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Equipped With Agency — Workshop Series Seventeen facilitated sessions derived from the book and companion workbook.
Read alongside the Facilitator Handbook, which carries the safety frame, group agreements, and the crisis-in-the-room procedure. This document covers what the series is, how it's sequenced, and how to run it in shorter forms.
What this is
A skills series in coping and self-regulation, delivered peer-to-peer. Non-clinical.
Mixed audience by design. Every session teaches the tool, then teaches how to carry it to someone else — so people who came for themselves and people who came for a partner, child or parent are in the same room learning the same thing from two ends. Session 12 is the helper track's centrepiece; Session 10 is where the two tracks explicitly converge.
Source material. Equipped With Agency (17 chapters) and Equipped With Agency — The Workbook (8 sections, ~60 worksheets). Every chapter is built in four layers — A: What to Do Now, B: Why It Works, C: How to Teach It, D: Practice Pages — and the session template follows that structure directly.
The standard session
90 minutes, except Session 1 (105) which sets up the container.
| Min | Block | Source |
|---|---|---|
| — | Facilitator pre-session — run the chapter's protocol on yourself | Ch 1 Layer C |
| 5 | Standing safety frame — verbatim, every week | Handbook §3 |
| 5 | Baseline check | Ch 16 |
| 5 | Hook — the chapter's "you feel…" opener, read aloud | Chapter opener |
| 15 | The protocol — demonstrate, then run it in the room | Layer A |
| 10 | Why it works — two or three mechanisms, never all five | Layer B |
| 15 | Own practice — the matching workbook page | Layer D |
| 20 | Teach it — pairs. Everyone practises being the helper | Layer C |
| 10 | Close — Operational Rule, Self-Reward Loop, routing, take-home | Chapter close |
Three sessions deviate deliberately: S11 (mostly build time), S13 (a live ten-minute work block replaces the worksheet), and S17 (a facilitated document, no pair work).
Session map
| # | Session | Workbook | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Now | WB 1.1, 2.1, 7.1 (abbrev.) |
105 min. Group agreements + abbreviated safety plan |
| 2 | The Body | WB 1.2, 2.2, 2.2b |
⚠ TIPP medical cautions — say them aloud |
| 3 | The Thought | WB 1.3, 2.3b–d |
Biggest chapter; triage is in the guide |
| 4 | The Line | WB 1.4, 2.4 |
⚠ Activation risk |
| 5 | The Circle | WB 1.5, 2.5 |
Lighter — say so after S4 |
| 6 | The Sphere | WB 1.6, 2.6b, 2.14b |
Three-piles exercise |
| 7 | The Wave | WB 1.7, 2.7 |
Self-Reward Loop reveal · flags S8 |
| 8 | The Nexus | WB 1.8, 2.8 |
⚠ Activation risk |
| 9 | The Repair | WB 1.9, 2.9b–d |
Four protocols; triage in the guide |
| 10 | The Team | WB 1.10, 2.10, 6.1, 6.2 |
The two tracks converge |
| 11 | Trigger Maps | WB 2.4, 2.11b, 8.1, 8.2 |
Working session — 26 min build |
| 12 | Co-Regulation Scripts | WB 2.12b–d, 8.4 |
The helper track's session |
| 13 | School and Work | WB 2.13, 8.8 |
Live ten-minute block |
| 14 | Conflict and Repair | WB 2.14b, 8.5, 8.6 |
Four scenarios · flags S15 |
| 15 | Shutdown, Panic, Anger, Grief, Shame | WB 2.15, 2.15b |
⚠⚠ Crisis content · no enactment |
| 16 | Daily Maintenance Habits | WB 2.16b–c, 3.1, 4.1, 8.8–8.10 |
Lightest session · flags S17 |
| 17 | Crisis and Escalation Plan | WB 7.1, 2.17b |
⚠⚠ Crisis content · working session · series close |
Prerequisites
For the facilitator
| Requirement | For |
|---|---|
| Group facilitation experience | All sessions. The Pain BC volunteer facilitator training (~40 hrs, free) is the natural route |
WB 2.12b, 2.12c, 7.1 completed for yourself |
Before Session 1 |
| A named debrief person | Before Session 1. Handbook §8 |
Recommended, and deliberately not a prerequisite: ASIST or safeTALK, for S15 and S17. Both sessions go directly at suicidal thinking and the training is the one that most directly helps you hold that room. It is not a condition of delivering them — the scope boundary, the crisis block and the referral routing do the safety work on every surface whether or not anybody holds a certificate. Telling somebody they may not use material written to help them withholds the material without making anyone safer.
