speaker-0: you What is up, y'all? You're listening to the Engine House. My name's Cody. I'm your host. And this is your first time listening. Welcome. Thank you for checking us out. Before we get started with our amazing guest of the day, I have to mention a couple of things real quick. The first is that this episode of the show is sponsored by my company, Engine House Designs, and we specialize in custom fire service apparel. So if that's something you're looking for, check us out at engine house designs.com. We are also on Instagram, tick tock, Facebook and YouTube. And then of course, if you have an idea for the show, maybe you want to be a guest or see a certain guest on the show. Feel free to email me at engine house podcast at gmail.com. And then as always, don't forget to share this episode with somebody that you think will benefit from it. ⁓ Or if you think that what we're doing here is cool or entertaining share the show with somebody Make sure that you subscribe and hit the notification bell so you can get notified every single time a new episode drops These are the easiest Cheapest way to support the episodes in the show and as a whole without spending a dime, so Let's get right into it. I'm excited about this one Today's guest is a good friend of mine that I had the pleasure of meeting when we originally went through fire school in Memphis, Tennessee. ⁓ We eventually got assigned to the same battalion, rode the unit a handful of times, had a lot of fun doing that, and ⁓ made some fires together. But now he's doing really well. ⁓ His new department that he's working for, we'll get into that in a second, but he's got a story to tell. And I figured that it would be good for y'all to hear. And maybe it'll give someone a shift in their perspective. And if nothing else, hopefully ⁓ you enjoy the conversation. So I just want to dive right in with our first segment, the size up. So, buddy, if you could give us your name, your current job title and years of service. And if there's anything else you want to throw in there, go for it.
speaker-1: Yeah, well, you know me, Chris Wheeler. ⁓ Me and Cody went to recruit school together in Memphis. I've been doing this, what, since I was 18, I'm about to turn 29, so 11 years almost now. ⁓ Nine or 10 of them as a paramedic. ⁓ Worked around the country a little bit. Kinda wanted to get away from Northeast Ohio, so ran south. I worked for, excuse me, ASAL River Charleston. Uh, full time. And, um, I was really just trying to get on like a bigger city as a, as a fireman. So I just started putting lateral and recruit apps in and, uh, Memphis called me. I knew a guy who had already worked there and, know, had a conversation with him on the phone and stuff and, uh, off I went and then we met in recruit school. Um, and then, uh, what we were in the sixth battalion together for a couple of years, right? You're at, uh, 16th private. If I remember correctly, was at 13th systematic road unit four together, had some good times, ⁓ caught some fires together, some details, whatever. got the call that every guy dreams of right to go to the eights, went to the eights, great group of guys down there and work there for several years. And then, you know, my parents were getting older and just, you know, life and needing a support system and all that good stuff kind of came up and it was just. time for me to come back home and here I am. So I've been with the department that I'm with now. It's a suburb of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio for every two years in June. ⁓ Good department, good guys, aggressive guys. You know, I have no complaints. So yeah.
speaker-0: I make a lot of jobs out there too, I see you on Facebook all the time.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, first suburb man. First suburb we get after it for sure. I would have to look at the actual numbers from last year. I don't have them in front of me, but first suburb we get some fires. We go to lot of mutual aid fires too. We got two stations. run six, just over 6,500 or just around 6,500, something like that. 6,500 runs a year. We got eight guys on duty. Four guys to the station. So two guys on the engine two guys on the squad That's our minimum or maximums 12, which would be four guys on the engine two guys on the squad The officers are good. The guys are good man. They have an aggressive mindset Obviously my brother's there as you know, he was in Memphis with us and came back Yeah, I can't complain man, it's a good spot I landed I got lucky. Yeah, I mean I got lucky coming back for sure. So we got good leadership I mean, there's not really much more you could ask for You know, so besides more fire, it's very, very much more.
speaker-0: Yeah, y'all do y'all run EMS
speaker-1: Yeah, we do. Yeah. So majority of it's, know, just like anywhere else that runs EMS majority of it's EMS. Yep.
speaker-0: I was gonna say that's the only thing that could get better is no EMS.
speaker-1: No EMS, No EMS? Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Unfortunately, no. Uh, yeah, we, we do run EMS. Um, I think our average call volume out of two stations is 18 runs a day. I want to say 17, 18, something like that. So, yeah, man, I mean, first ever we move and we have, um, something that I've really noticed since working there too, is we've got a lot of guys that have come from places like where Josh and I came from that have a lot of experience. So it makes for like a good. like melting pot basically, right? Like we got a lot of guys that have workplaces that go to fires and then we still get some where I work and it makes for a good, a good work atmosphere. Yeah. So.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome, and I'm excited for that Yeah So just kind of diving into like early Chris what what got you interested in the fire service?
speaker-1: Oh, I appreciate it. My dad. Yeah, my dad's retired now. My dad was a fireman for a suburb of Cleveland called Independence. It's a smaller, like one station apartment. Two to three thousand calls a year, maybe. I don't know. But something like that. I always knew I was going to do this like I there was a couple of years in high school where I thought I might be a cop. Thankfully, I didn't do that. But other than that, I just. I just kind of always knew and he's retired now. My dad's retired. He's a he's a pilot. He works for a company that basically like contracts with the Cleveland Clinic. They fly like the heart transplant teams or the organs round or whatever. But yeah, I mean, he was a fireman in the pants for 31 years. I believe it was. We retired in May of 24th right before I read for I left Memphis. Sure. And yeah, man, that's that's pretty much what got me into it. Yeah.
speaker-0: ⁓ And so, you you said you, you progressed through, you got to Memphis and then, know, eventually you felt led to, go back home ⁓ to your current department. Is there anything that you would say to guys that are thinking about making that jump to, to another department or maybe even a different station? And maybe they're having some second thoughts about that.
speaker-1: Yeah, just remember you're starting over, right? Nobody cares about where you came from. Well, let me rephrase that. In a city like Memphis, guys know, hey, you're from this company, right? That's a firefighting company. That's not a firefighting company, whatever. But when you go to leave Memphis, just know if that is on your mind that you are starting over. Nobody cares about your experience. Nobody cares about where you've been, what you've done. You have to learn that new department's way of doing things, which is good really actually, because it's kind of, it's almost kind of refreshing to a point because you know, when you leave the city and then you end up in a suburb again and four man engines are a thing of the past and predetermined assignments are a thing of the past. you know, true truck companies are a thing of the past and rescue companies and battalion chiefs and operations and safety. Right. Cause now. You're just working with whatever shows up. Like this might end there. This engine might have like three guys on it. This engine might have five, like who knows? You know what I mean? So, things are going to change for the good and things could change for the bad. ⁓ a lot of the things that you're used to, like if you're a current Memphis guy that's thinking about leaving with all the predetermined assignments and properly staffed rigs and all that stuff, that's unless you're going to another big city, man, that's going to be a thing of the past. It's back to just street firefighting. Basically right. Learning how to work with limited manpower with, you know, limited command ability, I guess. Right. Like there's not somebody showing up in a Chevy Tahoe out front for the radio. That's going to run the fire. Right. Like the guy sitting in the front seat might be running the fire and the nozzleman might be the only guy that's there. You know, ⁓ so things change. if you do make the jump, prove through your actions, what you're capable of. You know what I mean? Everybody knows, you know, What what's the best way like what Memphis is right like guys know you go to violence there You go to fires there that kind of thing, right? Um, but proof of your actions if you decide to leave right because especially if go to a place that that that runs like where uh i'm at now Just prove through your actions that like hey when you go to a shooting you can tell hey It's not just for a shooting when you go to a fire You know what I mean? You just kind of go do what needs to be done without being told um
speaker-0: Right ⁓
speaker-1: That would be probably my best advice to a guy that is looking to leave Memphis, especially going to a smaller department. That's what I've learned at least.
speaker-0: Right. You kind of take on that mindset of, being the new guy again, because you are ⁓ just that, you know, last one to sit down first one to get up, you know. Right.
speaker-1: Don't center. Yeah, right. Like, you know, your first couple of months, don't sit in recliner, you know, be the first guy wake in the morning. Not saying I do all this now. I'm just saying like when I started like, right, like, you put the dishes away, wash the rig, ask questions, know your, know, know your streets, know your territory, whatever you want to call it. ⁓ you know, that kind of thing. And then just let your actions prove the rest. Yeah. Cause guys, guys will notice, man, guys. Guys in Memphis notice guys up here notice guys wherever notice on this job, probably anywhere in the world, honestly, like you go to something serious, they look at you and they see how you react. And if you react good, they're like, okay, this guy's always, you know, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Not they're like, maybe not, you know.
speaker-0: Well, and I'll even throw this back around to if you're a new guy at Memphis coming from somewhere else. Yeah. These are good tips too, because we get that a lot of flatter rules, you know, where it's like,
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Like, well, back home we did this.
speaker-1: I still remember yeah, like this guy come from this podunk volunteer fire department Yeah, is good at drafting and now he wants to tell me how to be a fireman. Yeah, like I get it. I get it, man. I do
speaker-0: You know how to suck I shouldn't have ⁓ said that But no man you ⁓ you were recently on another podcast sharing your story ⁓ and I recently had ⁓ Basically a subject matter expert of mental health on on a recent podcast and and Since we got the professionals perspective. I figured it'd be good to hear your story
speaker-1: in you, Yeah
speaker-0: And get the fireman's perspective, you know, because I think she did a really good job of answering a lot of questions that I had personally. ⁓ and a lot of questions that I thought other firemen would have. ⁓
speaker-1: perspective yeah Yes. I saw your ⁓ episode. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. And hopefully you liked it. But, you know, think it would be good for guys to hear it from a fireman himself. Like this is what it is. ⁓ it really is like this or it really isn't like this. So, ⁓ if you kind of just want to give a summary of, your career and how you got to where you are today and, ⁓ what led you to decide to get, ⁓ some therapy.
speaker-1: Yeah, that was good. Absolutely to go to therapy, yeah. Well, where do I begin? ⁓ I got back from Memphis and I quickly realized that there's a lot of incidents that I went to there that definitely stuck with me there and when I my time at Clifton EMS. And I kind of ignored it a while. I always did what I always do, which is like just work myself to death, right? Just keep, you know, I've got like six jobs or something right now, crazy like that. Like just keep signing up for shifts, keep going to work. Don't think about it, whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, everybody just kind of gets to a point where they're like, should probably do something about this, you know? So I called a friend of mine who. He's a chaplain and he used to be a fireman. And that's whose podcast I was on. Talk to him for a little bit or whatever. And he kind of, you know, referred me into therapy and off I went. yeah. And I, am I, what is it now? April 1st. I've been, ⁓ five months now or so of therapy ish somewhere in there.
speaker-0: And you and I both, I mean, I've been in this for 12 years. You've been doing it for 11. So we came up under the same umbrella mindset of fuck that shit.
speaker-1: Yeah, we got your fucking mouth. Yeah. Fucking job. And don't talk about it. So can't do that. Find something else to do. Is that not I mean, it's still pretty much is the attitude of the fire service.
speaker-0: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's one of those things that's changing. A lot of things have changed. And this is something I brought up to her too is like, you know, we take physical fitness more seriously. We're advancing technology. The cancer stuff is, is changing, but like this mental health thing is it's a tough go. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah. And unfortunately, dude, we probably got a long road ahead of us. You know what I mean? It's, it's, um, until you see my personal opinion, until you see a legislator kind of starting to take it a little bit more serious or legislation, I guess what I should say, uh, trying to take this a little bit more seriously. It's going to be. Man, it's, it's, it's, it's a tough go, right? It's a tough go because you're asking a guy to spend his personal money.
speaker-0: from
speaker-1: on something that we don't even believe in basically. Sure. I think that's best way I can really put it, honestly.
speaker-0: something that we're not convinced that we need.
speaker-1: Yeah. And like, I'm still, dude, I've been in therapy for five months and I'm to be honest with you, dude. I still don't think it does anything. You know what I mean? I think it's the placebo effect, dude. It's just like, okay, cool. You said some words, you know what I mean? Tap your finger a few times, do EMDR and tap your finger and okay, now you're better. Like, you know what I mean? But, um, like I said on Tom's podcast, like there's something about it though. Like when you go to therapy that you're like, This is probably a good thing that I'm doing even if I'm not doing it the right way or the way that you know an insurance company wants you to do it or whatever Yeah, you know what I mean? Cuz that's what all boys down to right But yeah, I mean It's weird though. I will say that it's weird and we can go into that, you
speaker-0: ⁓ what, I mean, what is your experience with it? Ben? mean, like, you know, like a lot of guys I think are, are turned off by the idea cause they don't know what to expect. You know? So, mean, what, what's it like, guess is the question.
speaker-1: Well, ⁓
speaker-0: It's like it's like you're losing your virginity again. What was it like?
