When Tragedy Is Part of Your Job, Finding A Reset and A Way Back to Normal [Sleep 07]
I've learned a lot in my over five decades of life as a fellow human and professional psychologist who holds other people's stories, often having trauma. The experiences that went into creating this episode are the following: I've faced a life threatening experience where another human threatened my life, I've been an unexpected witness to harm done to another, I've been with people when they've died, and I've professionally sat with high ranking military and police officers who have taught me the mental discipline it takes to transition from work to civilian life.
This episode is especially created for first responders, military—present and former, professions who witness death as well as individuals who have been undone by also experiencing a person's death or injury, usually in some sudden incident.
Take a listen to find the way back to feeling grounded and to help work the traumatic event through your nervous system so it doesn't "stick" and become a mental health concern like chronic anxiety, PTSD, addictions, or OCD.
This episode was recorded on the eve of another school mass shooting. With this painful reality, the topic of sleep can seem unimportant, and perhaps even impossible to consider. How are we supposed to sleep? How can we put our minds to rest after such violence again and again and again?
However, being on high alert against it isn't a way to live. This state of dysregulation affects our body's natural state of relaxation and sleep, and it makes our neurological health impaired. In fact, it's impossible to live in such a way without developing some sort of hyper vigilance, OCD, or chronic anxiety. So, what can we do when we encounter such moments that shake us to the core (for example, as part of a first responder’s job or a one-time event we’ve experienced or heard about)?
In this episode, Dr. Kimber discusses the importance of finding a way to reset ourselves when we witness tragedy and various ways to help bring our bodies back to a place of regulation.
Key moments include:
02:40 - An 11-year-old's confession about his fear of dying and Dr. Kimber’s realization about this event.
03:40 - How the constant state of hyper-vigilance can disrupt the body’s neurobiological state.
06:07 - An example of how you transport your body to a place of regulation.
13:30 - What is pseudo-regulating and what are its symptoms?
17:40 - How to do the box-breathing and other ways of finding your safe exits to escape the negative state of hypervigilance.
19:20 - The impact of witnessing an injury or death — a heightened state of fight or flight mode.
Resources Mentioned:
John Gottman’s, The 7 Principles for Making Marriages Work - https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Principles-Making-Marriage-Work/dp/0553447718/ref=asc_df_0553447718/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312674999652&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17241933250132874481&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011912&hvtargid=pla-434109122391&psc=1
Daniel Siegel’s, Mindsight - https://www.amazon.com/Mindsight-New-Science-Personal-Transformation/dp/0553386395
Pause Episode 01 - https://www.ithoughtiwasoverthis.com/pause-breath-work-body-scans-and-feeling-safe-ep01/
Pause Episode 02 - https://www.ithoughtiwasoverthis.com/pause-breath-tracking-body-scan-and-voo-breath-ep-2/
Please remember that this podcast is not a replacement for treatment by a healthcare or mental health professional. This content is created for education and entertainment purposes only.
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This transcript has been created using A.I. please excuse any missed words or incorrect grammar.
