OFFICER WELLNESS


Self-Care continued…. How does police officer stress manifest itself? Consider these possible signs and symptoms: • Isolation and withdrawal • Being disengaged or unmotivated • Physical exhaustion • Nightmares and flashbacks • Poor hygiene or apathy about one’s physical appearance • Loss of empathy or compassion • Relationship issues, including divorce • Substance misuse and abuse • Recurrent sadness or depression • Resistance to feedback • Resistance to change • Reduction in meaningful work product • Reduced job satisfaction • Increase in citizen complaints


Most of these signs and symptoms can be traced back to depleted energy. For many officers, law enforce- ment is their identity. They don’t leave much energy for their family, their friends or themselves. In turn, they can quickly feel isolated when dealing with the normal challenges of law enforcement. Once isolated, it’s a short step to despair and depression.


How Can Self-Care Help? The answer to the devastating consequences of police officer stress is self-care for mental health.


You may have heard this term tossed around, but what does it really mean? Self-care is not an exercise regi- men or seeing a psychologist (although it could encompass those things). Rather, it’s a conscious process of considering our needs and seeking out activities and habits that replenish our energy—so that we can do our jobs better. This last part is often difficult to understand. Our Type A personalities often lead us to believe that we do our best when we commit all our resources to something, working ourselves harder and harder. But that’s simply not true.


We only have a finite amount of energy each day to expend. Just as taking a day off from the gym can help us train harder the next day, participating in activities outside law enforcement helps us refuel emotionally, which makes us more effective when we go back on duty. Combating the negative mindset also comes into play here. When you consider that negative emotion burns twice as much energy as positive emotion, the challenge and skill to remain positive makes its own case. We need to train officers to regularly assess their energy levels and focus on the positive.


One way to do this is by applying the “For vs. To” test to reframe an experience. Saying that something hap- pened “to me” makes the experience negative and victimizing. Saying that something happened “for me” immediately turns the experience into a positive event and creates a challenge for officers to better them- selves by developing their leadership and coping skills. Everything is a lesson and at minimum, in every trag- edy/critical incident, there is a test of humanity. That test can develop good character if administered cor- rectly, and should allow officers to feel relief instead of regret. The lesson is to not allow a temporary event to become a permanent state of mind. let’s look at a few ways to do just that.


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