Our signature program
PESD: Proactive Emotional Self-Defense
PESD is about individual empowerment. It equips each person to recognize the early warning signs of toxicity — manipulation, invalidation, pressure, isolation, boundary violations and escalation — at work and in their personal lives, and to respond with a plan they have practiced. When individuals can recognize and manage toxicity, teams speak up sooner and workplaces become healthier places to be.
Why start with the individual?
Many workplace trainings focus on what to do after harm has already happened. Even organizations that value being proactive often struggle to find a practical plan or framework for it. That is where PESD comes in.
Toxic dynamics are hardest to see from the inside. People second-guess themselves, defer to someone else’s version of events or talk themselves out of what they noticed. PESD names what makes recognition difficult and builds the capacities that make it more reliable, so every employee has a way to act on their own behalf, whether the toxicity is in a meeting, a working relationship or at home.
It also protects health. Workplace toxicity is linked to depression, anxiety and problem drinking. PESD is designed to help people act before stress turns into something heavier, which is why it was developed by clinicians who specialize in mental health and substance use.
See what toxicity costs organizations →
How PESD works
Six protective principles strengthen recognition, and recognition activates a practiced response.
The six protective principles
Self-Attunement
Noticing internal signals — bodily, emotional and attentional — as they arise.
Internal Authority
Trusting your own appraisal rather than automatically deferring to someone else’s account.
Protective Limit-Setting
Setting and holding a clear, professional boundary in response to a recognized signal.
Psychological Equilibrium
Remaining steady under another person’s pressure, moods or emotional escalation.
Protective Environmental Selection
Shaping the relationships and settings — allies, mentors, reporting channels — that reinforce accurate perception.
Somatic Regulation
Settling the nervous system so recognition stays online and you can think clearly.
The practiced protective response
Who it’s for
- Every employee — the principles and the practiced response, applied to toxicity at work and in personal relationships
- Supervisors and managers — plus responding well when someone brings a concern, and building psychological safety on the team
- HR and leadership — plus policy, reporting systems and culture
Formats
- 90-minute session for all staff
- Half-day workshop with practice scenarios from your workplace
- Multi-session series that builds skills over time
- Live by video nationwide or on-site in Dallas–Fort Worth
Our commitments
- Recognition is not responsibility. Harm is always the responsibility of the person who causes it.
- No victim-blame. We ask what made a problem hard to see, never why someone “missed” it.
- A complement, not a replacement for HR processes, your EAP, counseling or safety planning.
Bring PESD to your team See the PESD Program package →
PESD is an emerging framework: its components come from established research, and the framework as a whole is conceptual and the subject of ongoing study. It is educational, not therapy. Sources for statistics: American Psychological Association, 2023 Work in America Survey; Sull, Sull & Zweig, “Toxic Culture Is Driving the Great Resignation,” MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022.