Mandatory Fitness and Mental Health For First Responders

If you think police wellness is mostly about eating better and “handling stress,” this conversation will challenge you fast. Kevin Gilmartin returns and gets blunt about what the job does to the body and brain over years of hypervigilance, and why the usual scapegoat (donuts) misses the real drivers: cortisol, adrenaline, sleep debt, and a culture that treats prevention like an optional perk.

We talk through the metabolic health side of first responder mental health, including type 2 diabetes risk, abdominal weight gain, and the two simplest red flags that signal trouble: shrinking sleep and expanding waist size. We also dig into a tough truth from decades of fitness-for-duty work, where “anger issues” are often undiagnosed sleep disorders and exhaustion. If we want safer decisions, better policing, and fewer careers ending early, sleep hygiene and daily physical training have to be treated like officer safety, not a personal preference.

From there we zoom out to leadership, overtime culture, and the retirement transition. When the job becomes identity, relationships, and social life, retirement can feel like a cliff. We discuss practical time management, building civilian friendships, and keeping hobbies alive now rather than postponing life until “after I retire.” We also touch on financial wellness, smarter wellness programs, sabbaticals like other countries use, and why clinicians need real cultural competency through ride-alongs and time in the environment.

You’ll also hear a powerful example of peer support done right: community, hobbies, and living in the moment, plus a strong recommendation for Kevin Gilmartin’s book Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. If this helped, subscribe, share it with a coworker, and leave a review so more first responders can find it.

Transcript

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Welcome And Show Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson. This is the podcast dedicated to first responder mental health, helping police, fire, EMS, dispatchers, and paramedics create better growth environments for themselves and their teams. Let's get started.

Diabetes Myths And Metabolic Damage

SPEAKER_02 0:36

We've been talking a lot about like wellness. We've talked about leadership. We talked about diabetes. One thing I want to finish off from our last conversation is that one of the misconceptions that I hear from many people, including police. Oh, I can only get diabetes if it's because I'm having you know bad food. And if I eat right, I'll be fine. And I'm like, yeah, no, that's not how that works. And most people get up my ass about it, but maybe you could help. Maybe, like, you know, you're a former cop, so maybe you'll have more value than what I fucking say.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

You know, let me tell you, donuts have taken a bad rap. Exactly. They have just, you know, it's always been built in, you know, the old power rings, you know, the donuts. That's that's why cops gain 50 pounds. No, it's not. I don't get me wrong. They're not the nutritional issues of cops suck. They're terrible. You're eating fast food, you're eating at odd hours. But what happens is it is the cop loses. First of all, the cop doesn't have knowledge of what's going on biologically with them. And that's part of the of the wellness training. You wouldn't you wouldn't teach cops on the range how to not clear a malfunction. The guy has a malfunction, they get a stovepipe on their weapon, they show them how to clear that and get back in the fight. But we don't show them how do you undo the damage that officer safety has caused to your metabolic health. And

Mandating Daily Fitness On Duty

SPEAKER_01 2:05

it's terribly simple. Yeah, we do need better nutrition, absolutely. But we need to have cops in the gym undoing the damage that all this adrenaline and cortisol has caused. Research is absolutely clear. A lot of it comes out of Boston. And we know, for example, if a cop walks on a treadmill, or anybody walks on a treadmill briskly for 20 minutes a day, it treats depression as effectively as antidepressant medication and counseling. So it shouldn't be an option that cops exercise, but it should be mandated. And this is where leadership comes in. And I I love when I speak to chiefs and they say, Oh, our cops can exercise on duty call load permitting. I said, Chief, when is call load ever permitting? You're down 20% of your officers, your calls are stacked, the officers are working. No, I'm not talking about call load permitting. Um I'm talking about mandatory, at least a half hour of mandatory physical fitness every single day. You don't clear, the the word, the the way out of the department is through the gym. And that's part of your work day, and you're compensated for it. And if in fact something happens in the gym, that's that's a work-related injury. And and so we get we we have all of these. It's okay to have the police officer have a heart attack, have a stroke, or develop type 2 diabetes, but but it's not okay if they they pull a muscle doing some weight work. I go to stress conferences, law enforcement stress conferences, and I see the chaplains, I see the therapists, I see the psychologist, but I very rarely see the physical fitness coordinators. And they're they're the major, most underappreciated linchpin in this whole movement if we're going to get good, effective cops out doing the job.

