Transformed By Trauma

09/18/2022

***de
Funerals remind us that life is so finite it’s shocking — it’s why I hate them. But for some, this idea could be a relief.

For those of you who have considered ***de, I want to remind you that while your struggle is excruciating — the part of you that wants relief is not complete. It holds perspective and experiences that changes what you feel and see but there is more. There is a life that you have not lived yet.

Your absence will be missed in the lives and the memories of those around you. Just get through today.

09/14/2022

Friends, the time and energy it takes to hold onto anger, resentment, or hold a grudge is so expensive. Imagine if time were money, imagine the cost of holding onto this type of negativity and for how long?

Process these emotions, feel them out, understand where they come from and what is needed to let them go and then do that.

Your time is far more valuable than your money.

09/26/2021

“The body will never go where the mind has never been.”

I am a firm believer in training and preparation for first responders.
You cannot separate the body from the mind and therefore, training remains an integral component to both mental and physical health.

This past week I had the privilege of working with the Detroit Police Department, providing training in both Use of Force and Employee Wellness and Mental Health.

Such an incredible group of people! Thank you 🙏

06/05/2021

If we are too close to a problem, we are often unable to see our position in it - or a way out.

When change is what you want, step back. We may not be able to change the circumstance or the person but you CAN change your response too it.

05/01/2021

HOW ARE YOU FEELING?

When was the last time someone asked you this question — and really, truly wanted to know the answer.

When was the last time you answered honestly?

Chances are, if you are a first responder it’s been a while. As a cop, I held the mindset that feelings had no place in police work. I made decisions on facts.

It turns out our emotions play a huge role in our decisions. They have a constructive function in our memory, ability to learn, social engagements, our health as well as our goals.

Check out by if you’re interested in understanding why your emotions may be more important than you think.

02/08/2021

Being labeled as “emotional” carries negative undertones in most circles. But there is a difference in being emotional and being aware of your emotions. We can learn to understand our emotions by asking what the need is behind the emotion. By recognizing the need, we can then choose our response and understand why we have it.

When we choose to avoid or ignore the emotion, we slowly become disconnected from them altogether. Here, we start to forget why we chose the career we did. We forget that we believed in making a difference, hoped for something more or enjoyed certain parts of it. To reconnect that part us requires us to stay present with what we feel.

Passion and success often die in the day too day. Between the bills, policy changes, lack of appreciation, failure of leadership, and life responsibilities, we forget the reasons why we loved our job. Learning to reconnect your cognitive mind to your emotional state will not make you emotional, it will make you aware and will likely lead to better health and success.

01/19/2021

We often equate anger with our actions or the actions of others that cause physical or emotional pain. Those actions can be against ourselves, people we love or strangers. But our anger is not the problem. Anger is an emotional response to events in our lives and anger tells us when things aren’t right.

Many try to avoid anger or ignore it because it is uncomfortable. However, when we divorce ourselves from one emotion, we distance ourselves from them all, including joy and happiness.

Instead of ignoring or numbing anger, welcome it, search for its purpose and understand it does not need to dictate the negative actions that we are familiar with. We can learn to be patient when we feel angry and we can be kind in our response to ourselves, those we love and others.

01/03/2021

You’ve likely heard that anyone deprived of sleep for 24 hours is the equivalent of having blood-alcohol content of .10 percent or legally drunk.

What most people don’t know is that insufficient sleep impairs your cognitive ability and comes with a host of other negative effects including; depressed mood, lower IQ, and maybe the most important, slower hand and eye coordination.

For anyone who has worked overnights or been exposed to shift work, you know this is not a difficult number to reach and can likely recall hitting 36 hours or even 48 hours. (What’s the longest you’ve been awake?)

One perspective regarding sleep is to compare it to nutrition. If you average 7 hours of sleep a night, you can go a long time but you will start building up a sleep debt that can take a profound psychological and physiological toll. Similarly, you can spend a significant amount of your life malnourished, but it will take years off your life.

In 2002, the medical community established regulations requiring doctors and interns get enough sleep because of the legal liability of having zombie-like medical personnel making life and death decisions was too great. Researchers have also discovered that sleep deprivation and physical exhausting is a key factor in predisposing you to be a stress casualty and physical illness.

Consider 8 hours of sleep to be optimal, 9 would be the best but really, who has that kind of time. Just remember this, prioritize your sleep like your life depends on it, because it might.

12/31/2020

When trauma occurs, coping skills freeze and defense mechanisms fail. The normal channels used to keep the bridge from falling apart, fail.

While most people are stunned by traumatic events temporarily, there are others who suffer more long term effects. In those cases, the goal for the individual is to build resiliency which enhances recovery for the majority of people.

Resiliency provides an individual the ability to stretch (like elastic) or flex (like a suspension bridge) in response to the pressures and strains in life. This process is similar to strengthening your legs by increasing the repetitions and load bearing weight.

Pathways to resilience vary by development, genetics, environment, gender and other risk/protective factors but one of the most valuable ways to build resilience is through having a sense of community.