speaker-1: Honestly though bro you You go in there for the first time and you talk to this person and You just kind of have well at least I are what's I? Can only speak for my own self right sure I can't say that like every guy is gonna have the same type of you know Interaction or whatever right but for myself like you walk in and normally so what starts is they call you right? They call you, you talk on the phone. Um, and they basically kind of feel you out, like if you two are going to be a good fit, right? So like therapy, you have to fit with your therapist, right? Like you have to get along. There's something called the therapeutic relationship where they're going to try to build that, which basically means you blindly trust them almost, you know what I mean? And that is, um, extremely difficult for people that do it. do for a living. say the least. So you talk to them on the phone and then you kind of go in there and you have like your first session or whatever you want to call it. And generally you're to have what's called an intake session where they ask you a million questions, right? do their, they're basically they're doing like their due diligence. Like if you go to the ER and they're like, do you feel it's safe at home? You know what mean? Like that kind of thing, Like there's asking you million questions. They're just like, me about relationships, tell me about work, tell me about How much money you make, you know what I mean? Like they try to get a good understanding of like who you are and what you do for a living. ⁓ you know, your socioeconomic status, like they try to basically establish all that, any like personal issues you might have, any issues at work you might have, whatever. Then the fun begins. you'll notice, you'll notice at first, like the first thing I noticed, I was like, that was not a normal interaction with another person. Right. Because we interact with people all day at work. We interact with, mean, especially in Memphis on an ambulance, 20 to 30 or for a responder, 20 to 30 times a day, you're interacting with some random person. Right. Right. So you learn how. people react to things that you say, guess would be like the best way of me putting it. I don't know if that kind of makes sense. And I know it's there. Right. Right. Yeah. You learn to read people. And I noticed instantly I'm like, this was not a normal interaction with another human. So go down this whole autistic rabbit hole about therapy, which is exactly what I did. So I'm like, what the heck was that? And why was that interaction so weird? And I shoot down this rabbit hole. ⁓
speaker-0: He re-
speaker-1: It's a glorified one way street depending on who you see. There are therapists that would do levels of self-disclosure. There are therapists that don't. ⁓ There are both some think that sitting there and not letting you know anything about them and just letting you talk is the way to fix people. There are others that sit there that will try to talk or relate stories to you to build a rapport. ⁓ That's kind of gonna be like person dependent on what you want. ⁓ Personally, For me, and I think for probably most people that do this for a living, you're going to want to know the person that you're talking to, because you're going to be like, who am I to come in here and just talk to this random person? Like, I don't know who they are and what their intentions are, you know, with this information, like blindly trust them. ⁓ and other guys might just show up or gals might just show up and just be like, okay, here's this, you know what I mean? but that's the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't a normal interaction with humans. And now to go into one way street thing, that's kind of like where therapy seems like it's almost different, dependent on the therapist really from what I've discovered. ⁓ you know, not to, you know, some, some want to talk about themselves, some don't. And I think that The ones that want to deal with us and understand us probably will be more prone to self-disclosure because they understand our trust issues that we have because we do have trust issues. But at the same time, man, somebody might, because I don't want to knock, you know, what another guy, you know, what, what might work for another guy. Another guy might want to go in there and not know anything about the therapist and just vomit. You know what I mean? I want to talk about. and then you kind of just start. Talking about life, really, I mean, you don't, you can go in swinging if you want and just be like, Hey, talk, you know, listen to this bad call, you know what I mean? And they'll take it. But at the same time, I think most of us are kind of like sketches or a sketch, not sketches, uh, skittish, I'm sorry, skittish of therapy in general. And so we're going to be skittish of the therapist. We're not going to think they understand us. Um, still a concern of mine even after five months, you know what I mean? So it doesn't go away quick. And it's just something, man, you you got to work through. I mean, to be honest with you, I really, I've been in therapy for five months and I, I don't, I really haven't talked about too much. Like I've talked about a few like stories here and there, like, I went on this call, I on that call, but it takes a long time for people like us to trust people. And, and that's going to be, I think that's the hardest part of it, is just trying to trust somebody else that you don't know if that makes sense. That's kind of like my spiel on like how therapy begins, right? Like that's kind of how it begins is where you're sitting across from a stranger and you don't know. Yeah. And they want you to just tell, you know, they want you to tell her say or whatever, everything about you, right? Cause that's what they want. Cause they're trying to deal with it. ⁓ but it's hard to do that.
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. And that's always been I mean, other than my my opinion on the whole matter, which is it's changed in the last few months. ⁓ You know, and that's kind of what I told her was like, I've never I've always had all these questions. I've never known what to think about it. Therapy or mental health or anything like that, because even in my personal life, I was I was raised to just you're OK. Like anybody else, you're fine. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, and I think to some extent that's true. Like you should, there are things that you in moments, you need to do what you're supposed to do and we can deal with this later. but you know, that was what I had told her was like, I'm not going to go sit in someone's office and talk to somebody. don't know about shit that I'm not even comfortable telling my wife, you know,
speaker-1: Right, right. And you know, that's, that's that dude, I'm telling you, man, that's the hardest part. Yeah. Dude, that's that, you know, that is the hardest part of therapy. What you just said right there is just like, you don't trust anybody with this information. You don't even trust yourself really with half the information. You're like, you don't even acknowledge it when you're by yourself and nobody's around. You know, I mean, you're, you know, you're, Your wife and your kids aren't around. You don't even think about it then. So you want me to just talk about this or that random person? Like, no, dude, I'm not doing that. You know what I mean? And like, it's hard, man. It's it's, I'm going to be honest, dude. It's one of the, like, I haven't, I've made probably minimal progress, you know, in therapy and it's dude, it's, it's not, it's not an easy, it's not an easy task.
speaker-0: Well, because of the trust, like you said, I mean, we work with people that we are, or we live with them for 24 hours a day and we go through a lot of shit together and we bond. then when somebody gets detailed in or sent to our station to work with us, that doesn't normally work there. It's like, uh, don't know. Can I trust you? You're going to do what I need you to do. Right. Right. You know, if I get in danger,
speaker-1: You're a fire
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I think that just becomes the norm. Like when you get around people you don't know, you're just like, I don't know if I can trust this guy, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, and then you go get on an ambulance with him.
speaker-0: Yeah. But, ⁓ and you know, I know you said that you feel like you've made, you've probably made minimal progress, but do you, have you seen a change in yourself because of this?
speaker-1: Then it really gets fine. Yeah Yes, ⁓ whether you want to or not, you start discovering things about yourself that you weren't paying attention to before, if that makes sense. it may not be out because, or it may not happen, I guess what I should say, because of the therapist, right? They may not sit there and be like, whatever, and then you discover this by yourself. But if you aren't, bringing it up in therapy, you're probably thinking about it and just holding it back, which is pretty much me. And then you know that that's there. you know, whatever the problem is, ⁓ personal life, work life, whatever, even if you don't bring it up, you at least start to like comprehend like, ⁓ okay, like I like, this is a problem, right? And then it just comes to. Are you going to deal with it yourself? Are you going to talk to a therapist about it and what are you willing to talk about? That's really a lot of, a lot of therapy is what are you willing to talk about? And for me really right now, it's not much of anything serious. You know what I mean? Yeah.
speaker-0: You're still trying to get get to know them
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Even subconsciously, mean, that's it's probably what you're doing is.
speaker-1: Right. And then like, you know, you should screen your therapist. This is something I was kind of like weirded out by it first. Screening therapist. What are you talking about? Right. I'm like, that's weird. But, um, you should, you should find somebody who wants to work with your gender and then find somebody who wants to work with your gender that does what you do. Now there is a website for, oh, what's the name of the thing? Um, license.
speaker-0: Yeah
speaker-1: first responders, certified therapists, something like that. I'd have to look it up. But there are, there's a national list, so Tennessee's on there, obviously, Ohio, whatever, South Carolina, that have, they have been through this training course where like they're required to do ride-alongs and they have to do projects on like what a first responder is. I believe they have the choice to either do police or fire or EMS. ⁓ But they kind of like get indoctrinated to our culture basically. Right. Like, you know what I mean? And like, remember, know personally, I've had therapists actually ride with me, like on an ambulance and like everybody in the firehouse was like, steer clear. You know what I mean? Like that person's trying to figure you out. Don't talk to them. But at the same time, even a therapist experiencing that and realizing like, well, none of these guys are even comfortable saying hi to me. It's good for them because it humbles them. They make it makes them realize because a lot.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: A lot of therapists go to their training and they think they're like God, and they can just make you do whatever and talk about whatever. And if you don't, you're a, you know, resistive client who isn't ready for therapy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all this other nonsense that they want to believe when in reality, maybe that's true for most people. Right. Like, and that may be true, but it is not true for us. just don't trust. Right. don't, you know what I mean? I don't trust random people. You don't trust random people because we see every day when we go to work, what happens when you trust the wrong person? Right. You know I mean? Or, yeah. And we just were very skittish of that. And I know personally, guys, I've told me about some of these expense and some of these experiences that they've had in therapy. And I'm like, dude, there's no way I would go back. You know what I mean? There's no way. You know what mean? But that's their only experience. And then they just walk. And it's like, ⁓ like it's difficult to see that because you're like, dude, you just went to the wrong person. You know what mean? Like you just went to the wrong person. You just needed to switch therapists. And but now he's going to have a negative perception of therapy for the rest of his career. And he's going to tell the guys, oh, you know, don't go fucking do that. You know what I mean? The therapist told me whatever, you know, so.
speaker-0: Right. That was one of the things that, uh, the, the lady I had talked to on the podcast, said, know, um, if you are looking for a therapist and they say that they're kind of in all categories, maybe steer clear of that person. Yeah. You know, you want to find someone who specializes in, children, if you need your child to talk to someone or, you know, specializes in marriage, if you're having marriage issues and then there's. Some that are specific for military first responders, you know, stuff like that. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, and ⁓ ironically, man, you can use AI to find them. You can literally do that. Like, dude, you can just go on AI and just search. I need I am a you know, in your situation would be, you know, I'm a firefighter paramedic from Memphis, Tennessee, and I need a therapist who is specialized in. Me or whatever, you know, I mean, no, not for responders or men or whatever. And then. ⁓
speaker-0: Really?
speaker-1: tell what gender you want. want to talk to a female, I want to talk to a male, whatever. And then it'll start shooting out suggestions to you. Now the insurance thing, you know, I really can't help you with that. You got kind of got to figure that out on your own, but yeah. So, but there's the thing. What's the name of that website? Psychology Today or something like that. There's some psychology, if you looked it up, there's some psychology website too that I know about that like therapists will go on there and they'll like set up a profile almost like, it's almost like a LinkedIn profile basically like, hey, I'm so and so and these are the clients that I wanna work with, right? And you can actually filter ⁓ from what the one guy showed me on his phone. Like he could filter like, want a male. And I want a first responder certified therapist and then it'll pop up with every first responders, you know, certified male therapists within however many miles you set it to. Wow. So, yeah, definitely take advantage of that for sure.
speaker-0: Yeah Yeah. Do you think it's helped like your work life?
speaker-1: yeah, somewhat like you get to, you know, can blow off some steam from work, you know, ⁓ whether it's about calls and her personal issues, you know, whatever. ⁓ it is nice to just, you know, kind of just be like, ⁓ this happened, that happened and just get it off your chest to somebody. Cause you don't, know what I mean? Like you're a lot like me, like don't take it home. You know what I mean? So, ⁓ and it builds up after a while that it definitely does. Sure.
speaker-0: ⁓ cause I know like I'm I've kind of experienced it, especially in like Christmas season. So cause we own, you know, engine house designs, a little shameless plug, check them out, get some shit. ⁓ but you know, in Christmas season, like it's, it's balls to the walls apparel. And then it's, ⁓ you know, we're getting our butts beaten at work. So you kind of go through this like burnout phase and it's just like, dude, ⁓ And then afterwards, you know, everything slows down and you kind of get through it. But like you think therapy would be good for for that.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, ⁓ well, in reality, you can go, you can go to therapy for anything. I mean, any you could just be like, and I just I feel stuck in life. You know what I mean? Sure. Therapists, they'll try to, you know, explore your feelings or whatever. ⁓ And so, you know, for that kind of thing, for burnout, like with like the holiday season, absolutely. Now, burnout with the job. 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because You kind of forget that like we generally just like the police have negative interactions with people. We don't have a lot. We don't show up in an ambulance like 99 % of the time and like for like something good, right? And you know, so for dealing with burnout of just like frustration of dealing with people for sure. Yeah. You can definitely go to therapy for that too.
speaker-0: Do you think changing your perspective on like, like deciding to go to therapy, obviously change your, your outlook on going to therapy. ⁓ but do think it's helped you look at other things differently? Like they're just different aspects in life. Like maybe like, I know you always worked out, but you think it made the gym more of a necessity or do you think like, ⁓ completing today's tasks is more of like a priority. Like, do you think it just overall changed? perspective in life, how you handle everything.
speaker-1: Yeah, to an extent. Yeah. ⁓ like I said, I haven't done like really much of any like deep work or whatever you want to show in therapy. You you just you've learned but kind of like I you know was talking about earlier whatever you you learn about yourself So whether you learn about yourself because the therapist talks to you about like what she's here or she is saying like I guess like patterns kind of like that kind of deal. ⁓ so you learn about yourself, but you also learn about yourself in a way where if you're not talking about it, kind of, like I said, you know, it's there and it kind of helps you change your perspective, you know, on life. Sure. generally for the positive. Yeah. Generally for the positive. So.
