Why First Responders Need More Than War Stories

Trauma swapping is one of those habits that feels supportive in the moment, then quietly keeps the whole nervous system on high alert. We sit down with Rick and Monique from Real Connections Counseling and Coaching to name what’s actually happening when first responders start one-upping each other’s worst calls and why that “instant relief” can turn into rumination, anger, isolation, and relationship damage later. If you’ve ever left a shift, a bar, or a buddy conversation feeling weirdly stuck or keyed up, this one will hit home. 

We also get practical about what helps. Rick and Monique explain their team-based approach to counseling, including two-hour couples therapy sessions that give you room to tell the whole story without racing the clock. We talk about how to externalize the problem so you can face it together, how grief and loss show up as secondary trauma for police, fire, EMS, and dispatch, and why the goal isn’t forgetting what you saw but learning to reprocess it so it stops running your life. 

Finally, we challenge the “only we understand” bubble. Community matters, but it can’t be limited to the blue line. We dig into why connecting with safe people outside the job, rebuilding hobbies, getting back into nature, and sharing the emotional experience rather than the graphic details can create a real soft place to land and a real path to healing. If this conversation helps you, subscribe, share it with someone on your crew, and leave a review so more first responders and families can find it.

If you or someone you know is in crisis and at risk of self-harm, please call or text 988, the suicide and crisis lifeline. 

To contact us directly send an email to  Dan@10-42project.org  or call 515-350-6274
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Transcript

Welcome Back To Shared Voices

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Welcome back to the Shared Voices podcast. We are blessed today to have Rick and Monique back in the house, back in the new studio, guys. What do you think?

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Hello. This place is amazing. Yeah. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

It's nice that Godspeed Equine allows us to use this space for free, allows our organization to come in and to have a podcast studio to use our voice.

SPEAKER_03 0:23

Amazing. The first time was in your house.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Man, you guys, so you guys have been with me for a long time. Yeah. Rick and Monique, for some of you guys know, Monique's on the board. Um, they'd both be on the board, but we we can only pick one from a family, so they they pulled dice.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

She's better looking.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

They went by the looks and she won. So yeah, but so they've been around for a while. They've been on other podcasts. You guys have heard them before. If you haven't, go back and check out some of their other stuff because it's awesome. Um, I got to know these folks uh maybe three years ago. And uh three, three and a half. And they came, they were they were from Iowa and then they moved to Colorado.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

And then we came back to Iowa. Then we came back.

SPEAKER_00 0:59

To start to start something that's different in this area.

SPEAKER_03 1:02

We came back on uh our our whole hope. We get we became educated as counselors in Colorado Springs. Yeah, okay, good. I know you can't tell sometimes, but it's true. So you're in it and I'm the educated one. I have proof because I have the thing hanging on my wall. Wow. I remember now I don't know. And you got the bills, and I got the bills to pay.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

Loans.

SPEAKER_03 1:24

So you go to Colorado, you get education. We got educatation as counselors, but we knew right away that we wanted to become um a different kind of company because the word on the street for decades has been marriage is in trouble, marriage is in trouble, relationships are in trouble, uh, relationships in businesses are toxic. Um, suicide rates in in soldier communities, in first responder communities are high, so on and so forth. And we have counselors, we've had counseling that entire time. The needle wasn't moving. That doesn't mean the counselors were doing a bad job. That means the needle wasn't moving. So Monique and I decided do we know that the needle is gonna move? No, but we decided to change the game to do something different. So Monique and I created a team-oriented company that says, okay, we're gonna bring two people in the room with you and we're gonna start our sessions at two hours instead of 45 minutes. So you don't have to talk fast for 45 minutes. You can tell your whole story in a two-hour period of time and more. We do all day sessions too.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

I want to challenge you a little bit on that. We didn't come up with this plan. God did.

SPEAKER_03 2:30

There you go. That was a God thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

I really was.

SPEAKER_03 2:33

I mean, we got you, boy. You did. God got me.

Why They Returned To Iowa

SPEAKER_01 2:36

You know, God called us. We have been working individually off and on through our lives. I mean, this is just a place God's put us where people come and talk to us. It's just a natural thing for them to do. And um really had a heart for veterans, first responders, um, people that have gone through a lot of trauma. We've been through things in our life, and we can bring that into the therapy room, not because we want to do the topic we're gonna focus on today, which is trauma swap, but more along the lines of that we can understand where they're coming from and then we can take that to the next level because there's more than just talking about your trauma. There is the importance of finding someone that can help you through your trauma.

