Psychological Protection Plan

A Psychological Protection Plan is a proactive supportive layer, to enhance a strong psychological safe environment or a way to build your own corner of psychological safety in an inconsistent or unsafe environment.

I created this iterative structure, to fill the support gap I found when researching bereavement, in a trauma informed design organisation.

Reigniting skills from my time as a support and rehabilitation worker in not-for-profit organisations.

Providing rehabilitation planning, rehousing and independent living support, suicide intervention alongside staff training, mentoring and well-being support.

Warning: We should always follow the policies and procedures of our organisations if they exist to ensure that we do not breach contractual agreements.

Why is planning important?

Working in a wide range of organisations, with a variety of well-being, mental health and safeguarding policies and procedures in place, noticeably they tend to be reactive.

When supporting others, planning is essential, giving people a safe space to reflect, discuss, learn, think, decide and co-design their ongoing and reactive support plan.

We would not expect a person in crisis to be able to do all these things. However, that is what we expect of our colleagues being exposed to trauma on a daily basis.

The reason behind its creation

I came back into bereavement research during COVID, after a few years break. I expected a high level of targeted support when being consistently exposed to the traumatic lived experiences of our users.

My expectations were not met, either by additional support or current policies and processes, I needed something more.

I created something in my own time, to help me, using my past experience doing this for staff and service users when working with at risk young adults and support workers being constantly exposed to risky situations and riskier information.

First came the plan, a simple template that enables us to proactively support our mental health and equiping us with an instruction guide for if something bad happens.

I started sharing this with others to see if it could help them during their exposure to a wide range of bereavement lived experience, iterating the plan as I received more feedback.

Second came the workshop, creating a way to have open conversations about the impact of our work on us, widening our support network and breaking down barriers, giving ourselves permission to self-care and see the importance of our well-being.

What is a Psychological Protection Plan?

It is a simple plan that lays out, our commitment, to how we will proactively support our well-being. As well as providing an instruction manual to our trusted person, for when things get tough.

From how we will activate the plan, the specific support we need immediately and over time, as well as who else to get involved. The plan is your:

Clear commitment to well-being, laying out the self-care at work we will take and what our basic support needs are.
Identify and risk rate hard topics we are exposed too and those we know we should not be exposed too.
Instruction manual of what to do, when our mental health is negatively impacted through.

Enhancing a strong psychological safe environment or a way to build your own corner of psychological safety in an inconsistent or unsafe environment.

What is psychological safety?

'A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes and the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking'

Dr Amy Edmondson

Psychological safety is critical to a safe, productive and supportive work environment. Where everyone can learn and express themselves, without fear of inappropriate reactions or it being used against them.

Key behaviours seen in psychologically safe environments:

Taking risks and seeing them as opportunities for growth and learning
Safety and well-being are top priority
Share learning and up skill each other
Open and transparent communication
High levels of trust
Effective collaboration and ideation

If this doesn’t sound like your work environment, the plan may be your way of creating a corner of psychological safety with your trusted people.

Why does psychological safety matter?

Psychological safety matters for a number of reasons, for both you and the organisation you work in or with.

There is a positive correlation between feeling safe and feeling able to show as much of our authentic self as we want to share. Unsafe or fluctuating environment, by fluctuating I mean we may have pockets of psychological safety, in our team we feel good, but with some stakeholders or other areas of the organisation, that safety quickly dissipates.

People mask for many reaason, psychological safety in the work environment has a big impact on this. Unsafe or fluctuating safety results in a higher level of masking for an individual. By mask I mean hide our true selves, traits, lived experiences, anything really. Any aspect of you, you hide, in this context because you do not feel it is safe to be you, for fear of consequence because of the psychological safety of the environment, compared to what you would over time unmask in a psychological safe working environment.

Masking is exhausting, it takes up energy that could be better spend elsewhere and creates an environment that doesn't get the best out of us. Because that brilliant idea, or different view we had, we are not safe to say it. In the same way if we have seen the mistake happen before, we are not able to warn of the risk.

If we do not feel safe to share information about ourselves, this can prevent or reduce the support we receive from line managers, mentors and reasonable adjustments that should be in place to break down the barriers work places around us, enabling us to be effective at our work.

Signs of a psychological unsafe environment, regularly referred to as toxic, can include:

being and feeling unsafe to be our authentic self
low or no support openly talked about, considered or put in place
generally feeling on edge, feeling unsafe and worried about others behaviours.

Most of us have worked in environments just like that, it can have a massive impact on our physical and mental health, that lasts beyond leaving that environment.

Aggravating or triggering impostor syndrome, low confidence, anxiety, depression and any other pre-existing mental or physical health conditions.

