Episode 12: Stop Waiting for Permission

Why did first responders need someone outside our profession to tell us it was okay to talk about mental health?

In this episode of the Responder RESET Podcast, Rich Creamer explores a question that has been weighing heavily on him. As respected military and special operations voices continue leading the mental health conversation, why have so many first responders waited for their validation before acknowledging their own trauma?

This isn’t about comparing professions or ranking suffering. It’s about recognizing the striking similarities in culture. Different uniforms. Different missions. The same expectation to stay quiet, stay tough, and keep moving.

Rich challenges the culture of minimizing our own experiences, discusses why we continue to compare trauma, examines the hypocrisy of celebrating vulnerability in one profession while questioning it in another, and reminds listeners that healing should never require someone else’s permission.

If you’ve ever wondered whether your story matters because it doesn’t look like someone else’s, this episode is for you.

Your career mattered.
 Your sacrifices mattered.
 Your story mattered.

Stop waiting for permission.

Hosted by: Rich Creamer, Retired Police Sergeant, U.S. Navy Veteran, and Host of the Responder RESET Podcast.

There’s a lot of noise out there. A lot of solutions. But what’s missing? Connection. Credibility. Consistency.  If you’re still here—leading, learning, showing up for your people—you’re not alone. Let’s reset. Together.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Responder Reset Podcast. I'm your host, Rich Kramer. We spent decades teaching first responders how to respond to everyone else's crisis while spending very little time preparing them for their own. This isn't just another wellness podcast. This is where we challenge the culture. We challenge leadership. We challenge ourselves. Because awareness without action changes nothing. Whether you're a first responder, veteran, clinician, leader, or someone who simply wants to better understand this profession, I'm glad you're here. This is the Responder Reset Podcast. Now, let's do the work. Welcome back to the Responder Reset. I'm your host, Rich Kramer. Listen, I've been sitting with this topic for a while. Uh not because I didn't know what to say, I just wanted to make sure I said it the right way. Um, because, you know, in today's world, people don't always hear what you're saying. Um sometimes they hear what they want to argue, and this is not the episode for that. Um, so before we even get started, this is not an attack on our military, this is not an attack on special operations, our tier one operators, it's not an attack on veterans at all. Um shit. I'm I'm a veteran. So uh being that I served in the Navy, I've been most of my life has been spent around the military community. Uh, I've worked with veterans, I've learned from veterans. Uh, unfortunately, I've buried veterans. Um, and some of the strongest men and women I know uh wore this country's uniform. And this isn't about uh taking anything away from them at all. Um, it's about asking why we've spent so many years, I guess, taking something away from ourselves as first responders. Um and basically I I want to talk about it because it's been bothering me. Um the more I travel, more conferences I attend, uh, more social media fills my head, um, the more I notice a pattern. Um, some of the biggest voices in mental health right now uh come from elite military backgrounds, but whether it be the SEALs, special forces, rangers, delta, any operators, combat vets, um, and they're doing incredible work. Um, they're telling people it's okay to struggle. Uh, they're talking about therapy, uh, different modalities. Uh, you know, obviously here lately is the big push for for Ibegain. Uh, but they've been talking about therapy and trauma and identity and transition for a long time. Um, and I respect that. I genuinely respect that. Um, but the question I can't shake right now is why do we need them to tell us as first responders? Why does a police officer with 20 plus years uh on the street working investigations, working homicide, working violent crime, whatever it is, SWAT, suddenly suddenly believe uh mental health mattered because somebody from another profession has said it? Why did the firefighter that spent three decades basically pulling people from burning homes and vehicles and all of that uh trauma suddenly feel seen because somebody from another community shared their story? Uh why did a dispatcher that's carried thousands of calls and emergencies through a headset suddenly think, hey, maybe it's okay to ask for help? I've asked myself that question over and over, and I think the answer has less to do with them and everything to do with us. So I want to stop this thing off about borrowing credibility. Um, I think somewhere along the way, first responders stop believing our own experiences were enough. I want you to think about that for a second. Uh, we're constantly in this uh comparison, or we compare ourselves uh to other branches, uh other services, uh, whatever it may be, whether it's police versus fire, fire versus EMS, patrol versus detectives, uh urban policing versus rural policing, small town, busy agency, slow agency, all the comparisons. Everybody wants to know whose trauma counts the most, uh, who had it worse, uh, who's earned the right to struggle? And that's one of the most dangerous things we've ever done to ourselves. Um, trauma only kids that you were human when it happened. That's it. You know, I've watched first responders dismiss decades of accumulated trauma with one sentence.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

I wasn't in combat. Think about it. Think about that for one second.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

Twenty plus years, thousands of calls, deaths, violence, unfortunately, dead children, suicides, fatal crashes, human suffering, abuse, years of broken sleep, years of carrying everybody else's emergencies reduced to one sentence.