SPEAKER_00 3:14

There you go. There you go. And there's and and what's amazing is that you you got your military family. Is that correct? Both of you. Yep. Yeah, military family. But I think what's awesome about you guys is yeah, you've never been a police officer, you've been a firefighter, but you guys have dedicated your life early on to say, hey, we're gonna focus on marriages, and then we're gonna focus on first responder marriages. Yep. And and so you you did it's not like it's something that one day somebody walked in that happened to be a first responder. Like you guys have dedicated time, education, specifically to be culturally competent to help first responders. That's correct. And so that's what honestly separates you guys differently. And I've known you guys, and I know a lot of counselors, and counselors are great. I I always say uh repeat a thing that Jeremy says, which is counselors are are like shoes, some are good, some are bad, or some are bad, and some are some stink.

SPEAKER_03 4:03

But that that's true. Like in any industry, they're good and bad. We love our therapists out there. We just happen to really love this community, and that is one of the reasons why we created a team. Um, they think in teams. This group of people um grows up in teams and that in their careers, and so we wanted wanted to provide that for them as well. Besides uh on the faith component, we knew that we were asked to be one. We were called to be one. You were now one in God's eyes, and we wanted to carry that into every part of our life together. And so, and we do that in as much love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control as we possibly can.

SPEAKER_01 4:46

And our agency is that way, right? We it's not just Rick and I. We have um uh our daughter is also a therapist, and she really focuses on grief and loss. So that's another piece that first responders don't necessarily have a good resource for. And she is just amazing when it comes to the grief and loss piece, especially that unconventional grief that first responders are dealing with secondary trauma, secondary grief. You know, they're not directly knowing the person maybe that died or had the event, but they're struggling with it. And so she can really be a great resource for that from an individual perspective. But she also partners with me and Rick, and and we do co-therapy with her as well with our couples.

SPEAKER_03 5:22

She also has a lot of training in the first responder, um, particularly the police world.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

So yeah, her daddy was caught.

SPEAKER_02 5:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:32

Um so what I think what's cool about this is you guys, I don't bring just anybody on the podcast. You know, I I I don't just somebody doesn't just call me up and say, I'm a counselor down the street, I want to come in and do a podcast. That's not how it works. Um, just because we do need to vet, we need to make sure that when we're putting people on here, that they're culturally competent, that they're safe, and that they're not just on the podcast, you know, to get clients. And I know that's not your guys' heart. That's why I bring you on. Like you guys care about our first responders. And and uh you guys care about our first responders and you and you anyway. I'm just putting an edit right there. That camera turned off, it's bugging me now, didn't it? It's off all the way. Yeah, all right.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

The light went off.

A Different Model For Counseling

SPEAKER_00 6:19

So let's get right down to it, Rick. I want to tell you guys, and I want to tell you, Monique, the worst story I've ever been on. Oh my gosh, you guys should have seen all the blood and guts. It was terrible. I can't wait to tell you guys all this.

SPEAKER_01 6:31

That's not exactly what you need to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

It's not a good idea.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

Well, it's not, it might be, but ironically, we get into this stage with, especially when we are in a trauma field where we like try to one-up each other with our traumas. We call those trauma swapping. That's not necessarily going to help you heal. It might make you feel validated, it might make you feel seen, but it's not gonna necessarily help you actually process it.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah. And that's why we're bringing it up today because it's a topic that you know I work with first responders all the time. You guys do as well. And and sometimes one of the first things first responders want to do is immediately tell you all the bad, traumatic things they've been through. And sometimes it can come across as like they're almost bringing it up to like justify that they're here, that they need to help, or like, and and I think that gets dangerous when not only do they a lot of times do it when they first reach out, which is fine, but then when other first responders get around, then it gets brought up again.

SPEAKER_03 7:25

It's a trigger response. Uh a lot of us when we get triggered by anything, we start to think faster, talk faster, we get a little bit panicked, we get a little bit nervous.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Or a little bit excited.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

A little bit excited, our palms start to sweat, those kinds of things happen in the counseling room too.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Sweaty, mom spaghetti.

