When I was a kid, my dad taught me how to backflip from a diving board. I was terrified, but with his encouragement I pulled it off. He then asked me to do it again – and while it was stuck, and again. With confidence, I decided to push myself and bounce high. Bad movement. I jumped high, but not enough, but I bumped my head into a diving board along the way. Then I sank. Underwater, he grabbed me as his dad reached him. When I went outside, I shed tears. That’s when I first heard it: “Suck it.”
He told me to go back to the board and do it again. I was furious, scared and confused, but his strict approach worked (ISH). I didn’t want to, but I climbed. I reluctantly called out all the courage to complete another backflip. Then I left the pool and let my dad do it again after getting injured and let me run around the house. I was mad and I didn’t forgive him for years. Looking back, I get it now. He could have handled it perfectly, but that was everything he knew – it was his normal.
Here are other things I noticed: There is a time and place to push your emotions aside to overcome the confusion. At that moment, “sucking it” was necessary for me to settle, focus, and return to proverb horses. But here’s the catch. When that approach becomes your everyday norm, especially when your work is all mess, it starts to bleed in every situation and every aspect of life.
There are times and places to push your emotions aside to get through the confusion, but once that approach becomes your everyday norm, you start to bleed in every situation and every aspect of life.
Calmness is not always a goal
For my first responder, I meet while leading a tactical brain training session. That’s the challenge. The nature of the job requires emotional aside to effectively handle emergencies.
The detective once replied to me, “So when someone comes to me with a gun or a knife, do you want me to close my eyes, breathe in, and be peaceful and calm?” “Indeed, if your intentions are meant to be stabbed or shot!” (I might be a bit cursed here too.) I said, “No, that’s going to be the wrong move here. Instead, you use mindfulness to strategically complement your law enforcement training… you can protect yourself.
When work literally demands that you place yourself in the fire, the stress that comes with it is understandable. And trauma is inevitable whether you have experienced it personally or witnessed someone else. If we know that trauma is part of our job, it is our responsibility to deal with it. We train for all other aspects of our work – weapon residency, CPR execution, someone else’s suppression – why not train to manage potential fallouts? This is the gap seen between training for action and training for sustainability (i.e. training to keep yourself mentally healthy).
Mindfulness interventions and tactical brain training are more than just making something gentle. They are about regulating the nervous system so that someone can approach it with purposeful behavior rather than just responding to their work or partner. Instead of guiding behavior into emotions, mindfulness interventions train the prefrontal cortex of the brain to guide behavior. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for executive functions, namely cognitive abilities such as working memory, flexible thinking, and self-control. Training this part of the brain means that you can operate in a responsive state rather than in a reactive state.
For first responders, veterans, and others facing stressful situations, having a variety of emotional regulatory skills increases access to balance. It’s about building a toolbox that you can go to for your strategy. If one doesn’t work, throw it and try another. This is not zoning or ignoring pain or suffering. It’s about training to tune into it while you know there’s a strategy to go your way.
How to “suck” with mindfulness
Mindfulness is not as simple as “just notice your emotions” or “just breathing.” To ask someone trained to save a drowning person to be saved suddenly to feel and accept every emotion can be overwhelming, distracting and even irritating. And asking someone who is super excited to stop what they’re doing and breathe can be ridiculously annoying! If you’ve seen me write or listen to it, and have heard of it say “JFB,” this is my way of creating some lightness in stressful moments. JFB just shortens the breath (but I’m sure you already understand that).
Starting small is key. You train your brain the same way you train your body with graduates, manageable steps. It would be pretty ridiculous to start weight training by lifting 100 pounds. We need to build slowly and steadily (I’m currently at 10 pounds weight. I need to work on this).
You train your brain the same way you train your body with graduates, manageable steps.
For example, instead of starting with “I’m so frustrated, where do you feel that in your body?” you can feel overwhelming. It can approach interventions for physical and mental connections in stages. “First, we want to train ourselves to feel the sensations of our bodies, then we try to connect those sensations with our emotions.” It helps us start by noticing common physical sensations. Training for Curiosity: “Where do I feel hungry?” “Where do my body fatigue manifest?”
From chaos to emotional regulation
From there you can build it. Think of happy thoughts. How do you feel about your body happiness? And think of something that will make you feel frustrated (but not trauma, as there’s no need to intentionally trigger it here). And once again be interested. Try to identify where you feel frustrated. This step-by-step approach builds the foundation of consciousness. By the time the emotions are dealt directly, it is no longer foreign or overwhelming. Skills are developed to make you realize without being consumed.
This is why I call it tactical brain training. It distracts the idea of mindfulness from the stigma of being “emotional” and reconstructs it as a strategic idea. The idea is not to erase the emotions to get the job done. It’s about creating a “container that sucks it” knowing that chaos can return to those emotions once it settles down. Emotional recognition is not just about handling stress. It is a tactical skill to navigate both work disruption and the calmness of everyday life.
Emotional recognition is not just about handling stress. It is a tactical skill to navigate both work disruption and the calmness of everyday life.
Just like learning to reverse a diving board, it requires practice, patience and a step-by-step approach. And, as inevitably when mistakes occur, training can acknowledge the emotions without controlling them. Instead, they are temporarily put aside, allowing clear focus to complete tasks at hand.
Many of the people I work with are surprised to find out that it can be this simple. I’m not saying that traumatic experiences are simple, but that it’s easy to start practicing mindfulness. Here’s what I’m saying:
Yes, stress and trauma are inevitable parts of work. No, you’re not broken. Yes, that’s what it is – and now you know. Yes, you can approach this in a way that feels more likely to relate to you. Now, let’s get to work! #JFB