speaker-0: I just, imagine like, ⁓ you know, when I first started running my business and it started to get busier, I learned that like, Hey, if this task needs done today, like I have to do it today. I can't do it tomorrow. Cause then it's late. ⁓ or it just continues to get put off. And that kind of changed my perspective on like, you know, ⁓ put the trash out in the morning instead of waiting before you go to bed. Cause you might forget, or, know, like it just changes your perspective on daily tasks because it's like, It's important that I do this now instead of waiting, right? You know, ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. It can have that effect. ⁓ It's kind of like what you put into it is what you get out of it. Sure. I mean, like if you're going to be like me and not really talk about anything serious for a while, like, you know, how much can really expect to change? It's on you. ⁓ But at the same time, if you put a ton of work into it and you're like, I, you know, want to be better at organizing my day or whatever. Right. ⁓ I mean, people that become shrinks are trained to help you navigate that, right? Not everything has to be, you know, life or death, like talking about college or whatever. So, you know, if you were looking just for more like superficial kind of work, like just talking about generic life and then see where it goes, that's totally fine. You have complete control over whether you go weekly or biweekly or monthly or every few months or whatever. You can make it whatever you want it to be. ⁓ it's really up to you. You, you decide what you talk about for the most part. You decide, you know, you know, what skills are like, I don't know what else to call it besides like, like coping skills, basically that you learn, you know what I mean? Um, and they'll offer up whatever, you know, assistance or guidance they can give you and it's up to you to take it. Right. Like for me personally, I really haven't taken too much. I've taken some, but not too much because I'm so skeptical kind of this whole thing. But you know, if you could, I could go back next week and speak, no, let's, let's do this. You know I mean? Um, it's just when you get to that comfort level. So, Yep.
speaker-0: What made you decide to actually try it out?
speaker-1: Yeah, I've heard that before too. Uh, I just, man, I, don't know, man. I just, I just got to a point where I was just like, man, like, you know, I'm 28 at the time or yeah, 28 years old. And I'm just like, like I spent my whole twenties like this. Like, is this how I want to live the rest of my life? Cause I'm kind of buckled in basically, you know I mean? Like this is life on just repeat mode. You know I mean? Yeah. ⁓ and I'm like, is this really how I want to spend the rest of my life? Like, do I really want to spend the rest of my life being like this? And I'm like, no. So I decided, yeah, I'll give it a shot. You know what I mean? Like maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. I'm so skeptical of it, but at least I'm trying something, I guess. You know what I mean? that's kind of like what put me there for sure. ⁓ yeah. And it's just like, do you want to continue down that path or do you want to get better or fix yourself a little bit? You know what I mean? Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, and that's kind of like where I got to. So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's my best way of putting it.
speaker-0: Yeah, sure. You think you think some people like never see that as an issue? Like they never see feeling a certain way or being disgruntled or hardened. They never see it as an issue.
speaker-1: Mm hmm. 100%. Yeah. And was one of them for a long time and I still am a problem for the record. I'm not fixed. I'm not healed. Yeah. You know, I'm the furthest thing from that. ⁓ you know, I, you know, I just, you know, you
speaker-0: We sort of make it a badge of honor in the fire service.
speaker-1: Yeah, and this job, yeah, for sure.
speaker-0: You know, you're that you're the guy that gets angry, you know, don't don't piss him off.
speaker-1: When something's going wrong, you know what to do, so everyone's just like whatever, you know what I mean?
speaker-0: Yeah. And I get it. mean, we're all, we're all masculine type a personalities. ⁓ and it's, it's the old school way, you know, like, I said, I think there is.
speaker-1: Right. I was brought up to that's all. I was trained by dudes that were like, kind of like going back to the beginning of this podcast. mean, you, shut your fucking mouth. You go on the calls and you don't say another word about it. And if you can't do that, then you need to go find something else to do. Cause you can handle this. And you know, a lot of these dudes are in their life, you know, when they retire and, ⁓ you know, having been through. a period of time where I was off work because of an injury and having gone to an extremely dark place during that time, I kind of realized like when I retire, I'm screwed. You know what I mean? So I better try to find some way of making this situation better than what it is. You know what I mean? ⁓ cause what do you hear, man? You hear a dude retires and then six months later he takes his own life and it's sad to see you. Or to see somebody, guess is really what I should say. You know, you serve a community for how long, you know, and then what's your reward? You don't even enjoy your pension. I mean, you just you retire six months and then it's over, you know, it's just like, well, you know, it means it's it's it's I know several people that have taken their own life that do this for a living and whether they're retired or active and you just it's that man, it's a It's sad to see. Yeah, it's sad to see. So.
speaker-0: Yeah, and why do you think we don't take it more seriously?
speaker-1: I think it's the masculinity and the alpha personality. I really do. Um, nobody wants to admit that. no, like for me personally, you'll never see me at work admit that a call bothered me. Yeah. I mean, how many, how many nights did we spend on unit four together? You know what I mean? Under the nets. You know what I mean? Like just saw the most traumatic thing I've ever seen in my life. Dropped them off at the med. All right. What's, what's holding? You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, what's in our territory or whatever. But, um, yeah. Um,
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: think that's got a big part of it for sure. ⁓ And I said this on Tom's podcast and I'll say it here. To an extent, we have to have that. do. Really do. I mean, like you can't. I'm for therapy for guys. ⁓ I don't necessarily think it's my niche. Like, I don't really know how much this is going to do for me. I feel like I'm more of one of those people where therapy isn't really going to change me at all anyway. So like, you know what I mean? But at the same time,
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely.
speaker-1: I don't want to downplay this for somebody else who this, I mean, this could save their life. You know what mean? Like, knows? ⁓ so, you know, I, I'll say the line. guess I always tell, ⁓ you know, people that I teach and stuff, but as I say, not as I do, you know, you should do this. Don't end up like me, because you end up just an extremely closed off, emotionless person. You know what I mean? You don't, you don't ever like.
speaker-0: Absolutely.
speaker-1: You don't even allow yourself to feel emotions like when you're by yourself, so.
speaker-0: Well, you see...
speaker-1: You know what mean? Because you can't just break it. Like, it's not like I can just be like, you know what I mean? So it's just you. It's just I don't if I could prevent every guy on this job from. From from becoming like this, you know, I would. And that's why, like, I'm so pro mental health for the fire service. So I tell dudes that just start doing this, especially at busy places like, hey, man, you, know, you don't have to go every day or every week. You don't have to go every month. You don't even have to go every other month. But like, you should probably have a phone number that you can call. every six months and just go vent about work too, or whatever you want to talk about, you know, whatever you're going through. because we see things that people shouldn't see every day and we see a lot of it, especially at a place where you work. ⁓ can attest to that and, ⁓ you're going to handle it healthily or you're going to like in a healthy way or whatever, or you're going to hand it, handle it in an unhealthy way. Yeah. And, The choice is yours basically on what you want to do.
speaker-0: So when I think, uh, I think you hit a good point, you know, to some extent you do. How inappropriate moments you do have to suck it up because when you get on scene and this person needs you or this family needs you, like that's what you are getting paid to do. mean,
speaker-1: And you can't, you know, you can't sit there and be all emotional. Right. You know what mean? Like you've got a job to do,
speaker-0: or short circuit and not be able to function.
speaker-1: Right. And something that I was taught early, like on this job, ⁓ is that like, the leaders all like, if you're the paramedic in charge, which I know that I have been the paramedic in charge of numerous bad runs. ⁓ and I'm sure at this point in your career now in Memphis, you have, gotta be like, everybody's looking for you to make the decision, right? Like, I'm not speaking a foreign language to, think you or any, especially paramedics from Memphis that's going to watch this. ⁓
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: You gotta, ⁓ you gotta be calm, man. You can't, you, lost the right to freak out when you decided to do this for a living. Like you got to tell everybody, you know, which, what needs to happen. It's just the way the job is, man. mean, I'm not going to sit here and be like, you know, you should be allowed to access your emotions on like, no, no. And if you're that way, then you've got to go find something else to do, man. Cause you can't do that. Like, cause imagine if it was you, imagine if it was your kid, not breathing.
speaker-0: Exactly
speaker-1: And then the firemen show up and they start crying. You'd like, are you serious? You know I mean? Like you're supposed to, you know what I mean? Like you're supposed to fix this situation, not make it worse. Yeah. I'm not. So, but when you get off, that's when you kind of got to start to figure out like, how should I handle this? Sure. You know what I mean? ⁓ cause there is a sequence of emotions that you should feel that you don't. And then the longer you put it off, the harder it, you know, it gets. And I can attest to this, even talk about any of it at all, uh, emotional wise. And it's, you know, it, uh, it can be a tough go at times. but when you're on scene, man, yeah, I mean, you got a job to do, dude.
speaker-0: And you're right. You know, every it's not just that they're it's not just that they're waiting for you to tell them what to do. They're also reading your energy. They're looking at how you're acting because then they know you set the pace and.
speaker-1: And I mean, you have to do that. Yeah. Times. Sorry, go ahead.
speaker-0: And I've ⁓ even had to have talks with my EMTs like, hey, I need this to get done. And they're like, ⁓ I'm sorry. You're just so chill. And I'm like, yeah, but I need you to do this now.
speaker-1: I put them on a CPAP, guess, you Yeah, man. And I have had it. Well, at least twice I can think of off top of my head, uh, times in my career where I have gotten in the back of an ambulance during a really bad run and just looked and just seen chaos and be like, everybody stopped. take a deep breath. We got this. Here's what we're going to do. You know, I need you to do this. I need you to do this. Whatever is orchestrating a band basically. Right. Right. Um, But especially if you're going to be a paramedic in a place where you don't have medics everywhere, you have to learn that skill. have to. You have to. Because either this job will eat you up and spit you out and you won't be able to function as a person, period. Or you're going to learn how to, at least when you're at work, do that. And you have to. mean, it's no different than the lieutenants on the rigs or the battalion chief pulling up out front of whatever. Could be a Mayday fire, could be whatever. He's got to manage that situation. He can't just get on the radio and start screaming and freaking out because it's going to, what would that do to a fire scene? If the battalion chief showed up and just screamed and gave no clear orders and just freaked out, what would happen on a fire scene? It'd fall apart. What's the same thing for us as a paramedic too. If you don't orchestrate the band, they're just going to start playing. You know what I mean? It's going to get away from you and then you're going to look like an idiot.
speaker-0: Yeah. sound like fifth grade recorders.
speaker-1: Yeah, I knew he was gonna- yeah, yeah. Right.
speaker-0: But I think too that that plays an important key in how that run affects the the person too if you if you do a good job of ⁓ You know leading the band so to speak and you know that you did everything that you could and you gave it your all You did you did the best you could? ⁓ Then it doesn't really matter the outcome at least to me if I know that I did my job the way I was supposed to the outcome doesn't I don't care. You know, I shouldn't say I don't care. I wanted to help them, but if I couldn't help them, then that's it was out of my hands. But if I show up and I'm just total trash and that person dies, I take that personally, you know. The people I'm working with are trash then I take that personally.
speaker-1: Right. There you go. There's a there's a medic survival. You know, medic survival scar right there. Crap company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That may be true for some guys for sure. Yeah, man. You you do what you're supposed to do and there's nothing else to it. And, know, it is what it is, man. You know, we get put into. impossible situations all the time. You know what I mean? Doing this for a living. Especially in a city like where you work and yeah, man. You just, you know, you got to do what you can do with the resources that you have, man. I mean, there's really nothing else to do it besides that. But I think that's why, you know, we're here to talk about mental health, but brings me to another point on this job is like, that's why people should take knowing your job seriously. They really should. Cause it's on you. You know what I mean? And I was brought up in a way on this job. It's like, ⁓ you don't do this for awards. You don't do this for the, you know, you do this because what you're supposed to do, it's no, I look at going on a squad call or going on a house fire or whatever you want to call it, right? Some call where you got to fix somebody's problem, right? Yeah. It's no different than your car breaks down and you take it to the mechanic, right? Sure. The mechanic fixes it. He charges you that charges the tax, right? People pay their taxes. ⁓ You don't care that that, you know, he was under there for 12 hours of the ranch and your bolts were rusted or whatever, you know what I mean? Or you were, but you know, you were just like, whatever, man, I paid you for the service. Thanks. And like, yeah, that that's an honestly, that's, think I personally think that's the right edge to the fire service should have. Like you shouldn't be doing this because. You know, you think you're like a hero or some, some weird like that. you should be doing this because you generally like believe in what you're doing. You know what I mean? Not because you want, you know, you know, you want to.
speaker-0: Yeah, whatever you got
speaker-1: you know, get some award or whatever. Cause you see that all the time on this job. I know you do. know I've seen it. So like you just, it's what you're supposed to do, man. It's just, ⁓ you know, you, we deal with people in the worst situations of their lives. They're losing their property. They're losing a loved one, whatever. You just try to make it better, man. You know? And, ⁓ and then that's it. That's pretty much how I think at least the add to the Fire Service should be. Now I could be wrong and I'm sure there's a hundred guys that disagree with me, but it is what it is. So that's a whole other rabbit hole. Yeah.