Two Red Flags Sleep And Waist

SPEAKER_01 4:04

There's two red flags to me when a cop isn't doing well. The first is, as we mentioned earlier, sleep. Has your sleep pattern changed since you became a cop? And the second red flag is has your waist size increased? You've been on the job 10 years. Can you wear the uniform you graduated from the police academy in? If you're sleeping seven to eight hours a day and you could fit in the uniform you wear you wore at graduation from the police academy, you're probably taking care of yourself. If you've gained 15, 20 pounds in those 10 years and you're sleeping four to six hours a night, you're not doing well. That is a red flag. And you can use all the denial you want about it, but things aren't working for you, and you will pay the price for that. Not when you're 35, but clearly when you're 55, you will.

SPEAKER_02 4:58

Well, there's two things I want to go with there. It's yeah, it's not it that health stuff is so important. And I tell people you want to avoid seeing me regularly. I'm not saying that mental health is not important, but work out, and there's a good chance that this is going to significantly decrease if you need me at all. I do believe in wellness visits, don't get me wrong. Once you're the checkup from the neck up is essential, but sometimes I'm not minimizing that at all, Steve. Oh no, no, no, no. I know you're not. I was just this is not what you said. I was just because remember, like again, thank you, audience. If you want to write me a letter, go ahead. Sometimes my audience misinterprets things like all the letters you want. I don't care. That's why I want to make sure we said that, not because of you, just because they needed to hear it.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

Well, they're writing a letter, that means they're listening, and that's half the battle, you know.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Because I've had those like, so you think we're all crazy? No, that's not what I said. You misinterpreted what was said. So now I just try to do it right away. And I like your two red flags, the sleep and the waist side increasing. That that that that's absolutely good signs. And when I talk about sleep hygiene, I get these like, what are you talking about? And then I'm like, I can save your career by just giving you good sleep hygiene, add some exercise. You probably won't need me

Sleep Disorders Mistaken For Anger

SPEAKER_02 6:15

that much.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Well, you know, it's I've had lots and lots of cops sent to me over the last 40, 50 years for fitness for duty evaluations. They they're a little overly exuberant on an arrest, or maybe we have a little kind of domestic issue at home that had a physical component to it. And they want to know I had them assess for anger management deficiencies. And I'll say, Chief, your cop doesn't have an anger issue. He has an undiagnosed sleep disorder. And we need to start addressing that. You know, you you can't just have the cops say, I go to sleep when I get tired. Because you won't get tired. You have learned to override your body's thermostat of fatigue. You you the you don't have a metric to realize you're tired. And I I always think of my own life. On September 11th, 2001, I was with the Boca Raton, Florida Police Department. We were talking with their SWAT team, and everybody's pager went off. And everybody had to deploy in the police department deployed their officers, and my pager went off, and I was being called by the Department of Justice to ask if I could get to New York. I said, Okay, I'll hop a plane. They said there's no planes, all planes are being grounded. Do you have a rental car? I said, Yes, I do. Just head up here. They told me where we we were going to be meeting at which hotel, right on the New Jersey side of the tunnels. So I started from Boca Ratone, Florida. I got in the car, I started driving towards New New York on 9-11. I made it all the way to New York, which is virtually a very abnormal act to be able to do it. That must be a thousand miles, I don't know how far it is. Yeah, it's a good ride. And that was because I was a lot younger then, but it was also because my police career was in my rear view mirror very recently. And the the capacity to stay awake for that length of time is evidence of a sleep disorder. It's not a strength, it's a liability. When I'm teaching a class and there's some guy in the back of the room and he falls asleep, and somebody says, That you ought to address that guy sleeping in the back of the room. I say, he's doing exactly what his body demands that he does. He worked midnight. The poor guy ought to be asleep right now. We should be teaching this class at midnight to accommodate his biological clock. And we ignore that. But sleep sleep is terribly important. But overall wellness, getting in the gym. I remember I remember they used to have signs in the gyms all over the uh Marine Corps bases. It would say, the more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war. And and that made good sense. It made really, really good sense. And I look at cops today. We graduated from the police academy, or not just today, we always have. They're lean, they're mean, they're knocking out 50 push-ups, they can run a 10K. Then you come back 18 years later, and five push-ups would put them in the cardiac care unit. Right. And we we don't see that as a big glaring flag being waved in front of us.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

