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The Protectors® Podcast
Welcome to The Protectors® Podcast, where the valor meets the storyteller. Hosted by Jason Piccolo, a seasoned veteran and retired special agent, this series is a must-listen for anyone intrigued by the courage and tales of those who pledge to protect us. Beyond the front-line stories of bravery and dedication, this podcast goes a step further, weaving in the perspectives of those who bolster and narrate the protector's journey—featuring a remarkable lineup including New York Times Best Sellers and acclaimed Hollywood actors.
The Protectors® Podcast offers a diverse array of voices, from those who wear the uniform to the authors and entertainers who amplify their stories. It's a unique blend that highlights not only the raw realities faced by our protectors but also how their sacrifices inspire the narratives we cherish in literature and film. Each episode is a testament to the interconnected worlds of service and support, bringing listeners an unmatched depth of insight.
Dr. Jason Piccolo is a retired federal agent, former U.S. Army Infantry Captain (Iraq 2006), and author.
Past Guests Include:- Sean Patrick Flanery - Andrews & Wilson- Mark Greaney- Stephen Hunter- Remi Adeleke - Florent Groberg - Clint Emerson - Travis Mills
The Protectors® Podcast
526 | Dr. Jena Casas, PhD
This episode provides an exploration of the often overlooked mental health issues facing rural law enforcement officers. Stressors like isolation, limited resources, and the pressures of the job create significant mental health challenges. We share stories from the field and emphasize the importance of seeking help before reaching a breaking point. Our guest highlights the necessity of mental health training within law enforcement culture and discusses various accessible resources for mental wellness.
• Examining the realities of rural law enforcement
• Discussing mental health challenges unique to rural officers
• Importance of seeking preventative mental health support
• Finding the right mental health professional
• The role of peer support programs
• Importance of incorporating mental wellness into basic and ongoing officer training
• The journey towards better mental and emotional well-being
• Strategic insights for managing job-related stress
• Recognizing that mental health is an ongoing journey, not just a response to crisis
Make sure to check out Jason on IG @drjasonpiccolo
Hey, welcome back to the protectors episode 500 plus. But Dr Jenna cost us on today and you know what I had to hit record. Jenna Casas on today and you know what I had to hit record. I had to hit record right away because we got into a topic that just boom, something that hit me probably about 70 months ago.
Speaker 1:I ended up in the middle of nowhere in Nebraska delivering tourniquets to a small police department as part of the Protectors Foundation. That's a little plug there, but part of the foundation is to give equipment and training to small departments. Now when I went out there I talked to these cops. There was three of them, three their nearest backups, 30, 40 minutes away. Life flight. The nearest city is probably Omaha or wherever it's. It's going to be a long time. You have three cops out there, I get. I was going to give them a few tourniquets Cause I was like, ah, you know what, they just replaced the ones on our belt. We I was going to give them a few tourniquets because I was like, hey, you know what, they just replaced the ones on our belt. We could talk and see what else they need later on.
Speaker 1:But then I thought about it. They have schools out there and, god forbid, there was a mass casualty event. So I gave them all the tourniquets I had and I'm thinking to myself can you imagine you are your own backup and you never know what's going to happen next? Your own backup, and you never know what's going to happen next? And when you're in these rural areas, there's a lot of people that are semi-proficient in firearms as well. And what if you just have a vehicle roll over? What if there's mass casualties? There's so many things you could actually put on their plate. That has got to go through their mind. So when we started talking, before I hit record, you were mentioning that, so let's get right into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. First, thanks for having me on the podcast. I'm super excited and I'm glad that we started out with this topic specifically because this is a big passion of mine the realities of rural work. I'm a clinical and police and public safety psychologist in the state of Nevada and most of our counties are rural. We have 17 counties and outside of basically Washoe County, which is where I reside in, or Clark County, home to Las Vegas you're looking at, there being huge geographical barriers that make the realities of rural policing intense.
Speaker 2:You pointed to some other pieces here that it's a big component of what I do when I work with officers or agencies managing stress, but the insufficient resources. Some of the counties, some of the police departments or sheriff's offices, they have as few as five employees working for them. Some of the larger quote unquote ones that I work with maybe have a hundred commissioned staff members. So we're not talking these huge departments that you may see in LA County or New York Police Department. These are small agencies. Everybody knows everybody. You're on call 24 seven. You have a take-home vehicle because you may be the backup even though it's your day off. You know you have a take-home vehicle because you may be the backup, even though it's your day off. You may have had every position in that department, because there just aren't people lateraling in. So these are some of the realities of police work, and I'm excited to get into it deeper with you.
Speaker 1:The realities of police work out. There, too, is money, and when you think about counseling, like, like, listen, I was a fed for 23 years. I used my employee assistance program numerous times, especially like during the critical phases my my career, and I've also had good insurance. So my co-pay has always been anywhere between 20 and 30 dollars. But if you were in one of these, in these, you may not have access to either for one, having a counselor that you can trust in your area, and you may have to go remote. But what if you're not remote savvy? What if you don't feel like opening up? I cycled through five or six counselors before I landed on one that could kind of relate. But what if you're out there and you don't have one access to money you know that's going to pay for. Sometimes hey, listen, counselors are can be expensive. They can be pricey one 50, 200 an hour, if you're lucky, $75 an hour. So there's a lot more to to unpack there when it comes to finding the help that you need.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think something that can't be understated about the seeking help, asking for help going down that rabbit hole of you know I first of all, I've asked for help. Now I'm in that trajectory of understanding my insurance or private pay. Then you get into. I'm actually attending the sessions. Do I fit in with the person at all? No, I don't. Now, how do I find a second one?
Speaker 2:In rural communities, I found an additional challenge, which is that they don't have as many options of people to pick from in the available area. You pointed that out that maybe they have to use telehealth or some other virtual platform to be able to access care. The other piece for first responders in general, but definitely in law enforcement, is you work with these professionals in a professional capacity in the community. So there may be a community clinic that has great providers, but if you're dropping people off, transporting them, managing them, you know and you know everybody in the community you may not feel as if that is an option for you. There's a lot of barriers to seeking that care at the same place that you are. You know, working in a professional capacity during crises or emergencies, with Whether or not that actually is a legitimate fear. You know confidentiality is a real thing. It's not that this provider would be able to share your details, it's that internal barrier, that stigma. You know this is for the community, not for me. What would they think about me if I am now utilizing this service? So I find in my rural communities I have a lot greater success giving them referral lists for people that they're not going to see at the grocery store. They're not going's in state, so it's a problem.
