How do you not become numb with your feelings over your career?

Question

AK Dozanti · Answer

How do you not become numb with your feelings over your career? Compassion fatigue is super common in the first responder world. The first couple years it's really easy to kind of be strong for people and really hold space for them. But after a while your defense mechanisms kind of wear down. And on top of that, there's probably gonna be cases that you try to extend compassion and people are just not nice. So this really depends on the individual and making sure that you're checking in with your own mental health, making sure that you're staying connected with your body. I talk about this all the time. We get so overwhelmed that it's just easier to disconnect from ourselves, i.e. numbing out. Certainly this compartmentalization can be very effective while you're on shift. It's going to allow you to do your job and do it effectively and not crumble. But when you get home, you have got to process these things. You have got to decompress. You have got to allow your body to feel the effects of the stress and then release it. And if you're brave enough to start diving into this stuff, a lot of times we find that we are very good at intellectualizing our emotions and not actually feeling them. It's much safer to numb everything out and just try to explain it away. You cannot heal and process only in your mind. You have to let it cycle through your body. There are a lot of safe ways to do this. Sometimes just talking it out and letting yourself go through that is enough. Going to the gym, going for a walk, doing breathing exercises, meditation, tapping into you and your body, but ultimately just making sure that you're staying connected with yourself. And allowing other people to support you when needed.

Donald Soranno · Answer

How do you not become numb with your feelings over your career? I guess it depends on what you're actually doing in your career as relates to, for me, on the first responder side. I've always looked at it that no matter what I'm doing, I'm doing it for the greater good. I'm doing it to keep communities safe. I'm doing it to help people. I'm doing it to work with my local law enforcement agencies. At times, yes, it would get frustrating. It would get hard. I would feel stagnant. I would feel like I was out of place. But the biggest thing I would do is just try to take a step back and realize what I'm doing isn't about me, that it's about the communities I'm working in, the communities I'm serving, my fellow law enforcement agencies that I'm working with. It's all about what we do for the greater good to protect these communities. So basically a lot of this would be not internalizing the issues or what you're seeing or what you're doing or the confrontation, struggles, political BS, et cetera. Finding somebody that you can talk with is always key. Just don't internalize all of this and make sure that you're focusing on what's the overall goal that you're working towards.

SuperDave Leath · Answer

Question asked was how do you not become numb with your feelings over your career? So I believe that first responders, frontline heroes, police officers, firemen, nurses, military, paramedics are some of the most emotionally mature people that you will ever meet. It's one of the reasons why police officers have to go through such regular rigorous psychological examinations because you have to deal with human emotion on a regular basis all the time and you have to be psychologically fit yourself. People that drown their emotions in alcohol or drug abuse unfortunately some some do, they are not handling their emotions. They're trying to drown out those feelings but the people who deal with them in the most healthy ways continue to have some of the most healthy coping mechanisms in the world and some people don't have those coping mechanisms and sometimes that cumulative trauma adds up and unfortunately we see high rates of suicide. But the people that do seek help and the people that do have healthy ways to ventilate never become numb and they never forget that they're human also. So take care of self first and that's how you don't become numb over time.

Dena Ali · Answer

You know, you can become numb to certain calls, certain experiences. And at times I'm grateful for my ability on a call or even after seeing something just to be numb and to kind of store it in memory and move on. So those things aren't bad. However, when it comes to compassion fatigue and being rude and tired and having a short temper, for me, I've just had to learn to rest, to take time to myself, to take time off, to have daily expressions of gratitude. I know it sounds cheesy, but there's so much data behind just daily expressions of gratitude, waking up every morning and truly being thankful for something and considering what it is that you're thankful and ensuring that it's not the same thing every day. And then again, having hobbies outside of work, whether it's cycling, reading, gardening, pickleball, whatever it is, make sure that there's something more to your life besides just the job. And then when things bother you, talk about them. Find somebody to talk to you, whether it's a mentor, it's a friend, a family member, somebody in the job, somebody out of the job, talk. If that doesn't help, it doesn't hurt to see a professional therapist. That's probably been one of the greatest things I've ever done in my career is just finding a professional to talk to. Great question. Yeah, about the techniques here, it was rad.

Dave Robertson · Answer

How do you become numb over your career to the calls that we see? This question has actually come up in similar fashion before and some people do become numb but actually first of all you shouldn't. Being numb is a method of hiding. Your brain is fooling you. You know we talk about having black humor to diffuse whatever bad thing we've seen or as soon as I go home I turn it off. There's a number of different coping mechanisms. All of them are typically somewhat self-destructive. So you don't get numb. I'm going to speak about myself specifically. I was not emotionally numb. I actually was emotionally raw with the things that I saw. I'm a wear my heart on my sleeve kind of person and I think that fed through when I saw some of the tougher calls. Numbness was never part of it which I think is a problem in itself like I've already said but being emotionally raw was my part of it and that was also kind of a problem to be frank. Either way numb or raw talk to people. Find a support group. Create your support group. Rely on spouses. Rely on friends. Healthy friendships. All the stuff that you already know about the working out, the finding quiet time, the separation of work and family where you can and darn it all find a great therapist that specializes in PTSD or PTSI because they can work magic so that you are neither emotionally numb or raw. You just find a great way to navigate the tough stuff that you see and need to process as a first responder.

Eric McCants · Answer

How do you not become numb with your feelings over your career? It's kind of hard not to. Like I said, I've become immune to death. I've seen so much of it. It's kind of hard to have those feelings because you can't be emotionally attached to all the calls you go through. At the end of the day, you're there to solve a problem when it comes up to you. If somebody's getting murdered or someone's been in a vehicle accident, you've got to make sure you're able to do your job. So becoming numb is just part of the career field you're in. Like I said, you can't sit over there and cry with the family. I mean, you've got to be sympathetic. You've got to be feeling towards what they're going through, but you can't be out there letting your emotions loose when people are going through some of the most traumatic things in their life. So you become a little numb to things, but usually I make sure you try to keep and check what your feelings are. Make sure you express them because a lot of times as first responders, we tend to keep it inside of us and not express it out. I say, even if it takes you a couple of days, eventually talk to somebody. You need to get it out. But at the end of the day, you do become a little numb to the job. Like I said, I've seen so many dead bodies. It really doesn't bother me anymore. I don't even talk about it. I'm not an officer. I used to talk about that. I've seen somebody get shot. I've seen somebody that was dead today. I've seen somebody's body that's been decayed, that's been out for over a couple of weeks. You see how it melted into the carpet and stuff like that. So after you see those things so many times, you become numb to it. So it's kind of hard not to. It's just part of the job. And it kind of makes you a better officer so you don't become too emotionally attached to the cases that you come to. You can just handle your job and keep it pushing. But that's essentially what you have to do. You don't have to become numb to the job.

Swimming

Triathlon

Strength

Photography

Track & Field

Nutrition

Running

Physical Therapy

Pets

Cycling

Podcasting

HealthCare

Hockey

Musculoskeletal

First Responders

Integrative Medicine

Chiropractic

Cross Country Skiing

Adaptive Sports

Surfing

Climbing

Tennis

Mental Health

Mind Body

Military

Criminal Justice

Liquor

Scholars

Golf

Soccer

CrossFit

Pickleball

How do you not become numb with your feelings over your career?

AK Dozanti

AK Dozanti

Donald Soranno

SuperDave Leath

Dena Ali

Dave Robertson

Eric McCants