speaker-0: If you're in a shitty situation and the first thing that pops into your mind is like, I'm going to get recognition for this. Yeah. You're maybe doing the wrong. Right.
speaker-1: Yeah, you probably got the wrong job. You probably got the wrong job. Yeah.
speaker-0: And, you know, it's, ⁓ I've had the opportunity of, you know, being in a situation where the best possible outcome, ⁓ came out and my lieutenant was very adamant about putting me in for an award. And I'm like, that's, this isn't why I do this, you know? And I'm like, if you really feel led to do it, then you can do it. And. ⁓ I don't know if he listens these or not, but the jerk made me write my own disposition For the award and I'm like this is horrible. But ⁓ yeah, you know and then they ended up giving somebody else anyway, so worked out in my favor, but ⁓ You know, you're right the whole time. I wasn't sitting there thinking like I'm gonna do this right because I'm gonna get an award That's not why we do this job man Like and if it is why then go do something else because you're not really trying to help ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah. And I've been I got voluntold to go get an award this past ⁓ January, whatever it was. You know what mean? I didn't want to go. just got, hey, you have to go to this. And it's like whatever medical director wants you to go. So it's like, OK. You know what mean? And it was awkward the whole time. It was awkward getting the award. don't, you know, I mean, think I did anything that was worth any sort of recognition. I just did what the public expects me to do. something went wrong. I showed up. I made the situation better, which is why you pay your taxes. You know what I mean? So it's an awkward situation, I think, for a lot of guys to be in, because like, I don't want this. You know what I mean? Like, it's my job. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I get it. I get it.
speaker-0: ⁓ well getting back onto the mental health, if there's a guy, ⁓ maybe he's a fireman, maybe he's not. but if there's anyone out there that's kind of on the fence about, ⁓ you know, whether that, whether or not they should get treatment, ⁓ you know, what would you say to that person?
speaker-1: would say just give it a chance. You know what I mean? You never know. Worst that happens, you show up somewhere, you waste, you've used your insurance, who even knows it might not even cost you anything, but you waste, know, waste a little bit of money, whatever, right? But you're like, it's not for me because it could also change your life. You know what I mean? Just because, you know, maybe I'm not exactly. I don't know else to call it. Besides, not maybe I'm not doing therapy the right way, right? Like I'm not. talking about a bunch of emotional stuff or like, you know, anything like that. Cause I really don't know if it's for me, somebody else that might walk in the same room and just be like, this is awesome. You know what I mean? Let's talk about this. Let's talk about that. And you have the ability to talk about whatever you want to talk about. mean, I, you can, you can say, ah, I don't want to talk about that. You know what I mean? Now the therapist might push it and that's their right. Cause it's their job. But at the same time, you just, ah, I want to talk about that. I don't know what to say. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if they have that much of an issue with it, then you need to just go to a different therapist. Sure. You know what I mean? I kind of already talked about screening them, but screen them. You know what I mean? Test them. You know, know guys that have told me that they've been to therapists and they told them one story and the therapist started crying and they preferred them. So, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I know. Personally, I know somebody that that happened to like one story and it's like, by the way, this is one of like 70, you know what I mean? Like this one of pages that I have wrote down, I told you one story and you started crying and said, you can't handle this and send me to somebody else. And then that guy's like, well, apparently therapy is not for me. And walks, you know what I mean? Yeah, That's them. Um, as bad as that's going to sound really, uh, you should, because once you open the can of worms and you start talking about stuff, you don't want to get like halfway through and just be like,
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Oh, you can handle it. You know what I mean? Like, you like, want it right? Yeah. You you want to know that the person's going to like, be okay with it. And like most therapists themselves are in therapy themselves and probably go talk to their own therapists about the crazy clients that, know, they have to deal with or whatever. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, my advice to them would be just test it out, man. I mean, worst that happens is like they can't. It's not like you walk into a therapist office and you have to sit there for an hour. I've left therapy early. I've left at like 30 minutes before I'm like, I don't want to be a little hour. See you later. You know what I mean? Like you don't, they're not allowed to like keep you there or something. You know what I mean? You sit down and you're there 10 seconds. Nope. And you get up and walk out. They can't do anything. Like it's not, it's not how therapy works. Therapy is you want to be there and you're, you're putting in the work. So no one's going to like chase you or like. stop you from leaving. may ask as or something I can do to change the situation. You know, mean something like that, but they're not going to be like sit down and tell me about, know, tell me about your PTSD from work or whatever. It's not, it's almost like they're casually trying to get you to bring it up. You know what I mean? But you decide what you do and what you don't want to talk about. So
speaker-0: So you're very much in control.
speaker-1: You are very much. that's going to be so something that funny. You bring that up something that I've learned through my own therapy. And then through just like research is that. Yeah, that word right there. That's what we all have the issue with. That's the baseline of it is control because what do we do? We go to work and we get put in these ridiculously terrible situations. And what do we do? We figure everything out, right? Like sort everything out. We organize the or organize a band or whatever. and direct it, right? So now when you're the one that's not organizing the band and directing it, and now you know that somebody's sitting across from you trying to figure you out and you're not in control of any of it, it's tough. It's tough. That's it's, it's, it's a character flaw that you're to build doing this for a living. ⁓ and the longer you do this for a living and don't address it, it's going to get worse. You know, ⁓ but it's an issue that we have. It really is. It's an issue that we have, ⁓ probably I'm going to, don't really know if there's a first responder that would go to therapy and not have some sort of control issue with, with the room. Sure. so the best thing that you can do is find a therapist that's okay with that dynamic, right? Because there's a lot of therapists that don't want to deal with us. They don't want to talk to us. They don't want to deal with us. They want, you know, the 19 year old in college who's got PTSD from a breakup to come in so they can validate their feelings and tell them how hard their life is. Even though mommy and daddy are, but you know, whatever, you know I mean? We see it all the time at work, right? How many times we go to a call, rolling around drunk talking about, I, my, you know, my boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on me and now I have PTSD and you know what I mean? Like that's. what a lot of therapists actually want to deal with because it's easy and they think that's real work. it, you know, when it comes to people like us, you know, like that kind of thing, wouldn't even, we wouldn't even talk about that in therapy. You know I mean? Like, yeah, whatever. So, that's kind of like why you need to screen who you're talking to, right? Because you have people that are going to tell you like, ⁓ you have a you know, control problem. This is a character flaw. We need to address this right now and they're going to push it. And then like, that's not, that's not going to work. That's not going to work for people like us. You know what I mean? You have to try to find somebody who's willing to just deal with that part of it and then deal with it slowly and later basically. Right. Cause you're going to walk in and you're not going to be okay with somebody with a college degree sitting across from you telling you, you don't know what real life is basically. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to be cool with that at all. Would you be cool with that? Co no, no. You'd be like, you have no idea what real life is. I see real life every day.
speaker-0: Yeah, you don't know what real life is. Yeah
speaker-1: Right, right. Like you went to what? Some college. Okay, you got your little college education. You know what I mean? You think you understand me? You don't. And that's, I'm going to say, dude, for first responders, a majority of the time, that's right there. That, that is the issue that either they figure out with their therapist, they go to a different therapist or they walk from therapy completely. Like that's what it ends up. It ends up at control. It ends up at your version of reality. And Some can handle that and some can't. you need to find one that can. So I would encourage guys too, if you do go and you have this bad experience that I'm describing where it's, you know, you go to some therapist that thinks you should just start vomiting your feelings on day one. And if you don't, you're resistive and you're a problem, then just leave, but don't write therapy off in general, find another therapist. You know what I mean? Because they may not even understand on Like how thin ice they really are on with people like us, cause we'll be quick to walk. You know what mean? Well, you know what I mean? Like, all right, see you like we're not the, don't feel like a majority of us that do like this for a living that are already sketched out with like what therapy is in general, a majority of us, I don't feel like are going to argue with therapists. just going to leave. You know what I mean? Like we're just going to walk out. Like I can tell you from personal experience, my, like I've had a therapist say some things to me and I didn't argue. was like, okay, you know what I mean? Whatever. You know what I mean? Like I'm not going to sit here and get into some like, cause there are people like, know, most normal people, they show up to therapy probably, they, you know, they just completely depend on this person. And if they say something they disagree with or like push something, they just like, like I They just have like mental breakdowns. I can't believe, you know what I mean? Like that's not our first responders are. We're just going to sit there and take it honestly. Really? Are you really going to sit there and argue like I'm paying to sit here? Like, I really going to argue with this person on top? Like, no, like you're just showing me your true colors. Now I know what you truly think. You know what mean? Which is what we're trying to get out of them because we're trying to figure out if we can trust this person or not. Right. You know what I mean? And, ⁓ you know, so if you have a good therapist and something went wrong and You don't go in swinging and like, ⁓ why did you say, you know, you're just like, hey, like, why, what was that all about? If you have a good therapist, they're going to apologize to you and they're going to be like, hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant this. And they may feed you a crock of bullshit by what they meant, or they might tell you the truth, whichever, but they're going to at least try to repair it and make it better. ⁓ and if you have a bad therapist, they're going to sit there and going to tell you your problem and you don't want to do the work or whatever you want to call it. And I mean, it's serious, man. It goes one or two ways. Like, you know, you want an honest take on therapy. This is, this is the honest take. If they don't try to fix it and don't understand that, like, you're probably different than most clients that walk through that door, ⁓ then go to somebody else, man. Go to somebody else. You know what I mean? But don't.
speaker-0: For sure.
speaker-1: This is something that could save somebody's life one day. So even if you're someone like me, where you really don't think this is your thing, like I don't really know. I'm kind of like in a position right now where I'm like, I'm semi disengaging from it, but then I'm semi like, maybe I should stay like I'm in this weird area, right? Like, I really don't know what I'm doing. ⁓ Just because that's where I'm at doesn't mean that the guy that's on the verge of doing something that he or his family is going to regret or it's going to hurt. Might walk in that same office and have, it might save his life. know what mean? so don't knock it. Yeah. Even if it's not for you, like, I don't think it's for me. I'm not going to sit here and bash therapy and be like, ⁓ this is terrible. Nobody should do it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It just depends on where you're at really in life, where you're at, like being in touch with your emotions kind of like, you know, ⁓ and. You know, it's not, It's not necessarily going to be a fun experience. I can definitely attest to that. You're not going to therapy to talk about anything good. You're not going to therapy. Like Cody's not going to go to therapy and like, man, I love my wife and kids so much. My life's great. You know what I mean? You're going to therapy because you're like, Hey man, I got something bad to talk about. I just need to be comfortable enough with you to talk to you about it. Right. And honestly, man, there's different approaches of therapy, kind of like I talked about earlier. So there's the no self-disclosure completely closed off. And if you ask them a question about them, they're like, well, what made you think of that? You know what I mean? And then there's the ones that will try to relate with you because they understand. And those are the ones I think majority of guys are going to want is the one that like actually tries to build up some sort of rapport with you. You know what I mean? To like make you understand that like, yes, although I am your therapist, I am a human. You know what I mean? Like you can know things about me to help, you know, get you to talk about stuff. but then, and I, I don't want to knock the other side of it though. Like there, may be guys that don't want to know anything about their therapist because it'll throw them off and they just want to go in there and talk. But you have to figure out when you start, if you decide to start which, what you want and what you're looking for.
speaker-0: I think you make a really good point to that. Go ahead. everybody's different. And if, if therapy is for you, then go to therapy. If it's not right, then don't.
speaker-1: Don't but don't knock it for other guys. That's not fair
speaker-0: Don't determine what's right or wrong.
speaker-1: I think it's my thing. I really don't think it's my thing at all. I really, I think I'm in the 20. think it's like something like, ⁓ the number I read is like 70 % of people that go to therapy. helps 10%. It makes worse 20%. It makes, ⁓ no difference or it's not for them. I really think I'm in that 20. It hasn't made me worse. That's for sure. But I definitely think I'm in that 20 % of like, I really don't think it's going to help me. Sure. But I'm not going to sit here and I'm not going to knock it because the next guy that goes to that office story might save his life. Sure. Right. And that's what's important is if it is going to help you, if you're in that 70 % of it's going to help you, um, there's you can go on YouTube and look up firefighter EMDR. I mean, there's numerous stories of, guys that, or if you're a police officer, you know, police officer or veteran, whatever, uh, there's numerous guys that have success stories on YouTube that are like, yeah, I did EMDR and it, you know, The things that we see are always going to be with you, but it can at least maybe decrease the stress on your central nervous system. Cause that's what it turns out to be. Like this whole thing comes back to your central nervous system. Right. And this is something to talk about how it's therapy, you know, made you, you know, learn things about yourself or whatever. Um, we do a job where for 24 hours a day, every third day, our central nervous system is in fight or flight mode, whether you like it or not. Uh, let me, you're at 16 still. Yeah. Okay, when you make it back to quarters on unit 16 and you lay in bed, are you really going into a deep sleep on unit 16?
