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Resilience Development in Action: First Responder Mental Health
Discover practical resilience strategies that transform lives. Join Steve Bisson, licensed mental health counselor, as he guides first responders, leaders, and trauma survivors through actionable insights for mental wellness and professional growth.
Each week, dive deep into real conversations about grief processing, trauma recovery, and leadership development. Whether you're a first responder facing daily challenges, a leader navigating high-pressure situations, or someone on their healing journey, this podcast delivers the tools and strategies you need to build lasting resilience.
With over 20 years of mental health counseling experience, Steve brings authentic, professional expertise to every episode, making complex mental health concepts accessible and applicable to real-world situations.
Featured topics include:
• Practical resilience building strategies
• First responder mental wellness
• Trauma recovery and healing
• Leadership development
• Grief processing
• Professional growth
• Mental health insights
• Help you on your healing journey
Each week, join our community towards better mental health and turn your challenges into opportunities for growth with Resilience Development in Action.
Resilience Development in Action: First Responder Mental Health
Unseen Heroes: Dispatchers and the Emotional Toll
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Ever wondered how a paramedic transitions to a creative copywriter and brand photographer? Meet Sarah Wayte, who shares her incredible 20-year journey through the UK ambulance service and her unexpected leap into a new career in Canada. Sarah opens up about her life-changing late diagnosis of ADHD and how it influenced her path, offering a unique perspective on navigating high-pressure professions with neurodiversity. Her story is a testament to the unexpected paths our careers can take and underscores the importance of mental health awareness.
Sarah provides a candid look into the often overlooked roles within emergency services, shining a light on the unrecognized heroes—emergency dispatchers. She recounts the immense pressure they face and the emotional toll of making split-second decisions. Sarah also touches on her own experiences as a paramedic, discussing the emotional challenges of the job and the unhealthy habit of compartmentalizing trauma. Through her insights, we get a glimpse into the camaraderie and dark humor that serve as essential coping mechanisms in the field.
As we dive deeper, we address the critical need for mental health support among first responders. With alarming rates of suicide and a culture that often discourages open conversations about mental health, the episode advocates for annual mental health checkups and safe spaces for discussing personal struggles. Sarah's heartfelt sharing concludes with a powerful reminder of the importance of peer support and professional counseling, including resources for those in immediate need. Join us for this powerful conversation that emphasizes the significance of mental well-being in emergency services.
To contact Sarah, go to her website www.sarahwayte.com or email her at hello@sarahwayte.com
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Discussing Therapy and Life Transitions
Speaker 1Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy . A proud member of the PsychCraft Network , the goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy , what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences . Guests will talk about therapy , their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives , with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor . Here is your host , steve Bisson .
Speaker 2Alors , merci et bienvenue à l'épisode 170 . Thank you and welcome to episode 170 . If you haven't listened to episode 1699 , go back and listen to it . And diamond was very interesting . We talked about , uh , menopause . We talked about add and , uh , the late diagnosing of that and how to work on trauma , among many other things . So please go back and listen to it .
Speaker 2But episode 170 will be with sarah waite . Sarah waite , I live like what . The first thing she told me is that I'm an accidental paramedic , um , and she no longer practices . But she talked about , uh , her experience with that . So you know if I want to give you a brief discussion . Following a 20-year career in the uk as a paramedic , sarah with her husband and two cats and moved to canada she's out on the west coast , I'm sure she'll talk about that she's now a creative copywriter and brand photographer . She's a co-host of a podcast about creativity and writes and takes photographs in her spare time . She was late diagnosed with ADHD too so that's why I was mentioning that about the last interview and now fully embraces her neuro-spicy life . She also enjoys writing and talking about her experiences as a paramedic , especially through the lens of mental health and how it impacts the first responders . She is someone I was looking very much forward to talking . So here's the interview Get freeai yes , you've heard me talk about it previously in other episodes , but I'm going to talk about it again because GetFreeai is just a great service .
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Speaker 2Well , hi everyone and welcome to episode 170 . I'm so happy to have Sarah Waite with me today . I dubbed her the accidental paramedic based on our little conversation that you know we had through email and Facebook . But , sarah , welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy .
Speaker 3Thank you very much for having me . I'm excited to be here .
Speaker 2You know , I'm always fascinated because you know , being a Canadian myself , born and raised , and people going to Canada . But I don't want to jump to that right away . I know that you moved from the UK to Canada , but I want to bring that question up a little later on . You know , maybe I feel like I'm getting to know you still , but my audience has no clue who you are . So how about you tell a little bit about my ideas about yourself ?
Speaker 3Oh , my goodness , when do I even begin ? I am Sarah and currently now residing in BC , canada , but I am originally from the UK . I was born in the UK , but I'm also half Maltese , which is a tiny little island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea called Malta . So my background is like it's such a big , long story , um , but I became a paramedic by accident 2008 . But I've got a 20-year history in the ambulance service in the uk , which again was an accident . I I left home .
Speaker 3I was living in malta at the age of 19 , hated living there , moved back to the uk and , um , I needed work because I was determined not to go back to Malta . And I saw an ad in the paper , for it was like the equivalent of like 911 call handler basically it was the taking the emergency calls and I thought , oh , that sounds interesting . I can do that until I figure out what I want to do . You know what I want to be when I grow up , and that led to a 20-year career in the ambulance service , which I very nearly couldn't get myself out of . Until I want to be when I grow up , and that led to a 20-year career in the ambulance service , which I very nearly couldn't get myself out of until I moved to Canada . That's what kind of got me out of the ambulance service in the end . So that's a really quick rundown , but hopefully that gives you some idea well , it gives us plenty of places to go , that's for sure .