Well, and I don't know why we don't see that as a problem. Well, we have our preconceived notions. It's it's all the donuts. No, but it's not the adrenaline, it's the donuts. Sure. Okay, so let me listen. Let me be again a I'm gonna toss a grenade here as I call

Leadership Versus Blaming Officers

SPEAKER_02 9:57

it. Well, they signed up for this after all, so it's on them, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:01

Yeah, they signed up assuming they would have leadership, not bosses. They would have people who are gonna pave the way for them and mentor them, lead them. And again, with leadership, you have a vision to run your agency, and you have to put that vision through to the implementers, the cops, the rank and file. Well, if if you're not taking care of them, they're not gonna take care of you. And it's I don't know how many times I've been to a police department over the years that there's a vote of no confidence going on on the chief or the sheriff or whoever the head of the agency is. And all that vote of no confidence is is just a measurement of the anger and lack of mental health within the rank and file. It's and sometimes there's jerks that are chiefs that need to be removed, but even the best chief, if they have they're not taking care of mental health of their personnel, they're they're gonna pay the price for it. But uh well, I I look, I guess I have this vision. Young man, young woman signs up, becomes a cop. And when I speak at the police academies for recruits, and I've been doing this for so many, many years, I I I walk away with a worry. It's like, I hope this young man or this young woman who's standing in front of me at 23, 24, I hope they're still as intact at 33, 34, 43, 44, 53, 54. And I know a great number of them will not be. Right. And we really want them to have a rich, full life, serve the community for their 25, 30 years, whatever it is, but then pull the pin, retire, and collect that pension that they've earned, and then do the things that they want to do with their life, the dreams that they have, whatever those are. You know, what whatever those are. If it's riding your Harley up the Pacific Coast Highway, if it's drinking a beer on the beach in in Florida, if it's fly fishing in Montana, I I don't care. I want you to do those things. And so many older cops can't do those things because they're physically disabled because of the price they paid, because of the job, because of lack of mobility, lack of dynamic strength, metabolic illness, heart disease. And we can prevent that.

SPEAKER_02 12:18

And I had a if someone asked me that question to ask you, so I'm going to go ahead and ask you directly what they said because thank you for the for the direct question.

Why Retirement Hits Officers Hard

SPEAKER_02 12:27

But why is retirement emotionally also harder for officers in general?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Well, police work is a pretty heavy investment, a pretty heavy investment profession. You give your heart and soul to it, but you give your time to it. And it's very easy over the course of a law enforcement career to become law enforcement-centric. Your friends are cops, your social interactions are cops, and you haven't built in any resiliency in the rest of your life. It's painful for me to watch that. A lot of cops retire, and if you you talk with them about their social contacts, they could tell you the name of every cop in town, they could tell you the name of the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, and even half the gangsters in town. But if you ask them about something that's totally unrelated, they draw up blanks. You know, my wife and I would have barbecues out here in Arizona, and we had our social friends would come. Most of my friends were law enforcement-related people, and would have a massive number of people, and a lot of them had nothing to do with law enforcement. And my non-cop friends would come up to me and say, Hey, Kevin, do your cop friends talk about anything but work, but their job? Do they talk about anything but their job? I said, No, no, they pretty much talk about the job. Well, I don't talk about my job. Well, that's because your job sucks. You know, no, nobody cares how much lumber they sold at Lumberman's last month. You watch television shows about them. They're not watching television shows about you. And so, since it's a total involvement, foot on the accelerator type of life as a cop, then all of a sudden it's gone. It's a void. There's this huge hole. The first six months after retirement, it's it they're almost like a surreal time for for folks. And it then it depends on what what have you how have you prepared yourself? If you go to the gym every day while you're a cop, you'll still go to the gym every day when you're retired. If you're playing golf three days a week as a cop, you'll play golf three days a week into retirement. But so many cops they use their sense of time is into they tell you what they used to do for about the first 10 or 15 years of their career. They used to go to the gym, they used to go hiking, they used to go fishing. Everything's in the past tense. Then after about 10 or 15 years, they tell you what they're gonna do. When I retire, I'm gonna do this. I said, well, instead of telling me that you're gonna go fishing when you retire, why don't you go fishing today? Why why did you go to the gym today? Let's not keep putting, let's just live in the moment. And and and and I think that, you know, we we interviewed cops, had an extensive kind of interviewed a bunch of cops when they became eligible to retire. It didn't mean they were retiring, it meant they were eligible to retire. They could pull the pin anytime they want. And I would say you've been on the job 25 years now. You can pull the pin, it's KMA time for you, or you can stay longer if you'd like. What's the one lesson that you've learned over this past quarter century? What's what's your biggest regret that you you wish that you knew then what you know now? And by far, the number one regret of retirement eligible police officers was I wish I had done more in my personal life with my kids. I wish I had spent more time with my family. And they they worded it differently, but it was all this sense of lost time. The dates changed, the years changed, but they never learned how to control time. So one of the first things to prepare for retirement starts the day you walk into the police academy, and that's to learn aggressive personal time management, setting specific goals that you define and then following them through and doing them. Keeping a written calendar, and you and your family, we work around that calendar. Not big stuff, little stuff, but it but you run the fabric of your life, not the call, the radio doesn't run it. You run your life.