speaker-0: Well, I there's times when I have to be woken up.
speaker-1: But you know you're getting back up and that's busiest, any busiest, ⁓ ambulance at night, you know, like when you lay down, I've been on just like you plenty of busy ambulances in my career where you lay down and you know, within the next 20 to two hours you're getting back up more like 20 minutes, but yeah. So, you know, you lay there on your phone and you get tired and then, you know, it's just the whole thing of trying to fall asleep in a firehouse and a busy firehouse. But what you don't realize is you take that off duty with you. Like dude, I like I talked about this on Tom's podcast but like dude last year, dude I went I had the whole like month of July off dude. I went to Charleston saw some old friends had a sweet Airbnb of the pool dude went to the Bahamas like Dude, I was off from like July 5th to like August 1st. Like I didn't go you know what I mean? Yeah, and um, I Wasn't relaxed once You know what I mean? Like I wasn't relaxed like dude. I was in fight-or-flight mode the whole time
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. And you don't realize that you are in, cause I had no idea, dude. You know what mean? Like I had no idea that like my central nervous system was wired this way or any of that. And then I go to therapy and I learn about at least like the neurobiology of it. I'm like, ⁓ I'm like, that's why I'm like this. You know what I mean? Like you don't especially, and then more you work like you, you work and then you run a business and you have kids and you're married and You have to try to plan a podcast around when your wife wants to go to the gym or when you care, you know, when you kids are in school or, know, yeah, I know you got a dog, you know, you, your central nervous system is constantly firing and it never truly relaxes. Yeah. And something that therapy can do. Cause I know, cause a therapist that I see, uh, told me about this is like, so, you know, isn't exactly an exercise that like I personally been like, yeah, I'll do that. but they've at least shown it to me. are ways it's, there are ways to relax your central nervous system that can be taught. You're basically, you're activating your vagus nerve. It's your parasympathetic nervous, which most guys watching this podcast that have been to medical school, we all know about the vagus nerve. We all know about that. So there are certain things that you can do like breathing techniques, you know, that can calm your central nervous system down.
speaker-0: You're essentially forcing the central nervous system to shut off because of parasympathetic
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that can be extremely helpful. That can be extremely helpful. Even if you don't use it at work, but like you get off and you get in your vehicle to go home. Right. And you're just like, okay, I'm going to try to disengage from work. Right. So I'm going to do this parasympathetic nervous system or Vegas nerve exercise that, you know, my therapist taught me. And then, and then you do it. Maybe that helps you disengage on your, you know, on your drive home. you know, before you go home and deal with your wife and deal with your kids or whatever you got going on in your personal life. You know, I think that is something I almost think. Like I said, my therapist, the one therapist or my therapist, whatever I call that I saw or see, they told me about that. And I kind of was like, I'm not going to do that. And then of course I leave therapy and I YouTube it I'm like, Oh, this actually works. You know what I mean? I just didn't want to do it in therapy. You know what I mean? Because I'm stubborn, you know.
speaker-0: to walk her to know I'm doing it.
speaker-1: Yeah. I'm not going to let you see me do this, but I'm going to do it. You're not going to know about it. You know, mean, now, of course, I'm sure this is going to get shared all over the place and they're going to see this, but regardless, uh, you know, like it. So even showing up to therapy, if you show up to a there, you know, a therapist office and they give you that, and then you don't do it in front of them like me. And then you walk out and you get home and you YouTube it you do it at home and you're like, Oh, this works. You know what I mean? Like, cause it actually does work. You're, you're, you're literally, you are stimulating your Vegas nerve is what you're doing. And that's. That's not anything mental. Like you have to talk about that's just biology. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a mechanics in your body. You can't control it. Right. It's like a smack in the head. You're going to feel pain. You know what I mean? Like, so yeah, man. Yeah.
speaker-0: It's mechanics in your body. It is crazy that you talk about that though, because I've noticed that when I do sit down to relax, ⁓ like last night I sat down to ⁓ kids are going to bed. Aaron was getting ready for bed and I was just like, I'm just going to sit down and chill for a minute. And then I sit there and like five minutes later, I'm like, I need to go do this or I need to go get this done. You know, it's like.
speaker-1: Then the mind starts...
speaker-0: Right. Wanting to do stuff, you know.
speaker-1: And that's the problem with us is that like, even find this in myself because dude, I work like, dude, I've got, I'm, I got a bunch of jobs and involved in a few special teams, whatever. Like I'm constantly just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You never shut it off. Your body just learns over years. This is how life is right. Like I'm constantly in the go. Yeah. And then, so when it's time to sit down and your mind gets quiet, That's when issues with guys really start coming up because there's multiple pathways that this can go. There's like what I've noticed with myself, which is just, and I think this is common amongst most first responders is you get home and just disassociate until you go back to work. I mean, and that an example in case, you know, somebody doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about would be like, you come home from work, you see your wife, you see your kids, whatever, but you're not you. You're not in your head and you sit in reclining, you turn on the TV and you're just basically like zoning out. Right. That would be like disassociation. I don't think there's anybody that's going to watch this that's been doing this for any significant amount of time. This is they haven't done that before. I know I have. I'm sure you have. Right. I mean, like you just associate. And then when you go back to work, you know, Chris Wheeler comes back, Cody Hill comes back and it's like game time. Right. That's one way it goes. Another way it goes. guys start running into addiction problems. They start running into, you know, whatever sort of thing they're going to get involved in in their personal life. That's not good. Like, because what is that? That's a distraction because you don't want to sit there in the quiet and just let your mind race. Right. Because then you start thinking about not only because you brought up a perfect point here. Not only do you think about. Oh, this guy, do that, you know what mean? But then you said, you know, that's that's when runs start hitting you is when you're sitting there by yourself or.
speaker-0: I'll be agonizing.
speaker-1: You know, you're disassociated from your family and you're in your house. And then, yeah, that's that, that right there is the problem with, with where, where guys start making bad decisions. Right. And I think it's something that people need to know that they're doing. Cause I didn't know I was doing it, dude. I was going home and just, I've been going home and just associating every day of my life since I was like 19 years old. You know what I mean? And so like I've spent my whole twenties just.
speaker-0: Autopilot.
speaker-1: autopilot, literally, like I just work, take a vacation every now and then. And other than that, I just, you know what I mean? Like when I'm off, I'm just like, when do I go back to work? You know what I mean? Like there's no, there's no like any part of you. ⁓ and that's another thing that I think we should talk about real quick too, is that, ⁓ it's, it's almost like a, ⁓ something that I've learned myself in therapy is it's almost like a, it's, like an identity crisis, right? Like, like what is Cody Hill like? outside of work, right? And then you really sit there. Cause that's something that a good therapist who's trying to deal with people like us will ask you like, okay, you're Chris, you're in therapy and you're a fireman and you're a paramedic and you're this and you're that or whatever. Right. And that's what you are. Okay. Take that away from you. What are you? Yeah. And then most guys sit back and are like, and then you just kind of stare at them. Like, what do you mean? It's like, well, what are you? Yeah. Like what's your identity besides doing this for a living? What are you doing in your personal life? Do you any hobbies? Do you have anything that identifies you as you other than doing this for a living? Right. And I think when most people get asked that question right there, they're going to have the same reaction. Kinda I have had, which is like, well, what am I? I don't know. Spent my whole 20s only focusing on this. Right. You know? so if anything, therapy could even teach you just how to figure out who you are, like try to maybe help you find a hobby besides picking up overtime or whatever. So. Yeah. You know, means like, what's your hobby? I don't know. I'm signing up at my part-time job when I'm not at my full-time job. know what I mean? Like, I don't know, you know, so, or yeah. So, ⁓ yeah. So it's helpful with that for sure. You know what I mean? Cause I mean, I think even me just saying that question, if someone's watching this, they might actually sit back and be like, what am I besides this? You know what I mean? Right. And, you kind of got to try to start to form an identity outside of. just doing this, right? Cause you can spend your whole life just doing this, but this is where the problem runs in with the suicide on retirement. You take this from you and this is all you have. Right. And now you get your pension or your retirement or whatever, and you're sitting at home and you're not working. And now it's like, Whoa, like what am I, who am I? And what did I just do for the last 25 to 33, 40 years of my career? Yeah. You know what I mean? And look at all these things that I lived through. And I know those thoughts are real because, I was 20. I mean, you remember, dude, when I had shoulder surgery, like I was 24 years old, dude, I mean, and I was off and I did, I went through some dark times while I was off, man, some super dark times. And it was the same thing. It was like, it was like an identity crisis. It was a, your mind finally slowing down. You're not going to work because, you know, you take a week or two off, whatever. Right. But when you're off for six months ish, you're like, whoa, you know what I mean? Like, you're not like, and then this would ⁓ go along with people who are retired. Now you're sitting there you don't have any tasks to do. You know what I mean? Like my task was to go to physical therapy three times a week for an hour. Other than that, I wasn't allowed to do anything. I had to sit at the house. Yeah. You know what I mean? And you do it then, you know, you start thinking about some of these calls that you've been on. You start thinking about like, who, like, who am I? You know I mean? Like, these thoughts come up when guys retired too. And that's how like, You know, I'm not saying I can like relate to a guy with 25 or 30 years on the job that's going through that. But what I'm saying though, is that I at least understand at least somewhat what those thoughts are like. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I know what it's like to be like, cause I remember, dude, I remember when I got hurt, I remember I stopped at a 13th one time and I saw, um, you know, Mario's there's Anders was there. All those guys were there, man. Good. By the way. And, I remember telling them, I'm like, would take an ass kicking on unit four tonight. And they're looking at me like I'm crazy. You know what I mean? I'm just like, dude, I would man. So, you know what I mean? Like my mind's just racing. I want to occupy it. You know, and when your mind races, when there's nothing for it to do, you know, you, like I said, you just associate, you get into personal problems or you just are like me you just stay at work. That's another coping mechanism. You know, the guy that, well, There's not really part-time stuff down there, but let's just say the guy, like for me, it's working like a hundred hours a week, right down there. It's the guy that's picking up 36 hours of overtime every four day, right? Like he just keeps working, keeps working, keeps working. Unless he really needs the money. That guy's really just trying to keep his mind occupied. So he doesn't have to see, you know what I mean? That's, that's, that's what a lot of it is. And I know like, even when I was down there, like I did that and I was trying to buy a house, but at the same time, like a lot of it was just keep your mind occupied, stay busy. You don't want to keep going to work. You know what I mean? Just.
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: on the call, let's go to work on the call. You know what I mean? So you can find yourself in a cycle like that. And then when your mind learns that like, this is how I'm going to cope with the stress of doing this or the stress of, you know, whatever is going on in your life, that's not a healthy way of dealing with it. And then you can run into some problems down the line and you end up in therapy at 28.
speaker-0: Well...
speaker-1: Yeah. So,
speaker-0: ⁓ So is there anything else you would like to throw out there for the audience? I know you had mentioned that you're working with Tom on starting like a peer group.
speaker-1: Mm hmm. Yeah. So ⁓ a couple of things. ⁓ as someone across this place, it's called the safety forces center. ⁓ for this is going to be obviously for Northeast Ohio guys that see this. ⁓ the safety forces center is in Akron. It's in Summit County. ⁓ I know one of the therapists there and she was telling me that if you go and you're some accounting, I believe resident or you work in some accounting, the weekly therapy sessions are completely free. So I don't know, say Yeah, so I don't know, like they'll see you for free and they'll do telehealth or they'll do in person. I don't know, you know, how they fund it. I don't know if it's like grants or tax base. Like I really didn't ask her that much about it, but she's telling me about it. ⁓ and then a friend of mine, Tom, who's podcast I was on before he runs a rise up and fight ministries. And I'm going to give the links to both of these places to Cody to put in ⁓ the description of this video. ⁓ We are in the process right now of attempting to start a peer support team for Cuyahoga County, which is like basically the Shelby County of Ohio, right? It's like the Memphis of Ohio, right? You know, Cleveland and all the suburbs or whatever. so there's a two day class that the safety forces center is putting on. I, for me, it's in May. I think it is. I got to look at the exact dates, but, um, you go through a two day class. Tom is a certified chaplain. Um, and he is going to start this. I guess, I guess it's kind of like a nonprofit type of deal. And then we're going to try to get some guys that want to be on the support team, want to go get this class. So if somebody's spiraling or having some bad thoughts and. two in the morning and you got an argument with your wife and your hammer and you need somebody to talk to you like whatever you call us and we'll come. You can call me. I mean, anybody knows you can call me day or night and I'll show up. But regardless, you can call us and we'll. Hopefully talk you off the ledge enough and then get you to a therapist that wants to work. ⁓ we have Tom kind of already has a list from what he's doing. ⁓ and we're going to start probably knocking on doors of therapists this summer and going, Hey, we all like working for free. So, know, you want to deal with severely traumatized firemen. ⁓ you'll get paid for the therapy sessions, but we need you to come volunteer your time when you could have other clients and go to a fire station for free. Give a lecture on. relationships or EMDR or trauma brain, whatever you want to talk about, but it's always fun asking people to work that works for there asking people that work for hundreds of dollars an hour for free, but we are going to be trying to do that. ⁓ Fortunately, there are people, there are people out there that care that are willing to help. We have already started building a list of, of therapists. know he's got The one that he sent me to, we've got another friend of mine and his that used to be a fireman actually that he's I think graduating this year. He's gonna be one potentially, think maybe still gotta talk to him, I don't remember now, but we're trying to get a list of people that care about people that do what we do for a living and wanna talk to us and... Yeah, man. So I just want to give a shout out to both of those places, I guess. ⁓ And if you are in the Northeast Ohio area and you are interested, especially if you're in Cogut County on being on a peer support team or you want to know what the training is or whatever, ⁓ just reach out to Tom and I. ⁓ You can message him at Rise Up and Fight Ministries. You can just message me on my personal Facebook. It's just Chris Wheeler or whatever. And I can point you in the right direction. And then if you need therapy for some reason and you see this, please, by all means, give me a call. have at least four therapists right now that I know of that in my personal life that I can send you to that know how to deal with people like us. And I just don't. You know, I mean, we went through a suicide while I was there. There was a recent suicide around here. Then there's, you know, I just don't. It's it really saddens me to see somebody make a decision like that and just wonder like, you know what I mean? Like, what could we have done to stop this?