Speaker 2You know , I always thought that paramedics went to accidents . They don't become accidental paramedics , but hey , what do I know ? You know , one of the standard questions from finding your way through therapy is exactly that . We ask people have they ever been in therapy ? So I'm going to ask you that question have you ever been in therapy ?
Speaker 3I have several times actually , I mean going way back . I was first introduced to therapy when I was a teenager . Actually , I got bullied in school so I got sent to a it was a count , a school counselor at that point but it was classed as therapy and I , you know , I it's weird I had forgotten all about that until my most recent um therapy that I've just I've just finished about a year with a therapist in the last year . So , yeah , I've had a few , a few instances how was your experience in therapy ?
Speaker 2has it been mostly good , mostly inquisitive , mostly thought-provoking ?
Speaker 3something else the no , really good . Actually , this , this most um , recent experience , uh , I actually found my what was the word she used ? Like my inner , my inner , about my my what's the word ? My balance , like my center , my center , basically it's most . I had this like very incredible experience that I was telling everybody about afterwards because I've never been there before and actually that was . It was really interesting because it I think a lot of it was a lot of it was talking about earlier stuff back from way before I became a paramedic . But I think being a paramedic exacerbated a lot of the ways I was feeling . So there was a lot of stuff to get through . But yeah , I reached a point of being like completely , almost like zen . It was great , I was fantastic and now it's all gone .
Speaker 3That's what we're saying no , no , I'm good , I am happier than I have been in a very long time , so yes , well , you know
Uncovering the Journey of a Paramedic
Speaker 3I .
Speaker 2I think that that's what makes it very interesting , because we talk about the journey being exactly what you said . You know , we don't know what the journey is going to lead us . How do we get into this thought process ? Uh , I think you were sharing pre-interview that your husband is a paramedic and wanted to be a paramedic since age four . I'm like , I mean , what an oddball .
Speaker 2But , um , maybe we can talk about your journey , since it sounds very judgmental for someone I've never met to say that to . But hey , I'm , you know I . I want to break stereotypes about canadians being polite , so that's part of my other goal . But so let's talk about your journey a little bit . So you're looking for a job . You fall into this ass backwards , basically . So you got to be motivated to stay , other than hunger , because you know there's got to be things that you , you , you enjoyed about the job , or maybe you didn't , but so maybe we can start there and go from there . So maybe a little bit about what you know . You go in like bright eye and bushy tail and that dies , dies off , but in a month or two , usually for most people uh , yeah , but like , but I don't want to write your story .
Speaker 2I want you to paint that story thanks , I will .
Speaker 3Um . So I mean , obviously I say I started in the control room first of all taking calls , and then it progressed very quickly to , uh , being a dispatcher . So that's what I did for the first seven years . I was sending people , sending the ambulances all over the county and responding to calls , and it was a really I was amazed I stayed there as long as I did . Actually I did . I think it was like seven and a half years there and it was .
Speaker 3Every day was busy , it was stressful , it was , it was hard work . It was 12 hour shifts with like five or six screens around you . You had to know where everybody was at any one time . There was obviously this push , push , push to make sure you're responding to calls quickly and leaving no patients waiting and all of that kind of stuff . And I think when I first started I was completely naive . I had no idea that it was what I was kind of getting myself into , but it was . I've asked myself this question many times what kept me there ? And I think it was . I think it was the rush , I think it was . There was a bit , there was an adrenaline rush to it . There was a sense like a real sense of satisfaction of a job well done , when you could actually see that you were making differences to people , and a lot of it was the camaraderie as well . The people that I worked with kept me there for a long , long time . Actually , it certainly wasn't . It was I can say this now because I don't work for them anymore but it well , it wasn't the bosses , it wasn't the , the management . There was a lot of company politics within the ambulance service . It certainly wasn't any of that . In fact , a lot of that made me want to leave quite frequently as well . I so it felt like there was a real push-pull all the time , and also for me as well .
Speaker 3I went into the ambulance service with no qualifications . I wasn't qualified for anything . I was 20 years old , I'd not finished school , I hadn't gone to university , so I had no other qualifications , and I felt like I got to a point where I wasn't qualified to do anything else . This was all I knew . So when I , when I went to , when I decided to become a paramedic in fact , it wasn't even a decision to become a paramedic I said I'm done working in the control room . I might as well apply to become a paramedic and see if they'll take me and if not , I'll go and work in a store somewhere . That was my , that was my thought process . As it turned out , the person who interviewed me to become a paramedic went yeah , we'll take you on . So you know , that was it . It just kept me there and that was a new kind of adrenaline Once I got out onto the road and I was seeing patients .
Speaker 3It was stressful , but in a different way . It felt more at the time . Initially it felt more physical stress because you're out and you're busy and you're lifting patients and you know you're doing a lot of more physical stuff . I didn't think about the mental stuff until way later , but it was a different kind of stress from what I'd had in the control room . But I've discovered I did quite well under stressful situations and I've since learned that's probably an ADHD trait , where people with ADHD are very good in emergency situations . So we're pretty well suited to working in places like the ambulance service , you know frontline kind of work . So , yeah , that's that . I think that's it was . It was an accidental finding that this was my place and it was very much . Every now and again a call would happen and you would save a life and you would feel like you were on top of a mountain and you just wanted to keep chasing that feeling , basically . So I think that's what kept me there for a long , long time .