Sponsor Break Deemed Fit

SPEAKER_02 16:59

Just a quick break, guys. I'm gonna talk about a new product that I really like. I actually bought one of their hoodies, it was amazing, and I really enjoyed wearing it. Uh, it this episode is gonna be supported by Deemed Fit. Deemed Fit is a first responder-owned activewear and a leisure brand. And one thing that I genuinely like about them is that they support different causes. I actually gave a few people I know who work with first responders or nonprofits their name to uh DEMFit, and I know they're talking to them. They do a lot of initiatives and collections that are based on mental health for first responders. And if you go there right now and you buy anything, including the mental health support stuff, use the code RDA15. That's right, R D A 15, to get 15% off on any products that you get. Again, it's called RDA15. Go to deemfit.com, D-E-E, M-E-D-F-I-T.com, and enjoy 15% off at checkout to save. Now, right back to the episode.

Time Management Starts At Academy

SPEAKER_02 17:59

Well, I like what you said about when you start the academy because I I talk about that a little bit and people get to give me the grumble. And then after that, I say, well, two years before you retire, you gotta start preparing because you're not ready. And they still look at me and they grumble. And once they retire, most of them also go like, uh, that's what you were talking about. I'm like, you damn that's what I was talking about.

SPEAKER_01 18:23

Yeah, you get wisdom as you get older. The only trouble is sometimes you can't you're so beaten up, you can't do anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

But I I think that that's the hard part, right? It to me, it's get civilian friends. You don't need to always talk shop because what happens with I don't know, I can only speak intelligently about this area. But what other cops tend to fall in love with when they're working because they're going to retire, they fall in love with details. So they do their shift and then they go to detail, or they do a detail and they go to a shift, or vice versa, and then they do doubles and they get the overtime. And suddenly they're 25 years in, they don't know your their kids, they don't know their wife. Now they have the money, but they didn't even enjoy it once. Now they're 55, can't walk, and they're fucked up in the head.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Yeah, they've worked all those details, so they got to pay their federal income tax so they can support a Somali uh daycare center. That's that's I mean, that's a that's a heck of a deal, right? You know, give me time, don't give me money. The good one. Massachusetts. Your your your home state is one of the worst in terms of the of the detail. And if you think about it, I can remember talking to a young cop on the Cape years ago, and he came up to me, he said, Doc, do you know how many details I worked last month? I said, I have no idea. He said it's 30. I said, How can you possibly work 30 details? There's only