00:00
Welcome to I thought I was over this I'm your host, Dr. Kimber, a licensed clinical psychologist, trauma healer and fellow life journeyer. Every episode we dive into the science of human need, and whether you find yourself feeling like you've just hit an iceberg and don't know where help is coming from, or you're ready to trade in your raft for something bigger, you aren't alone, grab what you need, get comfortable. And let's do this
00:37
I'm recording this episode on the eve of another school mass shooting the 27th this year alone, this only 10 days after the racist shootings in Buffalo, and also in Laguna Niguel. And I am here to talk to you about sleep. Seems like how unimportant How are we supposed to sleep? How can we put our minds to rest after such violence again, and again. And again. The reality is that it can happen to any of us. But being on high alert against it isn't a way to live. In fact, it's impossible to live in such a way without developing some sort of hyper vigilance or OCD or chronic anxiety, some type of rigidity or chaos, which, in fact, can show up relationally when we are cut off, because emotions are in fact an inconvenience when it comes into survival outlooks. So here's the thing. It isn't a way to live. Maybe a philosopher would give us advice to embrace it, this fear of dying, we all have it. Some of us happen to have it at a younger age than others. I think all of our children unless they're living in a very isolated or rural place, are aware of school shootings at this age. With all the social media, just this weekend, I was talking to an 11 year old he's exiting fifth grade. And he confessed to me and I won't say his name, because he didn't give me his permission. But I'm hoping he's listening to this said to me that he's really afraid of dying. And he can't sleep with the lights off. We talked about how he has to trust his ears and his entire sensory systems and his body, other than his mind. And to trust that if something was wrong, it would wake him up, see his brain, our brains aren't made to be semi awake, which happens when we sleep with the lights on. And so he sat with that for about 24 hours. And he told me the next day, you're right about the ears. And I'm hoping along with his mom, that he might be able to get some deep sleep in the coming months. See, we all have to sit and embrace on some level that we can't control many, many things, we can only show up and do our best. And hope that it gets us through another day. Recently, I had the privilege to sit in on a group with a couple of former military guys. And as a tangent, because I do have clients who listen, I will never talk about my clients in a way that anyone would be able to identify them. And if I've done a good job, my clients won't be able to identify themselves. However, this interaction was in a facilitation environment. And I'm definitely not going to say who they were. But if any of the group is listening, we know that we are all bound by confidentiality. So we won't be disclosing their identity either. It's not our story to tell. However, I want to mention this because they taught me that failure is never an option in the military. In growth mindset we need to embrace failure. But when you're on the battlefield, you have to be alert and sometimes in hyper vigilant mode, and it can take a good deal of time to transition back to civilian life. As Dr. Dan Siegel remind reminds us regularly what fires together wires together. So when we transition from duty back back to civilian life, we have to rewire our brain.
05:04
For some of us, when we have a job that is dangerous, or a first responder, what wires together at work doesn't work so much in the home. And so we have to have routines and ways to remind our brain to shift out of our vocation, and into relationship and less intensity. I shared with them, these military guys and myself. What we know about the neurobiology is when we hardwire our brain to always know the exits, and what can be used as a potential weapon. We are putting our neurobiology back into the battlefield. And what we want instead is when we are out for dinner, for a movie, for anything out in public, we're wanting to come back into civilian life to be less hypervigilant. And so what we have to ask our mind to do is to notice what is safe about the area, we have to ask our mind to notice and take in the expressions of people. And what I suggest is we take in a moment to see the exits, do whatever you need to do, momentarily. But then, and I really want to emphasize this, you have to shift your brain because when you do a sweep of that type of an assessment, it just puts a massive dose of cortisol into your system. And that's we just contracted your muscles dilated your eyes, and it will take a good 20 to 40 minutes to bring yourself back into a place of regulation. Most of the time. I love John Gottman flooded, research when he talks about in the Seven Principles for Making a marriage work, that when we are flooded, which is what we are when we do a sweep, we will flood our neurobiology to them place that we cannot immediately shift. And depending on how much testosterone you have in your system, it really can take us up to an hour. And the way that you will know that you have come back to safety is when you can take that deep, spontaneous breath. And this isn't something that you can will yourself to do by doing deep breathing. That doesn't work here. That doesn't work to shift your neurobiology. You have to have signs of discharge, which is something that you can't force to happen. So the deep spontaneous breath is the most common. But you could have maybe a flash of warmth over your body. Tingling, sometimes we get momentarily light headedness. Those things are signs that you are passing the tension the cortisol out of your system, and shifting back into a place of safety. So what do you do when you've just put a bunch of cortisol in your system, like doing an assessment doing a sweep or even if you imagine a school shooter on your campus, you have to consciously ground yourself. Come back to the present moment. And that's why I have every other week recorded pause episodes. And these have the white Raven on the cover because we have to practice. Coming back to center we live in an age of violence all around the world. So we have to learn how to navigate this type of stress. My episodes, one and two of pause teaches you some of the basics. Some of the most important things soften your eyes. Soften your jaw. Soften your hands, even right now take the tongue off the roof of your mouth.