Speaker 2Well , a lot of people keeps the adrenaline rush really feels good and you know it's interesting . I'm in a group for first responders in the area and I talk about the God complex and that's part of what it is . So I definitely get what you just said and One of the things that I want to mention too , because you talk about being the control room , as we call it in US and Canada we call it more a dispatch , and dispatchers are highly , highly underappreciated for the stress to go through . I don't know if you have any comments on that , but I certainly , you know , like a guilty as charged Sometimes I'll mention all my first responders . Oh , in this batch it's always like an afterthought and that's on me too . But can you speak more about that ? You know in the control room , the dispatch and how you know there is some value in that , but people don't understand the stress that it also , besides having six screens , as you said , there's other stressors that go with that people don't really get oh yeah , totally do
Dispatchers
Speaker 2you know it's .
Speaker 3It's that they . They are like the unseen , unsung heroes because they because I kind of equated it to even it was even different from the , the people who took the calls . They were more recognized because it was , you know , the . The patient or their family would be like oh , that person on the phone was amazing . They gave me advice , you know , help me save this person's life until you guys got here , kind of thing . So they got recognized but nobody saw what happened in between the call coming in and then the ambulance arriving , which was the , the dispatcher . That wouldn't happen without that person and that person is completely .
Speaker 3I think that was the big stress area came from the fact that they were juggling everything . You'd look at an entire area and you'd maybe have , where I worked , you had maybe 50 , anywhere between 50 and 100 ambulances in your area that you were managing . At any one time you had to know and we were . We were taught as well . Lovely manager , very old school . He was very much of the of the belief that if you didn't know where your ambulances were when the power went out , then you weren't a good dispatcher , so you had to know where everything was . He would come and test you and he'd swing your chair around and go tell me where this crew is . Tell me where that crew is , and you'd be like , yes , they're on this call and they're doing or they're going here and so you have to know .
Speaker 3Your short-term memory was incredible . Basically I knew where you know any one time where my crews were . I also knew the calls that I said I called them my crews as well , that it was like I was their , I was their mother for the shift , basically so , and I felt responsible for them . If they went to a call that was really horrendous . I wanted to make sure they were okay afterwards and I took a lot of that on myself . So there's a lot of that stress as well the the responsibility of worrying about your crews , making sure they're safe and , you know , not going through awful things which some of them invariably were and just the sheer business of it all .
Speaker 3You know just like literally having calls coming in , it was like playing . It was like playing a big game of it all . You know just like literally having calls coming in , it was like playing . It was like playing a big game of chess . All the time . You're always moving things around trying to make sure you could respond to , like a cardiac arrest , really quickly , diverting crews off of other calls , making really quick decisions . Is this patient more sick than this one ? Do I need to be moving this ambulance to this call instead and it was a it was a 12-hour shift of constant mental gymnastics . Basically , I would go home at the end of every day with with a massive migraine , sleep for 10 hours and then come back and do it all again . You know so , yeah , they don't get .
Speaker 2They don't get sung about often enough , unfortunately so and you right , and I think that that's why I wanted to talk about it , because one of my , my biggest pet peeves is even within the system we work here , the dispatch is also kind of like . You know , I'll talk about the Northeast intelligently , but I think it's across the US and even in Canada . That's great , but remember , you're just a civilian , you're not one of us , and you know , and I think that that exclusionary standpoint happens just about everywhere . And just my curiosity , it's not 911 in England , what is it ?
Speaker 3It's 999 in England .
Speaker 2Thank you , I forgot about that . But hey , psa for anyone in Europe listening , but talk a little more about because the other part too is I really feel like they're underappreciated . But more importantly , you know , like I I should I showed this before in the podcast and you know you go , someone goes to a call with you know domestic , with violence or whatever , and you're talking to the person while the police is going on the way and then suddenly you hear bang or you hear like ah , yelling , and then it cuts off . That pressure on the dispatcher , the communication center , is absolutely mind boggling and I don't think that's appreciated as much .
Speaker 3Oh so much . Yeah , it was . I probably appreciate this more , having I obviously did a good few years as a paramedic , actually working with patients , you know , going out to patients and stuff years as a paramedic actually working with patients , you know , going out to patients and stuff . And then I came back into the control room , into the dispatch center , and I worked on telephone triage for a little while actually , and I had a newfound appreciation for the difficulty of not knowing what was going on or being able to actually do something . I was at the end of a phone and it's there would be so many times I would want to reach through the phone to make things right because I knew what to do .
Speaker 3Um , and I think I mean , as the call handlers in the uk are not , most of them are not medical . I think sometimes they are , but most of the time they're not medical . They again , they are typically civilians . They come in off the street , they're trained how to take emergency calls and follow a system . But there was still that sense of oh , I can do something here If people were especially trying to get people to listen as well , that's that was when you could give them advice that could help in the meantime or and yeah , situations like that if you would hear noises like that and phones getting cut off and things , then your mind would just go crazy thinking about all the possible things that were going on and you had no , no way of being able to see or do or be there in that moment to help . That distance , I think , made it like being on the other end of a phone , made that so much more difficult , definitely .
