Podcast on Crimes Against Women
The Conference on Crimes Against Women (CCAW) is thrilled the announce the Podcast on Crimes Against Women (PCAW). Continuing with our fourth season, the PCAW releases new episodes every Monday. The PCAW serves as an extension of the information and topics presented at the annual Conference, providing in-depth dialogue, fresh perspectives, and relevant updates by experts in the fields of victim advocacy, criminal justice, medicine, and more. This podcast’s format hopes to create a space for topical conversations aimed to engage and educate community members on the issue of violence against women, how it impacts our daily lives, and how we can work together to create lasting cultural and systemic change.
Podcast on Crimes Against Women
Healing Heroes: Dr. T's Holistic Approach to First Responder Wellness
What happens when those who save others need saving themselves? Behind the badge, helmet, or uniform lies a harsh reality few civilians understand: our first responders are suffering in silence.
Dr. Heather Twedell (Dr. T), forensic psychologist and founder of F1RST, pulls back the curtain on the devastating toll that repeated trauma takes on police officers, firefighters, paramedics, and dispatchers. With a brother and father in law enforcement, she combines professional expertise with personal understanding to revolutionize how we approach first responder wellness.
The statistics are alarming—first responders experience significantly higher rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, substance abuse, and divorce than the general population. But Dr. T explains why this happens through a fascinating exploration of how trauma physically changes the brain and body. That smell at a restaurant that suddenly triggers a police officer's fight-or-flight response? That's the brain's danger-detection system at work, months after a traumatic call.
Most compelling is Dr. T's innovative approach to healing. F1RST brings together therapists, nutritionists, physical therapists, and even horses to build resilience in our community protectors. The equine therapy program provides immediate feedback on emotional regulation that many participants say brings more awareness than years of traditional therapy.
Perhaps most powerful is Dr. T's insight into how first responder trauma affects entire families through "nervous system synchronization"—where a spouse or child unconsciously absorbs the stress and anxiety the first responder brings home. By including families in the healing process, F1RST addresses the ripple effects of trauma that conventional programs miss.
Want to support the first responders in your life or community? Listen now to understand what they're experiencing and discover practical ways to help those who've dedicated their lives to helping others.
The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
Speaker 2:In this country, 31 million crimes 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes there is a murder. Every five minutes there is a rape. Every two to five minutes there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business and I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women. I'm Maria McMullin. On the face of it, the role of the first responder is to simply protect and serve. As modest as that may sound, the job of a first responder expands much broader and delves much deeper than those two words suggest. First responders typically work long hours with high stress situations, making split second decisions in a position that comes with high demands from both their peers and the public alike. Additionally, first responders are required to remain on the cutting edge of information technology rules and regulations, while fighting to not only ensure other people's safety, but to keep themselves safe as well. Therefore, as one can imagine, the duty of a first responder can take a huge toll on their psychological and physical well-being. Although many strides have been made, a focus on the mental health of society's strong is still oftentimes met with derision that can put the lives of victims and survivors in danger and decrease the quality of life for first responders and their families. Today's conversation will be with Dr Twedell, whose mission is to dispel the myths and misconceptions associated with cognitive therapy and performance recovery and to highlight the valuable benefits of comprehensive wellness for first responders.
Speaker 1:Dr Heather Twedell, aka Dr T, is a forensic psychologist who is deeply dedicated to providing support to first responders and their families, while relentlessly paving a new standard of wellness for state and federal agencies. Her doctorate in forensic psychology, years of work with first responders and with a brother and father in law enforcement, dr T has a strong appreciation and understanding of the culture and stressors specific to this line of work. As the CEO and founder of FIRST, dr T has developed a comprehensive wellness program that fosters preventative action from departments, the first responder and his or her family members through training, conditioning, wellness checks and holistic health approaches. She's also an integral part of the R-Watch team providing equine-assisted resiliency training for first responders and their families with the healing power of horses. Dr T is committed in her efforts to ensure first responders are provided a proactive approach to their health and well-being to preserve quality of life as they sacrifice greatly to serve others.
Speaker 1:Dr T, welcome to the show, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. This is a really interesting topic, something I hadn't thought much about prior to learning about the work that you do, and you're a psychologist. So, in your field of psychology, what led you to working with individuals in law enforcement and other service providers?
