’ll see how you can elevate the 5 senses grounding technique through subtle turns of…
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Attending to both Feelings and Safety
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.…
