✅ DO — Protect yourself while acting responsibly
🧠 Nervous system first
- Pause before responding (hours or a day if possible)
- Breathe slowly (longer exhale than inhale)
- Remind yourself: “This is not mine to carry.”
📩 Communication
- Keep responses short, neutral, and procedural
- Redirect immediately to relevant authorities or professionals
- Use the same wording every time (consistency reduces stress)
- End the interaction after one response
📁 Information handling
- Preserve messages exactly as received
- Note date, sender, and method of contact only
- Store securely and out of sight
- Forward without commentary if required
⚖️ Responsibility
- Transfer responsibility clearly
- Let first-hand witnesses speak for themselves
- Allow authorities to assess credibility
- Stay out of interpretation or judgment
🌱 Aftercare
- Ground your body (walk, water, texture, temperature)
- Limit rumination — no rereading
- Protect sleep that night
- Resume normal routine quickly
🚫 DON’T — Avoid what harms recovery
❌ Engagement
- Don’t ask follow-up questions
- Don’t invite more detail
- Don’t offer empathy, reassurance, or validation
- Don’t explain your boundaries repeatedly
❌ Emotional load
- Don’t absorb guilt or urgency
- Don’t become a “safe container”
- Don’t carry someone else’s conscience
- Don’t try to make sense of it
❌ Cognitive traps
- Don’t re-read messages
- Don’t reconstruct timelines
- Don’t Google related material
- Don’t imagine outcomes
❌ Role confusion
- Don’t investigate
- Don’t verify
- Don’t confront
- Don’t warn others
❌ Self-betrayal thoughts to notice (not obey)
- “Maybe I should just listen”
- “What if it’s important I know”
- “I don’t want to seem cold”
- “It feels wrong to say nothing”
These are trauma-conditioned empathy reflexes, not obligations.
🧩 One-sentence response (keep saved)
“I’m not the appropriate person to receive or assess this information. If you believe it requires action, please report it directly to the relevant authorities or professionals.”
No additions. No explanations.
🛑 Red flag: disengage immediately if you feel
- Pressured to respond emotionally
- Responsible for outcomes
- Anxious after reading
- Pulled into secrecy
- Like the “only one who can handle this”
That’s your nervous system warning you.
Bottom line
This checklist helps you:
- Act ethically
- Avoid retraumatisation
- Maintain credibility
- Protect your recovery
- Keep responsibility where it belongs
You are not refusing truth — you are refusing harm.
