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The Secret Behind My Bulletproof Resilience In Crisis Support
When I started volunteering in suicide prevention, growth hurt. So. Badly. Now? My work improves with ease. I used to ask: why is it so difficult to just… get better? Some calls would go super well and I’d feel like I did a great job. Only to connect the dots later and realise I’d projected…
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EEAAO Is Too Subtle A Sledgehammer
For anyone who didn’t get the hype about Everything Everywhere All At Once, this is for you. You’ll read this essay and know exactly what the big deal is. The film has so much going on, it’s easy to lose the thread amidst the chaos. Kung fu fighting with dildos sticking out of butts (spoiler…
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How Reflective Practice Improved My Suicide Prevention Skills
More than anything, this is what helped me grow. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and hope you can learn from them. This article breaks down how reflective practice systems changed the game for me in suicide prevention and crisis support. Self awareness, skillset growth, competence and confidence all greatly improved. It covers my experience,…
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Using Abstraction In Suicide Prevention
There’s a powerful, hidden skill in suicide prevention. Read this article and you’ll be able to practice it in every day conversation – maybe even with people in distress. Who knows, it might help you support someone down from the edge. It’s called ‘Abstraction’. Abstraction is very popular and well understood in other fields like…
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How To Write With Life Saving Clarity In Digital Crisis Support
In learning suicide prevention there’s a tonne of obstacles and challenges. It’s hard, scary work and you’re here remove some of those obstacles and equip yourself with tools, skills and mindset to lower the barrier for others too. Long term this kind of work – preventing suicide – changes people, changes families, changes communities and…
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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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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…
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Here’s How I Reconcile A Huge Tension In Suicide Prevention
Suicide prevention comes with many tensions. No one-size-fits-all. It’s as complex and nuanced as the people in it. This is what makes risk obsession and black and white thinking so harmful. Intake policy for example might encourage getting info from patients quickly. But it’s chronic invalidation that led them to want to kill themselves in…
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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…
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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…