SPEAKER_03 7:43

Right? Those kinds of things. So now they're they're not uh it's it's a stress response system to where they think that they're coming in, they're a little bit stressed by coming to see somebody that they haven't talked to before, and they deliver um the news, right? In the end, what we want for them is to have a managed way to talk about their life because as they go forward, they're gonna be able to manage their life in a controlled way. They can't just go into all of life and dump, dump, dump, dump, dump. It's not gonna be healthy. So, in a way, when they come into that counseling room, we don't only allow this this straight dump. And at the same time, we give that two hours of time to allow them to give us a story of their life. Uh, we get to ask curious questions, they get to dump some of those stories out, they get to put them in the floor. And what we what we always tell them is that look, when you come into this room, when you come into any space, you're not the problem. We let the problem be the problem. So get it out of your mouth, let's put it in the middle of the room, let's look at it together. Um, and that is an amazing piece of our work.

SPEAKER_00 8:59

And we had a little audio difficulty there for a minute, so I I kind of had a little issue there. Yeah. But I want to get focused back in here. Yes. Um, I apologize, we're having some technical issues, but uh so when when people come in and and and they start sharing, I got a question for you and for our ambassadors that are out working with first responders and and helping them. So when they when we go and we're working with first responders and they want to go in, because I always tell the first responders, like, let's talk about the emotions from the call. You know, we can say like it was a fatality, there was three kids, um, you know, some some like details of where it was and stuff like that. But what we're talking about is when you really get down and you're focusing on, I'm just gonna say like the brain matter and you're focusing on the stuff on your clothes and stuff the details, yeah. Right. And and we can get stuck, right? We can get stuck in those thoughts. So we need to kind of talk those out with somebody who's healthy so we can get past the unlock those so we're no longer um because healing is like I said, it's not like you're gonna forget these memories. Like I've said in other podcasts, you're not gonna forget the memories, these memories no longer control you.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Right, right. What do you think? Why don't you help us define what trauma swapping is? What do you think it is?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Um, I honestly, if I can say it in in a in a can I use layman's terms? I mean, this is our podcast, right? It's a pissing match. Okay, is what it feels like. It feels like a pissing match. Um, it's a feel like a there's another word that's called stan s t-a-n. Shh, crap, that ain't nothing. Yep. Perfect, hear a story and they want to one up it.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

It's a it's a chest thump. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Yeah. And and I honestly see it more in the men than the female first responders. Um, but everybody does it. It's it's so what do we do when someone starts to do we just let them go? Do we let them there?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

I mean, there's definitely some relief from throwing out the trauma details, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:48

It's an immediate relief. The problem is, is it doesn't go anywhere. Like it's great that you guys can be a great um space for them to share that information, but the encouragement would be for you, they they you can understand. The ambassadors can understand. They've been there, they understand where they're coming from and the need to share the details and the need to share the experience. They want validation from you. That's fine. They want understanding from you, that's fine. But what they also need is recovery from that. And you need training for that. And that's where counseling steps in.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

Right. So they expose it, right? They say this, they say these things, but then what? Then what? You're just leaving them hanging.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

Then this is when we need the experts, we need the professionals to come in to that help that is the other person doesn't know exactly what'll be helpful. They just know they've that they they've taken on the information that the other person gave them and they chest thump their way back to the other person. But unfortunately, work doesn't stay between each other. Work also comes home, work also goes to the grocery store, work also goes to the bar, work also goes to the game, work also goes to the garage. So you can talk to each other and you say, Yeah, I got my I got my people. But the suicide rate is still extremely high. Yeah. The alcoholism rate is extremely high. The divorce rate is extremely high. When you're sharing, when you're chest thumping, that doesn't mean you're healing. And so we need to step outside of that bubble to say, look, I'm talking to my people. It's great. I'm good. If you're good, why are so many of us dying?

