Crisis Safety Plan

To help prevent any repeat problemmatic behavior including suicide attempts and self-harm, addictive behaviors, anger management, or others (including anxiety/avoidance). A range of factors are covered. Vulnerability factors are things that reduce our capacity to cope but do not directly  trigger the problem behavior. This could include but not limited to reduced sleep, side effects of medication change, physical illness or psychosocial issues. Triggers are things we know to trigger symptoms and feelings that typically result in the identified "problem behavior" occurring. Early warning signs are both internal and external. Internal ones are symptoms, visceral sensations, emotions, and thoughts that cue us in to the likelihood of the problem behavior occurring - as with medical health concerns, early recognition is key to positive outcomes but we often lack insight into this in our emotional health. External cues are things other people would notice - enumerating these and sharing this with loved ones allows them to communicate when they see these signs so we can initiate interventions. Interventions may also be ones we engage in and ones for social support. Social support interventions could be things other people should do if they notice early warning signs, how to talk to us in the ways we are likely to best respond, what types of things are helpful and what we'd like them to do. The interventions we engage in are highly individualized but could include common ones like deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, mindfulness, guided imagery and/or grounding.