Overtime Culture And Financial Fitness

SPEAKER_01 19:48

30 days in the month. He said, Well, I uh we have to be off the books for eight hours every day and show that. He said, But on my days off, I'll work two shifts. I'll work two details rather. And he went on to explain in depth his details. Now, stop and think. That's a young man with commitment, with dedication, and with a work ethic. Those are the type of people who built our country. Committed salt of the earth people, but he's killing himself. He's just killing himself. And the as I look at it, just I I'm thinking, why can't we why can't we address issues more effectively, especially monetary issues? We don't just talk about physical fitness, we have to talk about monetary fitness also. Absolutely. I I had a captain came in my office one time, and I was about four years short of retirement. We were talking. Good guy. And he goes, How are you doing with the deferred compensation program? I said, I don't even know what it is. He goes, You don't know what the deferred comp program is? I said, No. He took me by the ear, he marched me down to the human resources section, he signed me up for it, and he said, Since you're within so many years of retirement, you can double your contribution. And it was the first time in my career I took a moment to look at all the stuff that I thought was just peripheral bullshit. Okay. I have to go to a retirement seminar about three months before I pulled a pin. And they bring in someone from County Finance. He's talking to all these cynical cops, all most of them were sergeants, but all had at least 25 years on. And he goes, Do you know if you had contributed X amount of dollars for the first five years of your career as a young officer, you'd be having, you know, $1.3 million invested right now. And this one sergeant goes, Hey, asshole, why didn't you tell us that when we're getting hired, not when we're retiring? Well, we can't do shit about it. And and that some departments now have excellent wellness programs. I I go to some Uh some police departments, I am so impressed by the the financial guidance they have, the experts they bring in to work with the cops. And it and then you go the next day to a police department, then it might as well be 1972. They're as different as night and day.

SPEAKER_02 22:19

And I think that that's the other part too, is you face different departments that deal with it differently, right? You know, and you know, there's some some departments I've heard about the third comp, and they explain everything in great detail, and other places they

Identity Beyond The Uniform

SPEAKER_02 22:33

don't. I think that you talk about the overall wellness of police officers, sheriff, and any LEO, frankly. I think that what we we tend to forget is we don't see the person as a whole. And I think that that's the other part I wanted to kind of talk a little bit as we're gonna wrap up soon. But uh people as a whole, because there's a police officer that's a physical person who's also a family person, who's a human being, who happens to be a police officer, who has his mental health issue, has his own history. And I'm not saying that everyone's fucked up. That is not what I'm intending for. No, not at all. We don't see the whole person, we only see a uniform, we only see what can you do for me today.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Well, unfortunately, that's how the cop many times sees themselves. They don't say I work as a cop. Many times they say I am a cop. And a lot of times that has to do with again to the time element and getting off duty in this exhausted, parasympathetic state where they disengage, they become Iustas. Compare it to firefighters who who have compressed shifts. They they'll work, well, I shouldn't say work, they're firefighters, but well, they're they're uh I was gonna make a joke too about that. There's no 24-hour shifts are the minimum, and so they're there. So, you know, the different Kelly type of shifts, they'll have a a day or two on and three or four days off. And I don't know a single firefighter that's not competent in some other skill. They're great firefighters, but they also can lay tile, they can also repair a car, they can also do electrical work. The cops I know are great cops, but they supplement their income by working details, by working overtime. So as the years progress through the career of a firefighter, they become more competent in a diversity of skill sets, whereas the cop becomes highly competent in one skill set, then they retire and that skill set is taken away. Whereas the firefighter who's been laying tile just lays a few more tile jobs, or they put another roof on. And the firefighter's not constantly pumping adrenaline like the cop is. Even when the cop is just on patrol and not engaged in a call, they're in that hyper-vigilant state kicking out cortisol. The firefighter is back at the firehouse lifting weights and cooking chili or something. They will they'll risk their lives to save my family when the bell goes off. But until the bell goes off, they're in the green zone. They're chilling, they're kicking back. So they're not constantly kicking out cortisol, and they're not constantly putting glucose into the fat cell around the abdominal area. That's why women buy calendars of firefighters. They don't buy calendars of cops with their shirts off. I always like to say, what would you call a calendar of cops? You know, badges and bellies, you know, that's bad that weight around the abdominal area, that firefighters, by and large, are far fittered, far leaner.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

And you know, I, you know, we joked around about having more time. I would also argue, and I mean they're gonna go too long on this, but sometimes firefighters have too much time at the station. So not only do they work out, and though they start gossiping, they start like doing all the extracurricular, but that's a different story for a different day, I'm sure. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Idleness is the devil's workshop. That's why fire, that's why fire unions are far more effective than police unions. They they have far better benefits. There's one other thing I want to add here, though, that I think is critical to the policing issue in the United States, and that's the absence of sabbaticals for police officers.