Speaker 2I definitely wanted to shout out the dispatchers that I work with um underappreciated , appreciated , and Exactly what you just said and then some . But you know , in the joke I wanted to make earlier was you know People listening and you know I can reach to the phone and help them , and I was gonna say , well , I Is that . Why like . So you're like fuck this shit , I'm going to become a paramedic , I'm going to jump in and I'm going to be able to . Oh , is that what brought that transition on , or what brought that transition ?
Speaker 3No , you know , maybe that was a part of it . It was no , actually it wasn't . I think for some people it is . We had a lot of dispatchers would go on to be paramedics and that was because they were tired of being the person on the other end of the phone and they wanted to just go out and do the job basically . So I think that was the case for a lot of people . For me it was very much . I'd come to the end of my life as a dispatcher and it was just like that was . The natural transition was to go out onto the , onto the road , to be , you know , to work operationally . So it was just a case of let's see if they'll take me and if not , I'll go somewhere else instead .
Speaker 2So okay , and when you know , I think that there's , when you talk about a transition from phone to on-site , essentially that's what I call it emergency on-site work , because you still did emergency , but it wasn't on-site work necessarily . What ? How ? How easily is it to adapt to that , or how hard is it to adapt ? And what were the things you faced that you felt were very easy and the other stuff that you went , oh fuck oh , um .
Speaker 3So the transition was like for us at the time . It was a 12-week uh course in a classroom , basically being taught all the very basics of . We went out as student paramedics . So they they taught us the very bare minimum that we needed to know in 12 weeks , crammed us full of like anatomy and physiology and doing exams , and you know all the basic stuff cpr and basic skills and all of that kind of stuff . And then you did a . I think you did a couple of weeks driving course as well , so they taught you how to drive with the lights and the sirens and , which was obviously the best part , we all enjoyed that . Um , and then off you went out into the big wide world as a trainee paramedic . You were a student working with someone qualified , and actually that's when the real training began for most of us all .
Speaker 3The stuff that they teach you in the classroom is nothing like what you'll see when you're . When you're out there and I I had no idea what I was going to be facing . I kind of knew a little bit because I'd been a dispatcher . I knew and I was friends with a lot of paramedics as well , so I got to know a little bit about some of the things , but until you're there and facing them , you just don't know . I mean , the first time I saw an open , fractured lower leg , you know , it was like , oh , that's what bones look like , you know , I was just like and it was . It was that moment I realized , okay , this is a sink or swim moment . I'm either gonna like pass out here or I have to do something . And luckily the brain took it , kicked in and was like we must do something . Let's , let's fix this now . You know so , but you don't know , until you face that , how you're going to deal with that . The first time I went to a hanging , you know , which was really an unfortunate outcome it was like they sent a manager to me because I've never seen one before and I think I surprised them because I was like this is going to sound a little bit morbid , but I was like I've never felt a broken neck before . Can I see what
Emotional Toll of Paramedic Work
Speaker 3that feels like ?
Speaker 3It was like a learning experience for me because I was new and excited and even though it was an awful situation , I was curious to know , for learning , for future , you know , whether I'd be able to help somebody in the future , kind of thing . So I came at it very much from a place of curiosity . I was lucky at this point I was already with my partner , who had been a paramedic for a couple of years , so I had him as a really good resource . I think I learned a lot from him before I'd actually faced it myself , and him being a very enthusiastic paramedic , as we've already talked about , that was definitely really helpful .
Speaker 3I have a feeling it had been the other way around , because I was not an enthusiastic paramedic at all . In fact I would probably put a lot of people off the job now if they spoke to me . If it had been the other way around , it might have been a completely different story . But I was fortunate that he was so passionate about the job and what it entailed that I was . I think I just kind of went it , jumped in with both feet and waited to see what happened .
Speaker 2Really , so , yeah , well and I think that you know when you're dealing with hard scenes just like you just described . You know , sometimes it is our defense mechanism to say , gee , I never felt a broken neck , why that way ? I don't have to deal with this scene per se , I'm just dealing with a broken neck . Is that part of the stuff , too , dick ? Because you know where I think it's underestimated is that you know what I hate hearing and I hear this sometimes from and I am a civilian , I am not pretending I'm not .
Speaker 2I hear civilians talk about it as well . Isn't that what they signed up for ? I don't know if gruesome was exactly what they signed up for , or feeling like shit about it or whatever . But talk a little bit about that , because I think that for me it is so difficult to see your first hanging or your first shooting and you know , I still remember some , you know some of my scenes that I was on for the first time and going , and even today I think about it and like just I get a little bit of goosebumps just thinking about it . And again , civilian , I showed up as a civilian mental health clinician , not a first responder . So anyone listening to this , I'm not stealing any valor yeah , no , it's .
Speaker 3Uh , there's a . I think you learn really quickly and early on in your career that you learn how to dissociate , which is not . It's not healthy by any stretch of the imagination , but it's the only way to cope and it's a . It's . Yeah , it's definitely a coping mechanism and very early on as well as a paramedic I was we . It was a different service when I first started in that it was much quieter . We didn't have as many calls as what as it as came later , so you had time to like have discussion with your crewmates and your colleagues in the country in the in the break room . You'd all hang out together and you'd discuss calls together and it was almost like a peer review , almost . You'd have like a learning experience together , talking about what you did and what you could have done better , and everyone throwing in some of their experience and advice and I mean it was crew room banter . There would be a lot of laughter and joking about stuff as well which probably the civilians would be horrified at .
