Content note: This article contains references to homicide and suicide.
A retired Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) lieutenant, Brett is the co-founder and CEO of Warrior’s Rest Foundation, an Oklahoma City-based nonprofit organization dedicated to the mental health and wellness of first responders—law enforcement, fire, and EMS. An experienced peer counsellor, Brett is trained in Critical Incident Stress Management and has helped build and train peer support teams across Oklahoma.
In this excerpt, an OHP officer describes the culture that convinced him to hide his own unravelling and the question that broke his fall. Listen to the full conversation on The Gifts of Trauma Podcast.
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BRETT: There’s a date that’s etched in my head. Talk to any first responder that’s done it for any amount of time. Everybody has at least one—something that changed the trajectory of their life or the way that they thought about something.
December 26th, 2003, was one of mine. My wife and I had just had our second son, Duncan, that morning. About seven o’clock, my phone goes off, and it’s a buddy of mine. I think he’s calling to check on Amy and Duncan. He’s actually calling to tell me that one of our littermates—someone we went through the academy with, Nikki Green—had been shot and killed. Nikki was married with three daughters. Dispatch had called and asked him to check an abandoned vehicle down the road from his house. He wasn’t even on duty, but he put his uniform on, kissed his wife, went down there, and came in contact with somebody cooking meth out of the back of the car. After a substantial fight, the man took Nikki’s gun and shot and killed him.
When I got that news, saying I had a range of emotions is the understatement of the century. Not five minutes later, my pager goes off. The killer’s still on the loose. I walked over, kissed my wife, and left.
That started a series of events that spiralled quickly. I made some pretty stupid decisions. Enough that somebody finally said, “Man, you can’t keep doing this.” I had a pretty big breakdown in front of my wife. I remember falling on my knees and saying, “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.”
I knew that we had a counsellor. I had heard the name Dr. Kathy Thomas. There was no way in hell I was ever going to go see her for anything. I didn’t think anything was wrong, but I kind of got ‘voluntold’ to make an appointment.
I go up there and sit down, and I can vividly remember it. She’s not very big in stature. I kind of glared at her, sat down on her couch, and crossed my arms and my legs. She just kind of sits there. And she goes, “So how are we doing? Why are you here?” And I was like, “I was told to come; I have no idea.” And she goes, “Why do you think?” And I was like, “Dr. Thomas, I don’t know.” And she looked at me, and she goes, “How’s this working out for you?” It was like she just gut-punched me.
What I found out through that session, and those that followed, was that Nikki’s death and how he died pushed me over the edge. But it was the cumulative trauma and stress over my early career that had really gotten me. That’s one of the things first responders and the public get wrong. They think trauma has to be a big event. It can be ten, fifteen, twenty small events. And at some point, if you’re not taking care of yourself and not emptying it, it will catch up with you.
The resistance to counselling wasn’t the only wall Brett had to scale. There was another one that’s older and more elusive, and it resists being named. This wall had nothing to do with therapy at all.
BRETT: The thin blue line, the brotherhood side of it, is not what it’s made out to be. It’s mostly because we’re not intentional about making it what it needs to be. There is something to shared trauma. There is something to doing the same job somebody else is doing, especially when it’s high-stress. But the reality of it is, we don’t follow through with it. It’s mostly because if something’s wrong with him, then something could be wrong with me. So we just cover everything up.
The same instinct that kept Brett from noticing his own cumulative trauma is the instinct that kept an entire culture from noticing each other’s distress. Both patterns had to be unlearned, and both, it turns out, require the same thing: someone willing to ask the tough question and someone willing to answer honestly.
BRETT: We actually just started teaching a class that Jill, our clinical director, has been working on. In some of our very low-level training, if we feel like somebody is having suicidal ideations, you’ve gotta ask the hard question, being very specific in the way that it’s asked: “Are you going to kill yourself?” It’s not “Are you going to hurt yourself?” It is “Are you going to kill yourself?” Then you have to be prepared for what that answer is going to be.
Unfortunately, I’ve had to do that way too many times. I’ve heard both answers, even as recently as last week. And you really have to be comfortable asking that. If they say yes, then the follow-up is “Do you have a plan?” Once they say yes, we will not leave them until we get them help.
BRANDON: We know that a little intervention changes the game. They spent decades trying to put a net under the Golden Gate Bridge. After they put the net down, not many successful attempts happened there anymore. But what also doesn’t really happen… people don’t go and find another means. There’s an interruption in the plan that changes things for the individual. Small interventions, like asking the question… Now somebody else knows. It has the potential to change the narrative, to change the path. When they answer, it’s probably the first time that individual has ever said that out loud or admitted to it out loud. That frames it very differently.
BRETT: By asking, you’re not going to push them to suicide. They’re either going to attempt or they’re not. I tell a story about an individual who had a plan. Often it has to do with firearms, as that’s something that goes along with this first responder culture. But there was an individual on the paramedic side, and he was going to use what he had access to: an IV bag and medications. I wasn’t ready when he said that. My face did fine, but in my heart and my head I’m like, “Okay, didn’t see that coming.” But he was ready. If they say that, and they give you a plan, they’re wanting help.
The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma, transformation, healing, and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. Listen to the full conversation, and if it resonates, please subscribe, rate, review, and share.
Editor’s Note: This post comprises edited excerpts from The Gifts of Trauma podcast transcript. Selected passages have been carefully woven together to create a cohesive narrative that speaks in the guests’ voices and faithfully represents their perspective. – Rosemary Davies-Janes