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: And there is a stigma about this. guys, guys, guys make comments about my first podcast. I'm sure guys are to make comments about this podcast. It is what it is. Yeah. But I, my heart's truly in the right place with like trying to make mental health better for us. I can only do so much. I'm a small voice in a big pond. You know what I mean? But whatever I can do to get people to people who care. You know what I mean? Cause there are. And as much as I sat here and said, therapists don't care. There are plenty that do. You just have to find them and know who they are and leave that up to us on the peer support team. When we make this team in the near future, let us figure out who wants to and who doesn't want to. And the trust thing, right? Hopefully the fact that we're firemen or I'm still currently a fireman and we can help guide you in the right direction. I hope you would trust that, that I wouldn't send you to somebody that is going to be like, surprised there's a fireman or cop with PTSD walking through the front door. I didn't know it was going to happen. You know what I mean? Like, so, um, those are my two shout outs. So safety force center in Akron and a friend of mine, Tom freeboard, who's running a rise up ministry. So, uh, the safety forces center, I don't think has any social media that I've found, but, um, he has Facebook, Instagram, and then a YouTube channel. Um, I did a podcast similar to Cody's with him. Uh, about four months ago or so. ⁓ And so if you want to see like what I had to say on there or whatever, you're more than willing to go watch, you know, that episode. So.
speaker-0: Absolutely. And like he said, I'll, link everything down below.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, and I'll send all that to you. ⁓
speaker-0: Absolutely. Well, man, thanks for, ⁓ thanks for taking the time and being willing to share your story. ⁓ like I said, if, if nothing else, I hope people enjoy the conversation, but I really hope this helps, ⁓ someone shift their perspective. And, and, know, like you said, if it's not for you, then it's not.
speaker-1: else man because that's bottom line is that's what this job is about man i mean you got to care for the guys you know what i mean you got to care for the guys you work with just like if you ever get promoted it's it's not about you anymore right same thing that i'm taking that same approach with this right it's not about me anymore it's about the people that we work with it's about keeping people mentally healthy as we can for them to get to a career and actually enjoy a retirement not you know what i mean have something happen in retirement
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-1: Yeah, so yeah, man, I appreciate you having me on. I think this was a good conversation. Hopefully guys will watch this and get something out of it.
speaker-0: that you all have enjoyed today's episode. I know we've really been hammering home the mental health this season, but it is such an important topic that we are too often closed, closed off from. ⁓ And Chris and I have a lot of the same perspective on ⁓ I don't believe that every person is broken. I don't believe believe that every person is OK. But if you are somebody that that needs help, ⁓ feel free to reach out and get that help. Don't be afraid because of what the guys in the firehouse are saying about mental health. And you don't have to tell them. You don't have to bring it to light with them if that's something that you're concerned with how it be taken. ⁓ As Chris said, we are very in control. These are These are issues that only we know that we're struggling with. If that's you, get that help that you need. And if you're skeptical about it, like Chris said, give it a try. Maybe it's something that can help you. Obviously there's still a small percentage of people that it doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt to try. Basically is the message that he gave today. ⁓ Like I said, him and I are similar in lot of ways. One of our similarities is skepticism of therapy ⁓ But he was willing to try it and he said May not work for him, but at least he tried right? So that's basically the message that that I wanted y'all to hear today was even if you're skeptical Give it a try and Just because it's not for you or just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it won't work for the next guy. So just attempt to be an advocate for those around us that need it and that it is useful for. And let's quit cutting our own down and telling them that we just need to shut the fuck up and get back to work. Thanks again for tuning in. As always, check out enginehousedesigns.com for your custom fire service apparel needs. Link is in the description. Email me at engine house podcast at gmail.com if you've got some ideas for the show or if you'd like to be a guest and then make sure that you subscribe and get notified about the podcast so you can know as soon as the newest episode drops. Make sure you share the show with somebody. Maybe it's this episode or the entire show as a whole. We do have a Facebook group to ⁓ the engine house that you can join. All the new episodes get posted on there. You can join the discussion there if you didn't catch the live episode. And as always, stay safe and ignite the pride.
speaker-1: Yeah, well, you know me, Chris Wheeler. ⁓ Me and Cody went to recruit school together in Memphis. I've been doing this, what, since I was 18, I'm about to turn 29, so 11 years almost now. ⁓ Nine or 10 of them as a paramedic. ⁓ Worked around the country a little bit. Kinda wanted to get away from Northeast Ohio, so ran south. I worked for, excuse me, ASAL River Charleston. Uh, full time. And, um, I was really just trying to get on like a bigger city as a, as a fireman. So I just started putting lateral and recruit apps in and, uh, Memphis called me. I knew a guy who had already worked there and, know, had a conversation with him on the phone and stuff and, uh, off I went and then we met in recruit school. Um, and then, uh, what we were in the sixth battalion together for a couple of years, right? You're at, uh, 16th private. If I remember correctly, was at 13th systematic road unit four together, had some good times, ⁓ caught some fires together, some details, whatever. got the call that every guy dreams of right to go to the eights, went to the eights, great group of guys down there and work there for several years. And then, you know, my parents were getting older and just, you know, life and needing a support system and all that good stuff kind of came up and it was just. time for me to come back home and here I am. So I've been with the department that I'm with now. It's a suburb of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio for every two years in June. ⁓ Good department, good guys, aggressive guys. You know, I have no complaints. So yeah.
speaker-0: I make a lot of jobs out there too, I see you on Facebook all the time.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, first suburb man. First suburb we get after it for sure. I would have to look at the actual numbers from last year. I don't have them in front of me, but first suburb we get some fires. We go to lot of mutual aid fires too. We got two stations. run six, just over 6,500 or just around 6,500, something like that. 6,500 runs a year. We got eight guys on duty. Four guys to the station. So two guys on the engine two guys on the squad That's our minimum or maximums 12, which would be four guys on the engine two guys on the squad The officers are good. The guys are good man. They have an aggressive mindset Obviously my brother's there as you know, he was in Memphis with us and came back Yeah, I can't complain man, it's a good spot I landed I got lucky. Yeah, I mean I got lucky coming back for sure. So we got good leadership I mean, there's not really much more you could ask for You know, so besides more fire, it's very, very much more.
speaker-0: Yeah, y'all do y'all run EMS
speaker-1: Yeah, we do. Yeah. So majority of it's, know, just like anywhere else that runs EMS majority of it's EMS. Yep.
speaker-0: I was gonna say that's the only thing that could get better is no EMS.
speaker-1: No EMS, No EMS? Yeah, right, right. Yeah. Unfortunately, no. Uh, yeah, we, we do run EMS. Um, I think our average call volume out of two stations is 18 runs a day. I want to say 17, 18, something like that. So, yeah, man, I mean, first ever we move and we have, um, something that I've really noticed since working there too, is we've got a lot of guys that have come from places like where Josh and I came from that have a lot of experience. So it makes for like a good. like melting pot basically, right? Like we got a lot of guys that have workplaces that go to fires and then we still get some where I work and it makes for a good, a good work atmosphere. Yeah. So.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's awesome, and I'm excited for that Yeah So just kind of diving into like early Chris what what got you interested in the fire service?
speaker-1: Oh, I appreciate it. My dad. Yeah, my dad's retired now. My dad was a fireman for a suburb of Cleveland called Independence. It's a smaller, like one station apartment. Two to three thousand calls a year, maybe. I don't know. But something like that. I always knew I was going to do this like I there was a couple of years in high school where I thought I might be a cop. Thankfully, I didn't do that. But other than that, I just. I just kind of always knew and he's retired now. My dad's retired. He's a he's a pilot. He works for a company that basically like contracts with the Cleveland Clinic. They fly like the heart transplant teams or the organs round or whatever. But yeah, I mean, he was a fireman in the pants for 31 years. I believe it was. We retired in May of 24th right before I read for I left Memphis. Sure. And yeah, man, that's that's pretty much what got me into it. Yeah.
speaker-0: ⁓ And so, you you said you, you progressed through, you got to Memphis and then, know, eventually you felt led to, go back home ⁓ to your current department. Is there anything that you would say to guys that are thinking about making that jump to, to another department or maybe even a different station? And maybe they're having some second thoughts about that.
speaker-1: Yeah, just remember you're starting over, right? Nobody cares about where you came from. Well, let me rephrase that. In a city like Memphis, guys know, hey, you're from this company, right? That's a firefighting company. That's not a firefighting company, whatever. But when you go to leave Memphis, just know if that is on your mind that you are starting over. Nobody cares about your experience. Nobody cares about where you've been, what you've done. You have to learn that new department's way of doing things, which is good really actually, because it's kind of, it's almost kind of refreshing to a point because you know, when you leave the city and then you end up in a suburb again and four man engines are a thing of the past and predetermined assignments are a thing of the past. you know, true truck companies are a thing of the past and rescue companies and battalion chiefs and operations and safety. Right. Cause now. You're just working with whatever shows up. Like this might end there. This engine might have like three guys on it. This engine might have five, like who knows? You know what I mean? So, things are going to change for the good and things could change for the bad. ⁓ a lot of the things that you're used to, like if you're a current Memphis guy that's thinking about leaving with all the predetermined assignments and properly staffed rigs and all that stuff, that's unless you're going to another big city, man, that's going to be a thing of the past. It's back to just street firefighting. Basically right. Learning how to work with limited manpower with, you know, limited command ability, I guess. Right. Like there's not somebody showing up in a Chevy Tahoe out front for the radio. That's going to run the fire. Right. Like the guy sitting in the front seat might be running the fire and the nozzleman might be the only guy that's there. You know, ⁓ so things change. if you do make the jump, prove through your actions, what you're capable of. You know what I mean? Everybody knows, you know, What what's the best way like what Memphis is right like guys know you go to violence there You go to fires there that kind of thing, right? Um, but proof of your actions if you decide to leave right because especially if go to a place that that that runs like where uh i'm at now Just prove through your actions that like hey when you go to a shooting you can tell hey It's not just for a shooting when you go to a fire You know what I mean? You just kind of go do what needs to be done without being told um
speaker-0: Right ⁓
speaker-1: That would be probably my best advice to a guy that is looking to leave Memphis, especially going to a smaller department. That's what I've learned at least.
speaker-0: Right. You kind of take on that mindset of, being the new guy again, because you are ⁓ just that, you know, last one to sit down first one to get up, you know. Right.
speaker-1: Don't center. Yeah, right. Like, you know, your first couple of months, don't sit in recliner, you know, be the first guy wake in the morning. Not saying I do all this now. I'm just saying like when I started like, right, like, you put the dishes away, wash the rig, ask questions, know your, know, know your streets, know your territory, whatever you want to call it. ⁓ you know, that kind of thing. And then just let your actions prove the rest. Yeah. Cause guys, guys will notice, man, guys. Guys in Memphis notice guys up here notice guys wherever notice on this job, probably anywhere in the world, honestly, like you go to something serious, they look at you and they see how you react. And if you react good, they're like, okay, this guy's always, you know, he knows what he's doing. Yeah. Not they're like, maybe not, you know.
speaker-0: Well, and I'll even throw this back around to if you're a new guy at Memphis coming from somewhere else. Yeah. These are good tips too, because we get that a lot of flatter rules, you know, where it's like,
speaker-1: Yeah, ⁓ yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Like, well, back home we did this.
speaker-1: I still remember yeah, like this guy come from this podunk volunteer fire department Yeah, is good at drafting and now he wants to tell me how to be a fireman. Yeah, like I get it. I get it, man. I do
speaker-0: You know how to suck I shouldn't have ⁓ said that But no man you ⁓ you were recently on another podcast sharing your story ⁓ and I recently had ⁓ Basically a subject matter expert of mental health on on a recent podcast and and Since we got the professionals perspective. I figured it'd be good to hear your story
speaker-1: in you, Yeah
speaker-0: And get the fireman's perspective, you know, because I think she did a really good job of answering a lot of questions that I had personally. ⁓ and a lot of questions that I thought other firemen would have. ⁓
speaker-1: perspective yeah Yes. I saw your ⁓ episode. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah. And hopefully you liked it. But, you know, think it would be good for guys to hear it from a fireman himself. Like this is what it is. ⁓ it really is like this or it really isn't like this. So, ⁓ if you kind of just want to give a summary of, your career and how you got to where you are today and, ⁓ what led you to decide to get, ⁓ some therapy.