SPEAKER_01 5:06

I wasn't in combat. Why? Why do we do that to ourselves? See, the problem is over a course of time, uh I think we all kind of just push it on the job.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Um, we've we've pushed it on the job for for a long time, and I did it for years. Uh, whether it be, you know, 20, 22 years as a as a as a police officer, you know, working violent crime, uh, working critical incident stress management, peer support, the death notifications, you know, families collapsing into my arms uh at crime scenes, children screaming over their parents, bodies, blood, violence, all these things, the things that stay with you way after the investigation's complete or the report's finished. And yet, if somebody asked me years ago, do you think you've experienced trauma? I probably would have said, I'm fine, or I've seen some things. And that's the reality. And and I've caught myself saying that shit up until recently. Um and and uh I've always kind of had this, I don't know if it's a comparison thing, but I've always just put my own stuff to the side because I always believe that somebody is always going to have it a little bit worse than me.

SPEAKER_01 6:42

Um I don't know where that came from.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

I I I don't we I don't think I was ever taught that. Um, maybe, maybe it's something uh from my past. Uh, but but it can't, it's I know it's not just me. And I know it's a lot of you guys listening out there that are are probably doing the same thing. Um nobody has ever looked at a firefighter and said, you know what, you don't count because you've never been deployed. You know, nobody says that, nobody should say that. And nobody's ever going to go to somebody in the dispatch center and say something uh, you know, that that can't that can't affect you because of this, or that shouldn't affect you because you weren't there. Um, and these are all things, unfortunately, in my travels and unfortunately in the trainings that I that I do, these are all things that I hear um from folks that do the job day in and day out for a long, long time. Um I think we've just convinced ourselves that our own pain needs another profession to kind of validate it. Um but that's I I for some reason I can't wrap my head around it. Um not because I don't respect their stories. Their stories are amazing stories of of resilience and and uh battling through adversity, and and they've got amazing, amazing stories. Um but I think it's because I wish we respected ours just as much as theirs. You know, it's not a competition. You know, I I think for a lot of a lot of folks, that whole comparison thing uh becomes a competition because somewhere without realizing it, mental health unfortunately has become another competition. Who sacrificed war, who's had it harder, who's earned the right to struggle. Uh but can I tell you something after 20 plus years in policing? I've never once stood over a dead body and wondered if this tragedy ranked high enough to count for me.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

Um pain isn't scored. Trauma isn't ranked, and grief isn't a competition. You see, the human being experience is is something that it's tough of me to put into words. Like I I guess the best way to say it is human human beings experience human things.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Um some folks wear camo, some wear bunker gear, some wear headsets, some wear outer carriers, uh different uniforms, but at the end of the day, they're the same nervous systems, um, the same heart, the same brain, the same humanity.

SPEAKER_01 9:54

And that bill comes due for everybody.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

I think what's the most interesting about all of this is the more I listen to conversations, the more I realize that our cultures aren't nearly as different as we pretend they are. Um while the uniforms are different and the missions are different, uh environments are different, the culture. Culture sounds awfully familiar. Uh be tough, push through, handle it, don't complain. Mission comes first. Uh don't let people down, figure it out, keep moving. All this should sound very familiar to you. Because I don't know many first responders who haven't heard those same exact messages.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Uh maybe not word for word, but close enough. You know what both cultures reward though? The person who never needs help. The person who picks up the extra shift. The one who stays late. The one who always answers the phone. The one who never calls out. The one who never let anyone know that they were struggling. We celebrate them. We promote that. We point and say, That's what dedication looks like. But here's the problem. Sometimes what we're actually rewarding is a slow, slow self-destruction. You know, I spent over 20 years in policing. There were days I thought I was doing exactly what the profession expected of me. Push it down, move to the next call, go home, wake up, do it again. Wash, rinse, repeat. The problem is nobody told us to process it.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Nobody taught us what cumulative trauma looked like. Nobody explained that trauma isn't always the one big event.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Sometimes it's a thousand ordinary tragedies. Sometimes it's not the officer-involved shooting.

