Teaching nonviolence

Today I taught a nonviolent crisis intervention session. The Mennonite in me has come full circle. It is a system of nonviolence that can be applied to any escalating interpersonal situation. The stages are anxiety, defensive, acting out and tension reduction. When a person is anxious, the best way to react to him or her is to be supportive and caring. If she escalates to the defensive state, the best response is to set limits, choices or boundaries. If the situation escalates from these verbal states into physical acting out, the reaction needs to be nonviolent physical intervention. The final state is tension reduction, when all the bad energy has been spent, the person is exhausted, and the crisis is past. At this point the person needs to have contact with staff reestablished, care and rapport reintroduced. We teach and review these steps annually to all our emergency room staff, our behavioral health (psychiatric unit) staff, and to our public safety officers. I enjoyed teaching the session, and from the evaluations, so did the class.

Still a Newby

I am sitting at the back of the room at Novant orientation. I am looking at all 88 new faces joining our company, and they all look eager, and a little anxious. That is how I feel about this new type of communication...blogging.
So why am I at the back? Well, I am one of the educators responsible for the orientation this morning. I have been doing this every month for several years, so no more anxiety for this.
I can only imagine that I will get comfortable writing blogs, too!