Trauma Swapping In First Responder Culture

SPEAKER_00 12:29

Yep. We're not good. Yep. And we sometimes think when we trauma share that that is opening up in a like that that's when you go to a bar or whatever and you sit down, you start trauma sharing, you leave there and you're like, Well, yeah, I hang out with my bros, I got some help. That's not help because nothing happened. Yep. All you did was compile more on top of it, and there was nothing to move forward. So you're still stuck in that same spot. So our what I try to tell our people is our ambassadors is it's our job to be a lighthouse for them in the moment, but then be a bridge to get them to the other different modalities that are out there, the the counselors, the therapists, um, the different types of treatments. Right. We want to be there, help calm their storm, you know, relate with them because we can. But we ultimately once once that's done, we want to be a bridge to get them to you guys. And then we still work with them because there's there's a whole holistic approach that we have to have. Like I get them back into doing their activities again. Right. And I get them out where we go out and we talk about real hard things, affairs, you know, suicide attempts and things like that while we're out fishing and hunting and doing artwork and boating and music and stuff like that. Because it's a multiple thing. We want to work on their mental health as far as these, these, these thoughts or these things that are inside of us. And then we also want to get them out into community, right? Yeah. We want to get them back out into God's creation. We want God created us all to be be creators. We want him to get it back out in their stuff. So I feel like we can do really good at that, but we fail when we don't become the bridge to get to the other resource. Right, right.

SPEAKER_03 13:50

Here's the thing we know Jesus heals. We we believe that Jesus saves, we believe that God is in our hearts. But that doesn't mean that we're okay. I've been depressed and I had faith. She's been anxious and she had faith. Just because we come to Jesus doesn't mean that we're healed. Just because we know God doesn't mean that there isn't something else out there, right? We've go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Well, the thing is, is that God never promised us that it would be easy. Just because you give your life to Christ or or follow him doesn't mean it's going to be a smooth sail, that you're not going to deal with trauma, that you're not going to deal with the issues that come in your lap. You know, you still have to deal with those things. And as a matter of fact, the difference really is that you're not doing it alone. And I love that 1042 looks at that holistic space because we're just a piece, right? We can help them reprocess the trauma, reframe it, um, get to a healthier space, not allow the triggers to overtake, you know, uh, learn how to reframe how those triggers might uh look so that you're not ruminating or you're not spiraling or you're not becoming so angry that your wife or your children end up or your husband end up getting your anger. That's not actually from them. It's from the trauma, right? So we can help with those pieces, but we don't have the the capacity. We don't have the maybe not the skills, we don't have the resources probably to help them learn how to fish or to find some other new hobbies or to find ways to community. Yeah, that's they need the community.

SPEAKER_03 15:23

That's you guys.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

Yeah, we get two hours with them, uh a few times, you know, six months, a year, two years, whatever they need, but we aren't gonna stay with them forever.

SPEAKER_02 15:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 15:32

We our goal is to get them to a better place so they don't need us anymore. So they're but they need the community, they need like the 1042 community to help them move forward to find people that they can connect with, that they can do things with, they can do life with.

SPEAKER_03 15:46

They need to realize all of you need to realize that community isn't only somewhere within the blue line. Amen. Community is out here too. Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

You need some people that aren't in your in your group. You need people 100%. You need people that don't live in that world so that you can experience life in a different way, right? My dad grew up, I mean, my I grew up in the military. My dad was in for 24 years, so all 18 of mine, and then some before me. And he had such a hard time moving into the civic world afterwards. He was like, um, he ended up finding a job that was in the prison system because it was sort of like not quite military, but not quite civilian. And that was because he just wasn't ready, because it was so different to go into the world where you no longer had that instance camaraderie of the moving and the hierarchy and all of that. Same thing for first responders, right? If your whole world is first responders and then home, first responders and home, first responder world, home. Gikes, you lose so much of the world. You lose such an opportunity to expand who you are and what your world looks like. But it also helps keep you healthy because if that is your whole world, you will implode.

Validation Without Recovery

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yes, and your heart will be hardened and hardened and hardened and hardened because you see the worst of everybody, it's negative, and you cannot have a positive mind with a negative mindset. If all you see is negative, if all you see is negative, and that's why you gotta have friends at church. Like I always say, like some of the like if you have a friend who works with you at the at your department and you go to church with and is a good friend, okay, that's a good fit. But we don't need to be hanging out with the nine other guys that we barely know all the time. Like that, we got to mix in. Yeah, maybe that friend from work that's involved in these other things in your life, but your other people need to be people from your friends from you know, outside of law enforcement from growing up from church, from different areas, because get involved in something in your community so that you're not doing just first responder stuff.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Yes, right. Like find a find a gym that you enjoy going to, find a um a hobby that it has absolutely nothing to do with trauma.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 17:53

Right. That is actually, I mean, take up knitting. I don't care. They say that all those fields are coming back now. All these they call them the grandma and grandpa hobbies are coming back to a lot of knitting and stuff like that. Yeah, because their miss kids are tired of being in their phones. 20 somethings are tired of being in their phones, they want to experience life. We can help them with that. We can help them discover what they might find is fun.

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Yeah. That's great. The best thing about getting away from trauma swapping, because when you're trauma swapping, it may reduce the tension for a little bit, but your your nervous system is still activated. When you step outside and walk over the bridge and you talk to somebody who's just there and willing to listen, nope, they haven't seen it. Nope, they haven't been there, nope, they haven't heard the sounds. But what you get when you're talking to them is you're not sharing sounds, you're not sharing smells, you're not sharing locations, you're not sharing sights. You're giving s someone an experience that you've had in a way that they have never had it, which means they're not going to take it on themselves. They don't need to take it on themselves. That's not their life to live, and that's perfect. Now all of a sudden you have a soft place to land. And the one thing that first responders need to know is that a lot of us out here can understand. We do understand pain, we do understand death, we do understand some trauma, we do understand stress. Not like you've had it, but like we've had it. I can take it on. We're willing to take it on. Uh and if you're willing to give that to us, if you're willing to walk over that bridge, the first time you do it, it'll be scary. You're gonna look around, you you are gonna want to run right back into the bubble. It happens to all of you. But a few of you stay outside the bubble. And those are the ones that I've seen become the happiest people um in the first responder community.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah, but so much truth to that. And it's we see within first responders everywhere. It's it's they get in the first responder community and they don't want to leave it, and it's the whole world doesn't understand us. It's a nice against their mentality, you know, it becomes combative, right? Yeah, and it's it's it's uh it's an ugly mindset to get in, and it's an untrue mindset because yeah, we're wearing a piece of uniform that carries a badge and go into trauma and that yes, that's one thing, but normal folks deal with trauma as well.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

It's not like well, I mean, what given it let's give it its its due, right? Like it it's respect. There is definitely things that first responders have to do, especially in the city, that other people don't have to deal with and won't see, right? And we're talking EMS also, we're talking dispatchers having to make the calls and having to end the calls and things like that. We recognize that that's not something other people see every day. And we have to to recognize that. We have to understand that that is a unique club, if you want to call it. A club kind of makes it sound positive, but it's it's it's its own unique club, right? And I don't want to not give that the respect it's due. But there are definitely people outside of that club that can help you move beyond it so that that doesn't become your whole world, that you don't get that negative lens all the time, that you don't think everybody is, you know, terrible or the world's terrible in a negative place to be, or you know, especially I man, I I have a hard time, you know, working with DV because you know, domestic violence is such a tough thing. I can't imagine being a police officer having to walk in and deal with that. It is tough. It's tough. And they're dealing with that day in and day out sometimes. And so I know me as not being a first responder, how tough that is for me. I can't even imagine having to deal with that day in and day out. And you think, what in the heck is marriage if that's what people are doing, or what are relationships if that's what people doing? And so I can understand where they would get this real negative view on relationships, but we have an amazing ability. Ability to say, you know what, that's not how God designed relationships to be. God wants us to be in relationship, both in a marriage relationship and with friends. We want to connect. Real connections counseling, that's the name of our organization, Real Connections Counseling and Coaching. We picked real connections for a reason. God gave us that vision because we want to help build real connections, not just between couples, but between people. And you can only do that if you're real and night and vulnerable. But that doesn't mean you have to swap stories to see one up each other. See who can who can do that better. We share life together. We can share experience. Share experience together. That's the important piece.

SPEAKER_03 22:43

Isn't that why we do teams, right? When you get stressed by a domestic violence story that's coming our way, and I get to fill in when you so you can take a few breaths and vice versa. Right. Isn't that what relationship is all about? Isn't that what real connection is all about? And that's what we teach pe other people how to do.