SPEAKER_00 12:12

It's the hundred suicides, it's the dozens of dead kids, the overdoses, the fatal crashes, the domestics, the missing kids, the death notifications, the smells you can't forget, the sounds that you can still hear, the face that randomly shows up twenty some odd years later while you're standing in line at the grocery store.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Nobody teaches you that trauma accumulates. It stacks. And one day, your nervous system that's been collecting all this data that you didn't even know you were creating. But here's why I think we miss it. We always talk about resilience. See, resilience came became resilience became confused with suppression. You know, those aren't the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

See, resilience isn't pretending that nothing affects you. It's not about carrying everything by yourself. Uh, it's not refusing help. That's that's fucking survival. See, real resilience is being honest enough to admit when that weight is getting too fucking heavy before it crushes you. Those are two very different things.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

You know, I've heard people say, it's just the job, though, Rich. It's just the job. You're right. It is. Human suffering is part of the job. Pretending it doesn't affect you, that's the lie. And we've repeated it for generations, generation after generation, until eventually nobody remembers where it started. Then something interesting happened.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Some incredibly respected military leaders began talking publicly. They talked about PTSD, they talked about therapy, they talked about marriage, they talked about transition, they talked about identity, depression, purpose, anxiety.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

They've admitted for years they've been carrying everything. And eventually it caught up to them. People listened, as they should have. But here's the question Did they teach us something new? Or did they just simply give us permission to believe something we already knew?

SPEAKER_00 14:57

Because if it's the second one, then maybe we've been waiting for permission all along. And that brings me to something that I think we as a culture need to own. As first responders, we've become really good at admiring courage from a distance. We applaud people for speaking up. We repost the videos, we quote the books, we buy the merch, we attend the conferences, and then we go back to work. And when the officer in our department says, I'm struggling, we get quiet. When the firefighter says, I think I need to talk to somebody, people start whispering.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

And when the dispatcher takes a mental health day, somebody calls them weak. How does that even make sense? How does that even make sense? We'll celebrate vulnerability as long as it belongs to somebody else. That's where the hypocrisy lies. Not the military leaders, not the folks that are coming back and talking about these things. Our hypocrisy.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Our hypocrisy as a culture. You see, we don't have a knowledge problem anymore. We don't have that awareness problem anymore. We can't point the finger at that. What we have is a fucking courage problem. And that courage problem is because we know the trauma exists. And we know that cumulative stress is real. And we know sleep deprivation changes you. We know burnout destroys relationships. And we know that PTSD just doesn't disappear.

SPEAKER_01 16:42

We know all of it. The science is there. We've been through the classes, we've we've seen the speakers. Why are we still pretending? Is it because pretending has just become part of the culture?

SPEAKER_00 17:02

And maybe. I don't know. It's it's kind of a crazy thing to say here, but just maybe. Maybe it's time to challenge our own culture the same way we admire others for challenging theirs. You see, one of the things that I've learned over the last few years is healing doesn't begin when someone else validates your experience.

SPEAKER_01 17:26

You see, healing begins the moment that you stop minimizing it. And that doesn't require a best-selling author. It doesn't require a decorated operator. It doesn't require permission, and it doesn't require honesty. But it has to be the honesty that we have access to, not somebody else's honesty. We gotta stop borrow stop borrowing courage.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

And that's a phrase that I've been thinking about for the past couple weeks is that whole borrowing courage. And I think that's exactly what we've been doing. We've been borrowing courage from people that we admire instead of recognizing we've had it inside us the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

The decorated veteran. These are the people that we're listening to. The tier one operator, the best-selling author, the celebrity, the influencer, the person with the biggest platform. Again, there's nothing wrong with that. Some of these people have changed lives, to include mine.

SPEAKER_00 18:43

But somewhere along the way, we started to believe that the message only mattered if it came from somebody extraordinary.

SPEAKER_01 18:52

That's where I think we've lost our way. Because I've sat in briefing rooms with enough fucking hotbreak for three lifetimes. And and what I what I don't understand is we we've we've got enough of that hotbreak in our culture that I I I don't think that we need the validation from outside. See, the problem is I've talked with cops, I've talked with firefighters, I've talked with dispatchers. None of them have a million followers. Most of them will never stand on a fucking stage. But please don't tell me they don't have something worth listening to. Or worth teaching us about what they're experiencing. See, the problem is here's what worries me. See, we become consumers of courage instead of practitioners of it.