Speaker 2Dark humor and gallows humor makes us survive , but please go ahead , yes absolutely yeah .
Speaker 3And then , obviously later on it got so busy you never ever went back to the crew room , so you didn't have that opportunity anymore . So it became very much a case of compartmentalizing it in your brain . You'd see a thing , it was awful , you would put it in a box and youalizing it in your brain . You'd see a thing , it was awful , you would put it in a box and you'd push it out of the way , and you think I will deal with that later , whenever later comes , you know which , for a lot of people , would come very unexpectedly and not very nicely , unfortunately . So yeah , so there was definitely that element to it , but there was something you said and I've completely forgotten now I forgot my own stuff , so don't worry .
Speaker 2But don't worry , I I think that we talk about , you know , gala's humor . We talk about dark humor , we talk about dealing with it and how we don't you know . You talked about peer review I call it peer support and being able to talk about it , because that , as time goes on , that changes , and then you go to scenes and you know it's like next call and you don't necessarily have that time .
Speaker 3No , yeah there's also sorry to interrupt you there's an element .
Speaker 3There's an element of not dealing with it . Eventually , in the end , you just stop you it's , you would just cram it down . I mean , the box would get very , very full , basically . And when you try and stuff a box and it starts to burst at the edges , and that's basically what was happening . You just kept cramming things down and down and down and , yeah , at some point it would spill over . And I saw lots of people's personalities my own included change over the years as I worked in the service and , yeah , it's just not healthy .
Speaker 2Well , you know , it's the proverbial 10 pounds of shit in a 5-pound bag . I mean , at one point it's just going to explode at the seams . I know that what they call people on Discovery tried to do it and they clearly could tell that they couldn't do it . Mythbusters actually tried to do it . But I really think that once you don't have that peer review , you don't get that peer support and you need to repress it . But , like you said , it shows up in a weird way at other points in times in your life , because you can see so much bloodshed , you can see so much difficulties , domestic violence , um , or all those things , before it starts affecting you . I don't , I just want you know , I want to acknowledge that , because I also think that you bring that home . You said that it changes you and I do believe that it absolutely changes you . How did you feel it changed you ?
Speaker 3I became very depressed and angry and well , I went . Actually , I went through a range of emotions . There was a point I'm really well aware of , a point of I hit they call it sympathy fatigue where I just did not care . I was so apathetic to everything I was going out to , which is not what you want from a paramedic , really . When you're calling them in your most stressful moments , you want someone who's going to actually care for you , right , and turning up to people at 4am with their complaints and me going just get on the ambulance . I don't , you know , I didn't even really want to know at that point and that was a thing .
Speaker 3And yeah , being very angry . There was a lot of . One of the things they used to advise us a lot of was . I remember the biggest piece of advice I ever got given before I became a paramedic was you have to be as lovely and nice to the last person that you see in a shift as you are to the first person , and that's really hard to do when you are called as an example to maybe someone who has cut their finger .
Speaker 3Um , you know something really benign yeah , something really benign when you've just been out to say , I don't know , a 16 week old cardiac arrest or something like that , you know . So , trying to keep that same level of professionalism and kindness and is really hard , and yeah . So I think , um , and I am a person who wears her heart on her sleeve as well , I'm not . I don't , I'm not very good at keeping my emotions at bay or my opinions . Honestly , there were times when I had crewmates say to me you need to go outside and wait outside and I'll deal with this , you know , because otherwise I would have probably got myself fired , or yeah . And then , yeah , there was falling down the hole of depression as well , for a long time , being very , very depressed , thinking this isn't , this is not where I want to be , I need to get the hell out of here , kind of thing . So , yeah , it's a full range of emotions and feelings , I think does it affect your self-esteem ?
Speaker 2because I know that for some guys you know when I talk to them this is one of the common things is that you know at three o'clock in the morning you're finally in your bunk , you know you've had all calls all day , you're finally can relax a little bit , and then you get a phone call and then you know you hear the , you hear the ding . You got to go to the call and it's someone who's like oh yeah , I've had , I've had back pain for two days but I decided to call 9-1-1 at 3 am for that . And your lack of empathy in that particular moment is really clear because you were sleeping and everything else and they have to put it in check . And you know my paramedics , my firefighters , they're able to do that . But but ultimately it's like we forget that whoever , whatever you do in life , whether it is a paramedic , whether it's a police officer , whether it's a therapist , we're human beings too . But you don't get to show that side and I think exactly .
Speaker 2I think that's what you're talking about , like you have to wait outside . But for me it's like how do you survive without using a little gallows humor and sometimes saying for sake , it just took a guy a cardio , had to Nitro him , make sure that he got to the hospital safely , and you've got a cut on your finger and you can't get a band-aid . And you know if I sound cold . By the way , for everyone that heard me , I'm not a paramedic , it doesn't matter , I'm just a therapist . But that's one of those things that comes up and I don't know what you think about all that .
Speaker 2But oh yeah it's absolutely like it's hard to be ourselves in those situations well you do , you that you find you have to .
