Everyone Goes Home® - Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives Program

Shannon H. Pennington
firefighterveteran.com
26 Year Career Firefighter I.A.F.F.

Everyone Goes Home® Life Initiative 13: Firefighters and their families must have access to counseling and psychological support.

In the October 2008 Everyone Goes Home® newsletter I discussed the resources available at firefighterveteran.com and the educational information available on the subjects of stress, job stress, job burnout, Acute Stress Disorder and Post Traumatic Stress. I also wrote about the past, present and future needs of the fire service in managing stress and about occupational operational stress injuries caused by firefighter traumatic stress exposure and line of duty injuries.

This month I discuss the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) that you should consider when selecting your psychologist or psychiatric caregiver. PPE in this case refers to the psychologist or psychiatrist that you are "equipped" with by your department to provide treatment for an Occupational Operational Stress Injury (OOSI.)

If you make use of the departmental Employee Assistance Program (EAP) you will not usually be given a choice as to who you see, when you see them, how often you see them, and how much control you have over what they can or cannot do to impact your job status as a firefighter professional or volunteer.

The fire service has learned many valuable lessons from the past. We have learned the lesson of what is needed and when it is needed in regards to stress injury. Now we need to look at how and where to apply the correct responses to stress injury. It is our responsibility to establish communication with the caregivers who are assigned to help us and to have open communication when we are overcome with the emotional burdens of a triggering event or to the long term effects of stress. No matter if you are ordered into treatment, go on your own, receive education as part of Critical Incident Stress Management, or seek treatment privately, your participation itself may speed up the recovery process.

In order to understand how communication works, we can start by examining the way a firefighter thinks and processes information. Building on that, we can work on the communication skills that are needed to break down the barriers between "us," those in need of help and "them," the people who are trying to understand us.

As Ricky said to Lucy on more than one occasion "Lucy...you got some splaining to do!"

So let's have a go at some word play here...

When you get lost in the emotional smoke of the event and the back draft of those events builds up into a flashover, get down, get low, buddy up, get out and get competent help. Hey, that was not too bad; you probably understood what I just said. If you speak in these terms to someone who is trying to connect to you and help you with your stress issues, then they too can begin to understand that you are in emotional smoke from an event which took place and that your feelings and emotions have flashed over.

You are in the "hot zone" after the "flashover" of emotional events. You are in a hazardous overload of thoughts about what happened on the last call or about the number of calls. Everything is starting to build up to a "stress reaction" to the events and your "trauma trunk" is too full.

You need to open up the inch and a half between your head and your heart and start connecting to the fact that you are human. You can only load the head-space with so much exposure to trauma before you react to it from your heart-space. This is a very real and human condition that makes you a person. No, you are not a super hero, but a man or woman doing an extraordinary job under extraordinary conditions and making it look easy. Stress is the Kryptonite that will weaken and hurt you if you do not get help.

We are all in this together. Finding the "hydrant key" that fits the spindle will open the hydrant of information that will allow us to get the flow directed towards the emotional fires that are blazing inside of us. Get connected to the hydrant of information that is available from the Everyone Goes Home® Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives and firefighterveteran.com. Let's add another tool in the tool box and not have another "fool in the fool box" with stress freelancing us on the fire ground.

It makes good, solid bell-ringing common sense to reduce the back pressures that stress causes. When the emotional pressure causes us to "go beyond the limits" of the pressure relief valve in our heads and hearts then we need to find the setting to reduce the pressure to tolerable limits. We need to reach out to others, especially to competent professionals who have our best interests in mind.

Finding appropriate psychiatric professionals and interviewing them BEFORE YOU COMMIT YOURSELF to their care also makes sense. If the PPE does not fit, then do the size-up and find what does fit. You are in charge of the stress reduction outcome.

Everyone Goes Home® and when we get there let's make sure we are able to embrace the best of what life has to offer from health and wellness in our jobs and in our lives. Commitment to staying ahead of stress is the first step towards hope in staying healthy.

Connect to additional stress information at firefighterveteran.com