Sabbaticals Annual Physicals Union Priorities

SPEAKER_01 26:15

If I'm a police officer in Canada, if I'm a police officer in Australia or New Zealand, I have the capacity to enter a program where I will put a percentage of my salary into a def to a defer, like an escrow account. And let's say after every fourth year of full service, I can take a year off compensated. We don't even think about doing that in the United States. And if I'm a if I'm teaching freshman psychology, I'll get a sabbatical after about six or seven years. So I can go write a book or travel. But trust me, teaching freshman psychology is a whole lot less stressful than working fatal car accidents. So I I think our going back to the question of unions, our unions need to start fighting for some things that'll keep their brother or sister members alive. Mandatory physical fitness, mandatory annual physicals, so we can prevent diseases that are coming around, and sabbaticals. And at that point, then we're then we're really taking care of the our rank and file personnel.

SPEAKER_02 27:23

And I know that, you know, around here in Providence, Rhode Island, we've they they're the ones who started the whole, let's get some cancer screenings done at the station versus counting on people to go see a doctor. And that was innovative. Now it's been replicated and people love it. That's why, like part of me also wonders about wellness visits. You can't do those on-site, in my experience, because then it becomes a little less trustworthy for some people because why are you sitting next to the chief's office or whatever? But at the same time, it's the same. I think that finding ways to get the mental health wellness visits as important as any other physical health issue would be. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Absolutely. And I'll put the burden on the mental health

Cultural Competency Through Ride Alongs

SPEAKER_01 28:07

practitioners. We talked about cultural competency. I I really think the therapist, the clinician, needs to be in the patrol car on occasion. They need to see the world through a cop's windshield and not sitting in their office. And I I find that that helps develop that sense of cultural appreciation, not this mutual stereotyping that all cops are this way or all therapists are that way. They can see that they can see the world that this young man or this young woman has to deal with every day.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

If you don't do a ride-along, you are not going to be culturally competent. If you never sit around the firehouse table, you will never be culturally competent. Absolutely. And if you've never been to like any type of roll call dispatch or any type of in-office, also, you will not be competent. Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, more worth it than that. You know, like I've done all of those. Dad taught me more than any book I ever read. Yeah. And that's why it's important.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

Terribly important to have culturally competent clinicians.

SPEAKER_02 29:12

Well, we're working on it here in Massachusetts with Behind the Badge and Beyond here, but we'll continue working on it uh diligently because to me, what you just said today was so important in so many ways.

Peer Support And Fly Fishing Therapy

SPEAKER_02 29:24

The wellness of our police officers start on the day they go to their training and they do their their camp. And then after boot camp, continuously doing those things like walking for 20 minutes on the treadmill, taking care of their family, their neighbors, and other people that outside of work so that they can balance out their whole health system.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

You know, it's amazing to me to watch. I have some very intense hab hobbies that I I like. One is fly fishing. And I was standing in a river in Oregon fly fishing once about five years ago. It was a long summer day, it was ending. It was about 9 30 at night. It was getting too dark to to see my fly, but I'm hearing some voice down the river. I can't see I'm on there's nobody around. Must be another angler down the way. I walk out and I had maybe a mile walk back to my pickup. And I run into a another fella. I said, Oh. And we're we're we start talking to him. And I find out that that he's a cop. I said, Oh. I said, Yeah, he's fishing. No, I run a trauma group out here. I said, What? He goes, Yeah, I have a I have a trauma group and it's um peer support driven. They're cops, firefighters, dispatchers who join a group. This was in Bend, Oregon, and they called it the tight blue lines. They can Google that and and tight blue lines, and they get together and they live in the moment. They learn to fly fish. And they they get to to to put not thinking about the calls, not thinking about the trauma, not thinking about all the drama at work. They're just watching a dry fly, picking up a fish here and there, and living in the moment. And to me, that's the essence. Peer support, living in the moment, having rich, full lives. They're still great cops, but now they're becoming great fire fishermen. Having that bifurcation.

SPEAKER_02 31:33

I mean, I wrote it down tight blue lines. I mean, I there's something for veterans that's similar to what I work with around here, which is rifles to rods, where basically they take out the veterans for fishing. There's no like pressure, there's no converse. You want to talk, you don't talk. You want to talk the whole time, you talk the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah, the healing waters program, terribly important. Absolutely. And I think that holistic type approach to law enforcement that we have to start getting into.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