Speaker 3There is a real separation between who you are every day as a normal person outside of the of the service and who you are when you've got that uniform on . I actually wrote a piece about that , about how the uniform almost became like a superhero's cape kind of thing , where people see that and they expect the superhero , not realizing that actually underneath is a person who is probably more depressed than and mentally unwell than you will ever be , and you want this person to care for you . And there was a real there's a real stigma around that . You know the care who , who cares for the carer , kind of thing . If the carer is not well , how are they supposed to look after their patients effectively ?
Speaker 3You know , there were times when I felt so I wasn't mentally functioning as a paramedic and I would go to calls and I would have to call for help . I would say I'd have to say you need to send me another paramedic . I don't know what I'm doing . You know patients who are really poorly and I had no idea how to treat them . I was just standing there staring at them because I could not . It wasn't there for me to to be able to actually help them . I was completely useless to them and you don't . That's the last thing you need . You know , say you're calling someone in an emergency , normally like a life or life or death situation . You want someone who's going to come in with the cape flying , he's going to save the day . You know , and so many of them couldn't do that , even though though they had the uniform on it . Just it was a struggle , struggle to do that sometimes .
Speaker 2So yeah , and I think it's also because you know we need to be human in the human side , as I tell people , like , when you get to your third or fourth call you've been doing this for several years it's like smelling the color Thursday it makes no sense whatsoever . Smelling the color Thursday . It makes no sense whatsoever . And that's actually very sensible because , yeah , your brain's a little mush because of all the hard stuff that you saw and that's the depression as you talked about , and I know that you know in pre-interview we talked a little bit about suicide and colleagues and friends and all that . Can you speak a little more because that you know the ultimate sign of depression , of depression right is suicide attempts or suicide . Uh , I don't know what word we gotta use , but suicide is what the word I use ? You want to speak about it a little bit ?
Speaker 3yeah , I mean there's not a lot I can say , because I'm not an expert . I I'm certainly , I've had I'm not either .
Speaker 3I'm just winging it I can only speak from my own experiences and I I there was a point where , um , oh , I mean I've lost count of the number of colleagues I've lost to suicide .
Mental Health Support for First Responders
Speaker 3Um , over the years . I think I read somewhere that the rate of suicide in first responders is it's like something like 24 , close to 25 , like a quarter . It's ridiculous . It , compared to civilian numbers , it's really high . And , yeah , there was a point where it seemed like it was happening every week .
Speaker 3We were just hearing about someone and this is not just paramedics , I'm talking about actually some dispatch staff as well . We ended up losing dispatchers to suicide and those people that don't even get remembered by a lot of others . You know so and I maintain that if I'd stayed , I might well have been one of them . I had I was reaching that kind of point . I think . If I'd stayed , I might . I've been thinking about that myself . So it's it's really prevalent , it's it's terrible , it's terrifying to know how many people I I worked with are no longer here because because of how they were feeling and because they didn't couldn't talk about it or didn't know how to talk about it , or didn't have access or or whatever .
Speaker 2So , yeah , I think it's also because of the mentality right , you have a , you have a thick , you know , and while we were talking I quickly looked it up to a website . I know so it goes medical doctor , dentists and police officers . They didn't mention the medical people , but to me they also omitted the Department of Correction and people who work in the corrections Medical doctors and dentists not surprising they have access to good stuff . Police officers have access to perfect weapons and I think that with the medical people too , in general it's a hard thing to do . And you know like if you separate ERs emergency rooms from the regular medical place , the ER staff also has a higher suicide rate than the regular . I think it's because we have no space and we don't give anyone that space . And you know , making that safe space is something I try to do in my therapy , in my group sessions . But do you have any suggestions of how to make those places safe for people to talk about this ?
Speaker 3For me it very much became the only people I mean where , where I worked , you would tend to work with the same people over and over and over again , so you get to see when thing , when things aren't right with them , you get . I mean , I had a crewmate . I knew him better than I knew my husband at one point . We worked . So , you know , we worked together so often . He knew me so well that when I wasn't right , he , he could recognize that and he would ask me what's you know what's going on , are you okay ? He'd ask that question and it's it .
Speaker 3I think it fell to each of us to look out for our colleagues as opposed to expecting them to come and talk to us . It was when , when I first got you know , realized I had . I was depressed . It was because actually it was a colleague who pointed it out to me and I thought , oh no , that can't possibly be the case , because I still make love , I still make jokes and I laugh and how can I possibly depressed it be depressed if that's what's happening . But she pointed it out to me and it was like oh , okay , maybe I need to go and talk to somebody about this . But one of the things I was very . I need to go and talk to somebody about this . But one of the things I was very I used to talk an awful lot about and I don't think it has changed yet , but I I maintain that I would like to see there be at least an annual mental health review with somebody with with a professional , like , like maintenance , you know , just , even if it's like you go for one session , they ask , obviously , the key questions they need to be asking to try and figure out what's going on and at that point , make a decision .
Speaker 3Do we need to be having , you know , more sessions or are you great , you're good off , you go , you know , back out into the world , I'll see you again next year , kind of thing . I think that's something that would be , I think would be really important in all frontline areas . It's , um , it's yeah , I I said we , you know you do health checkups on a regular basis , especially when you get to a certain age . Why aren't we doing mental health checkups ?
Speaker 2that's that kind of thing well , what's funny is I have my first responders always kind of like surprised that I go to therapy and I have my own therapist .