09:43
And then notice your breath and train your body. Notice it through the nostrils one of the best ways to breathe in fight or flight is through the nostrils because it's a natural way of slowing down your blood pressure. And then if it feels good, you can breathe out of your mouth. And I just want to talk something over with you, I kind of wrestle with counting breaths when you're in fight or flight, because occasionally it can actually stiffen your body, your body becomes focused on doing it right. And so if your breath is really shallow, and you're forcing a deeper breath with the counting, then it can feel like you're bracing. And for some people, I want you to know they, it will work. But I want to kind of give you permission to play with it to see what works for you. And one thing, if you like counting brass that you could try is something like in to three, out to three, in to three, out to three. And then you can move on to a count of four. So in 234, out 234, something like that. But keep reminding yourself, soften your eyes, soften your mouth. And here's the thing, you really have to start over if you keep looking to the exit door to make sure everything's okay. That's scanning. I want to tell you this, trust your plan seriously, trust yourself, we have a co regulating system that picks up on the emotion and the place in spaces that we are. So trust, that you really are doing yourself no favors, if you've used up all your cortisol. If you have an emergency you want all of the cortisol available to you. So don't waste it in visualizations, or worry or what if just trust, trust. Keep coming back to your safety your body. One of the pause episodes has kind of a nighttime SOS. And if you need help for how you can look around and assess a situation. Maybe listen to that one, you're listening and looking for cues of safety. Looking at for all the people that you see relaxing and enjoying themselves. That's what you need to notice. Mind Training is connecting to your body. And it's absolutely the ticket for navigating mental health challenges. So I promised you in episode one, that I would talk about some of the ways if you are a first responder or military personnel, how I can help you how you can help yourself and your body come back to baseline. So you aren't doing what we call pseudo regulating, trying to find baselines by using some sort of substance like alcohol, because alcohol impacts your deep sleep, you can't get there. And it can feel like you're relaxing and calming. But on a neurobiological level, your whole system is still dysregulated I learned about pseudo regulators in my resilience and regulation training with Stephen Terrell and Kathy Kane. And they wrote a book with the same title. And so there's lots of different ways that we regulate ourselves that aren't true regulators. So pay attention to those things that you're using, but you're still having high blood pressure or racing heart or migraines, headaches, those are all symptoms signs can be that your system is in chronic fight or flight.
14:33
So as a whole, we really don't have the right training in this country. We can hear the body cam tapes of police where they're yelling and the adrenaline that is pumping through their veins is and what's coming out through the nonverbals the tone of voice the posture, there's absolutely no thinking that can happen. Only reaction in order to think we have to keep our heart rate in In a certain range. And so I don't want to get into that. But what I do want to offer is when you have been in an incident, no matter what that incident is where you feel like you have screaming, yelling, you may have felt in some way your life was threatened. If you've witnessed something, you've got to discharge the stress from your body. And again, this is going to take a minimum of at least an hour. If you have had a really long, serious exposure to life threatening things, it's going to take a lot longer. It might even take weeks. I just want to give you that permission. I want to give you that roadmap. It seriously takes a long time. When we have had scary incidences, there's such a pull up your bootstraps mentality, which completely is so not scientifically related. I mean, that's just not how our neurobiology is. I'm saying that as someone who grew up with a lot of cowboys around. So all right, here's the thing, check your heart rate monitor. If you haven't a heart rate monitor on you've got to look how high was your heart rate? It's gonna give you permission, you got to discharge that adrenaline. Again, it can take weeks. And I want to say if there's any researcher out there in the public sector, let's start analyzing the data. How long does it take, let's start giving people permission to have calming techniques to not feel like a loser that their body can't get back to regulated states. We need to start normalizing this. So common thing we exercise to discharge adrenaline, that's great. But you've got to have a downregulation period, so that again, you are discharging your body, you're getting that deep, spontaneous breath. And you have got to engage your parasympathetic nervous system exercise and exhaustion is not enough, it doesn't trigger or it doesn't invite that parasympathetic nervous system.
