00:00:01 Rosemary

If you’ve completed or are currently enrolled in Compassionate Inquiry training, you’re invited to attend the third International CI Conference in Vancouver, Canada, from October 30 to November 1. Dr. Gabor Mate is returning as our keynote speaker and masterclass presenter. Enjoy engaging workshops and inspiring demonstrations with Sat Dharam Kaur, CI facilitators and practitioners. Whether you join us in person for three days of shared inquiry with CI cohort partners and colleagues from around the world, or attend virtually to focus on the teachings, tap the link in the show notes to learn more and secure your place. And yes, there will be dancing.

00:00:49 Brett

Like I can remember the first pursuit that I ever got in. I can remember getting on the radio, my voice shaking. Dispatch says that I was screaming on the radio. I think that might have been a little exaggeration, but the adrenaline was there and you could hear my voice and all these different things. The same thing on the first couple of traffic stops that I did, I can remember hearing my heartbeat as I walked up to that car. 

Very quickly I got to where I wouldn’t approach a car because of a traffic stop. But at some point our body adjusts to it, right? The analogy of the boiling frog, Right. So that’s it. When we stop feeling it or noticing it, then we just think that it doesn’t happen. But the reality of it is it’s still happening to our body. Our body’s just adjusted to it. Right? And you talk about health issues and all that stuff. I would make 10, 15, sometimes 20 traffic stops in a day, and there’s no such thing as a routine traffic stop. So every time I would hit my disco lights, I’d hit my lights and walk up to that car or make that traffic stop, my body’s doing the exact same thing and it’s just this vicious roller coaster. Every time the tone goes off at the fire station, all that stuff. And we don’t realize that our body’s going through it, but our body’s going through it. Our mental side of us going through it, that’s what catches up with us.

00:02:19 Rosemary

This is the Gifts of Trauma Podcast, stories of transformation and healing through Compassionate Inquiry. Welcome to the Gifts of Trauma Podcast by Compassionate Inquiry. I’m Rosemary Davies-Janes and today I’m here with Brett Key and Brandon Evans. Brett, welcome.

00:02:47 Brett

Thanks for having us.

00:02:48 Rosemary

Brandon, it’s great to have you back.

00:02:50 Brandon

It’s a pleasure to be back.

00:02:51 Rosemary

I’m going to introduce you each briefly. Brett is a retired lieutenant with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Warriors Rest Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to the mental health and wellness of all first responders, law enforcement, fire and emergency medical services. He believes mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health should be the number one priority for every first responder, their family and their department. Is there anything you’d like to add to that, Brett?

00:03:21 Brett

I appreciate the introduction and I think that what our foundation has set out to do is to bridge that gap with the training that we get for our first responders. And we’re bridging that gap to over to the mental and emotional training. And that’s really, at the end of the day, knowing what I know now, that’s kind of the lifeline, right? That if that’s not in balance and that’s not in a good place, then it doesn’t matter how much you know about your job. There’s going to be hurdles and stuff. It’s going to make life a lot more difficult. I appreciate the opportunity.

00:03:48 Rosemary

Thank you for being here. Brandon is a retired firefighter and also the founder of Fire to Light, an organization dedicated to advancing preventative mental fitness training in the fire service to help reduce rates of suicide and psychological injury through the same approach fire departments use when training every other critical firefighting skill. Welcome, Brandon.

00:04:10 Brandon

Thanks for having me back.

00:04:11 Rosemary

Is there anything you’d like to add?

00:04:13 Brandon

Just excited for another awesome conversation today. Dive a bit deeper into this awareness of mental health and first responders and how that is connected to our life,and everything that we do as it is everybody else, you know. And focusing not just on the critical incident responses and members in crisis, we obviously need to do that, but also, like, how are we preparing for those things as we broaden that understanding of our awareness of mental health and tie it into all aspects, not just what happens at the bottom of the waterfall.

00:04:41 Rosemary

Yeah, beautiful. My intention for our conversation today is to hold space for both of you to speak candidly about what this work can cost first responders and share stories to illustrate. We touched on that in our last conversation, Brett, and how important storytelling is within the firehouse. And I’m curious to see how that expands out into the stations and the rooms where other first responders gather. So please feel free to share stories to illustrate any answers, and I’m really interested to dig into how job related issues can show up and be resolved so that our listeners, many of whom are clinicians, therapists, physicians, naturopaths, can walk away informed, inspired and better equipped to support any first responder clients they work with and perhaps moved to support both your work. Do either of you have intentions you’d like to share?

00:05:35 Brett

Yeah, I think just using this opportunity to raise awareness through our stories and experiences that Brandon and I have had, just raise the awareness of what first responders actually go through. I think there’s so much of the job that, you know, you have a portion of the job that is shown, whether it be through media or social media or different things like that. And from the surface, you think that’s all police officers and firefighters do. There’s so many layers to it and there’s so much more that goes on. And a lot of that stuff are the things that are the toughest for us. And so being able to share some stories and talk about those things to your audience and to the public of… It’s not just that surface stuff. Right. There’s a lot of other things that happen that you need to be aware of too.

00:06:16 Rosemary

Yeah, I’m very happy you’re going to bring that out because I’m not sure why, but so many TV shows are police service oriented and I’m sure they are not showing a true picture of what the work is actually. So I’m very keen to have you lift the veil and see what’s actually going on back there. Thank you.

00:06:33 Rosemary

Brandon, do you have an intention for today?

00:06:35 Brandon

Just to build on what Brett said and help to focus as we broaden that awareness, not just on the crisis response, obviously that’s a critical aspect and we need, we need the response, but also bringing awareness into, like, how we prepare. Whether you’re a clinician, doesn’t matter what you do. Right. Any first responder, how are we preparing for this side of the job? And then Brett and I will dive into all of that and what that means and how his work and my work, how those things are completely intertwined and connected. Right? And we need all of it, we can’t just be unprepared for things. It’s literally our job is just preparing for the unknown as first responders. And so just what does that mean for our mental health?

00:07:14 Rosemary

Yeah, as you say that, I think the world is getting a taste of that as chaos is reigning in so many parts of the world. The weather is unstable. We really don’t know what’s going to happenl in the next day, in the next week, in the next month. So hopefully we can pick up on some of what that training offers first responders and perhaps listeners are going to be able to take away some practices that they can integrate into their own lives, whatever profession they’re in. Now, Brett, I’m really curious. You have Had a very diverse career within police services. You have spent 26 years with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the roles you held are wide ranging from a K9 handler to sniper to academy commandant. And there may be a few that I’m missing. I’m sure there are. So I’m wondering if you could speak to what drew you to this work and what you found when you got inside. Because it seems like there’s a huge scope for learning and growth within that organization.

00:08:14 Brett

I really did. I grew up in a small town in southern Oklahoma. I think I had 65 people in my high school in my graduating class. I loved growing up in a small town, but everybody was in everybody’s business. I knew who the police officers were, I knew who my state troopers were and different things like that. But that’s not anything that I had ever thought… that’s the direction that I’m going to go. My dad, you know, he taught me how to work hard and he’s, you know, whatever you do at 100% of your ability, regardless of what everybody else is doing. And so when I left high school, I did the thing that I thought everybody was supposed to do, which was go to college. And I went to college. Lost. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Wasted a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of my parents money. And through kind of an odd series of events, I had a buddy of mine say, hey man, you ever thought about being a police officer? And I’m like, no. And the more I got to thinking about it, I was like, you know what at that time you could do ride-alongs… And so within the state of Oklahoma, when I was like, so who’s the elite? Who’s the best? Or Oklahoma highway patrol, I went down and rode with a state trooper. And man, an hour into it I’m like, I’m hooked. This is it. That was on a Sunday. Put my application in on a Monday. And 26 years, seven months and three days to be exact, was my career. Not that I was keeping count, but we have a high stress academy, what we consider a high stress academy. So I think we’re one of three right now in the nation that still run it like that. It’s more of a boot camp, Military boot camp. There’s a reason for that. Because of where we work, backup is not close to us. So they pushed me. We push our cadets to be very mentally, emotionally tough, that regardless of what happens, that you can make it through it. Right? That’s the mindset we take into it, which on one side of it is a very good mindset to have. And then I’ll get into the bad side of it here in just a minute. But the department. I’ve told my story hundreds of times, but the department did a great job of teaching me how to drive, fight and shoot, how to stay alive, how to come home at night. When I went into the academy, I was single. Wasn’t even thinking about marriage. So I poured everything, all the time that I had into being the best state trooper that I could have. Now, I had some going into it. I didn’t necessarily want to, quote, unquote, chase tail lights my entire career. So I knew very early on that I didn’t want to be setting out on the perimeter when something bad was happening. I wanted to be in the middle of it. So very early in my career, I got on with our special operations division. We did criminal interdiction, drug interdiction, and K9. I got on that and then got on our SWAT team the exact same day, three years into my career. So I was married at that time. Newlywed. I was pretty good at what I did and I enjoyed it. And my wife was very supportive. She’s a nurse. At that time, she was doing labor and delivery. We both worked nights. We spent a lot of time at work, a little time together, and then just kind of fast forward. Early in my career was very active, both by choice and then by circumstance. You talked about the weather being unstable a little bit earlier. Oklahoma is right in the middle of that. So we’ve had, I believe it’s three of the five largest tornadoes that have ever been on record. I have seen every one of those that was early on in my career. And then there’s just so many things that they didn’t teach you in the academy that you didn’t talk about. You know, you always hear that people will say you knew what you were signing up for… Maybe a little bit, but there’s so much of it that I had no idea. But very early in my career, like I said, it was very active. I was doing what I needed to do to get by and to be successful. But December 26th of 2003, that’s my date. That’s the date that is etched in my head. And for those listeners out there, you go talk to any first responder that’s done it for any amount of time. And everybody has at least one. I’ve got multiple. But at least has one date. And it’s something that changed the trajectory of their Life or the way that they thought about something, and that was mine. My wife and I have been married for a couple of years. We got married later in life. So pretty quickly we started having kids. So we had our first son. My wife was pregnant with our second son. Christmas night she goes into labor, we go to the hospital, have the baby, have Duncan about 3 o’ clock in the morning, Amy and Duncan are resting. And my phone goes off about 7 o’ clock that morning. And it’s a buddy of mine, it’s one of my partners that I was on the SWAT team with, and went through the academy with. And I think that he’s calling to check on Amy and Duncan and he is calling to tell me that one of our partners had been shot and killed. Nikki Green. So down in southwest Oklahoma, we call them our litter mates. It’s somebody we went through the academy with. So I didn’t work with him every day, but we had a pretty tight bond just because we had gone through our 20 week academy together. But Nikki was supposed to work that morning, but he wasn’t supposed to come on till 8 o’clock. But in rural Oklahoma, because we don’t have enough coverage, troopers go on call. So there was an abandoned vehicle within a mile of Nikki’s house. Nikki was married and had three daughters. Dispatch calls him and says, hey, there’s a car just down the road from you. Do you mind going and checking that? Going on duty early, going and checking that so we don’t have to call out the on-call trooper. And Nikki being Nicky’s like, absolutely not a deal, puts his uniform on, kisses Linda, goes down there, comes in contact with an individual who is cooking meth out of the back of the car and is strung out on it, get in a pretty substantial fight. He gets his gun from him and shoots and kills him, right? So when I got that news, man, to say I had a range of emotions there was… It might be the understatement of the century, but I didn’t know what to do. And not five minutes later, my pager goes off and it’s a tack team activation because the killer was still on the loose. And so I walked over, kissed my wife on the head and I left. Looking back on it now, knowing what I know now, would I have done the same thing? But I felt like that was something and it kind of goes back to control. I couldn’t control anything else at that point, but I knew I had control of maybe I can be the one that finds Nikki’s killer type of deal. So that started a series of events within my life that I spiraled pretty quickly, didn’t know what to do. There’s quite a bit more to that story, but I made some pretty stupid decisions. Enough to where somebody finally got a hold of me and said, man, Brett, you can’t keep doing this. I had a pretty big breakdown in front of my wife. She could tell something was going on. She didn’t know what to do. She’s got a two and a half year old and a newborn. She’s postpartum, so she’s not in a good place. And now she’s having to take care of me. And I just remember just falling on my knees and just saying. I just said, I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. I don’t know. I had a buddy of mine got a hold of me one night and just said, man, you need to go get help. Now. I knew that we had a counselor. I had heard the name, Dr. Kathy Thomas, but there was no way in hell that I was ever going to go see her for anything. First off, I didn’t think anything was wrong, but I end up going up there and making an appointment. Kind of got voluntold to go make an appointment. I go up there and sit down and I can vividly remember. And she can tell you the story too. I vividly remember walking into her office and she’s not very big in stature, and I kind of grinned at her and I sat down on her couch and crossed my arms and legs, and she just kind of sits there with this look on her face. And I say it was a smirk. She says it wasn’t a smirk. 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 kind of looked at me and she goes, how’s this working out for you? And it was like she just gut punched me, right? What I found out through that session and a lot more was it was Nikki’s death and how he died that kind of pushed me over the edge. But it was the cumulative trauma and stress that over a very early career, that’s what had really gotten me. And that’s one of the things that I think first responders and I think the public too, is they think it has to be a big event. And it can be 10, 15, 20 small events. And at some point if you’re not taking care of yourself and not emptying it will catch up with you. Right. And so for me it was Nikki, but It was the May 3rd tornado. It was May 11th. I can name the dates. My first day on the job, very first day in uniform. We’re sitting down at troop A, down at our headquarters. I’m meeting my new command staff. There’s four of us that are working the metro. And that’s something else. I got stationed in the metro. I came from a small town. I got stationed in Oklahoma City metro. That’s a culture shock for me by itself. The radios go off and they knew early on it was a fatality. And so we head down that way, we roll up our interstate at that time I think was three lanes completely shut down. So we have a church camp here in Oklahoma down in the Arbuckle Mountains, a youth church camp. And it was a church van headed down there, got in an accident, ejected four, killed three. And that was my very first day on the job. I can remember trying to deal with that and the images and making unbelievably crude jokes, which was for a lot of first responders that’s a self defense. I see Brandon shaking his head. Our sense of humor is…

Brandon: it’s the go to. 

It is dark. Right. But you either laugh or you cry. And there was no way in the world that I was going to cry. So the, the jokes, as inappropriate as they are, is our. That is a defense mechanism for us. Yeah. And that was all that stuff happened very early in my career and there was so much. And then just the stress of being a police officer or state trooper, it just catches up with you. And I kind of ramble there.

Rosemary: That’s okay. 

That was very early in my career and it stacked up in a hurry and I wasn’t prepared for that. I wasn’t another. I wasn’t prepared to make a death notification. That’s one of the things that people don’t think about. I can tell you every death notification I did, I could tell you what the weather was like. I can tell you what the front of the house is, what they look like when they answer the door, the look on their face when they answer the door. They know why I’m there. And it I. The first three or four that I did were like set me back on my heels. I’m like, I don’t. I watched my break in partners do it. They weren’t emotional about it, but man, it shook me up. We train for that now to a point as much as you can. But our training for that was we got to go do a death notification. And me and my break in trooper walk up to this front door and knock on it. And I can remember the words that he said to her and watching her just crumble, the mom just crumble right there in front of us. And he was hardened enough, unfortunately, he was hard enough that he didn’t comfort her. The complete opposite of the way that I ended up doing them later on. But I just thought that’s the way you were supposed to do it. But it had affected him too. But he would never talk about it. The death notifications was something that people don’t think about.

00:19:07 Rosemary

And you’ve named it really well, we say in the compassionate inquiry community there’s big T trauma.

00:19:13 Brett

Yeah.

00:19:13 Rosemary

Something happens like what happened to your partner and there’s small t trauma that’s like it could be a thousand paper cuts and it still lands the same way. So you’ve really sketched a clear picture of this cumulative trauma. And to circle back, you spoke about what got you into this work. I’m wondering over time, have you noticed a pattern of who’s drawn towards this work? And when they come in, the types of people who are drawn to it, who have what it takes to go the long haul, versus those who are drawn in by what they see outside that, then they can’t handle, what they don’t expect.

00:19:53 Brett

So one of the things, and I got the opportunity to quote unquote, see behind the curtain by running a couple of our academies. I was the assistant commandant, two of them, and then got to run my last one. I really got to see it then. But even in my academy, you could tell the guys that were enamored by, and to where it was a pride and an ego, and like they felt like they had to do this to be a man or they felt like they had to do this to prove themselves as a woman or something like that. They normally, because of the way we run our academy, didn’t make it through our academy because you really had to want it for the right reason to put up with the crap that we had to put up with. Right. And that’s part of the purpose that serves. Are there some that slip through? Absolutely. But for most, they truly want to be a public servant. Regardless of what their upbringing was and their background is. You can just kind of see it. You can hear it in the way that they talk and the things that they do. A lot of them, their adrenaline plays a huge part of it. Right. I was an adrenaline junkie. I didn’t even really know it at the time, but I fed off adrenaline, and so that plays a big part of it. And I do think that changes once you get in there and the realization of what the job really is. And the good ones, for the most part, there’s always cops, firefighters, doctors, it doesn’t matter. Right. There’s bad ones that get through, but for the most part, it truly is the heart of the individual, or they wouldn’t put up with it. And we all have that time saying, man, is this worth it? Is it worth my safety? Is it worth my family’s safety? But, yeah, I do think that the heart side of it is a big deal, and that makes them good at what they do.

00:21:25 Rosemary

And I’m wondering, does having the heart for it also make them somewhat more vulnerable to the cost? Because I was looking at some statistics. The rate of PTSD within police services is 35%, as opposed to in the general public, where it’s 6.8%. Depression can be 9 to 31% versus 6.7%. There’s chronic fatigue, there’s anxiety, and then the physical issues. Law enforcement personnel are 54% more likely to die by suicide. But there’s also cardiac issues from the high levels of stress, from cortisol, the adrenaline. There’s sleep disorders, and there’s physical on-the-job injuries like you talked about before we started recording. Racing across the parking lot and taking someone down. Well, asphalt’s not soft, so you take a few people down that way over time, you can injure yourself.

00:22:19 Brett

Yeah, Rosemary, I will say those percentages and stuff are so high, a lot of it has to do with that stigma that comes along with reaching out and getting help. Right. I do think that we’re making a difference. We’re not making a big enough difference, and I don’t know that for me we’ll ever make a big enough difference until numbers get down to nothing, which is not realistic. But I think a lot of that, even on the physical health side of it, a lot of it has to do with, there’s still that stigma out there of I can’t show emotion, I can’t go talk to somebody. I can’t. I don’t want to go get a physical, because a fear of finding something. If I don’t go get a physical and I don’t know about it, then I don’t have to deal with it. Right. And so I think that there’s so much of that, and the reason Brandon and I do what we do is to try to drive those numbers down. But it’s a… It’s completely an education and a proactive stance that we have to take for our first responder mental, emotional, spiritual health and all that. And I think as we do that and it becomes more accepted, then some of those numbers and stuff will come down. As the events happen we have to unload the bucket then instead of waiting to where I got to where that cumulative stress caught up with me. And I do think this generation, as many hits as they take, I do think that this generation is moving in the right direction. The youngest generation is moving in the right direction. They’re a lot more open. What we found, they’re a lot more open to talking about events and sharing. We call, we always say, hey, we’re going to throw the F word around quite a bit. Feelings. And so they will talk about their feelings and different things like that. From my point of view, even on the spiritual side, I do think that there’s been a reawakening as far as a relationship with God. And I do think that plays a huge role into it. And that did for me. That was probably the thing that saved me and got me to where I needed to be. But it goes back to the stigma. It goes back to breaking the stigma. And I think if we break that, then those numbers and stuff start coming down.

00:24:10 Rosemary

Yeah, I’m glad you referenced that because in my research I came across a 2020 study done with 400 Dallas Police Department personnel, and they identified four barriers to mental health care among law enforcement and number one, the inability to recognize when they’re experiencing a mental health issue, “I can’t be happening to me.” Number two, concerns regarding confidentiality. “What if this gets out?” Number three, the belief that mental health professionals cannot relate to those working in law enforcement jobs, which I’m sure is very valid, and the notion that those who seek mental health services are unfit to serve as officers in the criminal justice system. So you put all those together. I’m wondering, are there any others in the fire service that relate to those? Are they the same or are there different ones?

00:24:57 Brandon

I think they’re all the same. I don’t think there’s anything that sticks out as, oh, no, but this is different because of us. Those attributes of stigma are very alive and well and we’ve created a narrative. I think as first responders. Right. The narrative might be slightly different for bread in policing versus me in firefighting or someone else who is a full time medic, for example, or a dispatcher. However, the narrative is basically the same. Right. We’re changing people’s names. You’re changing the event of house fire versus Brett’s pulling over someone on the side of the road. They got a gun on them or whatever. But the feelings, the thoughts, the awareness, the stigma, all those things are probably the same. And we’ve just done a good job at painting this picture and not for fault of anyone. We do what we do through generations before us were raised by people who went off to war. Right. In large populist numbers. And so there’s all of these things as we look at how are we progressing with anything mental health related through our understanding, our awareness. We hear stories of people who we trust deeply because our lives depend on each other. Of going to see a clinician coming back and be like, whoa. Now, whether that is just a story that’s been sent off and drifted through the fishnet and you don’t actually know the person at all, but the story just circulates. Oh, yeah, Johnny from station whatever. Or this department had this horrible experience. Or it’s someone that you actually know. I think we’re hearing less and less of those stories. But culturally competent clinicians matter. They really matter. Like, if you hurt your back, you’re probably gonna go see a chiropractor or a physiotherapist to fix your back. You’re not gonna go knocking on a business consultant’s door and be like, hey, you know how to consult? I need consulting on my body. Maybe I’ll test it out. Let me see that. Culturally competent piece matters. It matters a lot. It’s a huge piece. And so if you’re not aware about who we are and what people like us do, we’re going to miss a little bit of the mark. Right. And that’s a small percentage of the work that actually needs to get done. Right. We need you to be an awesome clinician. That matters too. Need you to be compassionate and kind and all of those things. But that’s a big piece that really gets in the way of us moving towards it. It’s just not. It hasn’t been a natural part of what we do.

00:27:09 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:27:09 Brandon

When we also can’t allow as like, Brett’s talking about newer generations. Right. Not to push on anyone or push back or whatever. But, like, work also has to get done.

00:27:18 Brett

Yeah. Yep.

00:27:20 Brandon

Like, the generations that came before us, man, these people knew how to work. Like, they had good work ethic. Right. Maybe they didn’t know how to take care of this as much or as good. And so it’s how do we learn from both of those generations, from this new generation now and from the old generation, so that not just one thing is getting done, but we can get better at all of the things. Better understanding when we need time, better understanding how to regulate nervous systems, better understanding how to manage and deal with people, deal with our old feelings, with our own emotions and get in the house and get the people out of the house when it’s on fire. Not like, oh my God, that’s going to cause me trauma later. I can’t go in and do the job. No, you got to do it and we got to take care of it.

00:27:57 Rosemary

And I’m curious, coming from my position, how do excellent clinicians become culturally competent when it comes to first responders? Are there any trainings available? How do they get themselves up to speed if they have a heart to take care of the people who are taking care of everyone else?

00:28:14 Brett

Yeah, so we’re actually trying to address that. We do know that. And we’re working with a couple of different groups. We’ve even started some conversations with some universities and stuff. We the foundation, I think for the last three years we’ve done what we call a Clinicians for Warriors Conference. It’s three and a half days. We welcome any clinician or psychologist or whatever to come in. And for three and a half days we actually use it for two different things. But the first and the main purpose is to get them information and put them around other clinicians that have worked with first responders. And there’s a certain language we speak. And I always say this, I say,I am not doubting your ability to help. Right. I’m just saying the clientele that you’re getting ready to work with, we can be jackasses, and we’re pretty hard headed. And that is a huge obstacle for us. Whether it’s real or perceived. You have to understand at least a little bit what it is that I do and what I’ve gone through. Right. Again, whether it’s right or wrong, that’s just the fact of the way that it is. And so during that three and a half days, Jill, our clinical director here, she does a phenomenal job with it, bringing outside resources and stuff in. We emerge them in the culture both through classes. We have a panel made up of first responders, so the clinicians can ask them any questions that they want to. They get to hear the stories of those first responders, which some of them are absolutely gut wrenching. And for some, that’s their first introduction into that world. And they’re like, okay, I want to get more involved in this, so what else can I do? And there’s some other classes and stuff you can get into. Our goal, just like it is with our first responders, is we want to start getting in at the ground level. So if we can go through universities and there’s certain classes and certain things that we can introduce them to there, now we got them coming out of the university, going directly into that field of work. We’re short of clinicians for everybody, as it is, even more so with first responder clinicians.

00:30:10 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:30:10 Brett

And it’s not just for the first responder themselves. It’s for the first responder marriage. It’s for the first responder families, because that’s even different. Right? My wife, bless her heart, she stuck with me through the whole thing. And it. Look, marriage is hard. Marriage to first responder, or to a military veteran, is on a whole nother level. Right. Especially a first responder veteran that’s not taking care of themselves. And if they’re not taking there and themselves and they’re not able to take care of their families, that’s a whole nother series. But it’s just important for those clinicians to understand that it’s nothing against them. We just need them to understand. And so that’s something that the foundation is trying to do, is to offer some resources and stuff for there, and there really needs to be more of that. I know that there’s some individual clinicians across the United States and in different areas that are also doing kind of the same thing. And it takes everybody. It’s not a competition. So the more we can get out there and the more we can work together and do things like that, then the more resources we can get to our first responders. 

00:31:12 Rosemary

Yeah. And I think, Brandon, you said it in a previous episode. Firefighters are fighters. That’s part of their nature, is to fight, to push back and… tough clients and so in need of help. So I love what you’re doing. I love what you said. I’d also like to dig into something you said about, “At Warrior’s Rest. Wellness isn’t a lecture. It’s a conversation between equals delivered by those who’ve walked the beat,” or in Brandon’s case, in his work, who’ve handled the hoses, who’ve gone in and pulled out the bodies. I’m wondering, Brett, if you could say a little bit more about why this is so important in the policing culture.

00:31:51 Brett

I think it goes back to a little bit of the conversation we just had. I want to be able to sit and talk with somebody that has. You might not have been through the exact same thing that I’ve been through. But you know what it’s like at 2 o’ clock in the morning with no lights, to walk up to a car, not knowing what the intentions, that it might be an 85 year old grandmother that is going to see her grandkids across the state. Or it could be somebody that is hell bent on taking your life. Right. Nobody else, unless you have done that, can understand what goes through your head, what your body does, what the reaction is, to that. Now, if somebody’s in a bad enough spot, they will probably talk to anybody. But I’m going to get another police officer to open up a lot faster than Brandon’s going to. And that’s not a knock on Brandon. Same thing with a firefighter, vice versa. Or a corrections officer or a communications officer. Right? A dispatcher. I don’t know what it’s like to be a dispatcher. I don’t know what it’s like to sit for 10 hours or 12 hours and to answer a phone and know when I pick that phone up, that somebody on the other end is probably having what they think is the worst day of their life. I don’t know what that’s like. Yet they go in there and they do it every day for 5, 10, 15, 20 years, whatever it is. They want to talk to somebody that understands that. And so regardless of whether it’s law enforcement or fire, just having a peer that can speak the same language and know some of the stuff that I’ve been through. We say here at the foundation, “Healing begins in courageous conversations. that starts with a peer that I know that has been through what I’ve been through.” So I think that’s just. That’s kind of the power of a peer. Right. It’s not any different than a clinician. A clinician’s got to talk to somebody too. They’re not going to come to me as a police officer and talk. They’re going to go talk to another clinician.

00:33:40 Rosemary

Yeah, Brett, that’s a really good point because it’s a question we’ve been asking across this series. I’d love to hear your answer. Does the camaraderie in policing function as real accountability? Or is it more about having your back in the moment than checking in on you afterwards?

00:33:57 Brett

So it’s changed. I know when I first got on and mental health was not talked about a bit, in my academy or after that. So there was no way anybody was going to come up and say, hey, man, you’re struggling. Like the fact that… and Mike Castingham, a buddy of mine, and he’s passed away since, is the one that came up to me and said, dude, you got to get help. There’s something going on here. The fact that he did that was so out of the ordinary, and it might have been that’s how jacked up he saw me. He was a really good friend of mine, but for the most part, there wasn’t conversations, mostly because if something’s wrong with him, then something could be wrong with me. So we just covered everything up. We went, we did our jobs the best that we could do it, and we just moved on. That is changing now. And a lot of that has to do with education, both in the academies and what Brandon and I, with both of our groups, do. The thin blue line, the brotherhood side of it is not what it’s made out to be. And this will be probably offensive. I don’t care. And it’s mostly because we’re not intentional on making it what it needs to be. There is something to shared trauma. There is something to doing the same job that somebody else is doing, especially with as high stress as it is. But the reality of it is we don’t follow through with it for whatever reason. It’s getting better. And part of that is what we push and what Brandon’s curriculum and stuff pushes, to where we should start holding each other more accountable early on so that it doesn’t get to that breaking point. So that it doesn’t get to where you end up on the freaking news for anger, or for being involved in an alcohol involved accident, or domestic abuse or whatever it is. That’s not when that brotherhood needs to step in. It needs to step in back when you first start seeing signs. And that’s an educational deal. That’s an educational deal. So I don’t know if I answered your question there or not. Go ahead, Brandon.

00:35:46 Brandon

I was just gonna say it’s reps if we don’t.

00:35:48 Brett

Yeah.

00:35:49 Brandon

If we don’t practice doing things and we’re not going to be good at them. Like, I’m sure when you went to apply to become a sniper, they were just like, all right, good, you’re on the bill.

00:35:55 Brett

Yeah.

00:35:56 Brandon

Hopefully your first shot. Right. Like, it’s not what you do.

00:35:59 Brett

Yeah, yeah.

00:36:00 Brandon

You practice and you get reps in. And so we’re evolving into this place where we’re starting to better understand how do we get those reps in. We do trust within our peers. Right? That makes sense. Right. We have this shared experience and we aren’t trained clinicians. So what a lot of organizations in fire anyways, I’m just assuming because I haven’t dove too deep into the research on the law enforcement side. But like vicarious trauma within peer supporters is a very real thing. We’re seeing an increase of peer supporters going off on leave because of vicarious trauma, because that’s where the trust lies. Let’s just hold it all here. There’s still fear of going outside of our bubble. Right. Let’s just stay within the bubble because that’s where the trust lies. That’s where we’ve held the bubble. And so it’s a stepping stone. It’s a part of it. And we need those professionals. It’s the same reason people call us, you call us when your house is on fire, because you’re not a professional, nor do you have the equipment to put the house fire out, so…

00:36:54 Brett

Very much Brandon, you hit a point that, you know, even within kind of what we’re talking about, and we’ve, for the last couple of minutes, I’ve talked about peers. There’s a whole nother level of, like you said, the vicarious trauma there. And peers aren’t a good peer, most of the time is somebody that has been in that bad place and has come out of it, however, different reasons, however they came out of it. And then you decide, I want to share my story. I want to go start helping others so that they don’t go through the same thing that I did, and they’ll turn around and find themselves sometimes even in a worse place than they were back when they came out of their first story because they’re carrying everybody else’s weight. And trauma, too. And clinicians. It’s the same thing with the clinicians. If you don’t have processes and stuff in place after you see a client each time, to unload that, it continues to stack up. And so I think that’s a great point that you brought up there, Brandon.

00:37:45 Brandon

Within that peer support world, like, it’s obviously, it’s a fantastic thing. There’s a lot of research on a lot of different areas around it. Is it effective? How effective is it working? Is it helping? Is it hurting? Is it just something that’s neutral? Like, how much of a stepping stone is it actually? There was a study out of British Columbia. They had identified through a set number of criteria that a lot of the peer supporters weren’t, like, doing the work. They weren’t actively participating in proactive mental health activities. Right. It’s interesting. A lot of peer support teams are strictly voluntary. So one of the organizations that I did a case study on, this organization in Colorado has more than 20 years actively into how can we make our health and wellness better for our members. And one of the key elements that they rely on is selecting who is coming on to that peer support team. So it isn’t just strictly voluntary, trying to vet and ensure. Just like when you would hire somebody, are we hiring the right people? Did they meet the right criteria that we need on the peer support team to ensure that those people are being taken care of as well? Not just, can someone have a good conversation with you, but do you know your boundaries? Do you know what you should or shouldn’t say? When are we going to be directing people to go and get help versus just trying to put an arm around them and only be their only source of venting or relief or thinking that…hockey. So the puck drops here. Right. Is this where it stops or do we continue on? So it’s like all this stuff is so layered. Right. And there’s so much involved with all of it. And I think reps is really an important thing, like our training. Right. You said earlier on when Rosemary talked about lectures, like, how effective are they? It’s time and place. Right. Lectures are great. And then there’s application in the real world.

00:39:24 Brett

Yeah.

00:39:25 Brandon

And sometimes the information that we gather, whether it’s how we interpret it or the reality of it, it just doesn’t line up in the real world. And so we have to be able to become creative and be able to think outside of the lecture as this real application. And so as a clinician going to work in these places, the more you know about people like us and how people like us do things, you’re going to be able to connect a bit more. And the more conversations you have, the more stories you hear, it’s just going to broaden your experience. And because we do it right, we sit there and be like, you don’t know anything about me. You’ve never smelt the smelts I’ve smelt. You never felt the things that I’ve felt. You’ve never been in the experiences I’ve been in. So who the fuck are you to tell me what to do? This is what we… This was me. This is how I felt.

00:40:08 Brett

Yeah.

00:40:08 Brandon

Not that like the clinician needs to relate to that, but just understand it because we sit there like, oh, say certain things or bring up some of those experiences, and then we start to build on that, you know, and organizations who make those clinicians a part of the team, whether they’re on salary or contracted, but really work effortlessly to make them a part of the team. It really helps drive things forward for the entire organization. Like, I don’t know if you see that in law enforcement as well, Brett, but it just, to me, makes sense. Right? Of course. Right. Bring that person in, make them a part of us and what we do, and let’s normalize that as much as we can. We see organizations that see massive success when they have those clinicians on a regular basis going into fire stations, having conversations with crews and asking the crews, like, what do you want to learn about what I do? What do you want to learn about mental health? What topics are important to you that we could bring to the table and dive down in education? So there’s so many different ways you can tie those shoes, but there’s, like, really little things, because often, delay and the excuse, like, I’m too busy to go around to the stations. We hear this from fire chiefs all the time. It’s like, my job is up in the office. I’m a politician now. Not that they say that, but it’s true. I don’t have time to go and do that. When what matters is showing face and when we see amazing cultures within the fire service, leadership matters, and leadership shows up. They come into the station, not every day, but they make their presence aware.

00:41:33 Brett

Right?

00:41:33 Brandon

Yes. They have all of these other things, but it’s like, what’s the priority? If the priority is people, then get to know the people. Regardless, if you’re of the largest organizations in the world or you’re a small rural fire department with one fire truck, one might perceive to be easier than the other to get to. Obviously, you get to know one fire truck fairly easily if you got seven or ten individuals. But by just showing up, asking questions, getting to know people, it changes the game on an organizational level and throughout the entire service. Right? It’s that compassionate piece. Just care, right? Show me that you care.

00:42:04 Rosemary

Yeah, yeah, that’s really, really good points. I’d like to pivot away to address something that I think we should step over, and that’s the massive public scrutiny that policing is under now more than any time in recent memory. And I’m just wondering, Brett, how does that feel as a daily reality? Because here’s where fire services and EMS and policing diverge. Everyone’s so grateful to see the ambulance roll up. Everyone’s so happy to see the fire truck roll up when they squad cars roll up? Not necessarily. So how can that affect officers cognitively, physically and emotionally?

00:42:45 Brett

Yeah, you know, it’s not something that… Especially early in my career, and I don’t know that it’s. I didn’t care as much then. I don’t feel like that we kind of. Like you said, I do think in the last 10 years, 12 years, it has pivoted, it has changed quite a bit to where… And again, I’m in the middle of the United States for the most part. The support for law enforcement is there. And I still think within the United States anyway, a majority support law enforcement. It’s just the loudest. The ones that are. That are against it. And not that some of that hasn’t been brought on by bad cops. Right. It’s like I said earlier, there’s bad cops out there. But to lump everybody in, it does wear on you mentally and emotionally. And it’s whether it’s from a traffic stop to whether it’s just walking in public or going eating in a restaurant. For a lot of police officers, I never really thought about it a lot, but I knew guys that were like, I won’t go out and eat in a restaurant in uniform because I don’t know what the cook back there’s doing, or I don’t know what the waitress is doing, or I don’t want the confrontation in the restaurant between somebody that we’ve had a run in with or has had run in with another police officer somewhere. So it does play on you. And it’s just one more thing that a police officer has to freaking think about. And regardless of what the discipline is with the first responders, we have to process things, so many things so quickly. We don’t need all that outside stuff interfering with that. Right. Because that’s where mistakes and stuff are made. I don’t know what the solution to that is, because I do think that it’s personal for each individual on how they deal with that. But that’s a real deal. And I’ll say this, even for the families, that’s an issue. And it might even be more so for the families than it is for the officer themselves. To where we’re hardened a little bit to just at a certain point. Yeah, that some of that just comes along with the job. But my wife and kids didn’t sign up for that. And again, we’re a little sheltered here in the middle of the United States. But I’ve talked with first responders, I’ve talked with kids. We do an event where we bring first responder kids in, and listen to some of their stories is some of them are like, yeah, I didn’t want anybody to know what my dad did. And it’s not that I was ashamed of him or ashamed of her, but I would listen to him talk about cops and how they hated cops and how all cops were bad. And it’s the same with the spouses. Now I don’t think my kids, or at least they’ve never shared that with me, but that would have weighed on me heavier than what a citizen was thinking about me. I would have lost sleep over that had I known. I think for most officers it is in the back of your head. But I think for the families, I think it’s probably a bigger deal. And going through what we’ve gone through over the last five to seven years with the riots and stuff here in the states and I know even overseas and stuff, I think it’s just the same way. But where I just looked at it as, yeah, it’s part of my job when we go down there. I know for one of my kids it affected them greatly. What they were seeing on social media, what they were seeing on the news and knowing that dad was down there,.

00:45:37 Rosemary

Right, Being accountable while being perceived as a threat, that’s a no win proposition. So I guess really what your answer said is it’s up to the individuals to figure out how they’re going to hold both realities. And I’d like to circle back to something that you said earlier as well. You’re talking about making decisions in a split second and I’m wondering, is there a difference between the weight of having to make decisions in a split second and the weight of carrying that possibility, knowing that you may be called on to do X, Y or Z, but maybe it’s never used, maybe it’s never called on. I’m thinking both would be strains and stresses of sorts, but possibly different.

00:46:20 Brett

I do think that it’s different and that’s one of the things I will hang for us. I know with highway patrol, I would put our training up against anybody’s right. So there’s a mindset that we push towards in our academy that kind of takes care of some of that thought process. We mentally prepare ourselves. We know that we could have to do this. I played scenarios out of my brain every day, and it’s the worst case scenario. So when that time came, I knew that there would be no hesitation that I would do what I needed to do to protect me, to protect the public or my partner. Right. So there really wasn’t any stress. And I think for most police officers, I think the training and stuff takes care of that. Normally the weight comes afterwards when you’re second guessing yourself. Or could I have done something different or survivor’s guilt or something like that. I really think that the weight is post incident.

00:47:11 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:47:12 Brett

And that has a lot of the trauma and the issues that we see, is from that. So I think going into it most, and I think it’s the same on the fire side. I think that it’s a little bit different. Only one of these. We are authorized to take a life if DB. But there’s other things that the other first responders do that the same thought process goes through. It’s a mindset that you put yourself into that takes all the worry and stuff out of it.

00:47:39 Brandon

We train for it and we become trained for it. Right?

00:47:41 Brett

Yeah.

00:47:42 Brandon

Every call that you have is preparation. It allows you to look a little bit deeper into the next call. Yeah. Whether you’re arriving, not even on scene yet. Like we’re already painting the picture before we get on scene. From whatever information dispatch is giving us, providing to us, we start to put those pieces into play. And then your past experience comes into play. You are able to observe, as a younger officer firefighter in the early years of your career, how decision makers around you make decisions. We debrief things so we know what we could have changed for next time. We’re also taught no decision is a bad decision.

00:48:15 Brett

Right.

00:48:16 Brandon

There may be a few bad decisions that have been made, but really no decision is a bad decision. They’re all learning experiences. It’s already a bad situation when you’re showing up to it. And so we’re just trying to do the best with what we have, with our experience, with the knowledge base. In our recruit class, we had a senior officer or senior firefighter come in and he said, I don’t know why it stuck with me. He’s like, remember, take a minute to make a minute just before you’re on scene, before you make that final decision. Just take a minute before you dive into anything. You don’t have to rush every single thing. They are quick decisions, but we also sit there and we take time. We take a bit of time to be able to try to make the best calculated decision possible. And sometimes that means, like pulling our people out when other people are still inside because we don’t want to lose more people. And that’s a really challenging decision for an incident commander to make.

00:49:01 Brett

Right. And I do think that is probably the biggest difference between law enforcement and the others is there’s a true life and death decision is made in a tenth of a second. Right. And if you don’t have the right mindset going into it, you’re going to come up on the losing end of that. And the losing end of that, that’s a bad place to be, for you, for those that you’ve been sworn to protect. I think that’s probably one of the biggest things that I worry about, even putting our guys through the training and stuff, is the outside influence. If I’m put in a life or death situation and I think about before, if I have to draw my service weapon and the first thing that goes through my head is, how’s this going to look on video? Right. And there’s that hesitation. I haven’t seen any statistics, so I don’t know, but I got to think that there are some officer involved shootings and stuff, that there was that hesitation. And whether it cost the officer or his partner or a civilian their life or something like that, that’s the one area that I do think that outside influence can play in. And that’s a dangerous place to be.

00:50:08 Rosemary

Yeah. I hear that. What you sketched out earlier, the trepidation, which is a mild word for how it can feel to walk up to that car and not know who’s inside or what’s waiting for you. There’s fear on both sides. There’s fear…

Brett: Yes. 

Rosemary: …on the part of whoever is doing whatever they shouldn’t be doing when they see police officers approaching. And there’s the fear of the police officers because they don’t know what they’re approaching.

00:50:31 Brett

Yeah.

00:50:32 Rosemary

And so that’s very potent when those two.

00:50:36 Brett

And rosemary. And I think that’s one of the things that I know the public doesn’t get it, but I don’t even think police officers get it, is that like I can remember the first pursuit that I ever got in and I can remember getting on the radio, my. My voice shaking. Dispatch says that I was screaming on the radio. I think that might been a little exaggeration, but the adrenaline was there and you could hear my voice and all these different things. The same thing on the first couple of traffic stops that I did, I can remember hearing my heart beat as I walked up to that car. Now, later on, very quickly, I got to where I wouldn’t approach a car because of a traffic stop. But at some point our body adjusts to it. Right. The analogy of the boiling frog. Right. So that’s it. When we stop feeling it or noticing it, then we just think that it doesn’t happen. But the reality of it is it’s still happening to our body. Our body’s just adjusted to it. Right. And you talked about health issues and all that stuff. I would make 10, 15, sometimes 20 traffic stops in a day. And there’s no such thing as a routine traffic stop. So every time I would hit my disco lights, I’d hit my lights and walk up to that car or make that traffic stop. My body’s doing the exact same thing. And it’s just this vicious roller coaster. Every time the tone goes off at the fire station, all that stuff, and we don’t realize that our body’s going through it, but our body’s going through it. Our mental side of us going through it, it. That’s what catches up with us.

00:52:01 Rosemary

Yeah, and the adrenaline and the cortisol and like, coronary issues, you know, the heart is being overstressed on a regular basis.

00:52:09 Brett

And there are some studies and I haven’t looked at it in a while. I know it was going on, but they were looking at tying diabetes within police officers ,to when they were hitting their lights and sirens and that it was shooting the cortisol and adrenaline and everything up ,and then it comes crashing down. And there was some research that was starting to show that because it’s done so many times, that could have early onset diabetes because of, along with other factors that we don’t eat right, that type of deal. 

00:52:39 Rosemary

Yeah. A question I stepped over earlier that I’d like to circle back to is we talked about something fire services and police services share, is high suicide rates. And I’m wondering, Brett, if you can walk us through the CCDR model that you use in suicide awareness training and what it actually looks like in practice.

00:52:57 Brett

We actually just started teaching a class. Jill, our clinical director, is the one that has been working along with a couple of our other clinicians and some of the very low level training and stuff we do is, if we feel like that somebody is having suicidal ideations, is you gotta ask the hard question and you have to be prepared for what that answer is that you’re going to get back. Unfortunately, I’ve had to do that way too many times and I’ve heard both answers, even as recent as last week. But asking that hard question and being very specific in the way that that’s asked is, “Are you going to kill yourself?” It’s not, are you going to hurt yourself? It is, are you going to kill yourself. That is the main point of emphasis is you. And I think comfortable is a bad word, but you really have to be comfortable with asking that. And if you’re not, then don’t put yourself in that position. Right? Yeah. And we use a couple different formats and stuff. The assist training is good. But asking that question, being prepared for what that answer is, if it’s yes, then the follow up question of, “Do you have a plan?” And by that is, okay, so here’s the next steps, right? If they do say yes, then once they say yes, then we’re not leaving them. We will not leave them until we get help to them. We get somebody else with them, we get them to the proper facility or something that they need to go to. And if we stick to those things, then we will have as good of outcomes as we can possibly have during that situation. So asking the right question, being prepared for the answer, if they have a plan, is be ready for anything. I tell a story, there was an individual, he had a plan. And for a lot of them it has to do with their firearms. If it’s law enforcement, even firefighters, that’s just something that just goes along with this first responder culture. So firearms. And that’s why those numbers are so high. There was an individual that was in the paramedic side of it and he was going to use what he had access to, which was an IV bag and medications. I wasn’t ready when he said that. Now my face, I did fine. But in, 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 say that they’re going to do it and they give you a plan, they’re wanting help. And that’s the other thing. By asking, you’re not going to push them to suicide. They’re either going to attempt or they’re not. And so for us, that’s really the three main things that we really push for and we really want them to understand as a peer and in our peer training the other thing is, know when you’re outside of your league, right? Do no harm and if you need help, then reach out for help. Find somebody else. We encourage that if you’re doing a suicide intervention, you’re always doing it in pairs because there’s always something else going on or something else that needs to be done in order to do that. That’s kind of what we go along. I don’t want to reinvent the wheel. Jill doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel the ASSIST program is a phenomenal program as far as suicide intervention. And we’ll do a slight introduction just so they don’t necessarily get caught without having anything. But we push, go get as much training, as many different modalities as you can. Because out of all the suicide interventions I’ve done, not a single one of them has been the same. And I’ve used bits and pieces from every one of those modalities and stuff that I’ve used, or that I’ve been trained in, to go and do that and work. So we try not to pin it, get them to where they’ll pin it down to just one thing. We want them to be very well versed. And if you’re going into this world for peer work, if you’re not willing and don’t have a passion to go and get as much education on the different things as possible, then you probably don’t need to be a peer.

00:56:38 Rosemary

We’re taking a brief pause to share what’s on offer in the Compassionate Inquiry community. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. If you’ve been listening to our podcast and are curious about the compassionate inquiry approach developed by Dr. Gabor Mate and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the professional training program. It’s open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, bodyworkers, coaches and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you’ll also deepen your own internal process. If you’re interested, look for the link in the show notes. 

Rosemary: I hear you. Is there anything you’d like to add to that? Brandon?

00:57:24 Brandon

Yeah, so the Firelight foundation, we don’t have a peer network per se, right? Like we’re not establishing peer support groups like Brett is in training peer support groups. We’re much further upstream. How do we help to prepare before this stuff even happens so that we’re better prepared with those things? I align with everything that Brett said. If you are in that position as a peer, get help. It’s really important being to a few conferences specifically on mental health, suicide awareness. We’re always learning things about this specific thing because there’s only so much that we know about it. There’s so many unknowns. And so to stay on top of your education, how to talk about it, like this is a big thing, right? We shy away from not using the word or the language. And like Brett said, what he said was pretty powerful, right? Like you just gotta ask the question straight up you can’t beat around the bush. It’s probably the first time that individual has ever said that out loud, or admitted to that thing out loud. Right. It frames it very differently, adds a new perspective to it. We know that a little intervention changes the game. For an example is they spent years, I think it was more like decades, trying to put a net under the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a very popular spot for suicide after they put the net down. Not many successful suicide attempts happened over there. But what also doesn’t really happen is people go to find another means. It’s like they’ve come there to do a thing. They see the net catches them because maybe I’ll try it anyway. And then they don’t just go and find another means. There’s an interruption in the plan that changes things for the individual. Doesn’t mean they’re not still suffer from suicide ideation, those kinds of things. But that was really interesting to learn. Right. It isn’t necessarily. There’s other individuals that are like, I’m going to do this thing, it’s going to get done and we’re going to just do it. And it happens. But small interventions, like asking the question, like what Brett said, now somebody else knows. And it just, it has the potential, I think, from what I can understand, to change the narrative, to change the path for these specific individuals, so….

