Reprinted from Calibre Press Training Network
By Steve Albrecht
The uncomfortable truth about this job is that a highly traumatic event can appear before you during the first hour of your first day in the field. And while you may have been able to successfully cope with the first one, the tenth one, or the hundredth bad scene, as the numbers get higher, your internal defense mechanisms can begin to shred. To put it in Star Trek terms, your laser shields have failed and the burning hot beams are now penetrating. Things that used to bounce off may now get through and eat at your inner self.
Perhaps what makes all this so difficult is that the cumulative effects of so much grief and pain may not catch up to you for years and years. You can surmise by now that all this stress cannot be good for your heart, your stomach or your psyche. Perhaps this is the reason police funerals hit all of us so hard. As one year so sadly demonstrated with two officer deaths in my city, when bad things come upon us with a hard rush, it’s tough not to feel as if the whole world is off its axis. How can so much bad happen so quickly to our thin blue line?
In his best-selling book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, the author, Rabbi Harold Kushner, says that in times of grief and sorrow, it’s hard for all of us not to feel that life has no purpose. That our Creator has allowed bad things to happen in order to punish us for some past failing or that there is no justice.
In truth, he says, bad things don’t happen to punish us, or to prove that for every good person, place or event there must be an evil one to match. Bad things happen because that is the way of the world. There is no hidden cosmic book that keeps track of these things; they just happen.
And it is the cumulative effect of so many bad things we see, experience and are forced by the nature of our profession to deal with—the murder or rape of a child, an attack on an elderly woman who is left dazed and bleeding in the street, a family killed in a car crash, a dead officer—that can make it hard to cope with the rest of our lives even after we unpin our badges.
When faced by what seems like one terrible event after another, some officers turn to alcohol, drinking after work in an effort to forget the day and drinking on their days off in an effort to forget their week. Others turn to too many cigarettes, feel-good junk foods or other self-destructive habits to help themselves cope. But above all this, most cops internalize their feelings of sadness, rage, anger, guilt, fear or anxiety until their inner selves are filled to the brim, and this is what leads to the bad hearts, aching bellies and other stress-induced ailments that can serve to end our lives before we’ve had full use of them.
Psychologists suggest we deal with our feelings of grief, sorrow and horror about some of the terrible things we see, hear about or experience first-hand, by talking about them. While it may be in our nature to hold things in and not expose our feelings to the cold light of day (where, as many of us believe, they may be subject to ridicule), the better approach is to get them out, not bottle them up. This is not to say you should go about blurting horror stories to your unsuspecting friends and family, but under the right circumstances these people can be good sounding boards. And your police partners, police friends and other law enforcement collogues can serve a similar role, just as you can for them. And finally, your department may offer confidential psychological services.
Using your spouse or partner as the means to vent your feelings can be a powerful asset for your mental health, but only if you observe certain ground rules. A trusted colleague, who has suffered too many of the world’s evil people and evil visions, gave me good advice:
— Try very hard not to talk about bad things, bad people or other highly disturbing events while lying in bed together.
This is a cardinal rule. If you’re married, live with someone or have a significant dating relationship, you should establish strict physical and psychological boundaries about what you do in your bed together. Beds are for sleeping, snacking, reading, lovemaking and talking of many other things—a place where you share good things and good times. It should not be the place where one person unloads his or her problems upon the other. If you have the need to talk about something disturbing, like a frightening police event, get up and go into another room, like the kitchen.
— Prepare your spouse or domestic partner for the arrival of sad, frightening, or disturbing news.
When we’re upset about something and have had to carry it around all day, all week or all month, there’s a tendency to blurt it out all at once and get it over with. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of disturbing news you’ve heard without warning or time to put up your defense shields, you know how shocking it can be. Instead of helping the other person to deal with what he or she has experienced, you may be too stunned by the news to cope with your own feelings.
Preface a piece of disturbing news with the sentence, “I want to talk about something I experienced that has been bothering me a lot. Is now a good time for me to talk with you about it? Is there someplace we can go where we can talk and you can help me feel a little better?”
— Develop your own self-coping mechanisms as a supplement to talking about your feelings, emotions, anxieties, or fears.
This can include taking a shower as you get home from a particularly difficult patrol shift (this can serve as a physical and psychological “cleansing” process, as you clean the “dirt” from the streets off more than just your body.) This can include a winding down ritual as you drive home, a quick workout after your shift, or spending some time with your partners or police friends just rehashing the day’s events.
It’s OK for tough cops to cry. We should be able to express our feelings when things upset us more than usual. Create your own coping rituals and find friends and loved ones who will help you share your heavy load. Do the same things for them when they need it, too.
THOUGHTS? E-mail us at: [email protected]
About the author: Steve Albrecht worked for the San Diego Police Department for 15 years. He is the author of six books on officer safety and tactics, including The Police Professional: 60 Ways to Lead, with Captain Andrew Borrello. In 1992, Steve and then San Diego Police Detective Lt. John Morrison introduced the concept of Contact & Cover in their book, Contact & Cover: Two Officer Suspect Control.