Speaker 3:So I always had a love for just human behavior and psychology. I focused on it, obviously, in college. But I do come from a family of first responders. So, being raised by a police officer and a nurse, and then my brother is also a police officer and a nurse, and then my brother is also a police officer and also a vet, my older brother is a private security, that world is just familiar to me. I never thought that I would go into it, especially in the capacity of first responder psychology. But I think through my education paired with my personal connection to first responders, my education paired with my personal connection to first responders, as I continued to get more education, it just became clear of how poorly we approach the health of first responders and it felt more like a calling of just hey, there's a path forward here for better solutions. And I was able to pull on both the personal and professional side to be able to get to the point where we're at today with first that's so interesting.
Speaker 1:So was it the experience of the people who are close to you that are first responders that, like most interest you in this topic.
Speaker 3:You know I think I grew up, you know, doing a lot of ride-alongs with my dad and whatnot. But, as most first responder family members especially kids of first responders will know, the parents do a really good job of trying to protect the family members from understanding what it is exactly that they deal with day to day. So I never really knew exactly the types of traumas my dad and brother were exposed to. And then, I think, through college, as I was getting my bachelor's, you know, trauma didn't really become a thing until I got into my doctorate programs, my doctorate's in forensic psychology, and once I got through my practicums, internships, I ended up at LA County Sheriff's Department as a postdoc and then eventually a law enforcement psychologist opened my eyes to.
Speaker 3:I've always respected and appreciated my family members who serve. But just truly, a further peek behind that curtain of understanding what exactly happens to the brain with trauma, how that shows up in someone's body, but more so like what does that look like when they get home? And I think that's where, you know, just the heart of FIRST came from is because I just I have a love for first responders, because I have family members in that space, but just knowing that they deserve more, given how much they sacrifice.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. Now we're using the term first responder, but that may mean different things to different people, so let's set it up In your experience, how do you define first responder and how does that definition help curate your programming and training?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a great question. I think initially, when starting the program, you know we're looking at local, state and federal agencies. So thinking of fire, police, ems, corrections dispatchers, federal agents, really that public servant that is in a high stress, high trauma exposure, high performance field is where we focus our programming. The beauty of the FIRST program is because we take such a holistic approach to just the human being, regardless of what uniform they're wearing.
Speaker 3:FIRST has been able to expand not only from the FIRST responder space but also into professional athletes, not only from the first responder space but also into professional athletes, industrial athletes, teachers, students, and so we've kind of packaged health in that way that it can expand to others. But our forte and our focus has always been the first responder different fields that I just mentioned.
Speaker 1:Got it. Your organization is called FIRST and for people listening who may want to look it up, it's F number one, rst, which sort of pays homage to first responders but also symbolizes what you do, which is to put the health and wellness of service providers first. So tell us how FIRST got started and what sets it apart from other similar organizations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so, as I mentioned, you know, I used to work for Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, so I'm from Southern California, moved to Texas about six years ago, didn't know anybody, and I knew that I had this opportunity to just create something new when it came to not just my career but how we approach first responder health. And I knew that I didn't want to create just a mental health treatment center, because there's already so many great treatment centers. For me that still felt a little reactive and I knew that, again, coming from the family side of things and professional side, these first responders really need to be better equipped with skills to endure the type of unique stressors this job puts on them. So that's where I started first, about three and a half, almost four years ago, started with just one department and really understanding what do they have when it comes to wellness, because wellness can be such this vague term as can stress, and I've found that departments really don't know how to package it and make it tangible for their first responders. So working closely with that first fire department and starting to build out education because for us it's so big on before we build out the rest of the programming first responders, if you want them to be healthy, they have to be informed and what I have found is we do a great job initially, you know, in the academy, of getting them physically ready, but we really skip over some of the biggest threats to their quality of life, which is the mental and emotional health of what they go through.
Speaker 3:So, starting with education with these departments and then building more of a holistic approach to it, and that means including not just therapists and psychologists but also physical therapists and manual therapists so they understand, like, how to use exercise, how to prepare their vessel for the job. It includes nutritionists, because what they put in their body absolutely matters, especially getting through long shifts A research team, exercise physiologists, performance coaches really all experts of health around that first responder and their family members. And so, from that one department building that out because there's such a need, we quickly went from one department almost four years ago to fast forward today we now serve over 200 departments, as well as work with the DEA and the FBI. Just because, again, I think it speaks to not only the negligent or lacking approach to health, but also because I think they're ready, I think that we're done with the whole.
Speaker 3:You know it's weak to show emotion or it's weak to say like, hey, this job's taking a toll on me and my family. When we try to do that approach or we ask first responders to white knuckle it, we end up with devastating statistics, suicide being one of them. But beyond suicide, anxiety, depression, divorce rates, substance use all of those are higher for first responders in general population, which shows that we haven't been approaching health the right way. So not only has the program, I think, packaged the right way so departments can have sustainable programming, but I think these first responders and the leaders within these departments are ready, which is very refreshing and really great to work with as the program continues to grow.
