When big emotions feel overwhelming or unsafe, having a clear plan can make all the difference. The Safety Plan tool gives young people practical steps to recognize early signs of distress, build coping strategies, and connect with safe support when they need it most. This tool helps them feel prepared, supported, and empowered to take care of themselves.

This poster guides students step-by-step to identify what triggers them, what helps them feel better, who they can reach out to, and how they can keep their environment safer. It’s a simple and empowering resource that prepares students to support themselves before a crisis hits.

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How to Use the Safety Plan Tool

This tool can be filled out during a calm moment — ideally with a coach, counselor, teacher, or trusted adult. Guide students gently through each section:

1. I know I’m triggered when…
   Help students recognize early warning signs.
   Prompts: “What do you notice in your body?” “What thoughts show up?” "How does your behavior change?"
2. Things that help me when I feel this way…
   Explore coping strategies that have worked before.
   Examples: breathing exercises, stepping outside, music, texting a friend, grounding tools.
3. Good ways to distract myself…
   Collaborate on safe options for redirecting attention.
   Examples: doodling, stretching, playing a game, holding a fidget, watching a favorite TV show.
4. Safe people I can reach out to…
   Encourage naming trusted supporters with phone numbers.
   Friends, family, school staff, or coaches.
5. Other ways to get help…
   Remind students of additional support resources, including calling 988 - The suicide & crisis lifeline.
6. Ways to keep my space safe…
   Brainstorm ways to reduce risk in their environment.
   Example: removing harmful items, moving into a shared space, turning on lights.

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✔ Tip: Review the Safety Plan together after completing it and help the student store it somewhere accessible — a notebook, a backpack, or taped inside a locker.

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Additional Protective Factors

The following interventions can be key for de-escalating suicidal ideation.

Reason for Living

• Guide them to name the reason why they don’t kill themselves / their reason for living.

This is the most effective intervention. Sometimes this is a student's pet, a goal, personal values, religious beliefs, nature, a commitment they made to someone, fear of dying, etc. Whatever it is, it’s something that can protect them from following through with harming themselves or others.

Identify Their Positive Coping Skills

• Identify a time in the past they’ve been in distress and/or had the urge to kill themselves. Ask how they got through that.
• Validate that they were able to make it through previous challenges.
• Remind them of whatever qualities they have inside of them that allowed them to get through (e.g., reaching out for help, making a plan, strength, resilience…reflect back whatever qualities they identified in themselves).

Social Supports

Hopefully the safety planning will illuminate that they have people in their life that they love and who care about them (e.g., friends, family). You can emphasize that you care about them and that’s why you’re here. Community can be an important protective factor.

Help-Seeking Behavior

• Validate that they are sharing their feelings with you now.

Help-seeking behavior is a huge protective factor —- the fact that they are sharing is a good sign and it’s important to reflect back to students that reaching out is a sign of strength, courage, and advocacy for their own needs. It also can be a sign that they are valuing their feelings/needs and creating space for themselves to process/self-reflect which is such an important skill.

Be sure to validate help-seeking in whatever way they feel proud of it.

For example, if they share that they’ve never reached out to anyone before, you could ask them how it feels to reach out. Validate how brave they are and how hard it can feel to share / try something new. You can reflect back that they are caring/advocating for their feelings/needs and how important that is.

General De-escalation Tips

Validate

• Validate the feelings they are sharing
  • For example, if they are sharing that they feel sad, you can say:
    • “have you ever felt this sad before?”
    • “just so i can get a sense for how big or intense your sadness feels now, if you were to put it on a scale from 1-10, one being slightly sad, and 10 being unbearable and overwhelmed with sadness and despair, how would you rate the sadness you feel now? How intense is your sadness normally?”
• Validate the magnitude of what they're feeling
  • For example, saying
    • “It must be really upsetting feeling that sad. It can be hard to handle feelings that are bigger than anything you’ve ever dealt with before.”
  • As a secondary benefit, this technique also allows you to assess the severity of what they’re dealing with as part of the risk assessment.

It is so important for students to feel seen, heard, and valid in feeling the way they do. Some of the biggest threats to young people feeling validated in their feelings is the sense that:

1. Others can’t understand the pain they feel

OR

2. They shouldn’t feel the way they’re feeling.

Naming and appreciating the magnitude of the feeling is one way for a students to recognize that you see how big of a deal this is, which in and of itself could feel de-escalating.

Normalize

Normalizing is a way to address the “I shouldn’t feel this way” shame that students often feel.

In terms of suicidal ideation - the truth is it’s a natural coping response to feeling tremendous pain. Our human nature is to avoid pain. If our hand is in the door as its slamming shut, we quickly remove our hand so that we don’t get hurt. Same goes with feelings — we generally try to avoid painful feelings, and if we don’t have many coping strategies and our pain level surpasses what we’re able to deal with, suicidal ideation can be a natural way our mind tries to cope with the pain. The thought process is ‘if I disappear or die, I can avoid feeling the pain I feel trapped in’.

It can be really validating to a student to hear that they’re not alone in having these thoughts, that their mind and body is trying to cope with overwhelming pain AND ALSO there are other ways to cope with pain that we can practice together.

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Download the Poster & Support Your Students

Help students feel confident managing tough emotions — before they escalate.
Download the Safety Plan Tool poster today and start creating a personalized plan with the young people you support. It’s a resource they can return to anytime they need a reminder that they can get through difficult moments. 💛

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