Mental Firepower Monday: July 7, 2025

Before the shift hits the fan check in with your mental firepower.

In this kickoff Mental Firepower Monday, Erin recaps four field-tested tools pulled from last week’s episodes, built specifically for the first responder lifestyle. Whether you’re on duty, off shift, or somewhere in between, this is your moment to pause, refocus, and apply real strategies to protect your emotional resilience, relationships, and brain health.

This isn’t fluff. It’s your nervous system reset and a chance to hold yourself accountable before burnout, detachment, or emotional avoidance takes the wheel.

THIS WEEK’S FIREPOWER RECAP:

EP 1 – The Cost That No One Talks About

Mental Firepower: You can’t heal what you won’t name.
Get honest with your story. Recognizing trauma is the first step in trauma recovery and long-term burnout prevention.
Keywords: post-traumatic growth, first responder mental health, emotional awareness

EP 2 – The Re-Entry Ritual That Could Save Your Relationship

Mental Firepower: Try the Re-Entry Check-In:

1. What’s one thing you want me to know about your day?
2. What do you need from me tonight?
    This small ritual boosts work-life balance for first responders and helps eliminate spouse resentment by building emotional predictability after shift.
   Keywords: first responder spouse support, relationship communication, emotional regulation

EP 3 – Stillness is a Power Move (with Vance Row)

Mental Firepower: Take five minutes of intentional stillness.
Not zoning out...tuning in. This is about nervous system regulation, not yoga trends.
Keywords: mindfulness for first responders, emotional regulation, resilience training.

EP 4 – Feelings. The Other ‘F’ Word

Mental Firepower: Name 3 words that describe how you feel after your next shift.
No filters. No sugarcoating. Just awareness.
Because emotional deflection leads to explosions—naming it leads to control.
Keywords: stress management techniques, emotional intelligence, first responder burnout

YOUR CHECK-IN CHALLENGE:

Which tool did you actually try this week?

• Did you reconnect with your spouse using the Re-Entry Check-In?
• Did you get still?
• Did you name your emotional state without saying “fine”?

DM Erin on Facebook, IG, TikTok, LinkedIn, or go to theflashpointpodcast.com. Your insight could help someone else get unstuck.

WHO THIS IS FOR:

• Firefighters, EMTs, LEOs, and dispatchers managing chronic job-related stress
• Spouses who are tired of feeling shut out and overwhelmed
• Leaders looking for practical stress relief and resilience strategies
• Anyone in uniform who’s ready to stop surviving and start recalibrating

COMING THIS THURSDAY:

Brian Gillespie joins us. He is a retired law enforcement officer and Marine Corps Vet. A man who finally stopped pretending the job wasn’t changing him. You’re gonna want this one.

CALL TO ACTION:

Follow the show, leave a review, and share with someone who’s holding it together but could use a little nudge.
 

This podcast is climbing the Apple charts because of YOU.
Grab this Monday by the mindset. Make it a strong one.

Music from #Uppbeat

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

License code: QUUZB4TP7STKMLJN

Transcript

It is Monday again. So before those tones hit and the tension climbs at work, here's your mental firepower check-in, and this is just a reminder that your brain, it deserves backup too. ~ Before we get into that, ~you can expect that we're gonna have a mental Firepower Monday check-in every week to kind of take a look at.

What tools did you gain from the last episode that was released? Did you actually use them? Did you actually apply them? What did you learn? How can you share these tools with others? And you know, sometimes we just need a little accountability. So as your coach, I'll be checking in on Monday, sending a little reminder to you like, Hey, did you do your mental firepower for the week?

And then we'll go from there. But before I get into all of that, I just wanna say thank you from the bottom of my heart to everybody who has supported the Flashpoint podcast last week. For the official launch. What I can tell you is the feedback has been incredible. Thank you so much [00:01:00] for rating and reviewing the show.

If you haven't done so already, I just ask that you take the time to quickly go to the listening platform of your choice, which we are on all platforms, including YouTube and follow the show rate and review it. Let me know your experience. And share it with a friend. Share it with somebody that you think could use this information and that includes your spouse.

Because on the Flashpoint podcast, we don't leave out our spouses or our partners. So again, thank you so much for are listening, downloading, sharing all of the things, and in case. You don't follow us on social media. I will tell you that the Flashpoint podcast did hit number 153 in the top 200 under self-improvement for Apple podcasts.

And that might not seem like a big deal, but here's why it is. because if you can get the podcast into a certain range and the ranking, it moves it forward. Creates better [00:02:00] visibility for individuals who might be looking for a show like that. So thanks to you all. We were able to get to 1 53. Now it goes up and down a little bit, but let's keep us there.