This is not about wearing the same badge or having the same patch but about sharing the same core values. Build yourself a community of people that share your values and you will have the strength of the people behind you.

Citation: "Loss Trauma and Resilience" by Pauline Boss

12/29/2020

Most people have heard how trauma can impact you mentally (i.e., anxiety and panic attacks, getting triggered from sights, sounds, and/or smells) but what many are unaware of is how it impacts your body.

Think of your body like a filter, all of your experiences pass through it. When trauma gets stuck in the body, when there is no outlet, it shows up through body pains, stress related health problems, injury related issues and sheer exhaustion.

What is worth noting is that research has found that the more exposure to traumatic events, the more at risk you may be for developing a chronic health condition, including PTSD.

Consider the nature of combat and emergency service work. The environments and condition you operate in continually activate your fear and stress systems. As a result you actually enhance the range of cues that serve to protect you. This is good, right?

Wrong. Due to the repetitive nature of these unsafe environments, these same cues can cause the failure of the brain to function normally leaving you anxious and in a constant state of hyper-arousal. If not managed properly this could lead to a full blown acute stress or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Managing your stress can be done in a variety of ways. Recognizing the effects and creating a strategy on how to manage it both mentally and physically, is the first step. You will not lose your super-human abilities to detect danger but you will likely decrease your pain, anxiety, and stress related health problems because of it.

Find something that works for you and reach out when you need too.

12/29/2020

When you're feeling unsafe in a presumably safe environment, such as your home consider the following exercises to help ease the impact of the stressful event.

Start by asking yourself, "What am I feeling? Am I getting a sense that I'm not safe? Is it accurate? If not, what are the circumstances, thoughts, emotions, that are signaling me that I am not safe?" Track these situations. (For example, the sound of a backfire frequently triggers memories of gunfire.) Look for patterns.

You may also consider breathing exercises - Hold one of your hands up and trace the outline with a finger from the other hand. Breathe in when you trace up to the tip and breathe out as you trace down.

You may also consider animal or food alphabet - Name a food/animal/band or whatever for each letter of the alphabet. This exercise gets the brain out of the emotional brain and into logic brain.

At the end of the day there is no therapy that is 100% effective in every circumstance. Consider these strategies as options to help cope and understand that further treatment is needed to address the underlining causes of PTSD.

12/22/2020

John Violanti, a New York State Police trooper for 23 years and a University of Boston faculty expert on police stress and health, including PTSD found that cops tend to drink less frequently than the general population but when they do, they tend to binge drink. Of course, the topic of alcohol is not new and we understand it is widely accepted as part of police culture.

So why are we talking about it?

Alcohol can have positive effects, but when alcohol becomes your solution, it becomes a problem. While research says 10 drinks a week is considered a “healthy” limit, the answer to knowing what is healthy for you is truly yours. However, it is important to understand that if you are stressed when you get home from work, one drink every night may mean it’s time to consider other ways of managing that stress. Consider consuming alcohol like you would use medication, don’t use it as medication.

For example, if you take Tylenol to help with shoulder pain every night, the answer to your pain is not more Tylenol. It may mean you need to consider surgery, physical therapy, or making an appointment to see doctor. At the very least, be aware of why you’re taking it.

What is healthy for you may be different than others but it may be as simple as taking a walk, reading, taking a shower or calling a friend to help relieve some of the buildup.

12/15/2020

Learning and memory are among the brain’s most fundamental tools for survival. Therefore, both your pain and your past influence your ability to trust others.

As a kid from a small town in MN, I wanted to believe people. Of course, this changed rather quickly as I learned that suspects, witnesses, and victims all lied whether the truth was convenient or not. As a result, my fundamental beliefs about people started to change.

Cops are at the forefront of humanity at its' worst and are often said to deal with 3% of the population, 90% of the time. As a result of those negative life experiences, beliefs and perspectives often change and bleed into all aspects of life, including personal relationships.

Some consequences of negativity include:

• Distrust in others
• Generalized unhappiness, less personal and professional satisfaction, lowered self-esteem, low energy
• “Black or White thinking” (the inability to be flexible)
• “Catastrophizing” (Not only is a situation all bad, it is the worst thing ever!)
• Anxiety
• Accepting a positive perspective only leads to disappointment
• Negative thoughts leading to paranoia, faulty reasoning, and misinterpreting words and events
• Compromised physical health

If left unchallenged, these thought patterns inhibit your joy and impact your effectiveness on the job and off. Overcoming these thought patterns can be done.

Here are four things that may help:

1. The only thing we really have any control over is how we choose to respond to the stressors and demands of any given moment
2. When negative thoughts strike we only have about 60 seconds to overcome them before they start to take root.
3. Being aware of your moment-to-moment “where am I now” experience of thoughts and feelings — is proven to be highly effective combatting negativity, depression, and anxiety.
4. Slowing down your minds, taking the time to ask yourself “Is the information I’m receiving real and accurate? Am I interpreting it correctly? Is there more to the story? What have I not considered?” leads to a more positive and self-aware perspective.

