Lesson 1: Support yourself in case of emergency
Introduction:
The goal of this self-help coaching lesson is to think through your personal opportunities and steps to do in case of emergency. This process needs you feeling actually safe – for assessing your safety, we provide you a safety barometer at the beginning of the lesson.
Before starting to work, assure that you have
- enough time: at least 30-50 minutes of undisturbed time
- enough and safe space to work without interruptions and being disturbed in your process
- you can use this planning tool alone or if you have a person of confidence, you can also invite others to do it with you.
Objectives:
To help you to assess your personal feelings of safety
To help you to create an “emergency kit”
Exercise 1: Safety Barometer
For this action, you can use our online Safety Barometer Tool
This is a self-assessment tool on your feelings of security. Here we ask you, if you feel safe in general, and right now (actual). Feeling safe means you are not tensed, or anxious, you are not very worried, and you believe that you can deal with the issues of your life.
Step 1: Evaluate your sense of safety
Please choose a number from 1 to 10 for how you feel, where 1 is the feeling of very unsafe (of future, present, life danger etc.), and 10 is the perfectly safe.
Step 2: Assess your results! What’s next?
In case you give yourself the following values on either of the both barometers…
0-2: You feel very unsafe in general, or in the present situation.
In case you feel threatened, in danger right now, we encourage you to turn for help as soon as possible! Here are the support lines and organizations you can turn to:
3-5: You feel unsafe. In case you feel anxious, and a sense of unsafety, our recommendation is:
Try to find out why are you feeling unsafe. Is there any real danger around you? In that case turn for support, see options in the previous section.
Or you don’t have an exact fear, rather something triggered you and made you anxious? In this case, contact someone close to you for support and feedback. It is normal to feel afraid even without a concrete reason. Talking with a trusted person can help you to calm down, and maybe also to find out the reasons behind your anxiety.
Close your eyes. Try to locate the place in your body, where you feel the tension and fear. Take deep breaths, and breath into it, also you can touch, stroke, or massage that part of your own body. Sports, yoga, exercising, massage, hot bath or meditation – any practice where you can connect with your own body – can also help to decrease the feeling of anxiousness.
In case you generally and often feeling unsafe and anxious without understanding why, it can be a result of previous experiences and trauma. If so, we recommend you to turn for help to a counsellor.
6-8: You feel stable with challenges. We recommend you to go and continue to work with our emergency kit, it is especially made for you.
9-10: You feel perfectly safe and stable. There is no urgent need to go on, but our emergency kit can be good as a prevention activity for the future.
Exercise 2: Creating your emergency kit
This is a tool to create an emergency kit for those situations, when it is hard to think through rationally, what to do. In case you used our online safety barometer, you can go on and use our Online Emergency Kit tool for this exercise.
Step 1: How to support someone in case of crisis?
Think about it: what can you do, when someone around you feels upset or is in a crisis? How can you support them, or what can you suggest them to do? Think also about how you can support yourself in such situations.
List as many ways as possible (it can be as simple as drinking a hot tea, taking a shower, or going out to nature, but also more complicated). Write them down on a paper.
Step 2: Where to turn for help?
Think about it! What outside help is available for you or others who feel upset and / or in crisis? Where and to whom can you turn for help? List as many as possible, and as concrete as possible, as this will be emergency kit information. Write them down in the same paper you started with.
Step 3: Create your “physical” emergency kit!
- In case you work offline, look around in your home, and find a small physical symbol for each resource you have listed above!
Keep them together with your list somewhere safe and close to you.
- In case you worked on a computer, or with our online tool, have it printed in 2 copies. Put it into your purse and also to a safe space.
Feedback and evaluation
As a result of this lesson how do you feel: