EP01-This is the Cost that No One Talks About

This isn’t just a podcast. It’s a turning point for anyone navigating first responder mental health, relationship strain, or the cost of holding it all in.

In this raw and powerful debut, Erin Maccabee opens the vault. She shares the story of losing the love of her life to suicide, and how that loss set her on a path of trauma recovery, addiction healing, and eventually, purpose. This episode lays bare the real emotional toll of the job and what no one prepares you for once the uniform comes off.

Erin’s not a clinician. She’s not a responder. But she’s lived the collateral damage and now, as a First Responder Integration Coach and recovering alcoholic, she’s here to hand you the mindset tools she never had.

You’ll learn:

• Erin’s story of grief, addiction, and post-traumatic growth
• Why this podcast exists and who it’s built to serve
• What to expect in every episode: field-tested tools, emotional resilience practices, and zero BS
• Why burnout prevention starts with reclaiming who you are off-duty...not just surviving on autopilot

RECURRING TRUTH BOMBS:

• You’re not broken. You’re burned.
• Growth doesn’t show up with a bow it kicks the damn door in.
• You were trained for trauma, not for healing.
• Grief doesn’t end. It just gets quieter between the sirens.
• The badge can’t protect you from your own mind.

 WHO THIS SHOW IS FOR:

• First responders facing burnout, PTSD, or emotional shutdown
• Spouses watching their partner unravel and wondering if it’s their fault
• Leaders hungry for real resilience training, not empty buzzwords
• Anyone quietly falling apart while trying to "hold the line"

WHAT THIS SHOW ISN’T:

• War stories on loop
• Buzzword bingo or soft-focus self-care
• A therapy substitute
• Fluff disguised as support

WHAT THIS SHOW IS:

• Tactical mindset tools built for high-stress lives
• Straight talk on emotional regulation and life beyond the job
• Support for your nervous system, your mission, and your people
• A call to reclaim your identity—not just your badge

Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/needmospace/chill-power
License code: QUUZB4TP7STKMLJN

Music from #Uppbeat

https://uppbeat.io/t/needmospace/chill-power

License code: QUUZB4TP7STKMLJN

Transcript

Erin Maccabee: ~You ever hear a story that hits so hard, it makes your stomach drop.~[00:00:00] 

You ever hear a story that hits so hard and makes your stomach drop like someone cracked up in your past and started reading it out loud? Well, let me tell you one.

He was this guy and everyone counted on him who rarely ever missed a shift. He didn't complain. He also didn't show emotion, but he just kept showing up until one day to one day he didn't,

and the woman watching him unravel.

Was holding a breath every single day, just waiting for that other shoe to drop, just waiting to be hit across the face with a two by four. And that woman, well, that woman was me 



Erin Maccabee: and that man,

he was the love of my life.



Erin Maccabee: I've been in the room with some of the bravest people I've ever met in my life, and I've watched them [00:01:00] get taken out by something no one saw coming. We can call it the weight of the call, the years of piling it on the years of supposed compartmentalization. The silence, the coping, the unraveling that looks like isolation or addiction or detachment or anger.

But let me back up, because I wasn't always in this work 15 years ago. I was just a woman who kept getting drawn to men in uniform, and lemme tell you, it was not on purpose. It did just keep happening though. Military, police, fire, you name it. And one of them, ~well, probably all of them, but one of them in particular, ~he was everything I thought I wanted.

Quiet, loyal, mysterious, but underneath all of that. He was bleeding out in places that no one could see, and we met in recovery, [00:02:00] both of us trying to rebuild something new. And he loved hard, but unfortunately he was hurting harder.

And when he started slipping away, I thought if I just loved him hard enough, he'd be okay. I really had convinced myself of that, but that's not how any of this works. I stood by his side in the ICU after a self-harm attempt and still tried to convince myself of that, and then I stayed until I couldn't.

Because I knew that if I stayed, I was going down two. And so I left and the phone rang and it rang over two days and then it stopped, and then the next call I got was from his neighbor and this. Zero affect flat voice, almost talking about how the weather is [00:03:00] saying. Erin, he's gone.

And that was more than a decade ago. And and the truth is, I didn't just lose him. I lost myself and I had to fight. Like hell to come back.

I'm Erin McAbee 



Erin Maccabee: and let me take this opportunity before we get too much further in to run through some of my identities with you, because we all have more than one. Parts of us are always going to be there and parts of us. Our various identities all play simultaneous roles in each and every day. I'm a first responder integration coach.

I'm a mother, a wife, a friend, a go-getter, a procrastinator, a perfectionist, loyal to a fault at times. I'm also a recovering alcoholic. I am a former storm of a woman who, by [00:04:00] some fricking miracle found recovery, found her purpose and found her calling, and I didn't plan on doing this work, but when life handed me some brutal, brutal

tests and an even more brutal curriculum. I now get to use that curriculum to show up to show up for you.

you may be wondering. Why am I telling you all of this? 



Erin Maccabee: Because you're here, you're listening right now, and maybe you've lost someone too, or maybe you are the one unraveling and no one's noticed yet. ~This is a flash point and it's not here to pat you on the back for surviving.~

This is a flashpoint. And it's not here to pat you on the back for surviving. It's here to walk with you as you rebuild after all the stuff that no one sees. You want real tools, you're gonna get 'em. you wanna hear from your fellow responders and peers and maybe feel just a little [00:05:00] less broken.

Well, you're in the right place. I. You wanna learn how to regulate your brain, your body, your nervous system in real time, let's do it. ' cause I believe that no first responder should ever have to feel the way that he felt, and no partner should ever have to feel that helpless again. And this is where your healing starts.

But I do wanna share with you a little bit about what to expect here because the Flashpoint Podcast isn't your average podcast.

These episodes, they're short, they're gonna be punchy, they're built for your real shift schedule, your stress load, and quite frankly, your bullshit radar. And so the rundown of the format in most of our episodes is gonna be the following. We're gonna have a flash briefing. We're gonna look at the truth that nobody's telling you, nobody's talking about.

And if they are, I'm hoping that you're gonna [00:06:00] hear it in a different way. We're gonna have a call sign breakdown, where we're gonna decode just a little bit about what may be frying your nerves, what may be taking you out. We're not gonna get into the detailed details, but perhaps open up something new for you that you didn't know.

But my favorite part is gonna be the mental firepower, and these are real field tested tools that you can use in between runs,

in between calls, maybe even when you. Wake up in the morning, per, perhaps before you go to bed at night. Then we'll have the debrief where we're gonna just talk about the takeaways of the episode. And then lastly, the call out. And this is where the rubber's gonna meet the road. Friends, this is gonna be a challenge for you to move the needle just a little bit before your next shift.

And I'm sure you're gonna be like, I'm not doing that. That's crazy. That's stupid. That can't make any sense. People are gonna laugh at me. Whatever the story [00:07:00] is that you've been using to get by so far, I'm sure you'll say those things. And guess what? Who cares? Do it anyway. Because I'll tell you, you can have your misery back guaranteed.

Or maybe you can just try something a little bit different and take on these challenges. That we offer in the call out, and that's it. No fluff, just what works. We're not gonna be having guests on here telling their war stories

because quite frankly, we get it. We've heard 'em all. We understand. We understand the threats out there. We understand what's happening in this population. So we don't need to hear another war story. There are plenty of podcasts that offer that. 



Erin Maccabee: If you would like them, you can look on the website and go find them.

But here we're gonna be building some real value and tools. Not that those aren't valuable, but we need to [00:08:00] do the things we need to do to handle what's next. So. like I said, whether you're driving, decompressing or hiding in a station bathroom to catch your breath, this show is built for your real life.

This show is built for you. I am talking to you, 



Erin Maccabee: perhaps burned out and still battling, 



Erin Maccabee: but this is for all those burned out and still battling first responders out there. Because you know that there's just something there that might be able to take the edge off. But also this is for the spouses who don't get nearly enough attention.

Those spouses that are sitting there watching their partner change and wondering if it's them, did they do something? Why does their partner treating them like that? Those spouses that take it on and, and really, really. Consume the burden of the changes that are happening in you.

I wanna take the load off for them. 



Erin Maccabee: Here's the deal. Leaders crave real tools. They don't just walk around [00:09:00] saying buzzwords. Leaders also create other leaders. And if you are in this world, if you're listening to the show, I imagine that you have some kind of interest. And mindset work and healing and being the bigger voice out there.

And so this is gonna be your opportunity to show up like a real leader and make a difference. 



Erin Maccabee: This shows for anyone who's tired of feeling like they have to hold the line, while truly they're just falling apart inside. 