Speaker 2:When you're talking about the research supporting in-person or telehealth services, is there a difference in that mode of delivery? A lot of times, no, there's not. But it's that personal preference preference. If you want to be able to build rapport with someone and you want to have the safe space where you feel it is private and confidential, to let that guard down. Meeting the person and going to their office is a benefit. If you have high emotional distress or heavy trauma exposure, sometimes in-person is better. That's not possible, though, if you live in a rural area hours away from an urban space with resources. So this is a challenge.
Speaker 1:And we're going to help try to fix it, because one thing you brought up there was telehealth and in-person. Now, when you're dealing with LEOs and I want to listen, this is we're generalizing LEOs. Every LEO has to deal with people in person. I don't know one law enforcement officer, agent, special agent, any deputy, that has never has to deal with people in person. So if there is one out there, there's one out there, but everyone has also, in one point of their career, interviewed and interrogated someone and they've built rapport. They are. They should have learned how to build rapport.
Speaker 1:So when you're dealing with a counselor and this is what I found when I dealt with counselors and psychotherapists, psychologists, any, all of them is that I could tell bullshit right away, and it's a lot easier to tell bullshit right away in person. But I've also know you and with the podcast, I can tell bullshit person with with remote. So you have to be able to, you have to be authentic and you have to find someone that's authentic, and I think one of the options are is it's better to find one remotely, and that's what I'm preaching now is like I would rather speak to one remotely than not have one at all and have, or have the right one, remotely than have one. It's inadequate that I need to travel six hours for it because, believe me, six hours one way, or four hours, two hours, even an hour, someone who doesn't have a lot of critical time to, like you know, add in their family kids, sports, all the other stuff to take off and go to counseling to fix themselves or help themselves. It's tough.
Speaker 1:So I think one of the options that you brought up is great is telehealth. But have more options out there to be able to have a list of options, because you don't want to. It's not one size fits all with counselors. I tell you that right now, find one that you can stick with, and it may be sticking with them for six months to a year or beyond. So it's critical that you know what you want to do before you. It's like swiping right or swiping left. You need to know what you're getting into when you're, when you decide to take that gesture to seek help I really love that last point you made about know what you're getting into.
Speaker 2:When you ask, you know you're trying to seek help, because I agree that it is helpful to have the right fit. The one part that I've seen happen more times than not is somebody will eventually end up in my office or a colleague of mine's, and it's the same thing every time. They'll say something like I went to a provider and they didn't get me and they made me feel bad in some way because I told them a story that maybe was halfway traumatic and they couldn't handle it. Maybe they teared up or cried, maybe they in some way made a comment that made the client feel like they did something wrong. They just didn't understand the job or the demands of the job, and so I'm a big proponent of finding the right fit, knowing what you're getting into and realizing that some care if it's the wrong fit can actually be harmful. Now that places a demand on the person to seek care, to actually do their homework. And my advice for people when they're trying to do this because, again, if you're going to see somebody over telehealth, you're not going to get more of those in-person indicators, you're not going to get a chance to drive to their office, see what that looks like, feel how they've set things up. There's a lot of time and attention that comes into that for clinicians. What does the office space feel like? What are they trying to signal to you about the way that they decorate the office? Are they creating a safer, private space for you? You're not getting that in telehealth.
Speaker 2:So if you have to do your homework, you're going to take some time to figure out what's important to you. So it's not. You don't have to know. Do I have depression? Do I have anxiety? Do I have post-traumatic stress? That's our job as clinicians to be able to figure out the labels that fit. But you do have to know what's important to you and is the person going to understand that? So if you're in law enforcement and that's a really big part of your day and a really big part of your identity, it probably makes sense that you find a clinician who specializes in that and understands that work culture.
Speaker 2:If it's just something you do and it's not a huge part of your identity, then maybe you can find a clinician who doesn't know a lot about it but is open to learning, as long as they get the other parts of you. Maybe that's a religious component, maybe you identify strongly as a Catholic or a Christian, maybe it's your gender identity and that's a big component that you want them to be able to understand. So it's you knowing yourself well enough to figure out what do I need to relate to with this person so that they can understand my experience and help me on that journey. It's not enough to just say this person said they treat anxiety. I think I have that, so boom, or I'm willing to spend. You know, $75 seems like a good fit. You have to dig deeper in that.
Speaker 1:You know, I think you brought up a lot of great points there. One of the things is, when you're thinking about taking that step to get help I think you could turn a lot of the audience off. I think when we think about counseling, we think about going to see someone and talk to them that you have to be at the end of your rope, you have to be suicidal. You have to be at the end of your rope. You have to be suicidal. You have to be so. You have to be an alcoholic, you have to be so damaged that you're finally going to take that step to get help. I I'm I'm speaking a lot of personal today because I want people to realize that you don't have to be at that store.
Speaker 1:I was there when I was at that point in my life where I saw counseling, when I was at that door, when I was there and that was over a decade ago actually wow, it's been more than that. But over the years I found, you know what? There's a lot going on in my life. I should probably talk to someone so I could figure out what is going on in my mind, that I could, that I could be better and when things happened with me a long, long time ago. I started taking the Lexapro generic. For years I was on that and I got to a point where I'm like, okay, I'm numb, I'm absolutely numb, let me get to a counselor and we'll get into the Lexapro thing later on.
Speaker 1:But what I'm saying is you don't have to go to a counselor when you're at the edge of your rope. You don't have to be at that point. So when you're saying like, hey, you know what I think you check the box Like I got anxiety, I got this, I got that. Well, maybe you do have a little anxiety, maybe you have other stressors going on in your life. Maybe you had a few drinks one night and you found out you get depression. You don't have to be at that store, you don't have to be at death's door, you don't have to be at the edge of your rope. Before you take that step to seek guidance. And it's not just help, it's guidance, because guidance counselors also offer another function. You can lift weights all day long, you can work on your body, you can work on your health, but the counselors can help you build your brain to be better. I know it's a lot, but hey.
Speaker 2:No, I really like the direction that you took this, because this is exactly what my practice is built around is the idea of you have a lot more options before a problem develops if you can prevent it. So prevention should be the first line of defense. Can you come into a therapy session and learn enough about yourself to know what's typical for you so that when something changes, whether that's on the job or not, whether that's in your personal life or not, you know that it's a change from your baseline and you can do something about it earlier? There's something about first responders in general law enforcement for sure where intensity has to do with things. If things are not intense, they're not on their radar, constantly triaging emergencies. So it's easy to say, well, that wasn't such a great reaction after that call. Or, yeah, me and my wife maybe aren't getting along the way that we used to, but it's not that bad. I hear that all the time until it is. And then that's when they come and they seek help, but they need it immediately. You know, it's like 10 years of, it's not that bad. And then finally something hits and they go okay, is that bad, I need you now. Well, we can do a lot fewer things. We have a lot fewer options when we're at the breaking point than if we can walk ourselves back and we can do some prevention and some optimization.
Speaker 2:Most of the conversations I have in my therapy practice are about things people would not traditionally think are mental health. You pointed out earlier, most people have this conceptualization If I'm not suicidal, if I'm not depressed, if I don't have a substance use issue, then I don't have any need to be in therapy. It is guidance, it is consultation. There's a lot that you can talk about there. I constantly talk about things like nutrition and hydration, sleep, work, family balance.
Speaker 2:These are topics that people traditionally don't expect to start with. They expect me to ask about their worst call, you know, on the job. They expect me to talk about whether or not they're feeling suicidal. So it sort of throws them off that this is a big topic. But if we're not talking about the basics, we're not optimizing that, then we can't expect to perform well. So I think you're right. It's therapy is not just for the intense breaking point moments, it's for more than that. And doing that with the right person, where you actually would take their guidance and their consultation, is the difference between you putting an effort, feeling invested and empowered, or just going. Yeah, I did the thing. It didn't really matter to me.
Speaker 1:And I you know I I don't want to gloss over the rule.
Speaker 1:Rule, I can never say that word rule hey, listen, it's a I can't roll my R's in Spanish, but the thing is too is like out in the world, out in the boondocks, out in the middle of nowhere, you have a different type of anxiety.
Speaker 1:So when you're talking about all of these pressure points and you're dealing with a whole lot of geography, that it might be worth it even more for you to take that step before the anxiety gets a hold of you, before that critical breaking point, because you are your own backup and nobody else can cover down on you. So maybe that's the point where you think, hey, you know what, I needed to look into this before I get to that breaking point. So that's kind of like a almost like a wake up call for those that are out there in these areas. Is, before it gets to that point that maybe there are people like Dr Jen out there that are on there in these areas. Is before it gets to that point that maybe there are people like Dr Jen out there that are on the road, that maybe they'll come to you, or the telehealth portion of it, or you know who to recommend, et cetera.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of people don't recognize that just because it is part of the job doesn't mean it's not stressful. You know, you get, you get part of this culture. You go through your academy, you realize what's part of the organization, what's part of the operational piece of the job, and then you just get used to doing the thing that it doesn't really add up, that that could be a source of stress and that that could be the thing that eventually fuels and leads into anxiety. So the organizational stress at every agency is different. There's what is it? Over 18,000 different law enforcement agencies and when we really say the word law enforcement, that includes so many different components. I mean a sheriff's office is different than a police department, is different than a tribal department, than a university department, juvenile probation, department of alternative sentencing I mean there's so many options out there. So at the organizational level, each structure, policies, procedures, leadership, hierarchy, job security, funding all that's going to be different. We call those organizational stressors. In the rural these tend to be exacerbated because you're dealing with a more truncated rank structure. There are fewer people in each of your possible levels of rank. At that hierarchy. You have more intimate workplace politics, because everybody's business is everybody's business, and you can't just go into your own little unit in a substation off site because you got one station and you're all in the same room kind of deal. You typically have a smaller budget, so more insufficient resources or lack of ability to update more frequently, and policies and procedures may be not updated as often because you can't designate that to somebody to do, because it's just one more thing on top of many things. So it's the organizational piece. What you also are pointing out, though, is the operational stressors, and again, this differs based on the job description that you actually have. So if you're patrol or detention or other assignments, it's going to look a little bit different.
Speaker 2:But the nature of police work itself can be stressful. Are you in a high risk situation or high crime area? Do you deal with sexually explicit material for a lot of your job or not? Are there physical demands, like the gear, or bending, stooping, dealing with firearms, defensive tactics, like whatever, is a component of your job? That's a different physical demand, shift work that's common for everyone and trauma, but in the rurals you have a heightened level and it takes on a different form. So, yeah, you may be on patrol just like somebody would in a more urban area. But when you're on patrol, like you said, you may not have backup or the person that is your backup maybe somebody on call who has a take-home vehicle, who's at home right now. So if you need something, they're waking up out of bed, getting dressed as fast as they can and driving to see you and it may be miles. Fight it out for 45 minutes makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:And we didn't even touch into the other social emotional stuff that spills over, like the family end of things or the public scrutiny or media scrutiny or political climate. But this is all stuff that's packed on top of people that for the most part I hear them say it's the job I knew what I signed up for when I got into it. Yes, you did, but you do that work for decades. You know. I think in the agencies I work with they have to do like 30 years. Now you do that for 30 years. That adds up. That's chronic stress, that's stuff that runs in the background and if you don't have a good personal self-care plan to try to offload some of that, it's going to add. It is an inevitable that it adds up. I actually start with that for people. If you don't take care of yourself, this job is impossible. You have to take care of you.
Speaker 1:I think about. There's a lot there and we're going to get into some of it. And then we're going to jump back even further to the academy. I think about when you're utilizing one of your tools, the firearm, or you're doing anything in your life and you have and I'm saying this because I do competitive shooting on the side and when my head is not in the game, when I have the stressors of life going on, or you know, I'm just I got depression, I get it all the whole world onto my head and you're not in the game. And when you're out there and I'm shooting, everything's all over the place. But now think about it. You're on the job and you have the life, your whole life is on top of your shoulders all the time, and you walk up to the car and you don't notice the pre-fight indicators. You don't notice these things because all you're thinking is routine. Right now, let me get through this, stop, get back on my road and do my thing, but your mind isn't everywhere. So then that brings me back to how do we stop this? How do we get your mind in a game? It's not always going to be in a game.
Speaker 1:You're saying 30 years, but we've never been taught to be in the game, the mental game. We've always been taught how to and I brought up the firearms because we've always been taught how to use that tool. We've always been taught how to fight and flight and investigate and this and that and everything. Been taught how to fight and flight and everything and investigate and this and that and everything. But how many academies, how many law enforcement training centers, how many post certifications give you real bona fide? This is how you help yourself or this is how you seek help, rather than like I'm.