12/14/2020

PTSD has become a hot topic. Forget the clinical terms. Ever wonder what it would be like to experience Post Traumatic Stress or how you might recognize it in someone you care about?

PTSD can affect police officers in many different ways requiring officers to be aware of the signs and symptoms of PTSD and need to access medical help

12/11/2020

Control is a survival strategy and your brain is hardwired for it; therefore when you are in control you feel more calm and can think with more clarity. Control is key to both your physical health as well as your mental health but there is a fine line.

When you work in an environment that is not controlled, your primary focus automatically becomes your physical survival. After years of training and focusing on potential threats; your brain is highly attuned. No really, it’s kind of like the skill level of a Quarterback developed through high school, college and the NFL. Now, after years of experience and training, you are able to remain calm and think clearly under pressure in a seemingly uncontrolled and threatening environment.

But have you noticed a shift going home, when the kids are crying, when you’re at the grocery store or in a room full of people you don’t know? Suddenly the calm you felt managing a crime scene or a needle decompression of the chest changes. Instead, your palms are sweating, your heart is racing, you may start to sweat and even feel dizzy.

The main reason there is such a significant difference in how you feel in one environment verses another is not because you can truly control either one, but because of what your brain is able to focus on. Now when you go home and the kids are crying or you’re in a social environment, all of that changes.

So how do we begin to change our response in these uncomfortable environments? Give your brain something to focus on.

• Look For 5 Things You Can See
• Become Aware Of 4 Things You Can Touch
• Acknowledge 3 Things You Can Hear
• Notice 2 Things You Can Smell
• Become Aware Of 1 Thing You Can Taste

These ideas will help take your mind off of the environment that feels unsafe and give you something to focus on, something you can actually control.

12/08/2020

Numbers released by Blue H.E.L.P. in January of 2020 showed that in 2019, 228 American police officers died by su***de. That same year, the FBI released Statistics that showed a total of 89 officers were killed in line-of-duty incidents.

This means that if you are in law enforcement, you are 50% more likely to die by your own hand than someone else’s. This is difficult to understand.

Your response to a deadly force encounter is directly related to how you condition your mind and body for that event. Therefore, you train your body to react appropriately through scenarios and reduce your likelihood of death during a violent attack. The same tactics can apply to how you condition your mind and prevent thoughts and actions that result in su***de.

Critical training for your mind starts with awareness; i.e. knowing why something exists, how it works, and how it is impacting you.

For example, if you feel angry, you can start by asking “why” to understand the cause of it. Diving deeper would look something like “When did I start feeling this way?” “What was going on?” “Is this more intense than the last time?” “What helped decrease these feelings before?”

Know that thoughts of self-harm and su***de are not indicative of a mental illness and are not uncommon. If this is you, please believe there is no core function of who you are that is flawed. Your life is valuable and if you cannot see this, please risk being vulnerable with someone you know, before your risk life.

If you would like to talk to someone, call the toll-free National Su***de Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or text the Crisis Text Line (text HELLO to 741741) available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

12/03/2020

72 hours. That is the average time it takes for an individual to process a traumatic event. I was still a cop during my first year of graduate school and I laughed when I heard this. Imagine having that kind of time to process what you see every single day.

Instead, first responders, firefighters and so many others who are exposed to traumatic events day in and day out learn to compartmentalize. It is the brains natural response to managing the "overload." We suppress as it is not physically possible to process these events in the minutes it takes to get to the next call. What we don't know is that it is a short term solution.

Eventually all the compartments fill up and there is no separation. After years of "overload" the brain starts to shut down. It is a slow process, but have you ever looked back at how much you cared in the beginning of your career. Now think about how you respond today and consider the change.

Dr. Brene Brown said it best, “You cannot selectively numb. When we numb those hard things, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning in what we do. Then we feel vulnerable, so then we have a couple of beers and a banana nut muffin. And it becomes this dangerous cycle.”

You cannot selectively numb. Be aware of the shut down.

12/02/2020

Trauma is an experience we have that overwhelms our capacity to cope. But WHY does it overwhelm our capacity to cope? In other words, what is it about the
experience that makes it so damaging?

Fundamentally, it has to do with the inability to change things around you, the feeling of paralysis, loss of control or total helplessness.

How we overcome that loss of control and our bodies response to it is learning coping skills. And we're not just talking about combat breathing.

Throughout the course of your career you attend training seminars and multiple defensive tactics courses so your body knows how to respond under stress. That way, during a potentially lethal and rapidly evolving situation you don't have to think, you can respond effectively because you have trained for it.

We can apply this same strategy to trauma. In order to help your brain process these overwhelming experiences, it's important to be aware of all the information it has collected. Your five sense have not only kept you alive, but they have gathered a lot of information and it needs to be organized to let your brain work properly.

This process is called deliberate rumination which involves a more reflective effort focused on dealing with the situation, and is a form of processing that is characterized by a repetitive focus.

Cited Works:
National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine: The Neurobiology of Trauma
https://ptgi.uncc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2015/01/Intrusive-versus-deliberate-rumination-in-posttraumatic-growth-across-US-and-Japanese-samples.pdf