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New · 2-Hour Live Online · Registration Open

The First Five Minutes

“A client starts dissociating or panicking in your office—what do you do in the first five minutes?”

Clinical supervisors and interview panels don’t just ask for definitions — they test real-time de-escalation skills. Bridge the gap between textbook theory and practical crisis management in this intensive two-hour live online workshop.

Reserve My Place · PKR 2,000 Ask us on WhatsApp
The First Five Minutes: a two-hour live online crisis intervention and grounding skills workshop by MindCare Services®
The invitation

The five minutes nobody teaches you

A client’s breathing goes shallow. They grip the arms of the chair and tell you they are dying, or their eyes go flat and they are simply no longer in the room with you. Everything you have read about panic and dissociation is true, and none of it tells you what to say in the next sixty seconds.

This workshop is built around exactly that gap. Two hours, live, on triaging acute distress fast, the somatic tools that genuinely settle an activated nervous system, and the scripts to say out loud while you use them — then a guided simulation, so the protocol has been run once before the day you need it.

PKR 2,000everything included
Format2 hours · live on Zoom
InvestmentPKR 2,000
ForClinicians & students
You leave withE-certificate & toolkit
The Running Order

Two hours, on the clock

Every block earns its place. Assess, then stabilise, then rehearse it under pressure, then learn to talk about it the way a panel wants to hear.

00:00 – 00:30

Rapid Crisis Triage

Before any technique, one question: what is actually happening in front of you? The first half hour is about reading acute distress accurately and fast, inside the Psychological First Aid framework.

  • Telling panic, dissociation and acute distress apart while they are happening
  • Psychological First Aid as a working sequence, not a definition to recite
  • Risk and safety questions you can ask without escalating the room
  • The moment a session stops being therapy and becomes stabilisation
00:30 – 01:15

Core Grounding Protocols

The longest block, and the practical heart of the workshop: the somatic tools that settle an activated nervous system, and the words you say while you use them.

  • Vagal resetting: breath, temperature and orienting, and why each one works
  • Dual-awareness anchoring for dissociation, flashbacks and depersonalisation
  • De-escalation scripts, word for word, for a client who is already activated
  • Pace, posture and tone: what your own body is doing while you do it
01:15 – 01:45

Guided Case Simulation

One acute crisis, walked through step by step in the session rather than described in the abstract, so the protocols have been used once before you need them.

  • A full scenario worked live, from the first sign to the handover
  • Decision points: what you do, what you say, and what you deliberately leave alone
  • Closing a destabilised session safely, and writing up what happened
  • The common mistakes, named plainly, including the well-meant ones
01:45 – 02:00

Clinical Interview Prep & Q&A

Supervisors and hiring panels ask crisis questions on purpose. The last block is about answering them like someone who has done it.

  • The structure a panel is listening for in a crisis-response answer
  • Turning today's protocols into clean two-minute answers
  • What a supervisor is really asking with “what would you do first?”
  • Open Q&A with the facilitator
Included

What you take home

Two hours is short. The point is that nothing useful stays inside them.

E-Certificate of Completion

Issued by MindCare Services® to every participant and emailed after the session, for your CV, your portfolio or your supervision file.

Comprehensive PDF handout

The whole session written out: the frameworks, the protocols and the reasoning behind them, yours to keep and to print.

Ready-to-use triage flowcharts

The assessment sequence on a single page, laid out to be usable while somebody is sitting in front of you, not afterwards.

Grounding & de-escalation scripts

The actual wording, so you are not composing sentences from scratch while a client is panicking.

Good For

Who this is for

Practising clinicians

Psychologists, therapists and counselors who want a protocol for the moment a session destabilises, instead of improvising it each time.

Trainees & interns

Everyone whose supervisor is about to ask what they would do first, and who would like a real answer ready.

Students facing interviews

Psychology students and fresh graduates preparing for vivas, placements and hiring panels that test crisis response on purpose.

Helping professionals

School counselors, helpline volunteers, social workers and community workers who meet acute distress without a clinical team behind them.

Straight talk

What this is, and what it is not

Two hours of skills training. It will not qualify anyone to manage a psychiatric emergency alone, it is not a licence, and it does not replace your supervisor, your organisation’s protocols or your local emergency services. Anyone who tells you a short workshop does is selling something.

What it does do is narrow: it turns the first five minutes into something you have practised, with a framework to assess by, tools that work on a body rather than an argument, and the words already chosen.

Duration2 hours
PlatformOnline, live via Zoom
InvestmentPKR 2,000
LanguageEnglish, Urdu where it helps
Register & Pay PKR 2,000
Good to Know

Frequently Asked Questions

Practising psychologists, therapists and counselors who want their crisis response to be protocol-led rather than improvised, and trainees, interns and psychology students who are about to face supervisors, vivas or hiring panels. School counselors, helpline volunteers and social workers sit comfortably in it too. You do not need years of clinical experience: every framework is taught from the ground up.

Live on Zoom, all two hours of it. The case simulation is worked in the session and the last block is open Q&A, so nothing about it would survive being pre-recorded.

Yes. Every participant receives an E-Certificate of Completion issued by MindCare Services®, emailed after the session, for your CV or portfolio.

A comprehensive handout covering the full session, plus the two things people ask for most: ready-to-use triage flowcharts, laid out so they are usable while a client is in front of you, and the grounding and de-escalation scripts in full. It is yours to keep and print.

No. The frameworks are taught from first principles, and the final block exists precisely because students and fresh graduates are the ones being asked crisis questions in interviews. Practising clinicians get depth in the grounding block; students get the language and the structure. Both leave with the same toolkit.

We announce each date to registered participants first, along with the Zoom link and the joining instructions. Registering puts you at the front of that queue.

It covers your seat in the live two-hour session, the E-Certificate of Completion and the full PDF handout and protocol toolkit. There is nothing else to pay. Payment is by bank transfer, and you attach the screenshot of your transfer to the registration form so we can match the two by hand.

No, and we would rather say so plainly. This is two hours of skills training. It does not qualify anyone to manage a psychiatric emergency alone, and it is not a substitute for your supervisor, your organisation's protocols or your local emergency services. It makes the first five minutes something you have practised instead of something you invent.

Open the registration page, fill in the short form, transfer PKR 2,000 and attach the screenshot of your payment. We confirm your seat once the two are matched. You can also start on WhatsApp and we will walk you through it.

Not sure it is pitched at you?

Tell us where you are — practising, on placement, or still studying — and we will tell you honestly what you would get out of two hours. A real person from our team answers.

Reserve My Place