It’s PTSD Awareness Month and Paramedic Services Week in Ontario, and I can’t help but write about how painful this time is for me. I don’t want pity. I just want people to take care of themselves so that they don’t have to experience what I do almost every day – most often invisibly.
I think that the awareness of what PTSD is, is out there. We now need to focus on how to prevent it. I think that it’s so important to let first responder students know that it isn’t practical to think that a career that involves constant exposure to trauma will lead you to a healthy retirement – unless they work extremely hard at taking care of their mental and physical health. Yes, I’m sure there are some exceptions to the rule, but most first responders I know, start to find the career difficult to cope with around the 10 year mark. ‘Invincibility’ begins to waver at this point, and it becomes apparent that holding on for another 30 years until retirement isn’t healthy at all. Without they knowledge of how to take care of ourselves along the way, the ‘gold medal’ of a full pension begins to resemble a cheap chocolate dollar store coin that is half melted and tastes like crap. And with a hero persona weaved into the fabric of every uniform we wear, hanging it up by choice often makes us feel like a failure…so we don’t – we unknowingly wait until we are forced to hang it up because PTSD has taken over our brains and has physically altered them forever.
I still don’t know how to de-program my mind completely from being a first responder. I do know that I have had to go through the grieving process – like a death – of my career. I sure wish I had been told that this would be a likely possibility when I was in college.
I feel that there needs to be more research done on how to leave a first responder profession in a healthy way. Whether that be at retirement or before retirement by choice or due to injury.
If you are a first responder and you believe that you are not attached to the hero image, perceptions and feelings of being one, I challenge you to look more closely at that belief – doing so may save your life. Without your uniform you ARE a beautiful human being, but I can tell you from experience that if you don’t practice reminding yourself this as you progress through your career, you will hit a wall of reality when it comes time to move on (whenever that is) that may be so daunting and impossible to break through that it may kill you.
When/if you think that PTSD won’t/can’t happen to you, stop and see that you’ve added a brick to that wall! It CAN happen to you, and realizing this and using those moments of false invincibility to kick that brick away, will allow you to continue to see that you are much more than your uniform – hard to imagine right? Well let me remind you how much more you are – you are healthy parent, spouse, sibling, friend. An ALIVE parent, spouse, sibling, friend. Take care of you now – please.
UpTalk Podcast
Paramedic Nat 
June 3, 2017 at 9:23 PM
This is a good time to remind yourself and to share with others that ‘Movement is Medicine’ a motto and way of thinking for Clara Hughes. Exercise & movement is but one pillar in an overall health mind & body strategy, one that for this first responders is my foundation.
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June 4, 2017 at 5:53 AM
I want to write a thousand words l am trying to think of the right words. You know I think you are damn incredible, I’d do anything for you. It seems first responders are not treated with sufficnt respect after they put their bodies, minds, lives on the line.
Nat you are a strong and independent person, but you have to de-program your mind. Maybe that’s with therapy from someone who has been in your shoes. I think you could benefit from an expert on c ptsd. Heck they’d learn from you too.
Would you go for it?
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June 4, 2017 at 4:38 PM
Hello beautiful friend 🙂 I am seeing a wonderful therapist for my PTSD right now. I should ask her about C-PTSD though.
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July 17, 2017 at 1:43 PM
Hi Nat. You are very brave to open up like you do in your blogs. You give great insight into PTSD from the inside. I’m a paramedic in the UK and am becoming involved in some initiatives to help colleagues in the emergency services to deal with depression and PTSD. It is frustrating how slowly the projects are going. Also it is frustrating that all the focus is on dealing with PTSD and depression when they are established – although this is vital I think it is equally vital to spend time learning and teaching staff how to prevent them in the first place wherever possible and if not prevent then at least identify the early stages and take early action.
As for retiring from being a responder, I think it will be very hard because to many of us it’s a way of life, not just a job – maybe that’s part of the problem that can lead to depression and PTSD?
I hope the therapy helps and you find relief. Take care,
Rusty.
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July 19, 2017 at 5:55 PM
Hi Rusty. Thank you so much for your message. 🙂 I thank you for what you are doing to help those in your community- it’s so important as you know. Sending you love from Canada. And wishing you all the best.
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