Speaker 1:That's an incredible scale over four years to have that many participating departments and organizations, and it sounds like a very holistic approach that you've put together. What are some of the outcomes you've seen over the past few years?
Speaker 3:approach that you've put together. What are some of the outcomes you've seen over the past few years? Well, I think starting with just helping people realize that health doesn't there doesn't have to be that stigma. So when we come into departments and start with education, there's always a huge uptick in therapy requests as soon as we're done training that department. Because I think in the moment of a first responder who maybe has been doing this type of career for 12 years and has just been either white knuckling it or feeling like you know, I'm doing okay, this is one of those careers because trauma works this way. This is one of those careers where it's not just about the one call.
Speaker 3:Most of these responders, it's the different calls that just start to pile up in their file cabinet and then one day they just it hits their, it hits their system. And so when you educate them which what we do, is when we go into these departments and start with education, not just from someone like myself, teaching them the impact of trauma, but having our physical therapists speak to them and our nutritionists speak to them. That really gives them, I think, that starting point to say you know what? I could be healthier starting today and I have some tools now on how to do it, but I don't have to do this alone. I have a team around me.
Speaker 3:So the uptick in these first responders reaching out for therapy, I think, is a great sign, but also, as we've rolled out the other more holistic approaches just you know learning from departments of looking at recruitment and retention how hard it is to keep good first responders because sometimes there's a lack of wellness that once they have wellness programming, retention usually goes up, as does recruitment.
Speaker 3:We have seen and one story I love is there, you know the new generation coming forward to want to be first responders. I don't know if it's because health is just so much more accepted and talked about nowadays, but these younger first responders value it. And one of the chiefs was talking to us saying hey, we're not the highest paying department out there. We know we're up against some local departments who pay higher than we do, but in the interview these questions keep coming up with what do you do for the wellness of your first responders? And they are seeing some of these first responders will take a lower paying job if they know the department has wellness for them and their families, which I think that is a huge shift for this population moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That's a very interesting observation and outcome from the work that you're doing and I think it's really positive as well. So FIRST also has a very unique component that is incorporated into first responder therapy and that is an equine program. How have you found equine therapy to be beneficial to first responders?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, so I actually. So Our Watch is the nonprofit that we've partnered with and I actually met Our Watch before I started first. So when I first moved to Texas and you know I'm from Southern California, so I haven't, I'm not doing a bunch of horseback riding. You know I love animals, but when I first thought horses and all this, I'm like this is not going to be my strong suit but it has nothing to do with horseback riding and there's actually no horseback riding. It's all about getting out to this space and working with these equine coaches Susan and Jerry are the founders, who are also first responder family members, which makes it really unique.
Speaker 3:But understanding that it's all about connection and trauma exposure and time away from family members and stress and policy changes everything that comes with first responder health. It can create wedges with the people who matter the most to you and we always like to say that your number one resiliency tool to get through this career is to stay connected to the people that you love, and so if we aren't tactful with connection, which comes with the trauma exposure piece, you can really threaten those relationships. So coming out to a ranch not only being out in nature helps you return to the connection with yourself. It slows everything down so that your body can actually speak up. Or usually all of us, I think, can get in the mode of just going through the motions and bulldozing through our days and we forget that our body's maybe trying to tell us something. So the connection starts the moment they step out on that ranch.
Speaker 3:But then, when it comes to the horses, it's all about how to connect with this large animal. And horses are herd animals and you are entering into their herd and a really cool piece is because they're so large, they don't wanna exert energy if they don't need to. So if one member of the herd is dysregulated in any way, the horses are gonna give feedback because they want them to get more regulated. So they're not exerting that unnecessary energy. They're reserving that for when they need it to either run, sleep, play, whatever that looks like.
Speaker 3:So when you bring a first responder who's dysregulated into a round pen where it's just them and a 1200 pound animal and it might be they become dysregulated because of the large animal, or it could be they were dysregulated before they got there because they got in a fight with the spouse on the way there. There was a pediatric called two shifts prior that they haven't really dealt with. They just didn't sleep the last three nights. Their system's all out of whack. You put them in a round pen, you put them next to a horse and that feedback and watching not the demand, but the messaging from a horse to a human of hey, let's slow this moment down If we're going to connect and do this together is so, so beautiful to watch, first of all. But we have had first responders out of that space say what happened in this round pen today brought more awareness to what I've been doing with my life and my relationships than maybe like three years of therapy.
Speaker 1:Wow, that is brilliant. I had no idea that was how equine therapy works. Yes, yes, yes, and I didn't even think about how effective it could be for someone who is dysregulated. I'm glad you shared that with us. Now are there situations where equine therapy is the preferred method over traditional therapy?
Speaker 3:I would say I think, just because for me as a psychologist, because I am in that room at times, I always think that when you are approaching health therapeutic intervention, keep variety. Your brain, your system is going to respond differently to different modalities, so I wouldn't just put everything into one, I would keep it fresh. One thing that I loved is when COVID hit. I didn't love when COVID hit, but when COVID hit I loved was with the social distancing and not being able to sit with my first responders in the therapy room. I reached out to Jerry and Susan, founders of Our Watch, and I was like, hey, can I just do walk and talks and I just take the responder out there and just have that space. And as the person providing the therapy, what I will say is what these first responders said.
Speaker 3:As far as like the impact greater in one session versus years in therapy, I felt that even as the therapist where walking and talking with them, watching them talk about a trauma where maybe they had felt like it was their fault, and as the tears are coming and they are sitting on the grass and they're just, the sun shines on their face and they are releasing some of that guilt and like a bird is flying over and it's almost like you can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 3:It's like nature and that moment and the horses are nearby. Everything created a safe enough space for the system to release, and I think sometimes nature and connection with what this earth provides is so much more powerful than what a couch in a room can provide. And so, as another human being in that experience with them, I would say to any therapist like, switch it up, do walk and talks, even if you don't have access to a ranch. Like, get your people outside, but just understanding that you know the more creative you are when it comes to what someone might need, that will help therapy. Not feel cookie cutter, because everyone's needs are so different, but what we do know as human beings, we all are more regulated when we are able to be out in nature. So get outside for your healing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's another brilliant idea and I actually get the chills when you talk about it because it sounds so profound and yet so simple to just do the walk and talk and be outside. So because first responders experience different forms of trauma, so they can have primary trauma or secondary or vicarious trauma, and often at a higher rate than a lot of other professionals. Help us understand what that trauma looks like in each scenario and why it's so prevalent amongst first responders.
Speaker 3:Yes. Well, I think for everyone to remember that trauma isn't just a moment. When that moment passes, your brain is doing something with exposure and so we experience our world through the five senses, right. So you have to think about, when I'm at this scene, that many people will have no idea. They'll live their whole lives and not know what that sounds like from a screaming mother, or the smells or the visual details or even like the taste in the air when it's happening. Like many human beings will not experience that.
Speaker 3:But for a first responder, like that could be a typical Tuesday. So just alone, the amount of calls they go on automatically increases the level of exposure. But now, if you think about, the brain is an association maker. So now it has just taken maybe that certain smell that was at that terrible scene and it's connected those two things together and it's put like a little post-it note on it and the brain only works with two post-it notes either safety or danger, and it could be perceived threats, right. So it's put this now danger post-it note on this.
Speaker 3:So now it could be five weeks later and the first responder is at a restaurant with their family member and maybe they're thinking like I haven't even thought about the call. I'm not having nightmares, I feel good. It was a bad call but we got through it. And now they're sitting at this restaurant and the brain overgeneralizes all the time, it likes to take shortcuts for us.
Speaker 3:And there's a smell in that restaurant that's even somewhat familiar to the smell five weeks ago and your brain's going to take that in, check the Rolodex and say hold on, we've been here before, what is this? And it's going to see that there's a danger post-it note associated and it's going to release all the same chemicals into your system that it did when you had to get through that call five weeks ago. So now you have a first responder sitting at a table and all those chemicals throw you into fight, flight or freeze and the primary way they show up as an emotion is anxiety and irritability. So now to the family members at that table. You know, maybe the kiddo spills the milk and the first responder has like a really intense response. So you see these disproportionate responses during a trigger where the family members, if they don't understand it, they might be like why is daddy so upset?
Speaker 3:Or gosh mommy has such a short fuse, or mommy doesn't like going to dinner with us, or dad you know.
Speaker 3:And they make these assumptions, not realizing, and maybe if the first responder hasn't been trained on what a trigger is, they don't even know what's happening in their body. So that's where information is so key, because trauma can live in the brain and if it's not processed the right way, it can stay in this high alert, ready for the next threat to happen. And until we get that processed and stored in the right way, I wish we could get rid of the memory. We can't. But storing it in the right place helps the brain realize that we can come out of threat mode and back into a more regulated state.