Speaker 2I'm like yeah , because I'd be fucked up if I didn't . Right , I hear a lot of crazy stuff in my job , like you know . You see it , but I hear it , and I'm not saying that one's more valuable than the other , but it certainly is not much different in that way . So I think that you know I can only speak intelligently no-transcript every every year . And if you mean if you need more , because it's for transportation , everything else , and I know another place to talk about a full day off , uh , if you need it , and then for me , that's what I I've always the goal of finding your way through
Prioritizing Mental Health for First Responders
Speaker 2therapy .
Speaker 2My podcast is that I want mental health to be as important as physical health . I'd like to be able to . I have clients who come in only once every six months , three months a year . Hey , steve , I'm good . Oh , on this team , I might need help with that .
Speaker 2To me it's the same exact thing . It's like you don't need to like sit there and be psychoanalyzed on a couch , but some people believe it is it really is about are you doing good ? No , you know what I probably review . I've had , like add like four bad calls last year ones . I'm still not over it and , yes , I work with a lot of first responders , so obviously I'm talking about that .
Speaker 2And then we review them and after a four or five session you're like yeah , I'm good , I mean , I'm on my merry way soon , about a year . Sure , no problem . But we need to be able to do that . And you know , when you talk about depression , I think that you so that first responders accept it a little more to post-traumatic stress , uh , illness or injury , uh , I think it's injury and whatever makes it workable , I don't give a shit , it's whatever works . But I feel like the other part too and again , you correct me if I'm wrong and sorry , I'm a feminist women have it harder than men in that way too , because you went into a male profession , so to speak , and you need to be tougher because you are a female . I don't know if that's been your experience or not , and I just wanted to throw that out .
Speaker 3No , that's really interesting . I hadn't really considered that , but yeah , it makes total sense . Definitely Just trying to think . Did you know , though ? I think most of the experiences that I saw of suicide were actually mostly in the male staff members , and I think that comes back to how men don't often talk about you know how they're feeling , and it's kept very quiet until eventually they just can't cope with it anymore . So maybe I think actually maybe that's where my feminine experience is is that women are very good at talking about these things , and actually that's why I say I think having therapy is so useful , because it comes from that woman's background of being able or wanting to talk more about these things . It's really interesting thoughts . They just give me some little food for thought on that one , actually .
Speaker 2And like you talk , you're right . Right . Males don't talk about it and they tend to be the ones who commit suicide again , historically . I was a suicide prevention specialist for a while . Um , the other reason why men tend to die of suicide more than women is that they tend to use a more violent way to kill themselves .
Speaker 2It's true yeah but I'm not here to do suicide prevention just yet . But hey , it's always a great topic to talk about . But yeah , I really think that you know the ability to talk about it is half the battle . I've seen it too many times in my life and my career , not only about first responders , but in general people will say something like first responders . But in general people will say something like so sometimes I'm very sad when I watch a show with parents because it makes me think about my mom . Okay , like wow , it wasn't as hard as I thought .
Speaker 2I kept it in my head all these years thinking I was some sort of like weak person , but ultimately saying out loud help them , just made it up because I don't want to identify any of my clients . But the point is is that I I try to tell men like getting it out of your head , out in the open , just view sometimes is so relieving , even if I don't do anything as a therapist , because I don't fix people . I just listen to people and I give them suggestions if they need to , but I'm not actually doing any fixing and I think that what I I feel . Again , you can tell me what you think , but sometimes getting out that stupidity out of our head and saying it out loud . I mean , my therapist has heard most of my stupidities and he still seems to like me for some reason , so it's great . But I think that that's part of what the therapeutic process is , and sometimes you can't do that at the station or the communication center and all that .
Speaker 3Yeah Well , there's that fear of , I think , of judgment , of , like you say you're supposed to be the person helping people . How can you be that person if you're saying things like I'm really not feeling great today , I've been really thinking about this call and I might want to hurt myself , or you know , because there's a I think it's fear of judgment and there's just that shame that there's a . There's a real shame attached to it , because you are supposed to be the person helping other people . You're not supposed to need help from , from other people . Yeah , I think that's a lot of it , but actually it's so .
Speaker 3It was always really interesting when someone would say something like that and other people would in . In , you know , all crewmates , your colleagues , everyone around you . Most people would then go yeah , me too . Actually I've been feeling that way . It's amazing how , when one person speaks up , the rest think oh , okay , I can say that that's actually it's , it's safe to be able to say those things , and I think that was why it was always super important to ask your colleagues how they were . You know , or you know you don't see yourself today what's going on , just because it could be anything . It could be a job that they've done , but it could be something that got going on at home as well . You know that's . That would always have an impact on how you were feeling too . So just being able to give people the space to actually say something .
Speaker 2Right , and I think that you're absolutely right too . I try to leave my you know I go to work , I think my home backpack , leave it at the door , pick up my work backpack and show up for that . But there's times where my home backpack was too full , so I had to put a little bit of my work backpack and I do bring it to work . You know , for XYZ I have , you know , two teenage girls , and sometimes that can have its own challenges and maybe I have a conflict with a friend or a conflict with a family member , or that . You know , there's X , y , z to be done at the house and it's bothering me because it's got to be done soon rather than later , and I'm trying . So it all shows up .
Speaker 2And I think that you know the illusion that we can separate our home life from our work life and vice versa is absolutely bonkers . But I think that that's where you know , having good colleagues and people you can turn to is so essential , besides having a good mental health counselor , having a good counselor in general . I say mental health counselor , whatever the hell works for people , right ? But uh , that's what I think too . We do bring stuff . We bring stuff from work to home and vice versa . And let's not pretend we don't .
