Beautifully Broken: The Art of Post-Traumatic Growth

Hey all, Ryan here.  The brain is amazing and arguably the second most important organ of your body (first is the heart, get your mind out of the gutter). For real though, it’s the control center. Your movement, memory, breathing, and emotion are just a few of the things it manages. It is constantly observing, processing, and controlling the appropriate actions a firefighter needs to take to survive and thrive. 

Now the not-so-amazing part: It’s not always working WITH you. Sometimes it works against you, like when the intrusive thoughts creep in and seemingly overtake anything rational. Or how about when it opens the door and welcomes in bad memories from calls past? Taking all these things into consideration illustrates the importance of taking care of your mental health. The body keeps the score, but the brain is the scoreboard. 

We’ve all had the tough calls. In fact, most of us have had at least one of those 5 o’clock headline news stories that has a high probability of impacting you.  Fortunately, you’re in a proactive fire department that searches for those calls and follows up with the responders to make sure everything is being processed appropriately. You can also openly discuss those calls with your crew--an excellent way to build crew unity and resilience. 

But what about the more subtle calls...the ones that may not affect anyone but you? 

An actual scenario was explained to me where a child was locked inside a car.  Sounds easy enough. Wait on pop-a-lock or break a window. On the back of the rig was a detailed probie, who jumped out and rushed to break the window without waiting for an officer’s orders. In South Texas heat, that’s a no-brainer, but in this scenario, it’s nice and cool, and the child is fine, just a little confused by all the fuss.  Back at the station, the officer pulled the firefighter aside and sternly told him that’s not the way we do things here. The probie was still acting weird and didn’t have a legitimate explanation for his actions and wasn’t really given an opportunity to share anyway.  If the officer would’ve changed his questioning from “what’s wrong with you?” to “what happened to you?” he would’ve had a little more insight. The shift ended, and the firefighter went back to his home district. Only he didn’t. He went off sick for several shifts.  It was only later revealed that when he was a child, he grew up in an abusive home with alcoholic parents. Their favorite form of punishment was to lock him in a closet, hours at a time, for the smallest mistake. He remembers the closet, especially at night when it’s dark.  It had been at the center of many nightmares. When he knew a kid was locked in the car, he didn’t see things that way.  All he saw was the darkness of the closet. 

As you read that scenario, I hope your brain shifted from frustration to compassion. The probie found out later he had post-traumatic stress (PTS) and possibly even complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). He had not sought help until the dam broke, and the flood waters nearly drown him. Over time and with a lot of consistent therapy, he began to make sense of it all. He even tried a technique called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) that erased some deep pathways and eliminated most of the PTSD symptoms he was experiencing.  Therapists are awesome and have a lot of tools to help you. It took time but he was able to move past it and continue his career without another episode. In fact, he became an advocate for child safety and helped spread awareness on the dangers of distraction that could result in accidental lock-ins. This, my friends, is post-traumatic growth.     

I can put the previous scenario into a visual, but first a question for the class: Who here has heard of Kintsugi? It’s the ancient Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold mixed in lacquer. If I break a coffee mug and can’t find super glue within 60 seconds, it goes in the trash. Not the case with Kintsugi. The repaired breaks are not hidden...quite the opposite. They are highlighted and attention is drawn to the cracks with the gold bands that fill in and repair the breaks. This birthed Wabi Sabi, the philosophy of finding beauty in imperfection. Suddenly the piece has a story to tell and is actually celebrated and sought after for its newfound unique beauty. If throwing the piece in the trash is PTSD, then Kintsugi represents Post-Traumatic Growth.   

There are ALWAYS opportunities to repair the “cracks” in your brain, and the recovery can be more beautiful than what once was. But those repairs take time and don’t happen on their own.

Your peer support team and friends at the Wellness center are always here to help connect and walk alongside you on your journey.