00:59:17 Rosemary

Yeah.

00:59:17 Brett

There’s so many of them that just simply. And it’s not that they don’t care, but if somebody would just say, hey, man, how are you doing today? And don’t accept the I’m good, I’m fine. Right. And really dig and ask the question and do it with sincerity and be genuine when you’re doing it. That could head off so many… not just suicides, but other issues and stuff too. We just as a society have gotten away from just having conversations. That stupid phone that we keep in our hand, and we just doom scroll and all. And there’s good things to it. Right. The ability to watch this podcast on your phone. It’s awesome. But we’ve just stopped talking to one another. And now you put a high trauma, high stress job on top of that and it just pushes us even further away. It really is that simple. I mean, we can talk about other stuff. It really is that simple. We just have to start talking to one another.

Rosemary: Yeah.

01:00:15 Brandon

And even to be aware, to be like, oh my God, I never thought that before. Why did that just drop in? Do I actually think that? Do I actually feel that? Hey, you, person within my space who I’m comfortable with, who I’ve built some trust in. This is the awareness piece, right. It isn’t just for everybody. We always think it’s for everybody else. Right. But it’s for us to ask ourselves those questions and to get some affirmation like, you know, hey, doc, I’m not feeling well. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but something clearly isn’t right. Can you help me? What might it be? Let’s try some prescriptions or try this new thing. Try getting some sleep if you’re a first responder. So I think that’s a big piece of the understanding and awareness as well. It’s the self check in. It’s okay, these things are not abnormal. They are normal. It’s normal to think, feel and act so many different ways in each of our days. Right. Your entire day, even if you just won The World Cup, may not be happy and joyful the day right after, you might have an up and down, you might hear some bad news about a friend or a family. There’s so many things that happen and emotions that roll through us all the time. And so the more aware we are of those things, it allows us to become more comfortable with them. That allows us to reach out and just have normal conversations with whether it’s a peer or whether it’s a professional on a more regular basis.

01:01:27 Brett

And the one thing unfortunately, that first responders do when stuff starts stacking up is we go to social isolation. All that does is just. It makes it so much worse.

01:01:37 Rosemary

Good point, Brett. There’s a truism in compassionate inquiry is that healing happens in community. And we’re coming to the end of our time today. The 247 campaign frames who has their back when the shift is over as community responsibility. It’s up to the community to have the back of those who take care of us.

01:01:57 Brett

Yeah.

01:01:58 Rosemary

What do those of us on the outside need to know about what off duty support for officers actually requires?

01:02:04 Brett

I think understanding that for most of us, what we consider 10-7 when we go off duty is we don’t just leave it at the door. We take that in our families, you know, constantly live with it. And so understanding that there has to be resources for our first responders to give them the tools to, when they walk through that door, that they can be the husband or wife, they can be the mom or their dad, and unfortunately that doesn’t come for free. So being able to have groups like Brandon’s and mine, and there’s a ton of other groups out there that can get those resources and we can get that training Brandon has talked about. And one of the things that we push with our peer support teams is stop being reactive in nature. We have to be proactive. They need the tools in their toolbox before the trauma and the stress happens, not after. Right. We can deal with those, but get it before. It’s the same with the families. And like I said, unfortunately, it takes funds to do that. There’s certain departments that are stepping up and doing that, but the public can play a huge role in that also. And if they have a first responder in their family, they know a first responder by becoming a part of one of the organizations, whether it be financially or through time or even prayer, whatever it is. Right. That is a huge help. And then we get to go in and do the dirty work. We get to go in and give them the tools and get them the resources so that when you dial 911 or whatever and you call for a first responder, when they show up, they’re in the best mental and physical and emotional state that they can be in, because that’s where you want them. You want them to come in.

Brandon: Yeah. You want them

Brett: To come in with mental clarity. You want them to come in physically fit. You want them to come in spiritually in a good place. Because now you’re going to get the best absolute service. You pay somebody minimum wage at a restaurant and you get crappy service and you grab and complain about it. It’s not any different with first responders. So it’s not a choice for them. That’s just where they are in life. But you can play a huge part of that, a huge role in that.

01:03:59 Rosemary

Beautifully said. And, Brett, is there anything that you’d like to touch on that we haven’t addressed?

01:04:04 Brett

Oh, gosh, a couple more episodes. No, I. I will say, again, I appreciate it. I think for your audience, whether it be clinicians or whether it be just the general public listening, if you know a first responder or even if you have a first responder family, go talk to them. Ask them. Ask them about what their day looks like. Ask them about what’s been the toughest thing that you’ve ever had to deal with. What’s been the toughest thing that you see. Some people will talk about it, some won’t. Some are just waiting for somebody to ask. So that’s what I would encourage, that’s what I would leave everybody with, is go, go ask questions, go talk to a first responder. And thank them.

01:04:40 Rosemary

Yeah. I actually have one final question, and Brandon fielded this in the firefighting episodes. And it’s simply this, Brett, if you had the ear of every police officer in the country, 30 seconds, what would you say to them?

01:04:55 Brett

I think it is… it takes a very special person to do what it is that you do. And with that comes a lot of things that you’re probably not ready for or weren’t trained for. And that’s okay. But any reaction you have to any event is the right reaction. And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. Once you have that reaction, if it sticks around, it’s okay not to be okay. It’s just not okay to stay that way. So reach out for help. Go talk to a partner, your spouse, your pastor, whoever. Just don’t keep it in. You have to empty that bucket. We debrief incidents tactically. Any event to where you have a reaction to you should be talking about that also.

01:05:37 Rosemary

Thank you both so much for being with us today. If you’re listening and you’ve enjoyed this episode, I invite you to join us next week for episode 4 of the First Responders series, which focuses on the EMS medic’s inner world. What it means to arrive at the worst moment of someone’s life, do everything possible, and then leave without knowing how their story ends. We’ll explore the weight of that ‘not knowing’  the fatigue that comes from repeated exposure to traumatic scenes and how they process the emotional burden of the people they couldn’t save. Join us please. 

Brett Key. Brandon Evans thank you both so much for being with us today for this conversation. I have learned so much from listening to what you’ve had to share with us today.

01:06:21 Brett

I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much for having us.

01:06:24 Rosemary

It’s a total pleasure.

01:06:25 Brandon

Yeah.

01:06:26 Rosemary

And thank you, Brandon.

01:06:27 Brandon

Thanks, Rosemary. Always a pleasure.

01:06:34 Rosemary

The Gifts of Trauma is a weekly podcast that features personal stories of trauma healing, transformation and the gifts revealed on the path to authenticity. 

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