In reality for an organisation of any type, happier people that feel safe, result in higher productivity and effectiveness of staff... they get more for their money!

How psychologically safe do you feel?

Thinking back to the psychological safety explanation. It is a belief that we will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

How safe do you feel to express your emotions and challenge others?

In a group setting this can be made into an exercise making a matrix, with all the different teams or areas you interact with at work listed down one side of a sheet of paper, or digitalised and the following headings across the top: included, safe to learn, safe to contribute, communication is open, safe to challenge, safe to talk about mistakes, trusted.

The heading along the top are intentially vague to create discussion about what they mean to you, there are no right or wrong answers.

Tick, shade, put happy face icons, in the bits you feel or agree with, for example I feel trusted in my team, and if you don’t feel that leave that bit blank. Do this individually first so you can be completely honest and then discuss with others only sharing what you are happy too.

This is to focus on does our level of safety change depend on who your are working will and what you are working on, thinking of your different worlds of work.

Creating a Psychological Protection Plan

There are a 4 aspects to creating your plan, it doesn’t usually happen in a linear order, you may bounce from one to another, they can be grouped as understanding, self-reflection, investigation and sharing.

Your plan can be as complex or simple as you need it to be, you can share a small part of it with one person or the whole thing with multiple trusted people, whatever works for you.

Your plan should be regularly updated reviewed and reshared.

Understanding

Understanding and learning to a level which you are comfortable with is key.

Including, what psychological safety is, why breaking stereotypes of how to act in a work environment is key to success, why self care in work is essential to working with hard topics.

Self-reflection

Self-reflection on our view of our self and worries, how we believe others view us and what support we may need and when.

Being honest with how safe we feel in different environments. And if we have the right professional and line management support in place, and resonable adjustments.

Investigate

Investigate what support, policies and processes are in place in our organisations, for both employees and contractors.

Investigate reasonable adjustments and Access to Work.

Finding suitable support, self-care options, coping mechanisms and ways to access professional support.

Sharing your plan

Once you’ve put your plan together, the most important thing to do is share at least the support plan for when you have a negative psychological event with a trusted person.

Resetting our expectation

It’s business, leave your emotions at the door

This saying ‘it’s business, leave your emotions at the door’ means to intentionally suppress and not express certain emotions, in the work place.

Archaic sayings such as these reflect toxic work environments, where some emotions were invalid, undesirable and should not be expressed, rather than have a safe environment that enables challenge, that wants to understand the route cause of those emotions, and deal with the person or stimulus that triggered them effectively.

But which emotions?

If we didn't bring any emotions to work it would not just be detrimental to ourselves, but to work as well. Where would energised, proud, interest and respect go?

So, this saying does seem to focus on negative emotions. With the intention of expressing them, which doesn’t sound very psychologically safe.

If you feel sad, hurt, overwhelmed, burnt out, apathy or disappointment. These too need to be expressed so that you can get the help and support you need and depending on the cause action or an effective support structure be put in place.

Another way you may have heard this, is put on your work persona... 'Our work persona is a safe outward version of who we are - one that makes our bosses and colleagues feel comfortable working with us'.

You, your emotions, well-being and being able to express as much of your authentic self as you want to is important and a true measure of an inclusive and psychological safe work environment.

Let us dismiss and challenge any archiaic sayings and idioms we may have had impressed on us throughout our lives and work career.

Self-care and coping strategies

What is the difference between self-care and coping strategies?

Self-care is any healthy, deliberate activity intended to maintain or to improve mental, emotional and or physical well-being. They are regularly grouped into 5 areas of self-care: psychological, physical, emotional, spiritual and social.

Even though the activities may overlap coping strategies are different and should be recognised for their intention. Coping strategies are learnt techniques or activities, to help manage stress, feeling overwhelmed by emotions and burnt out.

Self-care is required consistently, whereas the use of copying strategies tends to be reactive, to deteriorating mental health or as part of a recovery plan to strengthen and maintain, better mental health.

Information about coping strategies are available online, but if you feel you need them reaching out to medical professional is your best option. I am not a medical professional and am not going to touch on coping strategies because of that.

If you already have medical professional support in place, please discuss this with them before taking on some of the activities, especially those about self reflecting on mistakes and triggers. They can guide you if this is appropriate for you, where you are in your journey right now, if it is ask they about support for doing these.

Self-care

So self-care is healthy activities that make us feel good and do not harm others. They look different to different people, and look different for the same person at different times. You are unlikely to be aware of all the self-care activities a person does, there are toxic concepts out there, that self-care is selfish. That is simply not true,, self-care is essential for us to survive, live and thrive. Because of this it is really important to not compare yourself to others and in the wise words of Chilli Heeler ‘Just run your own race’.