Speaker 1:We're not talking like a two-hour block of instruction here. We're talking about. This is you're going to experience these things, but these are some things you could do to prevent that mental health and push that on, and not just at the academy, your field training unit, posts two years down the road, check-ins, different ways to do that, and you know there are some big agencies are trying this, but you don't hear about it. You don't hear about this is one of your toolkit tools. Your, your mind. Yeah, we work on a body, we work on on learning case law and this and that and everything, but we never work on that. Your, your brain matter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I often find law enforcement to be a few years behind military in a lot of this. And when you look at the human performance optimization world, where you know sports, psychology world, it's all about integrating body and mind, realizing that they do have that bidirectional relationship where your mind can amp up your body, body can help your mind. And looking at the relationship between stress and performance, which in my opinion is the most interesting way to talk about stress. But law enforcement again tends to be behind on some of this because it takes in my opinion it probably takes a lot for them to reinvent the wheel. So if you have to go submit new training through post and get that to be standardized across a state, it just people look at that and they just go oh, it's a lot, we'll, we'll make sure it's worth it right, worth the investment. And this is just my opinion. I don't have any connection to anyone to you know, confirm that. That's true, but that's what it seems like to me, because we do have data to support this and in my state specifically, one thing that they're doing that is connected to this is we've passed legislation where you have to do mandated annual wellness visits and the intention behind the visits is not like a fitness for duty, it's not an evaluation. Its purpose is to be a check-in space for people every year where they can ask themselves how can they optimize their mindset.
Speaker 2:The way I run these and the agencies that have contracted with me is just like that. So every year I get one hour opportunity with each person that's employed to be able to ask them how are things going. You know what kinds of challenges or stressors are you experiencing right now and how are you managing those, so I can help them identify deficits in that area. So, for example, if I talk to somebody a few weeks ago that had passed through their FTO program so like the first time I talked to them, they were just out of Academy. Now they're, you know, through FTO. So I'm getting the chance to see the progression of them in their career, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:The stressors they have now are different than they had in the Academy and they're going to be different a year from now in their early career. You know they're making the sacrifices, they're working hard to understand the politics and all the pieces that are at play. They're figuring out and mapping out how they want their career to go. It's a beautiful time for them to have access to someone like me to figure out what do I need to be able to fare well on the job. And if I don't have it, how do I go and get it. We're the fifth state to pass legislation like this, so pretty early adopter of it, and I know other states are going to have something like this on their ballot. We'll see. It's a shame because there's some pretty good science behind it and we have some some interesting tools that people could use, and it would be simple tweaks in in places like Academy or FTO or otherwise, like you mentioned you're a tool.
Speaker 1:You're a tool for them and you're a number. So you would think that they would want the best version of you Mentally, the best version of you, someone who's going to be able to health counseling and not just by a checklist. Listen, you send me a checklist. I'm going to say whatever I need to do, I don't care, I'm not looking at it. It's going to be like check, yes, I'm good to go. You need people in person to talk to you and say and it's got to be one-on-one, and, yes, you could do group therapy. But in order to feel comfortable, I would say so many LEOs need to actually, before they take that step into group therapy, have a discussion with an actual mental health provider. Yes, peer counseling is great and I love the aspect of it. I like the critical incident response teams. I love all that stuff. It's great.
Speaker 2:But I think, when you're going to take a personal step towards speaking to someone, that it needs to be personal 100% and I, you know, as you were saying this, the thought was popping up in my head because I've worked with different agencies that have had different sorts of resources available and I'm just kind of comparing and contrasting them in my mind. And one thing that stands out to me is the difference between agencies that have a really well oiled machine going, so it's a comprehensive wellness program with lots of different pieces and everybody knows when to use what and how to use them. It tends to be with a collaboration with psychologists, police and public safety psychologists, so they have somebody that the leadership is consulting with to understand how they can continue to add components to their program, when to do that, how to do that, how to fund it, make it sustainable, build the trust versus people in leadership roles that are haphazardly picking things that they've heard other people have but not tailoring it to the agency. And the difference it's an important difference is just having the components doesn't guarantee that people are going to utilize them. It also doesn't guarantee that people will be able to discriminate when the thing should be employed or not. And if you have an agency that just has a bunch of different pieces and they're floating around and your employees are trying their best to navigate. They're going to end up using resources, like you're saying, maybe reaching out to a peer supporter, when what they ultimately would have been most benefited by would be reaching out to a professional. So having somebody driving the ship on the clinical end that can say here's how this should look and here's how these pieces should be integrated together and here's what the agency can expect from it, helps a lot.
Speaker 2:The issue that I've run into for the most part is people are either unwilling or unable I don't know which one to hire somebody to do that sort of a needs assessment and have that continuity throughout the programming. Here's the devil's advocate side of things. I don't blame them too much because you can't know what you don't know. So law enforcement being a primarily insider culture, not very open to a lot of outsiders coming in and seeing how things operate unless there's a legitimate reason for them to, they haven't had a lot of opportunities for police and public safety psychologists to come in. It's a relatively new field. Yeah, people have been operating in it since the 70s, but it became designated as a practice area by the APA in 2011. That's not that long of a period of time for people in my role to be able to have access to these departments. So we're early in a lot of those stages.
Speaker 2:A lot of leaders that I talk to are open to the idea of knowing what we can offer, but they just really don't know how that's integrated yet. So until you have somebody driving the ship, I think it's tough to make any judgments about it. But then, when you do have someone driving the ship, what you find like from my personal experience anecdotally is people start to learn when to use things and when not to use things, so they are better able to discriminate after a tough call. Here's how peer support can help and here's what their limits are.
Speaker 2:Ok, anything above and beyond this. I'm going to go reach out to somebody that's a mental health professional and I know who those people are because we have a list of vetted providers. So I know exactly who to reach out to and when to do that. And then they're going to walk me over and give a warm handoff to the other services that could be helpful for me. To walk me over and give a warm handoff to the other services that could be helpful for me. So I think it's complicated by a lot of different factors, but does have to do with this being somewhat of an earlier field and some politics playing into you know, you brought it up politics and admin.
Speaker 1:You're going to always hear admin sucks, politics, this and that. But looking at it from an administrative point of view, from a management point of view, and thinking that, hey, you know what? I know the reality of some of these managers out there. You're a number and I say that a lot because I was in the military and you're always a number. You're the last four years social.
Speaker 1:But the liability if you offer these services to your people and they use them and it helps them function better as an officer, agent or, et cetera, leo, this may stop that one officer from having a bad anger day or doing something on camera. That is going to have such a liability impact on their agency, big or small, that investing in mental health resources ahead of time not only will help those LEOs but it'll also help them later on if there was a critical incident that happened where they had to utilize their firearm or they had to use some sort of deadly force or they had something where they're going to have to testify to it later on. That said, hey, you know what? I was of clear mind and, by the way, I've been of clear mind and I wasn't mentally deficient. So there's actually the liability-wise. I think is another selling point for managers to look at this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I do think that a lot of them look at the long-term benefit and they want that. You know, ideally the ones that I've talked to, the leaders I've talked to they want services for their people. The fear comes from if I offer this. So if I tell people that it's OK for them to tell me that they're not OK, then what do I do? Right? So let's go back to like a rural agency. If they start an informal peer support team where people can reach out to, do they just tell a sergeant or do they work it up their chain of command? This is medical information. Who can have access to that and know that? What accommodations are you willing to make for people? Can you make that standardized?
Speaker 2:If it's not in policy and procedure and you give one person one thing and the next person gets something different, you have other problems on your hands. What if somebody reaches out for something you don't have a resource made for? So you have an EAP and that gives people two sessions, three sessions for free, let's say, but their problem requires inpatient hospitalization. Now what? So you know information about somebody's functioning that can make them a danger. Let's say to themselves or the community you can't put them to work? What type of leave can you place them on?
Speaker 2:This is where it's not enough to just say be open to mental health. It's not enough to just say offer the resources. You have to comprehensively think this thing through from start to finish and make sure that you're creating a true safety net for people. So when I have that conversation with leaders, what tends to shut them down is that this becomes not just a simple let's put together a peer support team of three to five people, send them to a training, we're good to go. It's whoa. This is an actual program we're developing, just like you would develop maybe a special assignment. If you want a SWAT team, you have to find funding, you have to have somebody run it, you have to go to trainings. Right, there's like legitimate stuff that goes into building the programming. Same with wellness. It's not just we have this person we call, we just say we're not okay. So I think that's what gets people.
Speaker 2:And when I say politics, I mean the politics of it's not just because the leader is a bad guy or gal that they don't want to offer wellness. It's because they understand that there's constraints If they didn't go to their county and advocate to put this in the budget. Nothing's going to happen that year, right, and if they have a mental health budget, that's really small. You have to be able to have an articulate and show statistics that having the budget increase would be worth something. Now, at the line level, you're probably like, well, but we know it would, you know it would benefit. Like, just give it to us. We know we need it, and I'm right there with them.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm on, you know, the line level, saying it's clear we need more money, but that doesn't always go over, well, when you have to have the conversations with counties or municipalities or whoever the budgetary person is, so, and you only get one shot that year to do it. I'm just trying to tease it out a little bit more, saying that it's a bit more complicated, because I think the easy thing to say is our agency doesn't care about us, or you know we're not, they're not really big on mental health, or we just do what we've always done. We're not really open to change, and I think that that could be part of it for sure. The other part of it, though, is it's not easy, and when people dig into the details, they start to see how much more work it is and maybe the agency is not ready to make that sort of a shift, especially going back to the rurals If you already don't have the staffing to do the basic job to the rurals.
Speaker 2:If you already don't have the staffing to do the basic job, like just the bare minimum, meet minimum manning on the street or in your detention facility, it's really hard to justify spending maybe a few hundred thousand dollars on a needs assessment and a police and public safety psychologist to build a wellness program. Yes, it would retain, it would attract candidates, it would help staff, it would reduce liability, it would do all of that. But if your staff doesn't have, like you do with your organization, tourniquets, where are you going to put the money? You might want to put the money on the legitimate thing for them to be able to do the job first. So I can't really blame agencies for making.
Speaker 1:Hey, listen, you brought up some absolutely valid points. Because budget, especially out in the rural areas, they don't have the money for mental health. They don't. I can tell you that right now, based on my limited personal experience. They don't have the money. Even these big agencies. When you want to implement even a policy of a very minimal policy that has nothing to do with dealing with someone's mental health, it takes layers of bureaucracy and you have to have buy-in by not only managers at every single level or just at the top or whatever, but the civilian oversight, the civilian budget approvals, hr. People who may have had a bad day and said I don't need mental health, they might not like cops, they might not care. So you have a lot of layers of bureaucracy and the thing is with this conversation is to plant the seed that if you were a manager or you're a line officer or you're anybody, and you want to plant the seed that this is something we need to look into, that there's a lot behind it, a lot, but it doesn't mean you discount it and doesn't mean you don't do it. It means you do what you can, but then this also puts the illness back on the individual. The individual needs to take that step and these and it sucks me it is not easy for everybody to take that step to get help. Listen, I've been through this and I want to talk about the Lexapro thing and the general anxiety.
Speaker 1:I have had anxiety for a long time. A lot of it came with just just a lot of things post-war, pre-war, leo stuff but anxiety has been there. You know, I have um, anxious attachment, all sorts. I mean, believe me, I have anxiety. So I had a neighbor you know, this is 2010, 2011 this is when I was at one of the darkest points mentally and I was like, man, I gotta do something. I don't want to go see a shrink. I don't want to because, you know, at the time, being a fed, I didn't want to be labeled, I didn't want to have anything to do with anything going on. I didn't want them to even know, um, that I was on any medication. But my neighbor across the street at the time was an engineer and he's like yeah, yeah, I just went to my doctor and I told my general anxiety and he, and he gave me like a skill up. I can't, I can't ever pronounce it. That's why I always say Alexa, pro generic, yeah. And he like uh and uh. I was like, ah, shit, so I'll just go to my regular doctor. So I go to my regular doctor and I get prescribed this medication, thinking that, hey, it's just something I'm going to take, it'll be fine, I'll just keep taking it. And I noticed the anxiety was going away and I was like gosh. I think I started off with 10 milligrams or whatever.
Speaker 1:As anxiety over the next years and years and years ramped up, I started going to heavier and heavier dosages, trying to keep my anxiety level down. But then I realized that it numbed me but I wasn't feeling anything. But then I would also get these weird anxious spurts. So then I would medicate myself with alcohol and I would drink a lot, drink a lot while taking these. It does not work out good for myself. So I eventually got to the point and this was I stopped drinking because that wasn't good for me anymore. It was I was the depression would kick in for days after I would drink. The Lexapro wouldn't help me with the depression, it would just make me numb. And then eventually I got to the point where I was like, okay, no more booze. I'd never made any good decisions when I drank booze. So you know I stopped that. You know occasionally, here and there, and now I will, but I tend to stay away from what I was doing.
Speaker 1:But then I got to the point in the past year where I had to make some critical life decisions, personal life decisions, life decisions that would affect my family and my kids and me. So I wanted to say, okay, I need to get off of this medication. And it was fucking rough. It was rough. It was like my mind was programmed for over a decade to come off of it and I went to my doctor, my general doctor I didn't even go to my counselor because they don't really deal with medication and trying to come off of that. So I'm cautioning people out there, before they start going on to the self-medication through alcohol or getting prescribed drugs, that there are ramifications to it and you're going to have to find something. That's going to get to the point where, if you are going to go on them, it's not going to be easy coming off.