SPEAKER_00 20:13

We watch somebody tell their story, we applaud it, we feel inspired to change. Then we go right back to hiding our own. You see, that inspiration lasts about as long as the flight home from the conference. See, Monday morning comes and uh that radio turn back, that radio turns back on, the you know, the tones drop, the calls keep coming, and we're right back to where we started.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

Because courage isn't something that you watch, it's something you practice every single day. You see, you know what's actually courageous? Walking into therapy before your marriage falls apart. Telling your crew you're not okay. Calling somebody, a peer, or somebody in your peer support unit before you convince yourself you don't need to talk. Taking a day off before your body makes the decision for you.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Looking at your kids and realizing they deserve more than the exhausted version of you that the job has left behind.

SPEAKER_01 21:32

That's what courage is. Not because it's dramatic, because it's uncomfortable. You see, I've had people tell me, Rich, I just don't think my story's important. Every time I hear that, I ask them this question compared to who? Compared to what? Who decided your story had to meet a certain criteria before it battered? Was it the one dead child? Five, ten, the one fatal crash, twenty of them, the one shooting, or five of them. Where the fuck's the line? And who drew it? Because I promise you, trauma doesn't give a fuck about your scorecard. Your nervous system isn't keeping stats.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

It doesn't say, well, this person only experienced 12 critical incidents, so we're not gonna we're not gonna respond. Your nervous system is gonna say, ah, they've only had 12. It's no big deal. Just doesn't work that way. You see, the brain responds to repeated exposure. The heart responds to repeated loss. And the body responds to chronic stress.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

That's the fucking biology of it. Not weakness. These are all things, whether you believe it or not, will creep up on you.

SPEAKER_00 23:08

And one of the biggest mistakes we've made in public safety is confusing extraordinary moments with cumulative ones. We wait for the catastrophic event, the shooting, the line of duty death, the mass casualty incident.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

And yes, those events absolutely matter. But if it wasn't what if it wasn't one call? What if it was 10,000? What if it wasn't one horrible shift? What if it was over 20 years of horrible moments stitched together? What if that finally catches up to you?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

Because that's what that cumulative trauma is. It's, and you've heard me say this before, and I'm sure you've heard other people say it, it's the death of a thousand paper cuts. No single cut kills you, but eventually you realize you've been bleeding the whole fucking time. And not only just bleeding, but bleeding all over everybody else. Your reactions, your responses, your behavior. It's all bleeding on your family members, it's bleeding on your partners, it's bleeding on your coworkers. And you're not even realizing it because you're comparing or waiting for that big, one big incident.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Then you can say that you're struggling. And I think that that's why this conversation and why this topic is so important and why this matters.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Uh, because I don't want another generation of first responders believing they have to earn the right to heal. You've already earned that day the moment you raise your right hand and accepted responsibility for seeing what most people spend their h their whole lives hoping that they never experience.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Not because your trauma is greater, not because your suffering is worse, but because you're human. And at the end of the day, humans carry things.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

You see, I think about all the years I spent telling officers to take care of themselves.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Meanwhile, to be honest with you, I wasn't very good at taking my own advice. You know, maybe you know that feeling.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

You you know, you're the one that everybody calls, you're the fixer, uh, you're dependable, you're the calm one. People assume that because you're helping everyone else. Uh people assume that you must be okay. And that's another lie that profession tells us. Sometimes the strongest person in the room is also carrying the most the most weight. And the longer everyone believes that they're the strong one, the less likely anyone is ask is going to ask how they're really doing.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

And that's why I don't want us borrowing courage anymore. I want us building it. Inside our own departments, in on inside our own stations, inside our own communication centers, inside our own families. I want us to become the people the next generation points to. And not because we had the biggest platform, but because we had the courage to change our own culture. So where do we go from here? I guess this is the reset because this episode isn't about convincing you up that trauma exists. I think we know that. Um it isn't convincing you that mental health matters. I think we've moved way past that conversation. This episode's about something much simpler. It's about ownership. It's about owning your story. It's about owning your career. And it's owning what it cost you and owning what it gave you. And understanding that both of those things can exist at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

You see, the job gave me purpose, it gave me lifelong friendships, it gave me experiences I'll never forget. It also gave me opportunities to stand beside people on the worst day of their lives.

SPEAKER_01 28:06

It taught me leadership, it taught me humility, it taught me service. And I'm grateful for every bit of it. But it also took something. And pretending that it didn't doesn't even do justice for honoring the profession. It actually dishonors it.

SPEAKER_00 28:30

Because if we can't be honest about what the career costs, how do we expect the next generation to prepare for it? You see, one of the biggest mistakes we made in public safety is believing that acknowledging the cost somehow diminishes the calling.