Let's think about what self-care can do for us. When I look at self-care, I think of self care as layers, the activities may switch layers over time dependant on how we are doing, there is fluidity in this concept.

Self-care to survive

.What we need to do to maintain us. Sleep, eat, hydrate, basic hygiene and health maintenance.

When someone is struggling with their mental health or where this does not come naturally to a person, even this level of self-care can be hard to achieve.

Self-care to live

Self-care that raises our base level from survival to living. Listening to our bodies a bit more, doing excercise from short walks to long cycles, proactive health improvements. Low level social activities, from going out to chatting over socials.

Picking up old or new hobbies and taking interest in doing certain things again.

Self-care to thrive

Empowering ourselves and building ourselves up, that move from living to thriving.

Being honest and open with our self reflection, setting up a support structure, doing more social activities (again doesn't have to mean nights out etc, but doing things we want to do, in the way we want to do them.) Actively engaging in hobbies and making time and prioritising well-being activities.

Self-care is not selfish or unnecessary on any of these three levels they all enable us to survive, live and thrive. It is about being kind to yourself, prioritising your mental health and knowing when it’s not enough and seeking help a little bit before you think you need it.

Self-care considerations

Self-care is the right activity, at the right time for you, as long as it causes no harm.

Not everyone is open about how or if they self care, for a range of reasons including fear of judgement.

Not everyone can self-care at home, even survival self-care may be limited or not possible in the home environment. Please do not judge each other for your activities, one huff, eye roll or comment can stick, for years to a persons belief system of themselves.

Self-care at work

Self-care in and out of the workplace can support our all round quality of life. Here are two self-care exercises that can be done by yourself or as a group

Exercise 1

Self-care game (warm up game at the start of this section when run as a workshop)

Quick game, you should have coloured card (paper) in front of you with not self-care, self- care at home, self-care at work. These are not perfect descriptions, if you think you could do it at work use the at work card, if you don’t, use the at home, and if you don’t think for you that is self-care choose that one. Remember everyone is different and what each person needs is different.

This is an instinct thing, I'm going to read out 10 activities, all you have to do is grab the card (paper) that you feel is right and stick it in the air.

No looking around go by what you think, doesn't matter if everyone has different option gut instinct.

Let's go:

Turning off notifications
Listening to music
Going on Spa day
Say no to things that make you sad
Wearing clothes that make you feel good
Plan something to look forward to
Limiting your exposure to bad news
Listening to what your body needs
Asking for help or advice with difficult tasks
Sitting in the car or on a bench before you go into somewhere

It is best not discuss beliefs why for each of these but to recognise what each person needs and would help them is different.

Exercise 2

Thinking about what self-care you do or would like to do. I would like to to reflect discuss (or mind map) the following.

Do you self-care at work and are you open about it?

Do you feel empowered to self-care at work?

Are there any blockers to doing or starting self-care at work?

if you are or were to self-care at work, when would it be useful to you? Do you have any ideas of what you think would help?

In a group if anyone has at home or at work tips and tricks to share this can be helpful.

After completing this take a moment to reflect it is common when doing this review of self-care that a basic level of line management, peer professional support or reasonable adjustments creep in here. It is worth being honest and open and understanding that all those should already be in place, it’s the additional that is the self-care side.

What self-care at work can look like

These are some simple ideas of what self-care at work can look like. It is useful on your plan to split activities to when you would use them, and if there is a range of activities you could fit in here and there split them by time, so if something is delayed or cancelled and you need a quick activity you can use your plan to find it, rather than the time trying to think of one.

Self-care can be anything you need it to be at that time as long as it doesn’t have a negative effect, sorry pint is out on this one. Self-care ideas:

Planning out time away from your computer to decompress after a heavy meeting, this can be sitting having a cuppa away from your device, going for a walk, listening to some music or doing some breathing exercises.
When you are with your support network, do something together than is not focused around devices, walk and decompress together, go for a cuppa.
Starting and ending you day on paper or record it what ever works for you but not in your emails, this is both a bit of self-care to do a brain dump and also a way of working. At the end of the day, get everything down that is running around your head from that days, from half thoughts, to things to do tomorrow to frustrations, get it all out.
Create clearer home work boundaries, this can be hard if we are flexibly working around care responsibilities or at home, but trying to put hard lines in form when we will not work past or before. Psychically putting work stuff like a laptop, notebook etc in a bag rather than leaving it in sight, and turning off notifications from works communications when we are not working.