Community Outside The Blue Line

SPEAKER_01 22:59

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

And um and we'll talk about this on the next episode, but um when we're when we're bonding through trauma, when we're trauma bonding, which is what we'll talk about a little bit on the next one, is trauma bond. We we think trauma bonds are real. Yeah. Um, especially when it comes to maybe female co coworkers, male co-workers, vice, whatever your sex is, and they can sometimes trauma bond at work that leads to affairs, reality, yeah, things that just it gets really ugly. It matters who you talk to, it matters who you surround yourself with. Absolutely. You are you're gonna become like the people around you. Your friends are taking you somewhere, where are they taking you? You know, I always on my phone I have the I have the little it's a picture um from the Bible and it's a little image of the friends digging through the roof and lowering their friend down to the feet of Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 23:49

Like those are my I want those friends, right? Yep, right. I want that. And they're gonna do that for me some days, and some days I'm gonna do that for them.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 23:56

But they're not taking me to the bar, they're not taking me to the titty bar, they're not, they're not doing that. I want friends that when I can't, they're gonna pick me up, they're gonna take me to the feet of Jesus and they're gonna stand there with me and they'll dig through the roof to go around people and do it. That's the kind of people we need to be hanging around with. Those are the friends that are gonna make a difference in your life that are gonna allow you to heal and to grow. And if you don't have those people in your life and you have and you have people around you that are not doing that, I'm sorry. We got to break away some from relationships that are not taking us to places we want to go. That's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 24:26

Surround yourself with where you want to be. They always say, I mean, they said that in business, but that's just in life, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:31

If you need to surround yourself with people that you want to be like, there's an uh there's a quote, and I think it's from Atomic Habits, and it says, Every that every action that you take is a vote for the person you want to become.

SPEAKER_01 24:43

So, what do you want to become?

SPEAKER_03 24:45

Now, when you're and that's from a faith side that matters, from uh just a life side that matters, and it's so good for first responders because it begins to help them think in order, uh, in the order of how am I acting? Am I proud of myself? What should I reasonably expect of myself today? We don't think about yesterday, we don't think about tomorrow. What's reasonable for me today? What's my experience today? You you said earlier, do I just come in and just go, blah, I've got so many details to give you. But what you're gonna recognize, especially over the bridge, is that the details are a little bit less important than your they're important, but your experience is way more important. Like, man, I can't just feel so sad. I am so hurt. I can take that on.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

And we don't need to compare trauma. No, that's that I say it all the time, you guys. It's it's and I was talking to this yesterday, I was giving a talk to the dispatcher academy. Like, we we we cannot be comparing our trauma with each other because I gave an example. If you're these were dispatchers, so I was talking to dispatchers. I said, if if you and Mark are working next to each other, I was talking a female and a male, and and the female picks up a call and it's a lady screaming that she's pinned in her room, a guy just raped her. And the lady on the phone, the dispatcher, has been raped before, and she's gone through this. Now, if Mark picks up the phone call and he does it and he's going through that, now is that a traumatic call for him? Maybe. Is it a traumatic call for her? Yeah. But we look at those two calls and say, like, what the hell's the matter? It's a it's what we do, it's a call. But we un we got to understand that the we always are the age we've ever been. We got a five-year-old inside of us, a six-year-old, old trauma, old bonds that come out, and that's why we can't compare our trauma because it matters what you've been through.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Right.

Stop Comparing Trauma Start Sharing Experience

SPEAKER_03 26:32

Some people uh go back to six years old, some people go back to 14, some people go back to 22. That's why your experience matters more than your details. Yeah. There's an interview out there called the Forensic Experiential Trauma Trauma Interview, and it's used in some um first responder uh areas um around the country, but the FEDI interview uh is I guess that's redundant, but the FEDI is there to gather up your experience. The details, was it a red coat, green coat, uh are way less important. And they've realized that they've been able to solve a lot of crimes just by saying it smelled like this. I noticed the sound of his the sound of his voice was really scary, that kind of thing. So now we carry that same idea into solving what's ailing you inside.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

What a great topic. We could literally go on for hours on this topic. You we've talked about this so many times. Yep. Yeah, and but it's so important. But I I think it's important, and we now that we have the studio set up, we're gonna be doing a lot more recordings. We'll be able to I want to sit here and keep going for another half hour. I really do. Yeah, but uh we're gonna close up. But Rick, what Rick and Monique, what would you say like when as we close out this? I want to give you guys the last 45 seconds or a minute. Number one, tell them it, you know, at the end, tell them where how the people can reach you. But what are the the the one to two three points that you want people to stick with them as as we close out um about what we just talked about? That it's okay.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