17:32
So here is where you can do counting breaths, like the box breathing, for counts in, hold four counts, then exhale for accounts, you can do deep breathing where you put a hand on your stomach, and you feel your breath into your belly. Another way to engage the parasympathetic nervous system, put a hand on your chest, feel the warmth. Sometimes saunas, steam rooms, keep asking your mind to look at all the ways that you're safe. When your fight or flight part of your mind is going to want to replay what happened. Same thing when you write reports, when you visualize what's happening, which can happen when you're writing the report, it's like it's happening again. So keep grounding your body in the present moment. Take breaks, if you need to. Look around the room, identify your safety, keep playing around with it, and see if you can help yourself from getting retriggered when you're writing the report. And, again, my pause episodes are really meant to engage your parasympathetic nervous system. If you have a topic you want me to address in one of those, tell me, email me, I'll do it. I love helping people get more regulated. So the second scenario that I want to address in this episode is something that isn't always known unless you deal with this regularly, which is when you witness someone being seriously injured. When you witness a death, your body is going to go into fight or flight. I remember when I was in my mid 20s, I witnessed a pedestrian being hit by a car. And he was okay. He actually did not tighten his body and he only suffered broken ribs. And but I knew that but every time I went by that spot, which was by where I lived at the time, so it was often my body would literally shake. It didn't matter that I knew he didn't get hurt. I mean, of course his ribs hurt but he didn't get seriously hurt. He was Like discharged from the hospital, he didn't even have to stay overnight. It didn't matter. It literally took weeks for my bodily reaction to stop. See our bodies are unnerved in the face of death. We have to come back to the present moment. In these incidences, these mass shootings that have been happening now for over a decade in the school shooting arena, it impacts so many people, it traumatizes so many people. So we've just got to have a roadmap of what's happening. And it does not take us telling ourselves it will pass, we want to have our minds come back to the present moment, time will heal, it really doesn't. In this way, it just makes the triggers on integrated into ourselves. But when we come back to the present moment, like focusing on the senses, taste, smell, sounds, touch, what we're seeing, and taking in that we are safe, it really helps us get regulated. See, our minds and bodies are often disconnected. And we need to help them continually be connected. There are times because I have witnessed serious things. I live in a city, a large city, I've witnessed things over the decades I've lived here. And there are times when a siren and ambulance siren will literally start my body shaking, because I'm having an on conscious response of a time when I was on an a scene. And I had witnessed someone getting hurt. I myself have mentioned before I had a life threatening episode where I wasn't hurt. But I wrote in a police car immediately following and I was shaking from the experience. And so I will sometimes shake when I see a police car. And it's been 20 years.
22:22
And here's the thing, if I was a black male, there's absolutely no way I couldn't have an unconscious, probably unwanted response to a police car. Every black man I know, which has many has had some type of negative potentially life threatening encounter with the police. And it's a real visceral war to be in this world. Getting some regulation when we have these kinds of traumas and burdens. So we've got to keep practicing groundedness we can't exercise it out. Exercise is a great thing. But again, it does not engage the parasympathetic nervous system. We have to re train our minds. I've talked about this before, but the neuro ception system in our body that picks up whether we are safe or not. It is all below awareness. And so the older we get, the more experiences we get, the more things that we see, the scarier it can be to live in our body. And so we've got to keep coming back to I am safe in this moment. And I know I'm being a broken record here. But I as somebody who was highly dysregulated. I can't tell you enough what the practice of being present has done for my whole system. Even as I continue to encounter incidences, that could be traumatizing. The reason trauma sticks is because we haven't moved the experience through our body. And if you are in a vocation where you are experiencing trauma after trauma. This is part of your vocation, self care, moving it through your body. I think I'm gonna leave it here. There is a lot that I could say. It's a massive topic. We need to do a better job of getting neuroscience and mental health information to all our emergency crews. From lifeguards to rugged mountain train rescuers we need to learn how to regulate our body when we face terror and death. Just want to say I'm just grateful that you're here. Thank you for taking me with you. Please share this episode with anyone you know who faces tragedy and their job. Who needs to hear this? I also want to remind you I have a newsletter that comes out twice a month to find more ways to be calm. Find hope, navigate the difficulties in your life. can sign up at I thought I was over this.com I'm cheering for us. We got this. I'm just grieving for the communities all over the world who have been so impacted by gun violence. Until next time.