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By prioritizing the mental well-being of first responders, we can not only improve their overall health but also enhance their ability to perform their duties effectively. Resilience training, counseling services, and creating a supportive environment are just some of the ways we can promote their mental strength.
Rodger Ruge, a renowned mental health expert and advocate, has dedicated his career to supporting the well-being of first responders. As a former police officer himself, Ruge intimately understands the unique challenges they face on a daily basis. With this vast knowledge and experience, Rodger and Dr. Renee Thornton have developed a groundbreaking approach called Navigating Adversity: Tactical Self-Care for First Responders.
Through practical strategies and tools, Navigating Adversity equips first responders with the skills to take care of themselves while fulfilling their demanding roles. The program incorporates mindfulness techniques, stress reduction practices, and effective communication strategies to promote overall well-being.
Rodger shared the following with us in his recent interview on Responder Resilience:
Recently, I've shifted my format to writing books, because a book empowers the individual to their own learning, their own growth. Navigating Adversity: Tactical Self-Care for First Responders is one of the books I wrote with Dr. Renee Thornton. It’s a lifelong resource that first responders can call upon so that when critical incidents occur, they are prepared to Navigate Adversity. Another nice aspect of writing a book that calls out the issues, but also offers solutions. Things you can try and experiment with to find what really resonates with you. And the beauty in all of that is no one has to know you're doing it.
So if you're feeling a little self-conscious about studying breath work or doing a meditation practice, or maybe you're going to re-engage with your spirituality in a different way than you have before, but you're worried about what people might think of you, here's a book. Study it all you want, practice it all you want and don't tell anyone if you want. Let's empower the individual.
What ends up happening here is a ripple effect because all of a sudden the person who starts doing this work will shift. It is impossible not to. And then people notice, and then people start going, “Hey, you seem like you're really relaxed and happy and peaceful. What are you doing?”
“Well, I found this and I found that and I've been doing this and that, and it's just been helping me a lot.”
“Really. Tell me more about that.”
And then we create a little grassroots ripple where the individual's empowered. And if you have a highly dysfunctional organization, now it doesn't matter. You have empowered yourself to this enhancement, this upleveling of your human potential. How awesome is that?
A lot of folks really struggle with creating some form of behavioral change. A paradigm change is really difficult to achieve. But somebody said something interesting to me: It's about doing inch pebbles, and inch pebbles lead to milestones.
During the Covid-19 surge, interviews with emergency medical professionals showed dramatic cases of ICU and ER responders exposed to major signs of advanced fatigue and risk of burnout. This significantly raised major risks to their work performance where lives are to be affected, including theirs. Over time, double and triple shifts resulted in "a different type of pandemic" on a national scale- where this level of exhaustion and overwhelm.  |
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As a resilience tool, meditation is interesting. When I first started meditating, and this is not an exaggeration in the least, I couldn't even sit for 60 seconds. Now I've worked my way up to six hours.
Don't let that metric concern you because even two or three minutes actually counts. I literally teach people in meditation. The very first thing I teach them is a three minute meditation. And studies have shown that if you do this quieting of the mind for three minutes, you'll stay in a parasympathetically restorative state for up to six hours. Imagine if just between each emergency call you did a meditation for three minutes, you don't need to close your eyes, you don't need to be in a cave in the Himalayas staring at a candle flame while a guru rubs patchouli oil on your feet.
You can do this very quickly, reset yourself. And by the way, just so we're clear, these practices have been part of ancient warrior societies for millennia. This is about stepping fully into being a warrior.
Now imagine you're driving really fast and you don't have this calming skill. Your adrenaline's coming up, the cortisol and 1400 other stress chemicals are flooding your body, preparing you, and you're getting more and more and more amped. You arrive on scene.. What would be the difference if you got out of your vehicle alert, ready, calm, centered, not mentally hijacked, with your physiology completely under your control. Do you think your cognitive processing would be better? I'm telling you, it is an absolute game changer to own meditation. And it starts with very small practices. And what is really cool is when you start having those experiences, you want to do it more and more because the return on investment is so profound.
It's really hard to go into a room of first responders who are indoctrinated into their culture and talk about things that might feel a little bit threatening, or certainly outside the box. And how's everybody going to take this? I've been in some tough rooms, and if I can get a room full of hardened police officers to meditate, you know you're getting somewhere. You make it safe.
I think by showing the science and showing by your heart that you're really there for them and that you've been where they are is the key. This is what separates everything and begins to help them wrap their mind around the beauty of what’s possible.
HOW THERAPISTS DIAGNOSE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES By: Jessica Connell, LCSW |
GET TO KNOW YOUR ANXIETY AND STRESS
HEALING, STRESS AND THE PARASYMPATHETIC SYSTEM (part 1)
Written by: Roberta Kline, MD
Stress is part of life, and comes in many forms including physical, emotional, mental and environmental. Foods we eat, unhealthy relationships, difficulties at work, toxins in our environment, even poor posture or lack of sunshine can all create stress on our bodies. But when stress is catastrophic or becomes chronic, it creates imbalances in this functioning that are much more likely to promote disease while at the same time preventing healing from taking place. [1]
With people under record levels of chronic stress, it is no wonder we have an epidemic of people suffering from all sorts of health issues and chronic diseases. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, pain, anxiety, depression, infertility, cancer, autoimmune diseases such as arthritis, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s …. These are just some of the many health conditions that have been linked to diet and lifestyle including chronic stress. [2, 3] But how does this work? And is meditation the answer to reversing this trend? Science is revealing some interesting clues.
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