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WELLNESS IS A SKILL

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TABLET COMMAND

TABLET COMMAND

HEALTH

Wellness is a Skill

By Bill Dungey

Whether you’re a career or a volunteer firefighter, you might think that there’s nothing more important to your success than receiving regular, quality training. The truth is that strengthening our mental health is just as important as any training –

if not more so. GOOD HEALTH IS OUR MOST EFFECTIVE TOOL, SO IT’S TIME TO WEAPONIZE WELLNESS.

If you were working on martial arts skills, you’d spend hours at the club, working on your form, sharpening your technique and putting your new skills to work. When you lose a match, your coach might point to a lack of defensive skills and say that your blocking technique isn’t sufficient to foil your opponent. But perhaps it makes sense to turn that advice around. Maybe the right strategy is to become more aggressive with your offensive moves. A great defense is always important, but you need a determined offense to win a match.

MENTAL ILLNESS IS A FORMIDABLE OPPONENT, ONE THAT CAN ONLY BE BATTLED USING BOTH STRONG DEFENSIVE AND CLEVER OFFENSIVE STRATEGIES.

And that opponent is gaining ground. A recent national study on suicide prevention involving a group of firefighters revealed that 65 percent admitted to

struggling with traumatic memories caused by their work, while more than 80 percent said that if they were to seek formal help, they felt it would make them appear weak or unfit for duty.

The reality is that when firefighters are struggling, many feel unable to ask for the help they need. This sense of helplessness threatens their work, their relationships and indeed, even their lives. And it speaks to a much deeper problem within our ranks.

Responses to mental health concerns are too often reactive

rather than proactive. Instead of waiting for an individual in crisis to reach for help, we need to fortify our responders before the crisis arises, giving them the training they need to build resilience.

Wellness is a skill that we can develop just as a boxer hones his or her right hook. With continuous repetition, a good coach to guide us, and the determination to continue learning and building our skills, firefighters can develop a protective shield of resilience.

Resilience is the ability

to withstand. When we experience traumas, whether singly or over time, our work-hardened exterior shell can suffer cracks. When that shell is breached, we need to be able to depend on our resilience skills to help guide us back to baseline. Just as we do during crises on the fire ground, we need to be able to depend on our training to take over when a significant mental health stressor presents itself.

The first step towards our resilience goal is to adopt a “stress-is-enhancing”

mindset. A 2019 study of US Navy SEALS recruits found that participants who believed that stressors are actually pathways for healthy growth ultimately persisted through training and scored better on evaluations than those with a negative outlook on stress. Accepting that challenges make us better is key in building a stronger foundation for the fire service.

The Mental Health Commission of Canada hosts a course entitled “The Working Mind for First Responders” during which participants are introduced to a widespread resiliencebuilding tactic called The Big 4. The techniques are borrowed from Navy SEALS and include positive selftalk, visualization, tactical breathing and and setting goals that are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant) goal setting. In combination, these methods enable responders to face a stressful event with evidence-based means to help manage the challenges. The Fire Service trains us for mayday situations with intensity because they can happen in a flash. We must prepare to react to dangerous circumstances with aggressive action. But sometimes a dangerous situation can develop slowly, so slowly that it reaches the boiling point before we’re aware that anything serious is building.

Consider the fable of the frog which, when placed in a pot of water on a stove, was happily unaware that his environment was slowly heating up. The water had reached a boil before the poor frog realized his situation – but by then, he was soup.

When a crisis like the collapse of the Surfside condo building in Miami last year occurs, a response team is sent immediately to help support the first responders. But when the exposure to trauma is less dramatic and occurs on an almost daily basis, first responders need resilience skills to keep them stable, healthy and able to deal with the challenges they face. Without good mental health hygiene, the proverbial water in the pot can reach a boil before the dependable firefighter has time to jump out.

It’s easy to spot the sudden flash but much harder to realize that the water is warming up while we’re working.

To return to our first analogy, when we train for a fight, we learn to calculate the variables of each shot

and work to aim correctly. Mental health goals within the fire service are very often carefully calculated and designed with the best intentions. But if the techniques we use are poor, we’ll miss the shot every time.

We already know what to do.

Our emotional capacity is defined by the work we’re willing to put in to safeguard our combined physical and mental health. Together they produce a fortress of ready-state resilience built on a positive foundation that enables us to view stress as a challenge rather than an enemy. Time, effort, pace and cadence are the cornerstones of progress, and resilience is our best protection.

ALL WE HAVE TO DO IS ASK FOR HELP BEFORE WE NEED IT.

WELLNESS IS A SKILL THAT WE CAN DEVELOP JUST AS A BOXER HONES HIS OR HER RIGHT HOOK.

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