Self-care examples mixture of home and work

Listen to what your body needs
Is it water, food, down time whatever it may be, try and tune in. Chase the dopamine but in safe ways, is it a run, cycle, nice walk. This could be giving yourself 10 mins headspace before switching topics or from work to home.

Comfort and positive vibes
Wear clothing, jewellery or accessories that make you feel good and comfortable.

Shutting out negativity
Turning off notificiations, limit your expose to bad news, limit your exposure to toxic people. Say no to going to a meeting that will make you sad (not every meeting though).

Music and hobbies
Listening to music, going to a gig, playing an instrument or doing a hobby.

Treat yourself within your finances
Doing something that you may not get to do regularly that you enjoy doing, going on a spa day, going to your favourite restaurant, going to a museum, whatever it is.

Plan something to look forward to
This doesn't have to be doing something it could be the opposite, some down time, a bath, seeing friends of any of the stuff mentioned above.

Get help, or support
Ask for help or advice with difficult tasks, get a buddy that can help with the hard stuff from doing it together to body doubling.

I could write a never ending list of self-care at work but there is so much available online I will leave that to Google and LinkedIn.

Triggers and vicarious trauma

Triggers

There is a lot of controversy around the use of the word ‘trigger’.

In 1980s the word trigger was included in the DSM to refer to psychological stimuli that cause a strong psychological response, stimuli can be smell, touch, taste, sight, location etc. Triggers can be grouped dependent on the effect of the trigger e.g. Anxiety, Anger, Trauma are all emotional triggers.

The use of trigger has expanded significantly to include a cultural meanings, such as the one we are using today. In this context a trigger being something that a person has a strong emotional response to. Context is more relevant in cultural meaning.

In the context of engaging with information at work, the trigger may have an immediate effect, or cause a delayed reaction dependent on the situation. Delayed effect can be common when researching, when the focus is on completing the research and ensuring the safety of the participant, delays the impact in totality, by a short time.

Identify triggers or suspected triggers

Identifying triggers we are already aware of can be simple, make a list of these. Next consider topics that you may not have been exposed to but that you suspect would cause a negative psychological impact if you were. Make a list of these as suspected triggers

You may not be aware of all of your triggers, you may have been aware you have been triggered in the past, but unaware of what the trigger was. Identifying unexpected triggers isn’t always immediately possible.

We should be cautious about breaking down the effect of triggers, we have experienced in the past, as that in itself, can have a negative impact on our wellbeing.

So, we are going to side step into the same activity but in the context of making a mistake instead.

Mistakes and their effect

This is a simple exercise to break down, how an event such as making a mistake or thinking we have made a mistake, makes us feel, think, and behave. It can help to draw or make notes as you go.

Looking at these things can help self reflection, plan support, help and self-care for the future, using our own lived experiences. The same can be replicated for trigger support.

This can be expanding into a group activity discussing:

Do you worry about making mistakes? If so, why?
Do you think that making mistakes, impacts what people think of you? Does it impact what you think about others?
How do you feel after making a mistake and how do you deal with it? At the time and after it happens.

Grab some post-its and to see if there are some themes or differing approaches.

Understanding the risk of your triggers

When thinking about the risk about being triggers has on you, simply rate high, medium and low. If you are unsure between two, go for the higher level, it is better to be more cautious than put yourself in an unsafe situation.

High risk trigger

This trigger has a significant emotional impact no matter what way you engage with the information. You need a plan of support, care and coping strategies in place incase you are accidentally exposed. You should not try and engage with this trigger in the workplace, without the support of a medical professional.

Medium risk trigger

This trigger can have a significant emotion impact, but the way you engage with the information can reduce the impact. This may not always be the case dependent on your overall wellbeing, in times of stress medium risks can shift up to high.
Be mindful of your emotions and thought patterns, notice signs of stress, distress, discomfort, overwhelm and burn out. Do you have a tell, that shows you or others close to you, that you are struggling or have been triggered. This is your time to think about the trigger management plan, think about what support you need from who when and how and how are you going to communicate to enact your plan.

All other triggers sit in the green risk, that is not that there is no risk but that with the right support in place they can be engaged with at the right time in the right way.

These rating are crucial to be aware of what to avoid and when to implement extra support, or request information in an alternative format to protect your psychological safety. This become a main part of your psychological protection plan.

Vicarious trauma and the range of impact

Psychological Protection Plan mainly focuses on triggers but when we work in trauma informed design, we are constantly exposed to other peoples lived experiences and trauma. We need to consider the effect of vicarious trauma. That doesn’t just come from the research sessions, analysis and outputs. It is present throughout all aspects of work from ideation sessions to backlog refinement, as we as a team aim to ensure that trauma informed designs enable vulnerable people to make ‘informed choices and enable them to know what to do’.