Speaker 3:And that's why, especially, you see that in the first three days after an incident and there's things that the first responder can do that can help and hurt that but if you don't teach them how to send safety signals back to their body, we're really leaving trauma as like in the driver's seat of their life. Because now there's just trauma, after trauma, after trauma, and the brain doesn't now know is this world of mine safe or dangerous? And the brain will always err on the side of caution. Now the brain just thinks this whole world is dangerous. And now the first responder can barely come out of fight or flight because the system is conditioned to be ready.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you using that example because of the smell associated with an experience of trauma, because I think it's something that, even if you're not a first responder, you can relate to that type of an experience, maybe at least once in your life, right, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Because we all experience trauma on a spectrum. Yes, there are some that are worse than others, but it all comes back to not comparing it. It all comes back to like how did my brain just process that and how does that make my vessel feel? And, more importantly, like how do I know how to help it when it gets triggered? Because even if you've been in a minor car crash, that can feel very traumatic. That's a helpless feeling of someone else maybe ran into you and whatnot, and that's something that any of us could go through.
Speaker 3:And now it's time to get back in the car and there might be high anxiety. There might be high anxiety next time you let somebody else drive. And now we have behavior of you know, I can barely get in the car or I always have to be the person to drive. And people don't realize that is their brain keeping that association of that one car wreck as cars, other people driving, is now associated with danger, and now they can't be comfortable in a car. Well, that's not that's, that's a slip of quality of life right there. And so if we don't teach people how to manage their own traumas, I think that's where my field has really messed this up, where we only look at how unprocessed trauma shows up in someone's life anxiety, depression, irritability, drinking too much. Where we've gotten so good at labeling the manifestation of unprocessed trauma rather than just coming back to the root and being like what happened to where the system thinks it's no longer safe.
Speaker 3:And if we target that, that can help the brain make a new association that that moment wasn't safe. But I have agency to bring safety back and that can be incredibly empowering to give that back to someone who has been through something helpless.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Now we're talking a lot about the brain, but how else does all of this trauma negatively affect other areas of the body?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think you know it all starts with the brain. That's like you know. It's it's information center. But if you take the brain and slice it into these three areas, I kind of like to call it this like stress sandwich, where we're targeting that middle part that is determining do I need to be in fight, flight or freeze?
Speaker 3:Right Is there a threat or not. And so once the brain determines that there is a threat and it releases those chemicals. One of those is cortisol. That's a stress hormone, right? So if someone's walking around in a chronic state of just fight or flight, hello chronic stress, hello chronic cortisol, and that's inflammation in the system. And when you have chronic cortisol and chronic inflammation, hello sudden cardiac arrest, type 2 diabetes, certain cancers, high blood pressure, memory fog, and then everyone's favorite is the cortisol tire which is waking right around the midsection.
Speaker 3:So when we talk about the vessel and how that relates back to mental health, if you're dealing first of all with any of those medical issues that can be very stressful, all with any of those medical issues that can be very stressful, and that helplessness can come back in because you can't, you feel like you're kind of stuck now with this disease, this medical issue, and that can really, you know, cause issues when it comes to depression, anxiety, quality of life, irritability, and so we got to keep the vessel healthy. And if we can't, for first responders, we can't prevent the next trauma. We know that there's going to be another one, another one, there may be 200 plus more ahead of them and their system's already inflamed. So that's where. How do you use food to help with anti-inflammatory? How do you use movement to decrease cortisol in the system? How do you use breath, work and grounding to tell the system that it's time to calm down and drop those cortisol levels?
Speaker 3:So really approaching the vessel from those other experts is only going to help the system. When it comes to now, the vessel is healthier. The brain is way more primed to now look at mindset how you make decisions way more primed. To now look at mindset how you make decisions, how you talk to yourself. It's going to be more clear to access those things where, if the system's inflamed, that can absolutely go up into the brain. And now we have the brains inflamed and it's hard to see light when everything can start to feel dark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it sounds like each person is going to need an individualized plan to approach their own well-being.
Speaker 3:Yes, I think the biggest thing is we always tell people you know self-awareness and intentionality. You have to be self-aware of what is your body telling you, what are your relationships telling you, what does your own life look like, what is currently on your plate when it comes to stress, like that is your responsibility, and then, once you're aware of it, we can't just sit there and look at it. You have to be intentional with maybe making some shifts or pivots in your life to get healthier. But when it comes to health in general, what we know so much about the human system, we can offer these individuals, who all have different journeys, different paths, different lives. We can offer them what we know about the human system and that could work for every single one of them. How you breathe when you're stressed, how you ground, how you move your body we know all of that just down to the human body, human system. So we can apply that to your life, even though your life looks different than the next person's.
