PTSD Awareness Month

June is PTSD Awareness month. This June I’m going to take a slight veer off that path, to discuss what I’ve experienced in relation to PTSD.

I was a volunteer firefighter/EMT/rescue operator for 16 years. I served in one department, then one district. Apart from basic Academy training, I pursued all kinds of certifications to broaden my skill set: confined space rescue, water rescue, Hazmat certs, several of the FEMA ISO certifications and the FEMA Professional Development course, to name a few. I didn’t sit on my laurels. And in the department I was in, there was a bit of a competition to get to the rigs first, as protocol stipulated that only two trucks rolled out, and if they needed more, they were called out. Which resulted in continuously being in the top 10 of responders in the department. We were all required to be certified and trained as firefighter, EMT, and rescue operators. And being so, I went to most of the worst of the worst calls. Our training included nothing about PTSD.

I moved, and became part of a district, and since I lived close to a station, I was able to respond to most of those calls. Again, fire/EMT/rescue, and again, the worst of the worst. And in this district, a wee bit about dealing with our own mental health. Just a wee. Nothing that anyone took too seriously. Nothing about PTSD.?

Then the crash came. It was Christmas Day, 2011. The worst of the worst calls, and for that family, the worst. If you’ve ever worked in small communities like I did, the odds of dealing with someone you know on their worst day, gets lower and lower with every call. The vehicle accident, the domestic violence, the secret autoeroticasphyxiation gone horribly wrong, the manic episode, the heart attack, the suicide. Until the day when I was curled up in a corner of a dark, unoccupied coffee shop back room, crying. It was there a staff member found me, and sat, until gently asking, “Who takes care of you guys?”

“You’re looking at it,” was my reply.?Shortly after that, I attended my first and only Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD) in my 16 year career. And what did we do? Well, among the responders there, all with arms and legs crossed, we re-hashed the ?call. Which was re-traumatizing. I was the only one that cried, and cry I did. And that was it.

Most firefighters in the US are volunteers. Between 70 and 80%. As such, few of those have Human Resource Departments, or Employee Assistance Programs. And only a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing if someone in authority called for one, and even then attendance is voluntary. Staff psychologist? Yea, right. In one place I visited, I was pointed to the pop vending machine. The last button on the right, a doubled up Root Beer, was their version of dealing it, their staff “psychologist.” It was all beer, no root. One sat, talked maybe. A little dark humor, and drank beer. Their version of “counseling.”

?After my crash I started to come back to the land of the living. Not the land of the functional though. That took a couple years. And a lot of subsequent losses. Eventually I began to look at what happened to me, what was still happening to me. The answer at first was stress. That led to trauma. Then the perceived hammer of PTSD. The first two as we can see, are the middle two initials of the oft career killing diagnosis: traumatizing stress. And the noun, is the stress - the real root of it all.?

?And here I thought I was done…. It turned out that in my subsequent search for an effective healing modality also turned up something called the ACE score, a veer on the path: developmental trauma. And my EMT brain was still interpreting “trauma” as an actual physical wound, which is what I looked for for 16 years.?And as it turns out, I was also not alone in having an ACE score. In subsequent work with emergency responders, 100% of them have had significantly high ACE scores.

?And here I am nine years later, healed, and owning a business that offers trauma healing to emergency responders (dispatch to coroner), veterans, and civilians. Women in civilian life, after all, have the highest number of cases of PTSDs.

If you suspect you have PTSD, there are lots of resources available to self-check on your own. Just be honest. Then take the ACE test. And then seek out help. Trauma is not a life sentence, nor is healing it. And not all modalities require talking about it, or even remembering it.?Or getting what could be a career ending diagnosis.

?I’m available if you want to talk, and you can e-mail me at [email protected]. We can set up a time and talk on the phone, or on Zoom.