And and that's why, like for my group, sometimes like we've done we did this in December. We went to someone's house and around the fire pit, and we ended up spending a couple hours just chit-chatting there. And someone said to me, How is that a group? I said, other than the firefighters start hanging out with the firefighters and the police hang out with the police. The other immense part is that they all sat, laugh, left, everyone had their phone number, and now they have friends outside of their work environment that are there. Absolutely. That's so important. Building resiliency. Yeah, I'm not like people like, oh, what type of therapy do you do? My therapy doesn't matter. It really doesn't. It's the support they get to each other. That's why I run that group. Yeah, absolutely. Yes. 100%. I'll throw in a couple of things. There's a a long-running joke about me being a French maid, but if you want to know more, just write to me. But you just run with it, and it's so much more fun because, guys, well, we talked one day about a police officer who unfortunately passed away around here due to a vehicle accident. And then we talked about someone growing up with abuse. And then the next session, we ended up laughing about an incident that occurred at a wrestling event around here. Happened to be midgets. And we had a 40-minute laughter about that. And people like, How is that therapy? I said, they all trust each other now. Yeah. They all trust me, even though I'm a civilian. So I like that. Well, that that having a sense of community is terribly

Book Recommendation And Final Wrap

SPEAKER_02 33:27

important. Well, as we wrap up here, what do you where where can we find you?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

I know I found you through your website, but well, I I think I I guess you could look my name up on the internet and read some of the things we've published. You could read our book, Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. I'll go ahead and send you a link if any of your listeners would like to look at the book. That that outlines pretty much everything we spoke about today. We wrote that book in 2002. It's been revised about nine times. The last one was came out, the new one came out last year. Uh, and it looks at this whole journey through through law enforcement. It it's applicable, I think, to fire, but I have to let the firefighters determine that. I don't I don't have the expertise in that field. Having read the book, it's helpful.

SPEAKER_02 34:18

Having read the revised group, I haven't read the one from a year ago. You're costing me a lot of money here, Kevin.

SPEAKER_01 34:25

Not really. We keep the price of that book pretty, pretty cheap. I know, it is really good. It was a labor of love, not a monetary game.

SPEAKER_02 34:34

I hope people go grab it, and I definitely will be grabbing the new. Like, send me the link, I'll put it in a show notes. And truly, the people who have listened to this podcast for almost five years know I don't lie. I've read that book at least twice, if not three times. One of them I might have cheated, not read the whole thing. It is highly recommended for police officers. Fire can get something out of it, but it really like any LEO type of guy, I think goes a lot better for them.

SPEAKER_01 35:01

If there's any big words in there that the firefighter doesn't understand, they could just ask the local cop and he'll explain what the word means. It I'll tell you a funny story about that book. In the wintertime, I'm being driven out to Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, where they train the highway patrol officers, state patrol officers, middle of the night at two in the morning. I have a car driving me out there, and we run into a deer, smashes the entire car. The driver's injured, not severely, broke his arm, and I'm in the back seat, and the airbags deploy. So hit 911, troopers show up, they have to euthanize the deer, to get an ambulance to chart off the uh the driver. And the trooper says he's gonna wait with me there at the side of the highway because of the late hour and the remoteness of the location. And he asked me, Why am I going to Camp McCoy? I said, I'm gonna teach a class for your outfit, the state patrol. He said, What are you gonna teach? I said, I'm gonna teach a class called emotional survival. And he goes, Oh, like an asshole Gilmartin. And so I said, I'm Gilmartin. So he goes, Hang on a second. So he runs back to his patrol car and he goes back with a battered copy of the book with little stickets and post-its on all these pages. He said, I had a question for you on page 182. I was gonna send you an email about it. I said, you know, I don't know what's on page 182, but the next time you want to talk to me, just send the email. Don't send the deer, okay? It just I'll always remember that. Yeah, don't send the deer. And the guy produces that book. So we're we're very happy that with the the footprint the book has found and the impact it in in people's lives. So that's that's what it was written for. So I hope your readers do take a look or borrow one, steal one, get one somewhere. Just read it and discuss the information with your with your loved ones.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

If you're my client, I have like two versions here already. And if you're not one of my clients, go buy it on. We're gonna get a link for you to go get it so that Kevin will send that. And from the bottom of my heart, you know, I I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope we stay in touch. This is an amazing conversation. I hope people listen to this, go get your book. And I I thank you for your time. Thank you, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

Take care, keep up the good work.

Subscribe Review And Crisis Resources

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Please like, subscribe, and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful. And as a reminder, this podcast is for 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.