Speaker 1:And I understand that FIRST offers an interdisciplinary program. Can you provide a breakdown of what interdisciplinary means as it relates to your programs and services, and why is that important?
Speaker 3:Yes. So that comes back to again that holistic approach. So finding experts in the field of health and wellness in general and trauma, so having culturally competent therapists would be one area, one field that we need to have ready to go. Then you need to have the nutritionists who understand stress and high performance. Then you need to have the physical component of injury mitigation with an injury prevention and injury recovery, with physical and manual therapists, and they have to understand not just the human system with injury, but what types of injuries do we tend to see with first responders because of what is asked of their system?
Speaker 3:You know, someone in patrol going from sitting for four hours to all of a sudden a high speed foot pursuit. That's a lot to ask of the body and hello, injuries, even if you are the most fit person in the room. So, really teaching them how to work with those four hours leading up to the foot pursuit, how do we help them have mindfulness so that we're helping with the injury, because, again, we can't remove the threat but we can help them have tools to implement, even in their shift. Exercise physiologists, the research team so that's really what that interdisciplinary team means is we all come from different disciplines, but we are all working together towards the mission of keeping quality of life in place. From all of these angles, we're aiming from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's another brilliant response or brilliant idea for this type of approach for first responders, because first responders, in addition to all of this trauma and the pressure and the lifestyle that they have to live, they also have a high lethality rate, especially when it comes to domestic disturbance calls. Is there anything preventative that first responders or the agencies they work for can do that would help facilitate safety and, potentially, reduction of lethality?
Speaker 3:Yes, I think that's a great question because you know, being well isn't going to necessarily buffer you from some of these very real threats that you are responding to. But what it can do is again it comes back to that regulation piece If you have been practicing wellness and regulation and practicing stress too, that's a very important piece, and what I mean by that is when you practice stress on your own terms, whether it's exercising, whether it's cold, plunging, having difficult conversations, things that make you uncomfortable when you build that window of tolerance for stress, the system doesn't get as hijacked when stress you didn't ask for hits your plate. And if the system isn't getting as hijacked, then it's not taking you on such a physiological high and low, which could lead to some of those medical issues we're talking about. So that regulation piece, priming them for that moment when they show up to a different call from a health perspective, is already going to help them. But what I would encourage departments to do on top of health and wellness is effective interactions. So much of the time, because the system, I think, is so ready for the next threat.
Speaker 3:What you could have is a system that responds first and sometimes it always comes down to safety.
Speaker 3:So you know they're trained to do that piece and that's out of my lane.
Speaker 3:I'll let them do the training piece. But if you are interacting with someone who's also dysregulated, having the skills on how to de-escalate a situation and the skills on how to make sure your partner is a little bit more regulated before we show up and we know we're going into something intense so that we don't have survival mode of the brain having a very reactive system and now we either might make a mistake, excessive use of force, we might not think as clearly because we're not thinking during trauma exposure. We're surviving it. Because we're not thinking during trauma exposure, we're surviving it. But if the system hasn't practiced that and doesn't know how to regulate or, to use their words, how to deescalate someone in front of them with a weapon, that's a skill set that has to be. It's just as important as then, maybe, how to make the arrest or fire the weapon. Is that kind of spot right before things maybe get bad or get lethal is how could we have de-escalated this with additional skills training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that you point out that we should practice stress. We should have situations where we are uncomfortable. We probably do every day and we don't even know that we're intentionally practicing stress, but learning to manage it can definitely lead to better reactions or responses when something comes our way. So thank you for including that information for us. We've talked a lot about the first responder, the person who is in this line of work. Let's talk a little bit more about their relatives, because your organization also includes a wellness program for relatives of first responders. What is the motivation for including them in the process?
Speaker 3:I think, like we spoke about before, connection is key, and I think we all can relate to this that when your home life is healthier and more regulated, that's going to translate to how you show up at work and vice versa, right, and so, while we may not always be able to change the personalities they work with or the leaders they work under, or the policy changes and policies they have to deal with, that can possibly follow them home. And now you know we're displacing some of that frustration that belongs at work on the family members. We can't always change that part. We can teach them how to buffer that piece, but we can work from the opposite side, where the things that we can control is how you spend time with your family members, how you resolve conflict when there's conflict with your family members, how to hold space for your family members, and what I mean by that there's a few things with this is when you have someone who is responding, like I said, to that call on a Tuesday and like that's their Tuesday and that's first responder terrible call Tuesday. And they come home and their spouse has had a Tuesday too, but their Tuesday is like right here, right, we see this all the time where all I have to do is show the first responder this and say what might happen when there's this gap and the first responder an honest one is always going to say, oh, I'm going to minimize their stress.