Erin Maccabee: That whole fake it till you make it. Thing doesn't work forever. Eventually. You are gonna hit a wall and that train's gonna stop.

You're definitely gonna hear some reoccurring truth bombs on here because sometimes we have to hear things 15 times before it actually clicks or just hits a little bit different. The biggest one is that you're not broken. 



Erin Maccabee: You might be burned out, but you're not broken. We all have the opportunity to heal.

And the thing is too, that growth doesn't just show up with a pretty little bow. It's gonna kick that damn [00:10:00] door in and you gotta be ready for it. And even more importantly, and this is probably gonna get a few scoffs, people are gonna be like, what are you talking about, lady D?

But little do you know that you were trained for trauma.

The reality is though you didn't know precisely what you signed up for. I mean, if we really, truly thought that really what it was was putting out fires or running hot on a call and our cruiser and getting the bad guy with no repercussions, then we were fooled because you didn't know all of the horrific things you were gonna be up against.

The parents that you're gonna have to tell that their kid was not coming home. The fallen peer, the fallen friend, you didn't know. And so while you were trained for trauma, you were not trained for healing, and you weren't trained for the trauma, you actually got. Okay, so as a result of that, there's gonna [00:11:00] be a lot of grief.

And I imagine there has been a lot of grief in your life. And here's the truth, and something you will be hearing more often is that grief doesn't actually end. I'm sorry to break it to you. It does get quieter. We can learn how to integrate it. We can learn how to make it part of us so that it becomes part of our story and our cause and our why.

But we will always have that piece of us that still grieves.

And here's the biggest kicker of 'em all that badge, that uniform. It cannot protect you from your own mind, that SOP, it cannot protect you from your own mind. You cannot, absolutely cannot get yourself out of a problem with the same brain that got you into that problem. You gotta be willing to find something new, some new tools so that you can retrain your brain.

And here's what we're not gonna be doing on here. We are not gonna be getting into this nitty [00:12:00] gritty clinical stuff because why? I'm not a clinician. I am an integration coach. I specialize in first responders, but I am not a clinician. So I do have a really, really big understanding of trauma and an understanding of the clinical world.

And in fact, I was a chemical dependency counselor up until recently. But we're not gonna bring that to this table because it doesn't matter. It's irrelevant in a lot of ways.

So we're gonna leave the clinical talk for therapy. We're gonna be cautious of using these self-care buzz words without a real reality check, without a true explanation of what they mean because a lot of things get thrown around. Like I'm a big fan of grounding. But if you don't know what the heck that means, or why it's important or why it matters, then why are we using that word?

And the other thing we're not gonna be doing

is we're not gonna pretend this work isn't gritty, isn't visceral, isn't gutting isn't goddamn [00:13:00] hard. We're not gonna pretend.

So this podcast is about reclaiming yourself, your energy, your nervous system, your clarity, your many identities. And I don't mean that in like a personality disorder way. I mean that as in we are a lot more than just the job.

And I'm gonna tell you too, that I am not here to save anyone. And before you write me off because I haven't worn the badge or I haven't done the job or I haven't drug hose or I haven't been in the line of fire or run hot well driving, I have definitely run hot in a cruiser before, but not while I was driving.

Before you discount that hear me out. Trauma is trauma. And I have been through the depths of hell and back in my world, and you'll learn more about me as we go, but I also know perhaps some tools that you don't. And so I get it. I understand that I have never put [00:14:00] out a fire bigger than the one that's in my backyard, you know, in the fire pit in my life.

But I sure as shit have been on fire in my life.

So I'm here to stand in the fire with you. I'm here to hand you tools. I'm here to show you some tools that changed my life, and then I've watched change other first responders lives as I've worked with them over the years. So these tools could very well save yours if that's where you are. And if that's not where you are in this business of needing your life saved, but maybe you just want a little tuneup, then this is the place too.

Erin Maccabee: So if you're barely holding on, which I hope that's not the case, but if you are, I, it's not unreasonable. If you feel like no one sees what the costs really are in your life, or what this job is really costing you.

To just keep going. If you've started to wonder if you're the only one who's quietly falling [00:15:00] apart, drinking themselves to sleep, if you can even sleep, having conflicts in your relationships, hating your administration. You're not, and you're not weak and you're not failing. And the biggest one is you are not alone.

Not anymore. And you haven't been for a while. 'cause there's a lot of us here. So I'm Erin McAbee and this is the Flashpoint Podcast.