SPEAKER_01 28:48

It doesn't. If anything, it elevates it. Think about that for a second. If I tell you policing affected me, does that make me weaker?

SPEAKER_00 29:01

Or does it simply tell you that how much I invested in the people that I served?

SPEAKER_01 29:10

If I tell you I still remember the names and faces of children I couldn't save, is that weakness? Or is that evidence that I never stopped caring? Somehow we've confused compassion with fragility. They're not the same. And sometimes that means sometimes it means you weren't paying attention. You see, the fact that something hurts you doesn't mean you're weak. Sometimes it means you actually have a hot. And thank God for that.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Because the day none of this affects us is the day we should probably stop doing it. I want to say something directly to uh a lot of the young officers, young firefighters, uh, young EMS dispatchers, etc. Anybody that's young into the public safety arena.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

Don't wait 20 years. Don't wait until your marriage is hanging by a thread. Don't wait until alcohol becomes your coping strategy. Don't wait until your kids stop talking to you. Don't wait until retirement to discover you have no idea who the fuck you are without the job. Learn from our generation. Not just from what we did right. Learn from what we've gotten wrong too. And God knows we've gotten a lot more wrong than we what we've done right. You see, we gotta start normalizing the conversation now.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

We've got to start building relationships and connections now.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Take care of yourself now. Not because you're weak. Because you're planning on surviving a career instead of just enduring one.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

And to those that are listening that have been doing this for 20, 25, 30 fucking years, it ain't too late for you either. I know some of you are thinking, well, that's just who I am now. That it's just who I am.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

This is just this is what the job did to me. I don't believe it. I've watched too many people find healing after retirement.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

And I've watched marriages rebuild, and I've watched people reconnect with their kids, and I've watched people finally get the sleep that they need, and I've watched people stop carrying everything alone.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

It's possible. But it's not to one decision to stop pretending.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

I want to leave you with one final thought on this episode. You see, the voices we admired didn't become influential because they were the toughest people in the room.

SPEAKER_01 32:20

They became influential because they were finally honest enough to tell the truth. That's what's changed lives.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

Not their resume, not their combat record, not their rank, their honesty. And if honesty changed lives for them, why couldn't it change lives for us? So here's my challenge. Stop waiting for permission. Stop waiting for somebody with a different uniform, uh a bigger platform, more followers, more awards, or a different story to tell you that they're well, tell you that your experiences matter.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

They already do.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

They mattered the first time you couldn't save somebody. They mattered the first time you drove home in silence because you didn't know how to explain your day. They mattered every time you carried someone else's burden so they wouldn't have to carry it alone.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

You don't need borrowed courage. You need your own. Because courage isn't found in somebody else's story.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

It's found the moment you decide to stop running from yours. So respect to my veterans, uh, respect to the operators, respect to the people opening the doors.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

Um, I'll continue to myself. But don't let your admiration for their journey become an excuse to ignore your own. Yes, different missions, but same humanity, same nervous system, and same heart. But we all have the same need to heal.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

And maybe, just maybe, the next generation of first responders won't need permission from anybody. Because we'll finally become the generation that gives it to ourselves. I'm Rich Kremer, and that is episode 12. Um, something that has been wearing heavily on me for months now. Um, I really wanted to get this message out. Uh, I want you guys to continue doing the work, continue doing the work on yourselves, continue uh making it more about you than everybody else. And stay tuned. There's there's a lot more to come with the Respond to Reset podcast. We're gonna be shifting gears a little bit. Um, we're gonna start talking about um in the next episode about the wellness hangover. Um, you've heard me talk about it, how we're a bit awarenessed out, and and you heard me kind of hit on some things in this episode, but stay tuned. Stay tuned for the next episode, which is gonna be the wellness hangover. Uh, thanks for tuning in. You know how to get in touch with me. I'll drop the links uh in the caption. Uh the responderreset.org is not only my page if you'd like for me to come talk to your agency, uh, instruct for your agency, uh, or even just want to reach out and tell me what you think about the platform that we have here with the reset. Um love to hear any and all feedback, good, bad, ugly, whatever it may be. Um, you can get in touch with me on on all of the social media platforms. I'm easy to find. Uh Rich Creamer underscore 77 on Instagram, um, as well as uh hit me up uh on the professional LinkedIn as well. So thanks again for tuning in, and uh look forward to uh our next episode, like I said, the the wellness hangover. Thanks again. If this hit home, pass it on. If you're carrying the weight, don't do it by yourself. Until next time, shift the mindset, change the outcome.