Speaker 1:I tried to explain this to people before and it was almost. I tried to explain this to people before. It was like friends and stuff. When I came off of it, you know, I slowly weaned myself from it and it was almost like a little electric jolts, like just these weird electric jolts in your brain and stuff. But I can tell you now, after all these years, it's great to have emotions back. I could literally I could cry. I could actually cry now. I could be emotional. I don't need them. And that's the same thing with alcohol and the same thing with caffeine.
Speaker 1:I know a lot of people are drinking like five, six months or drinks a day, trying to keep that mental clarity, thinking that it's helping them, trying to keep that mental clarity, thinking that it's helping them. This all boils down to. I think a lot of what I've done in the past really could have helped if I just went to counseling, if I had someone to talk to outside of my inner circle, because a lot of times they don't understand what's going on. Maybe, like you know, when I started taking those those drugs that I went to a counselor and they said, hey, you know what I I'm not going to prescribe that. I think we could work through this.
Speaker 1:Or hey, you know what? I've been drinking a lot. Maybe you shouldn't drink so much. Let's work through this. You have to take that step, when you first start realizing that your mind is going down a different path and you're not being yourself, that you take that step, before you end up with 10, 12 years of taking Lexapro generic and and you know at one point drinking a ton, then maybe you you start thinking about your mental health. Now I know it's kind of long winded, but I'm just saying that there is a time for counseling and that time is not when you're at the edge of the rope.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate your perspective and sharing your experience with that, because I think it's not. It is yours and it's also not unique in that I hear it a lot People going down this trajectory of realizing something's not right. This doesn't feel good. I want it to be different. What are my options? And looking at medication is often a first-line treatment for people because it offers the potential to be a quicker fix right. It's like could I at least reduce the intensity of the symptoms so that I can then have the capacity to maybe learn skills or, you know, be on a wait list for counseling. Whatever the deal is, it gives you that the potential for some reduction of symptoms fairly quickly. What a lot of people learn along that journey, though, is that when you're working with providers and they're talking, they're on the same page. Let's say, you're working with a psychiatrist or a primary care doctor that would prescribe you the medication, and then you get into something like counseling with some sort of a mental health provider. When they're talking, they can be on the same page about what the ideology, the origin of the problems are. You pointed out something really cool that I want to highlight. You said my emotions are back and it feels really good. You recognize that emotions are information. When you completely numb them out, that also feels wrong. Sure, feeling them at the intensity you did was impairing. But not feeling them at all was also impairing.
Speaker 2:And when people go on the journey they have their providers talking they start to figure out what the right combination is for them, the gold standard treatment. For most disorders like depression or anxiety it would involve some sort of combination, whether that's medication and psychotherapy. They're a conjoint sort of situation and the reason for that is there's an acknowledgement that there may be a neurochemical piece that without the medication you're only going to get yourself so far. Whether or not that means lifelong medication or just a short-term leg up depends on the person and the severity of their symptoms and the type of symptoms they have. But you pointing out this, even though I took the medication, the thing was still there. What that tells me is that there was an underlying origin that with therapy, if that would be addressed, you may find yourself more better able to tolerate that anxiety and not necessarily feel like you had to push it away. So that's the call to action for a lot of people too is asking yourself what's bringing this on.
Speaker 2:You know if you're, if you get a um, this is an extreme example. But if you get a gunshot wound to the arm and then you just tell yourself, well, just put some some analgesic on it, I don't want to feel the pain. That's like taking a medication, but you still got to deal with the fact that you have a hole in your arm at some point, right, so it's a little harder to point to. With mental health, yes, the medication can get you so far, but sometimes, if the the origin is something that's behavioral, you have a deficit in a skill. You don't know how to react or change the environment differently. Learning that in therapy can get you further. That's like cleaning the wound and putting a bandaid on it, and whatever the deal would be stitches, bandaid's not going to fix a gunshot wound.
Speaker 1:You get the point when you bring up therapy. Counseling is great, therapy's great. I've been doing it for a while, so I'm a proponent for it. Speaking to people, texting people listen. We talk a lot about fixing mental health and fixing this project, fixing this problem, but the end of the day I read this today is like the you're a person and you're not a project that you really need.
Speaker 1:It's not just going to counseling that. That is one aspect of everything. Mental health is just something you should really talk, you should really work on, you should really read things, you should really invest in yourself, because you don't have to be broken to get mental health. I'm just saying that right now. You don't have to be anything to be broken. You can be clear I've been finding a lot lately personally that if I get out of my norms, if I start reading about things that are going to help me mentally and walking, you could have the best counselor in the world.
Speaker 1:You could be on medication if you need it. But if you're not working on your physical health, if you're not moving this blood around in your body, you're going to have a lot of your depression and everything is going to be magnified. You're any of that low lying mental issues you have or mental things you want to work on are going to be magnified if you're not moving this body of yours. So, as LEOs unless you're on some medical list or you're off duty, we're talking. If you are on duty, walk, do something every single day that is going to get your blood flowing, because you need it. You need the mental clarity. You need the mental clarity.
Speaker 1:My thing now is like when I get past either it's 20 minutes on an elevated treadmill or two miles walking this thing opens up in your mind and you start thinking. You're like, huh, that's pretty, get mental clarity. And this will be the same things. If you're working out or you're, are you doing anything physical. You get to a certain point where this blood is flowing around in your body, where you could I call it, clear the mind, get this dark sponge out of my mind. But yeah, you have to work on everything, not just going to counseling and medication.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you. Everything you said I agree with, and so many thoughts were swirling through my brain as you were talking, One of them being that here we are again talking about the mind body connection. If you think about yourself as a sponge and you're absorbing everything that's going on around you and everything that you are doing to try to change that environmental response, it makes perfect sense. If you are exercising, you're getting all of the possible benefits that come from being influenced by that. Endorphins are pumping, you're getting vitamin D, you're spending time in nature all things that we know science supports are mood altering. If you're sedentary, we have a lot of research to suggest and there's been some pretty compelling evidence coming out recently about sedentary behavior and all of the health risks associated with it. It's an input-output ratio at its most simple form. If you are consuming garbage, you're going to feel like garbage. If you are not taking care of yourself, you're going to feel the extent of that later on. This is simple stuff that people can try to employ day to day. Like you said, if you're in your job, know that some of the actual operational stressors and organizational stressors that you're a part of you take the hit when you go to work. If you are in a patrol car and you're driving around for, let's say the S word, a slow night and it's very sedentary, that could be eight, 10, 12 hour shift where you are sitting the whole time in heavy gear. That, we know, puts your posture off position. If you have the outer carriers or you have the gun and it slightly raises your hip, your whole postural position is changed. So now you're taking all of that out of alignment and you're sedentary. We also know that when you're under stress, even if it's just that chronic low-grade stress, your body's producing stress chemicals. That makes you crave carbs and sugary treats. So now you're not feeding yourself well.
Speaker 2:And then if you work graveyard shift, let's say, your body's already out of its circadian rhythm. That's going to impact all sorts of things, including your hormone production. So just being in the job, just doing the thing that you signed up to do, already sets you up to be in a deficit. This means you have to take even more responsibility in your off time to actually recover from the effects of that, but then do good on top. So you have to be extra intentional about what you're eating and how you're moving your body and whether or not you're getting appropriate rest and you're dissipating cortisol in your system when you're off duty, because we know you took the hit at work. You don't get the luxury, unfortunately, when you take these unique jobs, to slack off when you're off and effort will speak for itself. You know the people you can see it who are taking care of themselves from the ones who are not.
Speaker 1:It's obvious you know you, there are so much, so many things I want to talk about right now, and the first thing is simple. It is is simple, it is absolutely simple. I, you know, probably I don't think I've ever said this on air About five. I think it was about five years ago. Yeah, it's been five, six years now. I had a really, really, I passed out, almost died in front of my daughter. It was crazy. It was horrible. Blood pressure things just were horrible.
Speaker 1:I was 300 and something pounds. I mean, if you look back at some of my social media in like 2019, I was fat. I was mentally fat too, and the simple thing to me, after I had these, this health scare and is it for one I got to. Uh, aaron Williams and a friend of mine put me on a program, helped me with my health, but the first part of that was walking. At this time, my, it was hard for me to even walk the end of the block, but walking that's why I'm such a proponent of rucking and walking is because's because it was a simple thing of just walking 15 minutes a day. That kicked it off. I am 60 something pounds lighter now.
Speaker 1:I walk every morning. I get up. I'm on a treadmill 30 minutes minimum, elevated weighted vest. I try to get my 10, 15,000 steps in a day. If it's a weekend I'll try to walk seven or eight miles, but it was that simple. And seven or eight miles, but it was as simple and I'm just saying this because it was at 15 minutes that got me off the couch the simple things.
Speaker 1:The other thing was comfort food. Not only at the time was I drinking a lot and I still fall into this, it's my, my Italian heritage. I always fall back on these. Carbs is comfort food and now that I've been monitoring my sugar intake and carbohydrates, you're going to notice I'm not lethargic, I'm not taking a nap every afternoon. It's these simple, simple, simple things that take a few weeks to kick in. But then you're like holy crap, you're back, we're in epistle, you're being able to walk, being able to be there for your kids, being in the moment, being able to just mentally focus when you're not carb loaded, you're not drinking like a fish and you're not obesely overweight, but all it takes is simply walking.
Speaker 2:I really appreciate you sharing this story and I want to say it is an example of what we talked about, of the intensity. It took an intense moment that's a tough moment to pass out in front of your kid and say this is not okay, I don't want to live like this, like that's a game time decision. It took that intensity to make the choice. And then you realize once you, once you made yourself a priority, you said this cannot stand. I want things to be different. I got to focus on me. You found the time suddenly. That was easy to uh, you know, push something else to the side and create a pocket of space for you 15 minutes where you started out, and now it's expanded because you realize the value For anybody listening. It is that simple of looking at your life and saying do I care about myself? Do I matter at all? If you want to do a job sacrificing yourself for others, you have to pour into yourself first, otherwise you have nothing left to give. And as much as you want to tell yourself that you can do a good job for others, you have to pour into yourself first, otherwise you have nothing left to give. And as much as you want to tell yourself that you can do a good job for others. You really can't if you're not taking care of yourself first, because we've talked a lot about how you know your decision-making, your judgment, your ability to concentrate, do things under high pressure. They all suffer when you're not at a hundred percent for yourself. So once you make that designation that you are important, you matter and that you can prioritize yourself, you start to find the time. I get every single they're not excuses, I don't believe they're excuses. I get every single reason in the book why people can't do it, and they are all valid reasons, every single one of them.
Speaker 2:I'm you know I worked. I was supposed to work a 12 hour shift last night. I ended up getting held over. I'm you know I worked. I was supposed to work a 12 hour shift last night. I ended up getting held over. I worked, you know, 14 hours. I have an hour commute. Then my kid was sick and I have a court appearance today, and so I just really only got like three hours of sleep. Okay, all valid reasons. I understand it sucks. Life is hard. And how are you? Because now what you just told me is your day is going to be that much harder. You didn't get good sleep, you're worried about your child and you have extra work duties. That is not the time when you come in with less capacity. That's the time when you need more. To take that on. If it were an easy day, your kid's not sick. You're going to work a 12-hour shift. It's routine. Yeah, maybe you could phone it in a little bit, but not on that day, not when everything is going the opposite.
Speaker 2:So it's really people's ability to just carve out a small amount of time that they're not going to negotiate. Start with five minutes. Can you take the one walk? Can you double dip on things that you're already doing, and then you don't even have to carve out more time. It's just pairing things that you're already doing just to signal to yourself that you're important to. My best example of this is telling people when they park in their agency parking lot, park in the farthest spot and get the extra 20, 30 steps. If you're on patrol and you have the option to do a park check, take advantage of that. Go on a quick walk. If you can do a community check, go into a store you know. Conversate with somebody at one of the businesses you know. Get a little bit more social time, a little bit more sunshine, a little bit more exercise, great Drink water that gives you an excuse to have to get out of the car and go find a bathroom. These are all just small little things you can do that really don't feel like it's a big deal, but this adds up over time.
Speaker 2:But again we go back to this component, which is you have to decide. You matter. You have to realize your health is non-negotiable and that if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to have longevity, not only in the job but in your life in general. If you start that stuff now, it is easier to maintain it than it is to dig yourself out of a hole. And I know that because working with people that are nearing retirement a lot of the conversations they have with me is well, I don't have any health behaviors at all. I don't. I haven't worked out in a long time, I don't have any hobbies or interests, I don't have friends outside of work, like what do I do? And now we're starting from nothing. Whereas if you're talking to somebody who has been actively practicing this, when they go to retire, the things they're worried about are different. It's not that they don't exist, they're just different worries. So start the habits now. Start small.
Speaker 1:And small apps that's one word I wanted to say is it doesn't have to be all at once either. Yeah, it could be like hanging. You know I wear the watch religiously when I'm on my. My goal of, you know, the 10 or 15 000 steps a day is like you park at the end of the lot. You do this, you do that. It all adds up. The sugar thing to me is huge. The carb thing is because I found that once I got rid of the carb and I didn't know I was pre-diabetic either. Thanks to the guys from RIFS for Responders, for hooking me up with a health test.