Speaker 3Yeah , absolutely , and I can . I just I want to really add to that as well , like no , you cannot add for it .
Speaker 2I'm sorry we're cutting you off , go ahead .
Speaker 3Just that . Obviously the talking part is really important , but also giving ourselves the space to feel the feelings as well . There's there were times when I would do a horrible call and I would be off the next day and actually the best thing for me was to spend the whole day wallowing in the feelings and actually experiencing . You know the shit . You know the upset , the shame , the dread , everything that I went through from that call . But giving myself a cut-off point like , okay , feel the feelings , but tomorrow you're going to be , you're going to be better in the game , you know and for me that was really useful as well I feel like , um , a lot of the time we would squish those feelings down and then still wouldn't allow ourselves to have those feelings , even when we have the time to do that .
Speaker 2So yeah , just kind of wanted to add that in there no , no , I appreciate , I appreciate it and always feel free to interrupt . I talk for a living , so I'm easily lost in my own thoughts . But the other part , too that you know you mentioned here and I think that is very important to mention is that I tell people have your pity party . You want to have a . You know like , if it's a bad call , take eight hours of pity party . If it's a bad call , take eight hours of pity party . It's really , really bad . Take a 24-hour pity party . I don't care about that .
Speaker 2But after that shit , we got to get back into working on the other stuff or even processing that , and I think that that's what happens is that I think , when you're depressed or you have anxiety or you're not permitted to have that if you start wallowing , you stay stuck there and no one tells and you don't know how to get yourself out because you don't have that ability . And you're not asking for help , because that's too shameful , right , because you need help . Oh , my god , you , you bastard , why do you need help ? So I think that that plays all factors . I appreciate you saying that because it is absolutely true and I will quote uh , one of my first , my favorite tick , tock , tick . Non-hon statement is uh . What you resist persists yes , oh yeah and um .
Speaker 2The buddhists and me will always want to share a little bit about my buddhism , uh , but what you resist persists and that's just what it is . So you feel bad because you , you saw like I've never again . I don't want to see it . I actually have no interest in seeing a bone sticking out of someone's leg . I have no interest , and if I did I'd probably handle it , but I just don't want to see it . But if you saw that and it's still in your mind and you can still see it , that's tough .
Speaker 2I saw someone have muscle collapse on their arm and you can see just the bones and I still think about it . I still have a little bit of goosebumps , but I kept it to myself . And then I went to someone like , was that stranger ? Is it me ? And the other person's like , oh my god , no one else said that , thank god . And then we talked about it for five minutes and it was over . Now I still have goosebumps , but it doesn't bother me as much . So I think that I tell people like , talk about the weird stuff , and maybe someone will be like , no , you're weird and that's okay . Then you can go talk to somebody else who's a therapist or whatever , and if you're not weird , they'll be like me too , and there's ways to join around these things yes , absolutely .
Speaker 3I think talking about it was the best thing I ever did . It was the . The there was , you know , two , three years ago . I would not have been able to share some of the stories that I share now without tears coming , without feeling like lots of anxiety , heart racing , all of that , and now and now I can just talk about it . It's a part of my history , it's a part of my past . It's still like you say , still gives you goosebumps and stuff , but it's much easier to talk about the more , the more you share it .
Speaker 2So Well , as we get close to the hour here , I'd like to wrap it up . Uh , knowing you , knowing , knowing human behavior and human uh concentration is never more than 45 to 50 minutes . Anything you want to talk about that , you do now and maybe people can reach you and talk to you about it uh , so I'm a writer these days .
Speaker 3When I left the ambulance service , I became a writer and actually I I do lots of different kinds of writing . But I have an account on medium . I'll send you the link so you can share it . But , uh , please , I share . I share stories about my paramedic life and what , what that , as well as other things . But , yeah , there's a lot of stuff about being a paramedic on there and I'd love to be able to . I've talked to paramedics from all over the world as well about their experiences , so if anyone ever wants to reach out and talk to me , I would love to speak to you and we can direct message you where uh , you can .
Speaker 3Um , oh , I probably actually email me . Email me is probably the easiest way . Hello at sarahwaitecom is the easiest way to get hold of me right .
Speaker 2So what I'll do is I'll I'll link down the show notes , but uh , if you know I I appreciate you sharing your story .
Sharing First Responder Experiences
Speaker 2I've worked this field for a long time and you know you being so transparent about what you just talked about is moving to me , and this is not just being nice to you , it's just the truth and I like to thank my thank you and thank you , thank you for sharing with my audience your experience and I'm sure it's going to benefit some people .
Speaker 3I hope so that's that's why I I wanted to come on and talk to you . Definitely so . Thank you for sharing with my audience your experience , and I'm sure it's going to benefit some people . I hope so . That's that's why I wanted to come on and talk to you .
Speaker 2Definitely so , thank you and I hope to talk to you again soon . Well , that completes episode 170 . Again , sarah Waite . Thank you so much , so much to talk about there and I hope you guys enjoy it . But episode 171 is going to be a little bit of my passion of working with first responders , how it started , where I'm at now and all that fun stuff .
Speaker 1So please join me then informational , educational and entertainment purposes only . If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue , please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation . If you are in a mental health crisis , call 988 for assistance . This number is available in the United States and Canada .
