The Catch Before The Fall
For many years, I was slowly burning out in visible positions within institutions that had a duty to protect and heal. For years, I said to doctors, friends, and family, “I feel overmedicated.” When an older student pointed out that kids were concerned, I was mortified. I begged the doctor to admit me in patient to detox from the tsunami of pills I was on to get to a baseline. I was dismissed.
I was running a massive program in a vocational position. I was also working full-time for a hospital, climbing into positions around HR. Unbeknownst to me, the negligence was multi-faceted. I didn’t have a safety net or support structure to intervene to catch me before I fell.
By the time I was asked, “Are you okay?” it was too late. For me - not only was I not ok, but I was so heavily medicated that I couldn’t articulate or see what was happening physiologically. As a tribute to my recovery journey, the independent practitioners I have worked with have encouraged me to share my story - and build a model of comprehensive processing for those of us at the helm - to honor what I built and what I learned in years of research …so we can try to answer the question, “If 911/EMS/first responders are called in times of crisis - who saves us - and how?”
My drive to make a difference on an iceberg problem has kept me fueled. My disability has become a gifted ability to see wtih a textured intuition. I invested years to “save myself” as holistically as possible. I want to take what I’ve experienced and petition for implementation and policy change at the state and federal levels. What happened to me was preventable. Don’t let it happen to another.
Change the language and vocabulary.
When you’re at the top, helping others, answering the call - to say “I need help” means saying “I can’t do my job.” By entering a hospitalization program, you give up your right to carry a weapon. If you’re in law enforcement, you give up your ability to support yourself and your family. Makes asking “for help” look a lot different than the average “SOS”.
If you’re a mother, or a father, or a business owner - to ask for help might mean you can’t take care of your children, or your business. Then what happens? Who is going to risk saying “I need help” at the mere suggestion that that might mean you can’t be trusted to take care of your children, or run your business.
Reclassify the first responder position as vocational
The first responder position is a calling. It’s not shift work. Those who answer the call don’t use words like “trauma.” All it takes is one event, and the damn bursts. It shouldn’t have to. My goal is to consult and offer a curriculum of comprehensive processing tools, adopted after years of directing a nationally recognized program for the third-largest diocese in the nation, and the coping tools learned firsthand, as a patient in a partial hospitalization program. I’m a chef of the koolaid because I’ve experienced the stacked trauma and the tipping point to know.
If the first responder position is reclassified as vocational, it will allow opportunity, flexibility, and built-in protected time on shift, to take care of health comprehensively. Cut the chase of financial drive with mandatory overtime. The need to busy ourselves erodes us further. Tune into cognitive fitness, physical wellness, and mindfulness. Utilize methodologies used by integrated practitioners: acupuncture, temperature therapy, and somatic bodywork. Provide more than a duty belt, a badge, and a uniform. Create a toolbox system for releasing stored trauma. Offer holistic opportunities that tap into what is stuck in the body. That which doesn’t get unpacked ultimately gets stored until one day, your body makes the decision for you.
Level up and normalize talking about what we don’t talk about. Host off-site retreats regularly, with space to consciously unpack what is seen and experienced in life on and off shift. When compounded, the daily grind desensitizes us. Life happens. Grief becomes complex. We turn to pills and substances, which are a band-aid. The tourniquet may hold us together temporarily, but if not talked about, what is seen and stored leads to a high morbidity and mortality rate = a fast track to an early death.
Catch us before we fall. Before we’re heavily medicated, falling asleep at the wheel, suffering from burnout, a heart attack, obesity, leaves of absence, job loss, navigating crisis, and suicidal. Impact the opioid epidemic and substance abuse addiction. My mission is to change how we take care of those that take care of us - impact healthcare with a system of comprehensive processing tools - for the time inbetween.