The quietest lifesaving moments often happen between a slammed door and a deep breath. We sit down with crisis mental health clinician and SWAT negotiator Jessi Beyer to unpack what it really takes to bring a volatile scene down, earn trust in minutes, and move someone from danger toward safety. Jessie works nights alongside law enforcement on 911 calls involving suicidal ideation, psychosis, and severe substance use, and she opens up about the tools that work when nothing else seems to.

You’ll hear how a winding path from vet school to EMT to graduate studies in trauma and terrorism shaped a clinician who knows her lane and thrives in it. Jessi breaks down tips for de‑escalation you can use anywhere: matching tone without escalating, reflecting the exact pain under the behavior, and delivering the one line that can drop someone from a ten to a six. We talk about realistic definitions of success in crisis care, why “alive tonight” is often the right metric, and how clean handoffs and community resources reduce reliance on emergency rooms and revolving-door hospitalizations.

We also confront a blind spot: up to 75% of people who die by suicide see a primary care clinician within a year. Jessi offers practical, time‑smart suicide screening questions any clinician can use, along with ways to sit in discomfort and listen without rushing to fix. And for trauma survivors who don’t thrive with talk therapy, we explore evidence‑supported alternatives like dance/movement therapy, canine- and equine-assisted work, and ecotherapy, drawing from Jessi's book on natural therapies.

If you’re a clinician, student, or curious listener, this conversation delivers actionable skills, candid stories, and a humane framework for care under pressure. Subscribe, share with a colleague, and leave a review to tell us which de‑escalation tip you’ll try this week.

Connect with Jessi Beyer at:

Website: https://jessibeyerinternational.com/

Instagram: @itsjessibeyer

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