Vicarious trauma

Vicarious trauma, also known as secondary trauma is an occupational hazard of working in trauma informed design. It is the psychological impact of being exposed to the trauma of other.

As a support worker, the effects of vicarious trauma especially on support workers, being in continuously high risk and trauma exposing situations was high.

Warning signs can be varied, and vicarious trauma can be confused with burnout, resulting in appropriate support being accessed.

Some examples of working signs from a user researchers view, can include:

experiencing lingering feelings about a participant’s trauma
becoming overly emotionally attached to a participant’s situation
experiencing bystander guilt, shame and self-doubt that you can impact the situation - preocupied with your research participants outside of work
hightened imposter syndrome (where not other new triggers exist)

Through making research a team sport, carrying out user-centred design from trauma informed research we are expanding the reach of this trauma. It isn't just us but everyone.... we are in a place where more support is available and openness, others experiencing this may not even understand what is going on, let along know how to access the right professional support for them.

Knowing when to reach out for professional support is important, even more so reaching out for that support before we think we need it,

Creating your plan

I run sessions for a range of professionals to develop these plans, the most valuable part of these sessions are the relationships, trust and awareness that everyone gains from these workshops.

Aim: to make a plan that enables you to proactively support your mental health and put a plan in place, so that your support is in place to manage the impact of triggers, enabling each other in the way that is right for us.

So what are the steps of getting there:

1. Identify person triggers or suspected triggers. If you have experienced them before can you safely consider how they affected you and what support and coping strategies could help you. You may not know what support you need that is okay, its time to investigate and ask for help doing it.

2. Identify what ongoing self-care is for you (takes a bit of trial and error), give yourself permission to self-care by prioritising regular self care in and out of work.

3. Identify what ongoing support you need to thrive. For work and well-being, this doesn’t always have to be through conventional routes.

4. Make a plan of what support you want in what form if you are triggered and how you want to communicate that trigger with your trusted person.

5. Share it with a trusted person, commit to review it either every couple of months, if you think of an iteration or have to use your trigger plan, which ever is sooner.

Not a step but something we all must do, Seek professional support a bit before we think we need it.

Let’s look at different aspects of Psychological Safety Plan

The detail you go into your Psychological Protection Plan is your choice and how you want to present the information can be adapted, and made visual. For these examples I have gone for basic text written docs. If you struggle to get started with a visual way of presenting, I will be adding some examples soon.

Sharing with your trusted person

The minimum you can share with your trusted person, is the part of your trigger support plan, that explains how they are to support you when things get rough. It is really important to talk through with your trusted person, co-designing your final version, so that they are comfortable and able to support you in that way.

Things to consider in this section include:

How you will trigger the plan
How you want to communicate with your trusted person
What support you need
What other things do you need in the short term
Over time how you want to be supported
Emergency contact details your trusted person may need.

This section can be as detailed as you need it to be, but it should be able to be used in isolation by your trusted person.

Let’s work through a basic example. I am observing research on a hard topic. This is what I may share with my trusted person.

Initial contact:

I am going to text you 123 if I am triggered
Text me as I can handle that, if you call I am likely to get more overwhelmed and not answer
I need you to let my line manager know what is happening, we have already agreed this with my line manager, and that you will be my key contact for the first 3 days
I need you or my line manager to contact my emergency contact if I do not respond

Support

On day one I’ll just want to vent and have some empathy
Next day onwards will need some help putting a plan together
I have given you permission to edit my calendar, so you or my line manager can cancel my meetings just saying ‘unexpected circumstance’ as the reason, if I am unable to do that myself
I need to avoid follow up meetings that refer to my trigger so that I am not re-triggered
I need weekly check ins until we decide they can move up to monthly then stop, as protected time to talk about how I am doing about this specifically
In the weekly check ins can you prompt me to make sure I’m doing my self-care and using my coping strategies.

It can help to share your triggers with your trusted person even if they do not get shared wider, for some that may be too much information to share with someone in the work environment, dependant on the work environment and the sensitivity of the trigger.

If you are in a design or full team that are using Psychological Protection Plans, it can be helpful to share your red triggers, amber triggers and/or just the contact details for your trusted person. This way if you leave research unexpectedly, your safety can be check in a quick way that is not going to aggregate the situation for you.

To be continued

I am releasing as I go, I am changing the format from my drawings and scribbles into a linear format that you do not need guiding through, because of this it takes a bit of time,I am aiming to keep updating every couple of days with the next section.