Let's keep the Flashpoint Podcast in that top 200 ranking so that. Apple will be encouraged to continue to put the show in front of others that could use these tools. Okay, so enough about that. Let's hop in. We're gonna have four recaps because we had four episodes. This will be the longest of the

Mental Firepower Monday check-ins that you're gonna probably hear. Seeing as how this past week was unique to have four episodes,

but each one had some type of tool in it for you to try in real time. And they're field tested and they work. so let's start with episode one, the cost that no one talks about. And on that one, I opened up about my own story. And what it means to love someone who's unraveling and how that pain became the reason I actually do this work.

if you didn't get to check out episode one, I encourage you to go back and check it out and [00:03:00] learn a little bit more about me. But the important part is the firepower. And really what it boils down to is that you can't heal what you won't name. You need to be in relationship with your story, your situation, and.

The most important thing was the reminder that you're not broken. None of us are broken. We're human beings doing the best we can with the information and tools that we have. Now, you might be burned out and that's very reasonable, but you're a hundred percent not broken. So begin to get curious about what you're experiencing.

See if you can put a name to it. And then we moved on to episode two, which is the reentry check-in episode, all about connection debt. This was aimed at the first responder couples out there and what it takes to reenter our home because it's been said on various occasions by my clients and by others that.

No one teaches the responder how to actually decompress from the shift, and go home and show up as dad, husband, [00:04:00] friend, show up as all the different identities that we actually do have outside of the job. And then on the flip side. We hear this a lot from our spouse too.

No one teaches us how to receive them home. Who do I need to be? How can I support them? How can we effectively communicate what I might need after being home all day or being my own job all day long and feeling a little bit frazzed? So this is where the reentry check-in is very, very supportive and you can commit to using it.

And Build it into your day every day that there is a shift. And really what the reentry check-in is too simple questions. And those questions are, what's one thing you want me to know about your day? And the other is. What do you need from me tonight? Or who do you need me to be? And I think the most important thing is that the spouses get to do this one as well.

So please don't skip it. Then we have episode three. We had our expert Vance Row on to kick us off at the Flashpoint podcast. We're so excited to have him. [00:05:00] And Vance really talked about burnout and recovery and yoga and how he used yoga as a tool, and that it's not a trend for him. Or any of us that use this as a tool, but it actually resets our nervous system.

It becomes a nervous system strategy, and so on that episode, Vance reminded us stillness is a skill. So your firepower from episode three was to try five minutes of stillness. Let the noise settle, pay attention to what your body is actually telling you. Just check in, get into relationship. Okay, what am I noticing?

I. I am just going to be still and let my emotions and my feelings rise to the surface. I promise it won't kill you. And then lastly, we had episode four. We can call this the emotional constipation episode or the worst F word of them all feelings.

And this one was very simple. We got real about emotional deflection and the damage it does when you keep swallowing [00:06:00] every feeling so the tool that was suggested was after your next shift. Name three words that can describe how you actually feel. And the idea is to have no filters, no fixing, no judgment.

It's just the truth. How am I feeling? The example that I used was hollow pissed and fried or something like that. And that counts, but we're usually so disconnected or don't even know that we have more feelings outside of the range from fine to angry that just beginning to understand that there's so many different emotions that we experience day in and day out is a step in the right direction to creating a healthier version of you and your brain.

So here's the deal. If you tried any of these tools last week, I wanna hear from you. You can shoot me a dm. I'm on every freaking social media platform there is. Besides X, I think, and maybe, well, there's so many [00:07:00] threads, I'm kind of on there. But really the main ones Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok.

LinkedIn, all of those. So please shoot me a DM and make sure you tag the show or you can always drop a comment The other thing you can do is you can go to the flashpoint podcast.com and click contact page and just shoot me an email. Let me know what landed, what completely flopped.

Like did not work at all. Did you have anything that surprised you, that you applied and did with perhaps your spouse or maybe a coworker, a peer? What surprised you? And, it's important to hear from you because your insight might actually help somebody else get unstuck. So remember, this is how we rebuild.

it takes one honest moment, one mental rep at a time. So Grab this Monday by the mindset, will ya? We'll see you on Thursday when we release episode number five with Mr. Brian Gillespie, retired law enforcement officer, [00:08:00] Marine Corps Vet, and a man who understands what it's like to be in service to others. And live a life that is much greater than him. as always, make it a strong day. Talk to you soon.