speaker-1: Yeah, that was good. Absolutely to go to therapy, yeah. Well, where do I begin? ⁓ I got back from Memphis and I quickly realized that there's a lot of incidents that I went to there that definitely stuck with me there and when I my time at Clifton EMS. And I kind of ignored it a while. I always did what I always do, which is like just work myself to death, right? Just keep, you know, I've got like six jobs or something right now, crazy like that. Like just keep signing up for shifts, keep going to work. Don't think about it, whatever, right? Yeah. Yeah, man. I mean, everybody just kind of gets to a point where they're like, should probably do something about this, you know? So I called a friend of mine who. He's a chaplain and he used to be a fireman. And that's whose podcast I was on. Talk to him for a little bit or whatever. And he kind of, you know, referred me into therapy and off I went. yeah. And I, am I, what is it now? April 1st. I've been, ⁓ five months now or so of therapy ish somewhere in there.
speaker-0: And you and I both, I mean, I've been in this for 12 years. You've been doing it for 11. So we came up under the same umbrella mindset of fuck that shit.
speaker-1: Yeah, we got your fucking mouth. Yeah. Fucking job. And don't talk about it. So can't do that. Find something else to do. Is that not I mean, it's still pretty much is the attitude of the fire service.
speaker-0: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's one of those things that's changing. A lot of things have changed. And this is something I brought up to her too is like, you know, we take physical fitness more seriously. We're advancing technology. The cancer stuff is, is changing, but like this mental health thing is it's a tough go. ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah. And unfortunately, dude, we probably got a long road ahead of us. You know what I mean? It's, it's, um, until you see my personal opinion, until you see a legislator kind of starting to take it a little bit more serious or legislation, I guess what I should say, uh, trying to take this a little bit more seriously. It's going to be. Man, it's, it's, it's, it's a tough go, right? It's a tough go because you're asking a guy to spend his personal money.
speaker-0: from
speaker-1: on something that we don't even believe in basically. Sure. I think that's best way I can really put it, honestly.
speaker-0: something that we're not convinced that we need.
speaker-1: Yeah. And like, I'm still, dude, I've been in therapy for five months and I'm to be honest with you, dude. I still don't think it does anything. You know what I mean? I think it's the placebo effect, dude. It's just like, okay, cool. You said some words, you know what I mean? Tap your finger a few times, do EMDR and tap your finger and okay, now you're better. Like, you know what I mean? But, um, like I said on Tom's podcast, like there's something about it though. Like when you go to therapy that you're like, This is probably a good thing that I'm doing even if I'm not doing it the right way or the way that you know an insurance company wants you to do it or whatever Yeah, you know what I mean? Cuz that's what all boys down to right But yeah, I mean It's weird though. I will say that it's weird and we can go into that, you
speaker-0: ⁓ what, I mean, what is your experience with it? Ben? mean, like, you know, like a lot of guys I think are, are turned off by the idea cause they don't know what to expect. You know? So, mean, what, what's it like, guess is the question.
speaker-1: Well, ⁓
speaker-0: It's like it's like you're losing your virginity again. What was it like?
speaker-1: Honestly though bro you You go in there for the first time and you talk to this person and You just kind of have well at least I are what's I? Can only speak for my own self right sure I can't say that like every guy is gonna have the same type of you know Interaction or whatever right but for myself like you walk in and normally so what starts is they call you right? They call you, you talk on the phone. Um, and they basically kind of feel you out, like if you two are going to be a good fit, right? So like therapy, you have to fit with your therapist, right? Like you have to get along. There's something called the therapeutic relationship where they're going to try to build that, which basically means you blindly trust them almost, you know what I mean? And that is, um, extremely difficult for people that do it. do for a living. say the least. So you talk to them on the phone and then you kind of go in there and you have like your first session or whatever you want to call it. And generally you're to have what's called an intake session where they ask you a million questions, right? do their, they're basically they're doing like their due diligence. Like if you go to the ER and they're like, do you feel it's safe at home? You know what mean? Like that kind of thing, Like there's asking you million questions. They're just like, me about relationships, tell me about work, tell me about How much money you make, you know what I mean? Like they try to get a good understanding of like who you are and what you do for a living. ⁓ you know, your socioeconomic status, like they try to basically establish all that, any like personal issues you might have, any issues at work you might have, whatever. Then the fun begins. you'll notice, you'll notice at first, like the first thing I noticed, I was like, that was not a normal interaction with another person. Right. Because we interact with people all day at work. We interact with, mean, especially in Memphis on an ambulance, 20 to 30 or for a responder, 20 to 30 times a day, you're interacting with some random person. Right. Right. So you learn how. people react to things that you say, guess would be like the best way of me putting it. I don't know if that kind of makes sense. And I know it's there. Right. Right. Yeah. You learn to read people. And I noticed instantly I'm like, this was not a normal interaction with another human. So go down this whole autistic rabbit hole about therapy, which is exactly what I did. So I'm like, what the heck was that? And why was that interaction so weird? And I shoot down this rabbit hole. ⁓
speaker-0: He re-
speaker-1: It's a glorified one way street depending on who you see. There are therapists that would do levels of self-disclosure. There are therapists that don't. ⁓ There are both some think that sitting there and not letting you know anything about them and just letting you talk is the way to fix people. There are others that sit there that will try to talk or relate stories to you to build a rapport. ⁓ That's kind of gonna be like person dependent on what you want. ⁓ Personally, For me, and I think for probably most people that do this for a living, you're going to want to know the person that you're talking to, because you're going to be like, who am I to come in here and just talk to this random person? Like, I don't know who they are and what their intentions are, you know, with this information, like blindly trust them. ⁓ and other guys might just show up or gals might just show up and just be like, okay, here's this, you know what I mean? but that's the first thing I noticed was that it wasn't a normal interaction with humans. And now to go into one way street thing, that's kind of like where therapy seems like it's almost different, dependent on the therapist really from what I've discovered. ⁓ you know, not to, you know, some, some want to talk about themselves, some don't. And I think that The ones that want to deal with us and understand us probably will be more prone to self-disclosure because they understand our trust issues that we have because we do have trust issues. But at the same time, man, somebody might, because I don't want to knock, you know, what another guy, you know, what, what might work for another guy. Another guy might want to go in there and not know anything about the therapist and just vomit. You know what I mean? I want to talk about. and then you kind of just start. Talking about life, really, I mean, you don't, you can go in swinging if you want and just be like, Hey, talk, you know, listen to this bad call, you know what I mean? And they'll take it. But at the same time, I think most of us are kind of like sketches or a sketch, not sketches, uh, skittish, I'm sorry, skittish of therapy in general. And so we're going to be skittish of the therapist. We're not going to think they understand us. Um, still a concern of mine even after five months, you know what I mean? So it doesn't go away quick. And it's just something, man, you you got to work through. I mean, to be honest with you, I really, I've been in therapy for five months and I, I don't, I really haven't talked about too much. Like I've talked about a few like stories here and there, like, I went on this call, I on that call, but it takes a long time for people like us to trust people. And, and that's going to be, I think that's the hardest part of it, is just trying to trust somebody else that you don't know if that makes sense. That's kind of like my spiel on like how therapy begins, right? Like that's kind of how it begins is where you're sitting across from a stranger and you don't know. Yeah. And they want you to just tell, you know, they want you to tell her say or whatever, everything about you, right? Cause that's what they want. Cause they're trying to deal with it. ⁓ but it's hard to do that.
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely. And that's always been I mean, other than my my opinion on the whole matter, which is it's changed in the last few months. ⁓ You know, and that's kind of what I told her was like, I've never I've always had all these questions. I've never known what to think about it. Therapy or mental health or anything like that, because even in my personal life, I was I was raised to just you're OK. Like anybody else, you're fine. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And, and I think to some extent that's true. Like you should, there are things that you in moments, you need to do what you're supposed to do and we can deal with this later. but you know, that was what I had told her was like, I'm not going to go sit in someone's office and talk to somebody. don't know about shit that I'm not even comfortable telling my wife, you know,
speaker-1: Right, right. And you know, that's, that's that dude, I'm telling you, man, that's the hardest part. Yeah. Dude, that's that, you know, that is the hardest part of therapy. What you just said right there is just like, you don't trust anybody with this information. You don't even trust yourself really with half the information. You're like, you don't even acknowledge it when you're by yourself and nobody's around. You know, I mean, you're, you know, you're, Your wife and your kids aren't around. You don't even think about it then. So you want me to just talk about this or that random person? Like, no, dude, I'm not doing that. You know what I mean? And like, it's hard, man. It's it's, I'm going to be honest, dude. It's one of the, like, I haven't, I've made probably minimal progress, you know, in therapy and it's dude, it's, it's not, it's not an easy, it's not an easy task.
speaker-0: Well, because of the trust, like you said, I mean, we work with people that we are, or we live with them for 24 hours a day and we go through a lot of shit together and we bond. then when somebody gets detailed in or sent to our station to work with us, that doesn't normally work there. It's like, uh, don't know. Can I trust you? You're going to do what I need you to do. Right. Right. You know, if I get in danger,
speaker-1: You're a fire
speaker-0: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So I think that just becomes the norm. Like when you get around people you don't know, you're just like, I don't know if I can trust this guy, you know.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, and then you go get on an ambulance with him.
speaker-0: Yeah. But, ⁓ and you know, I know you said that you feel like you've made, you've probably made minimal progress, but do you, have you seen a change in yourself because of this?
speaker-1: Then it really gets fine. Yeah Yes, ⁓ whether you want to or not, you start discovering things about yourself that you weren't paying attention to before, if that makes sense. it may not be out because, or it may not happen, I guess what I should say, because of the therapist, right? They may not sit there and be like, whatever, and then you discover this by yourself. But if you aren't, bringing it up in therapy, you're probably thinking about it and just holding it back, which is pretty much me. And then you know that that's there. you know, whatever the problem is, ⁓ personal life, work life, whatever, even if you don't bring it up, you at least start to like comprehend like, ⁓ okay, like I like, this is a problem, right? And then it just comes to. Are you going to deal with it yourself? Are you going to talk to a therapist about it and what are you willing to talk about? That's really a lot of, a lot of therapy is what are you willing to talk about? And for me really right now, it's not much of anything serious. You know what I mean? Yeah.
speaker-0: You're still trying to get get to know them
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
speaker-0: Even subconsciously, mean, that's it's probably what you're doing is.
speaker-1: Right. And then like, you know, you should screen your therapist. This is something I was kind of like weirded out by it first. Screening therapist. What are you talking about? Right. I'm like, that's weird. But, um, you should, you should find somebody who wants to work with your gender and then find somebody who wants to work with your gender that does what you do. Now there is a website for, oh, what's the name of the thing? Um, license.
speaker-0: Yeah
speaker-1: first responders, certified therapists, something like that. I'd have to look it up. But there are, there's a national list, so Tennessee's on there, obviously, Ohio, whatever, South Carolina, that have, they have been through this training course where like they're required to do ride-alongs and they have to do projects on like what a first responder is. I believe they have the choice to either do police or fire or EMS. ⁓ But they kind of like get indoctrinated to our culture basically. Right. Like, you know what I mean? And like, remember, know personally, I've had therapists actually ride with me, like on an ambulance and like everybody in the firehouse was like, steer clear. You know what I mean? Like that person's trying to figure you out. Don't talk to them. But at the same time, even a therapist experiencing that and realizing like, well, none of these guys are even comfortable saying hi to me. It's good for them because it humbles them. They make it makes them realize because a lot.