What the note asks for is preparation: decide before you open either session how you will hold the room, and arrange co-reflection first. If you would rather not run them this term, run 15 sessions and say so, or bring in a co-facilitator, or pause after S16. Announcing that is the model working, not a failure of it.
For participants
None. No prior reading, no prerequisites, no assessment. The book and workbook are useful but not required — every session's handout is self-contained.
Group size 6–12. Below 6, pair work collapses when someone is absent. Above 12, you cannot watch the room — and watching the room is most of the job.
Sequencing — and why it's book order
The book calls itself non-linear and routes by state. The series doesn't, for one reason: chapters 1–3 are the regulate-first sequence (body → present → thought), and teaching them out of order breaks the logic every later session depends on.
Two deliberate departures:
The safety plan is split. Session 1 carries an abbreviated WB 7.1 — crisis contacts and one trusted
person, ten minutes. Session 17 does the full nine steps. Running sixteen sessions before anyone writes
a safety plan contradicts the book's own instruction to complete it "when calm, before you need it."
Heavy sessions are flagged a week ahead. S7 flags S8, S14 flags S15, S16 flags S17. People are entitled to decide how they arrive rather than finding out at seven o'clock.
The rhythm
S4 and S8 are the activation-risk sessions in the first half; S5 and S7 are deliberately lighter and follow them. S15 is the heaviest, S16 is the lightest, and S17 needs both its halves. Do not reorder without preserving that alternation — a run of three heavy weeks loses people.
Shorter forms
The 6-session core
If an agency won't book seventeen weeks — and many won't — this is the compression. 90 minutes each.
| # | Covers | Chapters |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Foundations — safety frame, baselines, the Universal Coping Loop, the four principles | 16, 17 (frame only) |
| 2 | Regulate first — the Now + the Body | 1, 2 |
| 3 | The battleground — the Thought + Trigger Maps | 3, 11 |
| 4 | Patterns over time — the Line + the Circle | 4, 5 |
| 5 | Uncertainty and events — the Sphere, the Wave, the Nexus | 6, 7, 8 |
| 6 | Together — the Repair, the Team, Co-Regulation | 9, 10, 12 |
What you lose: the applied scenario chapters (13, 14), the full high-intensity state protocols (15), and the full safety plan (17). Say so when you pitch it — and keep session 1's abbreviated safety plan regardless.
What you keep: the whole framework, the mixed-audience structure, and the Self-Reward Loop.
The standalone taster
90 minutes, built on Session 1 (the Now) with the Body Reset from Session 2 added. Self-contained, lowest risk, and the natural thing to offer an organisation first. Session 13's live ten-minute block also works as a standalone demonstration and is the most immediately convincing thing in the series.
The four-week short course
Now/Body · Thought · Patterns · Together. Highest completion rate. Loses the Sphere/Wave/Nexus geometry, which is what makes the framework distinctive — so use it for recruitment rather than as the offer.
Delivery notes
Facilitator pacing — Handbook §8, and it's built into the design rather than bolted on: sit to facilitate, no whiteboard, notes dictated not typed, one session per week maximum, recovery day after.
Virtual delivery works with changes. Pair work goes to breakout rooms, which means you cannot see activation — check in with the whole room more often. The crisis procedure in Handbook §4 is materially harder online because you cannot stay with someone; if you run this virtually, collect an emergency contact and location at intake and say why.
Slides ship as PDF and PowerPoint for every session, alongside the facilitator guide and the participant handout. Nothing needs rendering before you can run a session.
Scope
Building and delivering this material is not therapy and must never be described as it. The scope statement is in Handbook §1 and it is not a disclaimer said once — it is what keeps the practice inside its competence and clear of protected titles in British Columbia.
Delivery is currently volunteer and unpaid, which is the intended route. If that ever changes, the Conditions of Delivery are reviewed first — a conditions acknowledgement between two volunteers is a different instrument from a commercial agreement.
Next in the pack: Facilitator Training and Fidelity18 min read