Well, some key points, I think, that you know, your peer conversations, your talking with your buddies from from the the force, you know, those are they might make you feel like you're you're reducing the isolation, but professional care, going to counseling, going to therapy is going to help restore that stability you need to be able to go back out to the next call. Um, you're gonna feel some relief after those conversations, maybe, but if you want actual recovery, you have to have structure. You've got to have some things outside of your buddies.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Because dopamine conversations don't give you there's no growth in those. If you were bonding with somebody and you're all both getting dopamine because you're telling stories, that's a feeling you get. But then when you leave, all of a sudden you feel icky kind of. Yeah. That's because it's a it was a it was a a high. Yes, it was a high. That's all it was. It got you nowhere. Right, right. But it feels like healing for a moment. Yep. And then we go home and then we feel stuck, and then now we have these thoughts that we just talked about.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Yeah, and then we're remembering those stories, and that just continues to ruminate in your head rather than actually make you feel like you actually processed something or got it out because you didn't get it out, you just swapped stories.

SPEAKER_00 29:18

And if you're keeping it inside your own head, that's a dangerous thing you can do. You're in monologue. We gotta get it in dialogue, right? We gotta get in dialogue.

SPEAKER_03 29:24

Many, many people say, like, uh, I want to protect other people from this information. And that sounds like bravery, it sounds like courage, but for me, it sounds really dangerous. It doesn't actually protect the Bible says love your neighbor as yourself. That means I have to love me as well as I love my late neighbor. And in fact, I have to love my name love me um first. So if you're trying to protect others from you, there's no community in that.

SPEAKER_00 29:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 29:56

God is a relational God. That's what I hope that others can remember about today.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

So if people, if any of the listeners would like to reach out to Real Connections, they can do that. Our website is RealConnectionsCounseling.com. Um, they can call uh 515-635-1805. Um, right now Alyssa is our primary admin that'll take the phone call.

SPEAKER_03 30:18

She's also a therapist.

Key Takeaways And How To Reach Them

SPEAKER_01 30:20

She's also a therapist, but she will pair you up with the best team to be with depending on your situation, what you're looking for. Um, we do individual work, we do couples work. Um, the couples, like Rick has mentioned a couple of times, we start at two-hour sessions. Um, individual work, we do our is traditional. It's the 50-minute sessions. Um, and we can do that as well. We have the option for intensive. So if you've got someone who's like, I've got some stuff I want to deal with, or we've got a relationship infidelity issue, we want to deal with it soon and hard and fast. We offer intensives, which is we do a two-hour intake and then we do a six or an eight-hour intensive. So they don't don't have to take off work. Just take one of your days that you're already off your shift. Let's let's hit it, let's deal with it, let's push through it.

SPEAKER_03 31:02

A lot of you, a lot of you don't have much time. And I wanted to say that. So coming in for an eight-hour day sounds like, oh my gosh, how can we do eight hours? But we control it and we have a little fun, we smile, we take some breaks, we eat some snacks, we have some drinks. It's a good day.

unknown 31:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:18

Drinks by beverages, not alcohol.

SPEAKER_00 31:21

Water.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

Water. Better quality.

SPEAKER_00 31:24

You guys are in Central Island? You guys do virtual Urbane? How do they get too?

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Yeah. Well, um, we're our office is based in Urbindale, so that's in the Des Moines metro area. Um, but we can do online uh sessions for the intensives. We do like those in person. It's too hard to do that far away. But you know, take a day, come out. Um, we've got some agreements with a couple of the hotels near our office.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

So yeah, you guys are down by Living History Farms, kind of in that area, and there's some nice hotels right next door. Revel Revel has given us a deal at the Revel Hotel, so we can certainly stay get a hotel for a night, bring your, you know, your and spend some time with your spouse.

SPEAKER_03 31:58

Yeah, and we're also in Winterset.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

So yeah, we have a space in Winterset, we can see people as well. So if they want to not be in the metro, we can certainly do that. We're also licensed in Colorado if you're and uh Hawaii, and I'm in Illinois. So if we've got people outside of uh we can reach it, listening, we and you're in those states, we can also see you that way.

SPEAKER_00 32:17

So well, thank you guys. You'll be on again and again and again. Can't wait. Thank you so much for how much you guys just give our organization and your dedication to to our first responders and this organization. Well, we're interviewed, Dan.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

So yeah. And our our theme is that we want to help the relational, we want to help build the relational health of our community. And let's start with the first responders.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

Thanks for joining us. And remember, guys, nobody walks alone.