Bend Don’t Break

May 23, 2016
The first “first responders” - 911 Dispatchers often refuse to acknowledge the toll stress and trauma take. But when we recognize, normalize and mitigate the normal affects of the work and support each other, we can strengthen ourselves and each other.

A mighty wind blew night and day
It stole the oak tree's leaves away
Then snapped its boughs and pulled its bark
Until the oak was tired and stark

But still the oak tree held its ground
While other trees fell all around
The weary wind gave up and spoke.
How can you still be standing Oak?

The oak tree said, I know that you
Can break each branch of mine in two
Carry every leaf away
Shake my limbs, and make me sway

But I have roots stretched in the earth
Growing stronger since my birth
You'll never touch them, for you see
They are the deepest part of me

Until today, I wasn't sure
Of just how much I could endure
But now I've found, with thanks to you
I'm stronger than I ever knew

- The Oak Tree, Johnny Ray Ryder Jr.

An arborist who works with traumatized children brought this poem to the class. As I read over the words, it wasn’t the children that I thought of but all the men and women who sit at the console, under the headset taking 911 calls and dispatching emergency responders. Those who I had the honor of working with for many years and those who I’ve had the privilege of talking to in the decade since as I’ve continued to advocate, educate and unify our weary voice. Only recently has the idea that 911 Dispatchers, as first responders suffer from extreme daily stress and trauma. We’ve recognized that something was amiss for years, but couldn’t or wouldn’t name it. We watched friends, colleagues and ourselves get callous, anxious, depressed, negative and burned out. We struggled with weight problems, migraines and autoimmune diseases. We easily recognized and admitted that we worked under extreme conditions: bad air, bad lighting, bad schedule, bad food and bad calls. What it seemed we didn’t want to acknowledge was the toll this took on us physically, mentally and emotionally. After talking with hundreds of 911 Dispatchers, as well as, experts in stress and trauma, three reasons emerged.

No Time

One of the aspects of public safety telecommunications work that differs from other first responders is the pace, the sheer quantity of incidents we are required to handle. Consider how a field responder typically deals with an incident. A tone goes off and the dispatcher gives information on where and what is occurring. He or she, hopefully with backup, heads to the scene. They do a quick situational awareness sweep assessing who, what, where and possibly why. They deal with the emergency until it is no longer an emergency. Then, often, they go get a cup of coffee, they write the report, or they take a moment of down time. On the other hand, for a dispatcher, someone or several someones call 911. The operator answers the call, begins asking questions, prioritizes the incident and either sends the information over to the dispatcher or dispatches the call themselves. They continue talking with the caller until field responders arrive. During this time, they are with the caller; they are on-scene. They hear everything including the caller begging for help. They try and mediate, negotiate and control using only their voices and their imagination. When the field responder arrives, they hang up. Several seconds later, the tone beeps in their ear and they begin again. Over and over and over and over. There is no down time. They don’t take a break to process each call before the next. According to Jim Marshall, CEO/Co-Founder of the 911 Wellness Foundation there is one other time factor that affects 911 Dispatch disproportionately. For every call a field responder is dispatched to, the 911 Dispatcher takes 5 to 10 because not every call requires an emergency response, but every call requires handling. The sheer frequency of calls without reprieve wears on an operator over a shift and over a career. 

No Training

Although many of us were taught some kind of stress reducing technique, such as visualization or meditation, we really are ill-prepared to handle the stress and trauma we experience. When we don’t understand the physiology of what we deal with, it is easy to blow it off, minimize or ignore it until we bow under its weight. Just because we refuse to acknowledge it does not mean that it will not make us mean, ill or dead. It is much like our calls, if we don’t deal with them, they will not get better, only worse. But in so many centers, training to recognize, normalize and mitigate stress factors is still being overlooked. And at the same time, many of us are still refusing to address the stress inherent in the work. We still hold on to the stigma that being affected is weak, that we’ll be judged by each other, and that we’ll be seen as unfit. We often don’t give each other the space to be real because we refuse to give ourselves that same space. We are the fixers. We are the ones that people come to for help both at work and at home. We are expected to have the answers and be able to handle any situation all the time. Our minds reel with the idea that if we need to ask for help or if we need to fix something within ourselves that the world will fall off its axis. Let me assure you it won’t. It’s okay. It’s normal and we need to seek support sometimes. When we are taught how to help each other, for example in certified peer support programs, we are given the space to acknowledge the very real aspects of stress and its affect on us and the internal permission to lean on our friends who sit right beside us and understand the world we live and work in.

No Trail

One of the key factors to our suck it up emotional code as Marshall describes it is that’s the way we’ve always done it. Since the very beginning when 911 Dispatchers entered the world of emergency response work, we’ve been indoctrinated into the don’t think about it, don’t feel it, and certainly don’t let it show it bothers you mentality. Only recently have field first responders been given the space and the permission to deal with the effects of their stress in a healthy way. But, for generations 911 Dispatchers have sucked it up right beside them. Unfortunately, as other first responders begin to get better, we’re often dismissed and forgotten about. We have so few people that we can look to as healthy examples. With the stigma, so often operators struggle then seek help quietly. When we do choose to share our story of hope and healing, we’re often viewed negatively because we are still entrenched in the stigma of weakness. News flash: Having a normal reaction (stress and trauma response) to abnormal situations (emergency work) is NORMAL. We all have a variety of resilience skills, but each of us is affected-PERIOD. When we have pioneers and leaders who are willing to stand in front of us and share their story, like at the 9114911 conference, we can have healthy examples to follow.

911 Dispatch work will never be easy. It will always take a toll on the person who handles the worst days of others. What we can do is begin to get healthy ourselves. We can recognize that our leaves and our branches will be sheared off, but if our core, our roots are kept healthy by understanding, education and support, we can bend but we don’t have to break.

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