Speaker 3:I'm going to look at their stress and be like are you kidding me? That's what you're upset about. You have no idea. You should have seen what I had to deal with. And when you have a high stress job in a relationship that can become almost this competition of whose stress is worse, right, and that will divide relationships very quickly. Because the next question I ask is okay, if we're constantly doing this and looking down at this other relationship, saying, really, is that what you're stressed about? What message are you sending them? You're sending the message that either their stress isn't important, their pains don't matter, their victories aren't as great, and what?
Speaker 3:happens when any of us feel that way, why would we share anymore?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very diminishing.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's very diminishing. Yeah, it's very diminishing. I'm going to shut down, I'm going to stop sharing or I'm going to go share it with other people who make me actually feel valued in that.
Speaker 3:And so the first responder didn't intentionally push a loved one away, but because of this high stress exposure and this dynamic of well, who's stress is worse or better, it can create a very terrible wedge. So it's really teaching them. First of all, it's not about better or worse, it's their stress is different than yours. They didn't sign up for this type of job, right? But that doesn't mean that they don't deserve to have their stress held for them. So if the first responder is dysregulated after that Tuesday, call how to regulate when they get back to the station, how to regulate on the way home, how to regulate in the driveway, so regulate when they get back to the station, how to regulate on the way home, how to regulate in the driveway, so that when they show up, both of their needs can be expressed and the question can then be hey, I see you, what do you need from me, rather than what's your problem? And because the two questions can be have very different responses, so teaching them about just the difference in stress, but also teaching them that there is very much a thing called nervous system synchronization when we are connected to people that we love, especially living with people that we love our systems sync up with theirs. So if you are anxious and if anyone's listening, like if you've ever lived with someone who has like high anxiety and like we're always late and we're going and everything's this and that, and there's worst case scenario, like you step out of that household and you can feel the anxiety in your body and next thing you know like you're doing this with the people at work or with your friends or with your kiddos. So our systems sync up with those that we love. Same thing if someone you live with is really depressed and they can't get out of the bed and it's going on like a week or two weeks and you can feel the heaviness in that house, well, that's also in your body. So you leave that household and now you go to work or to a meeting or to a play date or wherever you're going, and you just feel this like lull. It's because you're synced up with your loved ones. So, teaching family members hey, as a first responder family, you are already going to be up against very different type of stressors than a non-first responder family. Or hey, as a first responder couple, don't be comparing yourself to non-first responder couples, because your stress is different, even just from the physiological standpoint. So that means we can't just ask the family to white knuckle it. They have to be informed, they have to be prepared. They have to be informed, they have to be prepared, they have to have skills, as if we don't ask them to sacrifice enough, they have to work even harder to keep their connection in place because they're up against trauma and high stress which can create such wedges in relationships, and that's why we see the divorce rates so high.
Speaker 3:The kiddo piece is really important to us as well. We've partnered with the First Responder Children's Foundation, which is an incredible nonprofit, and through that relationship we are able to extend free therapy sessions to the kiddos of first responders, and kiddo is from zero to 25. They also do scholarships. They cover some of our workshops. So when we do family workshops or workshops for just the kids or just the teens, we do a virtual just teenagers, because that's hard too. It's just really beautiful to watch them, you know, make meals together with the nutritionist, move their bodies, with the performance coaches teaching them how to use belly breaths when they have big emotions, and then they come in and demonstrate it in front of mom and dad. All of those things that are happening in one of our workshops can hopefully follow them home and now they can implement those same skills to help again buffer them against that tidal wave of stress that's going to hit this family.
Speaker 1:So, in comparison, buy-in from first responders versus buy-in from their family members, how does that sync up?
Speaker 3:Yes, I love this piece because I love doing couples workshops.
