If you have ever sat with APPR — Action Planning for Prevention and Recovery — you know the architecture.
- A Wellness Toolbox.
- A Daily Maintenance Plan.
- A list of Triggers.
- Early Warning Signs.
- A plan for when things are getting harder.
- A Crisis Plan.
And, at the end, a Post-Crisis Plan — the part that helps you rebuild after a hard time has passed.
Most peer workers have walked someone else through that workbook, or filled it out for ourselves, or both.
Today we want to invite you to do something a little different.
We want to invite you to write an Action Plan for the work of peer support itself.
Why this work needs its own plan
Peer support is meaningful work. It is also, at times, hard work. The people we walk alongside are often navigating things that no one should have to navigate alone — illness, loss, instability, trauma, the slow grind of systems that were not built to hold them.
We hold space, listen and stay present for that. Sometimes we go home carrying more than we knew we picked up.
This is not a sign that something is wrong with us. It is a sign that the work is real.
The same Action Planning skills we have learned to apply to our own recovery can be applied here, too — with care, and with honesty about what this particular kind of work asks of us.
Your peer support Wellness Toolbox
Your personal Wellness Toolbox is the list of things that help you feel like yourself. A walk. A favourite song. A friend you can call. A particular meal. The smell of coffee in the morning.
Your peer support Wellness Toolbox is something a little different. It is the list of things that help you reset between the work and the rest of your life. The things that help you put down what you have been carrying so you can pick up your own life again.
Some examples, from peer workers we know:
- A specific song that gets played on the drive home
- Five minutes of silence in the car before walking into the house
- A shower right after a hard session
- Calling another peer worker, just to say hi — not to debrief, just to hear a friend’s voice
- Cooking something with your hands
- Stepping outside, no matter the weather, even for a minute
Your toolbox will be your own. The point is to know what’s in it before you need it.
Triggers and early warning signs in this work
In APPR, Triggers are external events that can stir up a hard time. Early Warning Signs are the small internal changes that tell you something is shifting.
Both apply to peer support work, too.
Triggers in this work might include hearing a story too close to your own, attending a memorial, learning that someone you walked alongside is gone, a particularly hard group, an anniversary of a loss in the community, or a season of the year when overdose deaths or other crises tend to rise.
Early Warning Signs might include feeling numb during a session when you usually feel present, dreading a group you usually look forward to, finding yourself short-tempered with the people closest to you, sleeping badly, or noticing that you are drinking more coffee, scrolling more, or pulling away from friends.
There is no shame in any of these. They are information.
The practice is to notice them early, before they become the thing that makes you step away from the work entirely.
A Post-Crisis Plan for after the hard moments
APPR’s Post-Crisis Plan is a beautiful part of the workbook. It is the part that comes after the storm — the part where you rebuild gently, where you let yourself recover from what just happened, where you take stock of what helped and what didn’t.
Peer support work has its own post-crisis moments. Someone you walked with passes away. A group session goes somewhere unexpectedly heavy. A long-time participant relapses. You attend a memorial that hits harder than you expected.
A peer-work Post-Crisis Plan might include:
Right after. Permission to do less for a day or two. A small list of people you will reach out to — not to fix anything, just to be in their company. The thing that always helps you sleep. Permission to take the next group off, if you can.
The next few days. Saying no to anything that isn’t already on your calendar. Returning to your daily maintenance, gently. Eating real meals. Letting yourself feel what you feel, without trying to make it productive.
The next few weeks. Checking in with someone who knew the person, or who was there. Naming what you learned, or what you wish had been different. Letting yourself remember.
A Post-Crisis Plan does not erase the loss. It walks you back into your life.
A note on respect
Some of us reading this are deep in this work, day in and day out. Some of us hold lighter pieces — supporting from the side, showing up where we can, doing the parts of the work that have lower stakes than the frontline.
There is real respect owed to the people who hold the hardest pieces. The peer workers who sit with people in crisis. The folks who show up to memorials again and again. The ones who keep coming back to a community they have already given so much to.
If that is you: please take care of yourself, and let your peers take care of you, too. The work needs you well. And so do we.
A small invitation
Find a quiet moment this week. Open a notebook, or your phone, or just close your eyes.
Ask yourself one of these questions:
- What is one thing that always helps me reset after a hard session?
- What is one early warning sign that I am running low?
- Who is one person I would call if I needed to put something down for a few minutes?
You don’t have to answer all of them today and you don’t have to write a full plan. You just have to start noticing.
That is how Action Plans get built. One honest answer at a time.
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