The Cheat Code Booklet: Staying Level under Pressure & How to Avoid Crashing Out

Who heals the healers? You do. Starting here.

If you're a credible messenger, an outreach worker, a violence interrupter, a case manager, a mentor — we already know what it costs to show up for everybody else. The hospital visits. The 2 a.m. calls. The "I'm good" we say so often we've started to believe it.

As Paul Carrillo, Vice President of the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention, puts it — "Violence intervention is not sustainable if we only invest in the healing of our communities while neglecting the healing of the frontline workers."

This is the field guide nobody handed us when we started this work — born out of the Who Heals the Healers? workshop, presented at the Giffords Center for Violence Intervention's national conference. Built from that workshop, The Cheat Code Booklet was written for the outreach workers, credible messengers, violence interrupters, reentry professionals, case managers, mentors, and community violence intervention (CVI) workers who spend their lives helping others survive their worst moments — while quietly running on empty themselves.

Inside, you'll find four practical pillars:

• Awareness — recognize what you're carrying before it carries you


• Emotional Vocabulary — build the language to name what's really going on, fast


• Regulation — field-ready tools for staying rooted and avoiding crashing out under pressure


• Support & Boundaries — how to stop carrying it alone without abandoning the people who depend on you

Rather than therapy talk or clinical language, Jonas Royster and Armand King speak from lived experience — writing as "we" and "us" because they've been where you are. This is not a self-help book written from the outside looking in. It's a pocket-sized, scannable field tool with practical exercises, quick-reference boxes, and a daily check-in practice built for the two minutes between one hard situation and the next. It fits in a glove box, a backpack, or a back pocket.

This booklet was built for people who already know how to show up for everyone else. It exists to help you learn how to show up for yourself — not someday, but right now, in the middle of the work.

For credible messengers, outreach teams, CVI organizations, reentry professionals, and anyone doing emotionally demanding frontline community work — this is a tool for staying level, staying present, and lasting in the work without losing yourself in it.

The work needs us. But you need you first.