Speaker 3:I mean, I love all the work that I do, but I just think that it just adds such a fun layer when you have a couple who knows each other and can call each other out and you have like 10 of these couples in one room, not only connecting the thread between all of them of yes, they're all different relationships but they do share this common bond of being a first responder couple. And I always love sometimes hearing you know, the first responders say you know my, my wife pulled me to this. Or my spouse said I had to come to this. But then once they get there and they realize that it's not a kumbaya group therapy session and this is actually very real talk with actual solution-focused techniques that they can start deploying. You then hear from the first responder of I'm so glad I came, and then what we hear from the spouse is I wish I would have known All of our couples' workshops. I will say there's always one spouse that comes up to me and here she says this would have been helpful, like 15 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's 15 years ago. I thought that it's because I was doing something wrong, or he was no longer attracted to me, or I was just a burden in his life, or he didn't like coming home to me and the kids anymore. And if you think about that narrative, as a trauma focused specialist I always say like yes, trauma rattles people. But what I think rattles them more is when they don't understand the impact of trauma, the narrative that they've told themselves. Because now for 15 years that spouse has maybe had this narrative about who he or she is in their relationship and we could have gotten ahead of that. We could have saved 15 years of not only a narrative, but every narrative has a behavioral response. They might have been acting different, showing up different, not speaking up when they should have, not expressing their needs, coping in unhealthy ways, like we could have saved 15 years of that. But that's why it's so important for every department do not leave family members out. They are part of your tool to keep your first responder healthy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. That's so insightful. This has all been so helpful. Let's talk about buy-in then, from the department level. I know you've scaled this program dramatically over the past several years. What does it take to get a department to say, yeah, we want to implement that. And then who pays for all of this?
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's it. Budget is always a roadblock, right, but I believe it's a roadblock because we have not been. We didn't have enough of the knowledge about the impact of the job to say, hey, we need a separate budget for wellness. You know we have a budget for the equipment for this training, like we needed a separate budget for that. You know we have a budget for the equipment for this training, like we needed a separate budget for that. So when I first started, first one thing I had learned pretty quickly was I didn't want to function off of a grant, because I think it's amazing that there are grants. There's a ton of money out there and I'm going to talk about how you should go after that money, but what I have found is, when a department uses a grant, grants can stop.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:And this is about sustainable programming. I believe that when we go the grant route, it takes some of the responsibility not only off of the department, but off of the city. And now we are letting a grant fund wellness, and now it's just stopped and you just gave your people a feel of, hey, we're going to start treating you different, we're going to start resourcing this out, we're going to take care of you and your family members. Money stops and that message stops with it. So we like to go not only after the decision makers, like the chiefs and getting peer coordinators involved and really the leaders in the department. We also like to sit down with city managers, city HR, helping educate them on how this job is different and that there should be budgeting for it.
Speaker 3:And we have found that some cities will create the wellness budget for the department and then it's up to the department hey, next year, budget differently so that your wellness budget can come now from within the department rather than on the city. Some cities continue to give them budgeting. So it's really starting with where do we want to place the level of responsibility? And I think the level of responsibility shouldn't be on some external you know. Hey, thanks for the cash it should really be. How do we want this culture to be different so that we can take care of our current first responders and the next waves of generations coming through?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's just a shift in priorities, right? Yes, prioritizing health and wellness and safety for the people who are protecting and saving lives through firefighting and all other types of organizations throughout a city. Where can people learn more about FIRST? What's your website?
Speaker 3:learn more about FIRST. What's your website? Our website is wwwfirstf1rstorg, and through our website you can send in anonymous inquiries, you can find out how to set up trainings, you can send in a request for therapy. All of that can be done through the website. We also are on different social media platforms. On Instagram and Facebook there's a Dr T page and then also a first page I believe mine is drtfirst for Instagram and I like to do helpful techniques, videos, posts behind the scenes, upcoming events. It's a little bit more personal, and then we have the first one as well. One other thing that I will say to maybe there is a city manager listening or a chief. I think the old ways of health and wellness for the department was, you know, eap, and if a first responder is listening, they might have like an initial negative response to oh, eap.
Speaker 3:Because, what has happened is the city would make EAP for all city employees, find these therapists and then expect the first responders to go see those therapists. But some of those therapists are not trauma-informed. They don't understand the culture. You have to understand the unique demands on these first responders Because what would happen is first responders would say I spent the first five sessions telling my therapist about what it is that I do and I spent the first five sessions telling my therapist about what it is that I do and I missed those first five sessions to just get to healing.
Speaker 3:So first, as a result, we now serve the whole city. So we've created EAP and programming that can be put out to citywide employees. But we've started with the first responder program. So now we know first responder departments have specialized care and that same specialization can go to the city, rather than getting non-specialized care and expecting it to go up to a specialized area if that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got it Perfect. Thank you so much for being on the show and providing this insightful information. It's outstanding.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. I just appreciate what you guys do. You know. I think, like I said, our biggest thing is education, and knowledge is power, and when you have a podcast like this and you hold space for people who can listen and maybe it relates to them or a family member I just think that's how we're going to continue the impact and you know, you'll never understand how many people you reach through things like podcasts. So thank you, guys for what you do as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, thank you. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 2025 Conference on Crimes Against Women will take place in Dallas, texas, may 19th through the 22nd at the Sheraton Dallas. Learn more and register at conferencecaworg and follow us on social media at National CCAW.