Looking after your most important asset… YOU

Long ago, in what seems like a far-off career, I dealt with the concepts of psychosocial risk, and what we called “PPRR risk management.” 

“Boring!” I hear you say.

What if I were to tell you that discrimination, bullying and harassment are all examples of psychosocial risks? What if I said that we can put into place a prevention, preparation, response and recovery plan to deal with the psychosocial risks to our mental, emotional, social and spiritual health? Still bored?

It’s important to plan for abuse, for loss, for change, for any kind of misfortune. It’s important to prepare for when it occurs. It’s important to respond appropriately. And it’s important to recover the situation. Our mental, emotional, social and spiritual health depend on these things.

But most people don’t plan around prevention, preparation, response and recovery. Life doesn’t run in that kind of structure. But we might consider it if there was sufficient foreseeable benefit.

Planning is anticipating the possibilities and being realistic about the likelihood. If 1-in-4 women and 1-in-6 men will be impacted by violence, we know that statistically it does happen. We will all face loss and uncertainty. We will all face betrayal and myriad other hurt. 

Prevention only comes into its own when we consider wisely what we have control over. We cannot control many of the losses that occur, but we can control the environments we enter and stay in. We can prevent some mental, emotional, social and spiritual health risks.

It is wise to plan for the best, but to prepare for the worst. For the risks to our mental, emotional, social and spiritual health we must prepare for the worst, because it will occur… at some point. We will feel overwhelmed mentally, we do fear losing mental capacity, and we will endure attacks to our emotional health. Socially, we will face conflict, rejection and exclusion. Spiritually, there will be times when our whole person will feel vulnerable. There are potential impacts in all these areas.

How will we respond when we face a mental, emotional, social and spiritual health crisis? It’s just as applicable to ask this question of those situations our loved ones will face. It is normal to respond in attacking (angry) and escaping (denying) ways initially. These are not the appropriate responses, but they’re very human responses. It’s wise to plan to respond in ways that give us the chance to more slowly and reflectively process what’s occurred.

Recovery is about finding ourselves in crisis. I’ve had several times of crisis in my life, where prevention, preparation and response were no longer applicable. The situations were already a mess. The best thing about being in crisis is it can be seen ultimately as a learning experience. Support, and plenty of it, is crucial when we’re in recovery. Healing is the goal of recovery.

If you look after you, you get license, and have the capacity, to care for others you’re responsible for and to. Looking after yourself is the most important task you’ll ever have.