Support and Empowerment in Helping Others

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How may our worldview influence our method when it comes to training and also helping others? If we do not acknowledge our own worldview, what impact may this have in how we support others? Also, how can we even begin to ponder what our worldview is, and so consider the above questions, if we don’t take the time to reflect and deeply contemplate on who we are and what we bring to a helping relationship?

These are questions that surfaced for me as I attended a ‘train the trainer’ program for a suicide alertness program called safeTALK last week. I have previously shared a short introduction to the program (https://safetyrisk.net/safetalk-suicide-alertness-program/) and as noted in that piece, I would further explore its methodology. This is what I intend to do here.

Read the full post first published HERE.

I was Offloaded!

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Why is it that even with ample information, and despite ‘knowing‘ differently, that sometimes our ‘feeling of risk’ may override, or at least heavily influence, our response to it? Also, how could someone who has studied and reflected on it in a rather intimate way for the last six years, not control or change their feelings about risk?

What do I mean? If you can bear with me, I’ll explain by sharing a short personal story about a recent overseas trip.

Read the full article which was first published HERE.

Do we Need a Different Way of Being in Safety?

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There are many people working in Safety who seek a ‘different’ way of engaging with others, and rightly so. The current policing and patrolling approaches adopted by many, seem to be doing little to support people in how they tackle the challenges of risk. Some even suggest that rather than being a problem, people are the solution; a creditable idea, but what might this mean in practice?

There are a few questions that come to mind when considering this ‘new view’ in Safety, including:

· How can we adopt an approach focused more on people if we don’t also broaden our ‘way of being’ from the deep-seated STEM focus that currently dominates Safety’s discourse?

· If we are to see people as a ‘solution’[1], how do we then resist also viewing them as objects to be studied and corrected, and instead see them as subjects (people) to be ‘met’?

· How do we deal with the often unrecognised and unconscious social forces in our modern world, that drive us toward individualistic thinking and steer us toward being an expert in others?

Counter intuitively, perhaps the answers to these questions may lie outside of Safety’s traditional literature, studies and references? Conceivably we also require a different ‘way of being’ if Safety is really going to be ‘different’? So where else can we look for guidance on this?

Read the full article first published HERE.