Speaker 1:But the other thing is it's not only little things, but you need to visualize the best version of you. You need to I mean, realize the best version of you. You need to. I mean I'm not. I always I love when people say well, I used to do this, I used to that. Listen, I was an infantry captain. I got back from the war. I was 198 pounds, I was fucking ripped, I was great. I was beautiful, handsome, great looking young guy. That is not me. I am 52 years old now.
Speaker 1:The visualization I have of myself now is not what I used to be or who I used to be. Everybody in this world always loved this one version of themselves. I will never be that version of myself again. Now I'm looking at a different version of myself. My visualization now is this I want to have a good waist size. I want to be able to walk 5, 10, 20 miles and not be winded or not winded, but I want to be able to just do it. And I want to have a different version of myself. I don't want to be has or did or this or my former, whatever. My former titles are for media or for whatever but I am not that version of me.
Speaker 1:I was before, so now, my visualization then? What I'd say everybody is visualize what you want to be in the future and how are you going to get there. Is it just 15? All it takes is five minutes here, 10 minutes here, 15 minutes here after dinner. Walk around the block, do anything. Wake up in the morning. Do 20 pushups, five pushups. Do anything to get this blood flowing.
Speaker 2:The savviest thing that somebody can do and you pointed it out directly when you said visualize yourself in the future and have those reasons the savviest thing somebody can do is tie a thing that they want to implement in their life to a value. It's really hard to cancel on the gym when you've told yourself that being fit means that you get to walk your child down the aisle one day. When they have a wedding, you get to be there for that. You're not going to die prematurely from metabolic syndrome. Let's say, it's really easy to cancel on the gym when you just say, well, it's because I want to have a six pack. And then you know enough time goes by and you're like I don't really care about the six pack anymore. Tie the thing that you want to implement in your life to something that matters to you. You know, is it important to you that in five years from now you'll be able to take that vacation when you retire and not, let's say, stay on the cruise ship because you're not as mobile as you used to be? Or you can go out and explore when everybody gets off at port? You know you and your wife and your kids will be able to make memories, or is it important for you? I'm thinking about, for for some reason, my dad crossed my mind, so I was thinking about him. He's, he's just retiring this month. Congrats, dad. Um, dad crossed my mind, so I was thinking about him. He's, he's just retiring this month. Congrats, dad. And he's thinking about you. Know, all this travel that he wants to do afterwards. It's like he's taking care of himself well enough, where that's possible for him.
Speaker 2:That may not be the story for everybody, but you got to link these things for yourself. What's important? Do you want to be able to be physically active to keep up with grandkids? Do you want to be able to be physically active to keep up with grandkids? Do you want to be able to have done all of your preventative screenings for hearing and vision and other stuff, so you can be present and intentional when you're out with kids, grandkids, friends, whatever it is? This is the piece of it that's missing. For a lot of people. They just go.
Speaker 2:Well, I know I should. Why. Why is it important to you? You, everybody gets to decide how they live their life, but you're also the only one that has to live with the consequences. If you can figure out what your should is. It makes it easier to do. So. I I in therapy. I never give advice. It's always guiding people towards what the life they want to live. But ultimately, the one thing that I do strongly suggest is thinking about your future self. If current you can make future you a little bit easier, happier, do that. That may mean taking the sacrifice today, doing the harder thing today, so you have an easier future. You know, you may not want to go to the gym today, but future you's going to thank you. You may not want to uh, order the cheeseburger and a salad, but you know eating the fries too means future you's going to have more problems. So it's just being a little bit considerate of that future version.
Speaker 1:You know what, I'm on your website, the ridge envycom, and I thought about something. I was like like we're in this conversation now about what, what you actually offer, and there's a lot to it, and this is what the you know. This little next portion we'll end out this conversation with for a little bit, is about achieving peak performance, because, yeah, we talked about hey, you know what mental health. There's all sorts of things going on with it. You know you could be absolutely beat down and need it and everything. But there's another part of this. This is being the best version of yourself, and that means being the best version of yourself on the street, in the job, doing the job. So let's get into this. How do you, what is your goal for for this portion of the Ridge?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I really conceptualize the services that I offer for people as services for people that are high functioning. They have jobs, they have families, they're doing it, you know, and life is good but it could be better. They want to be able to reach that next step. So maybe it's setting higher goals for themselves, maybe it's achieving promotions, maybe it's getting you know, furthering their education, maybe it's planning financially where they want to be in the future, but it's really taking a life that is good, but that they want to be better.
Speaker 2:And most of the conversation that I do when it comes to this is helping people understand the relationship between stress and performance, knowing that if we just numb out the ability to sense any emotion and you don't look at that brain body connection, you're actually losing out on a lot of benefit to be motivated and to achieve flow states and do well in the job that you want to have. So if people can recognize that stress could be beneficial for them, if they can learn to harness it and keep themselves within that optimal range, then they find themselves achieving really great things. So this is where we talk about what's your nutrition and hydration like? What's your work? Family balance like? What are your values? What are your goals? Where could you see yourself in five years? What's getting in the way? No-transcript, so they can endure those moments better and be proud of how they got through that and then continue to adapt and move forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that because it's on there to prepare, endure, adapt and repeat. So what did we learn today? We learned to take that step. It's really that simple. Whether that's take the step to, we learned to take that step. It's really that simple. Whether that's take the step to get counseling, take the step around the damn block, but take that step to be the best version of yourself. And man, I really want to have you back on. I really want to talk about, I really want to unpack, I want to get deep. You and I, before we hit record, were about nerding out and stuff. I think this is a good baseline conversation, so I definitely want you to come back on and really pulling back these layers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I agree with you, Any listeners out there you need to start small and start where you're at. You know, don't set yourself up for failure If you're a person who has no foundation for exercise. Don't set a goal where you're going to go to the gym every day. Start out by just saying when I remember that I can move my body a little more, maybe I'll go outside for five minutes. Start there. It counts, it's these, it's the consistency that matters, not the intensity. And I would love to be back on the guest. You know, as a guest on your show, I feel really honored to be able to do that and get deeper. I know we had a lot of topic areas we wanted to cover and it's hard to do that in such a short period of time. So I'll come back anytime.
Speaker 1:I have a laundry list of things that I really want to talk about. Like you know and I was telling you beforehand about, like you know, your daily focuses, your daily changes, your empathy. You know, as an LEOs, you want to fix other people's. You know, exhaustion, caffeine, and I really wanted to have, want to have these conversations. So I want you on. It could be early as next week or whenever, but I'd love to have you back on Dr Jenna.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Thanks for having me today too.
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