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: A lot of therapists go to their training and they think they're like God, and they can just make you do whatever and talk about whatever. And if you don't, you're a, you know, resistive client who isn't ready for therapy and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And all this other nonsense that they want to believe when in reality, maybe that's true for most people. Right. Like, and that may be true, but it is not true for us. just don't trust. Right. don't, you know what I mean? I don't trust random people. You don't trust random people because we see every day when we go to work, what happens when you trust the wrong person? Right. You know I mean? Or, yeah. And we just were very skittish of that. And I know personally, guys, I've told me about some of these expense and some of these experiences that they've had in therapy. And I'm like, dude, there's no way I would go back. You know what I mean? There's no way. You know what mean? But that's their only experience. And then they just walk. And it's like, ⁓ like it's difficult to see that because you're like, dude, you just went to the wrong person. You know what mean? Like you just went to the wrong person. You just needed to switch therapists. And but now he's going to have a negative perception of therapy for the rest of his career. And he's going to tell the guys, oh, you know, don't go fucking do that. You know what I mean? The therapist told me whatever, you know, so.
speaker-0: Right. That was one of the things that, uh, the, the lady I had talked to on the podcast, said, know, um, if you are looking for a therapist and they say that they're kind of in all categories, maybe steer clear of that person. Yeah. You know, you want to find someone who specializes in, children, if you need your child to talk to someone or, you know, specializes in marriage, if you're having marriage issues and then there's. Some that are specific for military first responders, you know, stuff like that. Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah, and ⁓ ironically, man, you can use AI to find them. You can literally do that. Like, dude, you can just go on AI and just search. I need I am a you know, in your situation would be, you know, I'm a firefighter paramedic from Memphis, Tennessee, and I need a therapist who is specialized in. Me or whatever, you know, I mean, no, not for responders or men or whatever. And then. ⁓
speaker-0: Really?
speaker-1: tell what gender you want. want to talk to a female, I want to talk to a male, whatever. And then it'll start shooting out suggestions to you. Now the insurance thing, you know, I really can't help you with that. You got kind of got to figure that out on your own, but yeah. So, but there's the thing. What's the name of that website? Psychology Today or something like that. There's some psychology, if you looked it up, there's some psychology website too that I know about that like therapists will go on there and they'll like set up a profile almost like, it's almost like a LinkedIn profile basically like, hey, I'm so and so and these are the clients that I wanna work with, right? And you can actually filter ⁓ from what the one guy showed me on his phone. Like he could filter like, want a male. And I want a first responder certified therapist and then it'll pop up with every first responders, you know, certified male therapists within however many miles you set it to. Wow. So, yeah, definitely take advantage of that for sure.
speaker-0: Yeah Yeah. Do you think it's helped like your work life?
speaker-1: yeah, somewhat like you get to, you know, can blow off some steam from work, you know, ⁓ whether it's about calls and her personal issues, you know, whatever. ⁓ it is nice to just, you know, kind of just be like, ⁓ this happened, that happened and just get it off your chest to somebody. Cause you don't, know what I mean? Like you're a lot like me, like don't take it home. You know what I mean? So, ⁓ and it builds up after a while that it definitely does. Sure.
speaker-0: ⁓ cause I know like I'm I've kind of experienced it, especially in like Christmas season. So cause we own, you know, engine house designs, a little shameless plug, check them out, get some shit. ⁓ but you know, in Christmas season, like it's, it's balls to the walls apparel. And then it's, ⁓ you know, we're getting our butts beaten at work. So you kind of go through this like burnout phase and it's just like, dude, ⁓ And then afterwards, you know, everything slows down and you kind of get through it. But like you think therapy would be good for for that.
speaker-1: Yeah, I mean, honestly, ⁓ well, in reality, you can go, you can go to therapy for anything. I mean, any you could just be like, and I just I feel stuck in life. You know what I mean? Sure. Therapists, they'll try to, you know, explore your feelings or whatever. ⁓ And so, you know, for that kind of thing, for burnout, like with like the holiday season, absolutely. Now, burnout with the job. 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because You kind of forget that like we generally just like the police have negative interactions with people. We don't have a lot. We don't show up in an ambulance like 99 % of the time and like for like something good, right? And you know, so for dealing with burnout of just like frustration of dealing with people for sure. Yeah. You can definitely go to therapy for that too.
speaker-0: Do you think changing your perspective on like, like deciding to go to therapy, obviously change your, your outlook on going to therapy. ⁓ but do think it's helped you look at other things differently? Like they're just different aspects in life. Like maybe like, I know you always worked out, but you think it made the gym more of a necessity or do you think like, ⁓ completing today's tasks is more of like a priority. Like, do you think it just overall changed? perspective in life, how you handle everything.
speaker-1: Yeah, to an extent. Yeah. ⁓ like I said, I haven't done like really much of any like deep work or whatever you want to show in therapy. You you just you've learned but kind of like I you know was talking about earlier whatever you you learn about yourself So whether you learn about yourself because the therapist talks to you about like what she's here or she is saying like I guess like patterns kind of like that kind of deal. ⁓ so you learn about yourself, but you also learn about yourself in a way where if you're not talking about it, kind of, like I said, you know, it's there and it kind of helps you change your perspective, you know, on life. Sure. generally for the positive. Yeah. Generally for the positive. So.
speaker-0: I just, imagine like, ⁓ you know, when I first started running my business and it started to get busier, I learned that like, Hey, if this task needs done today, like I have to do it today. I can't do it tomorrow. Cause then it's late. ⁓ or it just continues to get put off. And that kind of changed my perspective on like, you know, ⁓ put the trash out in the morning instead of waiting before you go to bed. Cause you might forget, or, know, like it just changes your perspective on daily tasks because it's like, It's important that I do this now instead of waiting, right? You know, ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. It can have that effect. ⁓ It's kind of like what you put into it is what you get out of it. Sure. I mean, like if you're going to be like me and not really talk about anything serious for a while, like, you know, how much can really expect to change? It's on you. ⁓ But at the same time, if you put a ton of work into it and you're like, I, you know, want to be better at organizing my day or whatever. Right. ⁓ I mean, people that become shrinks are trained to help you navigate that, right? Not everything has to be, you know, life or death, like talking about college or whatever. So, you know, if you were looking just for more like superficial kind of work, like just talking about generic life and then see where it goes, that's totally fine. You have complete control over whether you go weekly or biweekly or monthly or every few months or whatever. You can make it whatever you want it to be. ⁓ it's really up to you. You, you decide what you talk about for the most part. You decide, you know, you know, what skills are like, I don't know what else to call it besides like, like coping skills, basically that you learn, you know what I mean? Um, and they'll offer up whatever, you know, assistance or guidance they can give you and it's up to you to take it. Right. Like for me personally, I really haven't taken too much. I've taken some, but not too much because I'm so skeptical kind of this whole thing. But you know, if you could, I could go back next week and speak, no, let's, let's do this. You know I mean? Um, it's just when you get to that comfort level. So, Yep.
speaker-0: What made you decide to actually try it out?
speaker-1: Yeah, I've heard that before too. Uh, I just, man, I, don't know, man. I just, I just got to a point where I was just like, man, like, you know, I'm 28 at the time or yeah, 28 years old. And I'm just like, like I spent my whole twenties like this. Like, is this how I want to live the rest of my life? Cause I'm kind of buckled in basically, you know I mean? Like this is life on just repeat mode. You know I mean? Yeah. ⁓ and I'm like, is this really how I want to spend the rest of my life? Like, do I really want to spend the rest of my life being like this? And I'm like, no. So I decided, yeah, I'll give it a shot. You know what I mean? Like maybe it'll work. Maybe it won't. I'm so skeptical of it, but at least I'm trying something, I guess. You know what I mean? that's kind of like what put me there for sure. ⁓ yeah. And it's just like, do you want to continue down that path or do you want to get better or fix yourself a little bit? You know what I mean? Yeah. ⁓ Yeah, and that's kind of like where I got to. So I don't know if that makes sense, but that's my best way of putting it.
speaker-0: Yeah, sure. You think you think some people like never see that as an issue? Like they never see feeling a certain way or being disgruntled or hardened. They never see it as an issue.
speaker-1: Mm hmm. 100%. Yeah. And was one of them for a long time and I still am a problem for the record. I'm not fixed. I'm not healed. Yeah. You know, I'm the furthest thing from that. ⁓ you know, I, you know, I just, you know, you
speaker-0: We sort of make it a badge of honor in the fire service.
speaker-1: Yeah, and this job, yeah, for sure.
speaker-0: You know, you're that you're the guy that gets angry, you know, don't don't piss him off.
speaker-1: When something's going wrong, you know what to do, so everyone's just like whatever, you know what I mean?
speaker-0: Yeah. And I get it. mean, we're all, we're all masculine type a personalities. ⁓ and it's, it's the old school way, you know, like, I said, I think there is.
speaker-1: Right. I was brought up to that's all. I was trained by dudes that were like, kind of like going back to the beginning of this podcast. mean, you, shut your fucking mouth. You go on the calls and you don't say another word about it. And if you can't do that, then you need to go find something else to do. Cause you can handle this. And you know, a lot of these dudes are in their life, you know, when they retire and, ⁓ you know, having been through. a period of time where I was off work because of an injury and having gone to an extremely dark place during that time, I kind of realized like when I retire, I'm screwed. You know what I mean? So I better try to find some way of making this situation better than what it is. You know what I mean? ⁓ cause what do you hear, man? You hear a dude retires and then six months later he takes his own life and it's sad to see you. Or to see somebody, guess is really what I should say. You know, you serve a community for how long, you know, and then what's your reward? You don't even enjoy your pension. I mean, you just you retire six months and then it's over, you know, it's just like, well, you know, it means it's it's it's I know several people that have taken their own life that do this for a living and whether they're retired or active and you just it's that man, it's a It's sad to see. Yeah, it's sad to see. So.
speaker-0: Yeah, and why do you think we don't take it more seriously?
speaker-1: I think it's the masculinity and the alpha personality. I really do. Um, nobody wants to admit that. no, like for me personally, you'll never see me at work admit that a call bothered me. Yeah. I mean, how many, how many nights did we spend on unit four together? You know what I mean? Under the nets. You know what I mean? Like just saw the most traumatic thing I've ever seen in my life. Dropped them off at the med. All right. What's, what's holding? You know what I mean? Yeah. Um, what's in our territory or whatever. But, um, yeah. Um,
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: think that's got a big part of it for sure. ⁓ And I said this on Tom's podcast and I'll say it here. To an extent, we have to have that. do. Really do. I mean, like you can't. I'm for therapy for guys. ⁓ I don't necessarily think it's my niche. Like, I don't really know how much this is going to do for me. I feel like I'm more of one of those people where therapy isn't really going to change me at all anyway. So like, you know what I mean? But at the same time,
speaker-0: Yeah, absolutely.
speaker-1: I don't want to downplay this for somebody else who this, I mean, this could save their life. You know what mean? Like, knows? ⁓ so, you know, I, I'll say the line. guess I always tell, ⁓ you know, people that I teach and stuff, but as I say, not as I do, you know, you should do this. Don't end up like me, because you end up just an extremely closed off, emotionless person. You know what I mean? You don't, you don't ever like.
speaker-0: Absolutely.
speaker-1: You don't even allow yourself to feel emotions like when you're by yourself, so.
speaker-0: Well, you see...
speaker-1: You know what mean? Because you can't just break it. Like, it's not like I can just be like, you know what I mean? So it's just you. It's just I don't if I could prevent every guy on this job from. From from becoming like this, you know, I would. And that's why, like, I'm so pro mental health for the fire service. So I tell dudes that just start doing this, especially at busy places like, hey, man, you, know, you don't have to go every day or every week. You don't have to go every month. You don't even have to go every other month. But like, you should probably have a phone number that you can call. every six months and just go vent about work too, or whatever you want to talk about, you know, whatever you're going through. because we see things that people shouldn't see every day and we see a lot of it, especially at a place where you work. ⁓ can attest to that and, ⁓ you're going to handle it healthily or you're going to like in a healthy way or whatever, or you're going to hand it, handle it in an unhealthy way. Yeah. And, The choice is yours basically on what you want to do.
speaker-0: So when I think, uh, I think you hit a good point, you know, to some extent you do. How inappropriate moments you do have to suck it up because when you get on scene and this person needs you or this family needs you, like that's what you are getting paid to do. mean,
speaker-1: And you can't, you know, you can't sit there and be all emotional. Right. You know what mean? Like you've got a job to do,
speaker-0: or short circuit and not be able to function.
speaker-1: Right. And something that I was taught early, like on this job, ⁓ is that like, the leaders all like, if you're the paramedic in charge, which I know that I have been the paramedic in charge of numerous bad runs. ⁓ and I'm sure at this point in your career now in Memphis, you have, gotta be like, everybody's looking for you to make the decision, right? Like, I'm not speaking a foreign language to, think you or any, especially paramedics from Memphis that's going to watch this. ⁓
speaker-0: Mm-hmm.
speaker-1: You gotta, ⁓ you gotta be calm, man. You can't, you, lost the right to freak out when you decided to do this for a living. Like you got to tell everybody, you know, which, what needs to happen. It's just the way the job is, man. mean, I'm not going to sit here and be like, you know, you should be allowed to access your emotions on like, no, no. And if you're that way, then you've got to go find something else to do, man. Cause you can't do that. Like, cause imagine if it was you, imagine if it was your kid, not breathing.
speaker-0: Exactly
speaker-1: And then the firemen show up and they start crying. You'd like, are you serious? You know I mean? Like you're supposed to, you know what I mean? Like you're supposed to fix this situation, not make it worse. Yeah. I'm not. So, but when you get off, that's when you kind of got to start to figure out like, how should I handle this? Sure. You know what I mean? ⁓ cause there is a sequence of emotions that you should feel that you don't. And then the longer you put it off, the harder it, you know, it gets. And I can attest to this, even talk about any of it at all, uh, emotional wise. And it's, you know, it, uh, it can be a tough go at times. but when you're on scene, man, yeah, I mean, you got a job to do, dude.
speaker-0: And you're right. You know, every it's not just that they're it's not just that they're waiting for you to tell them what to do. They're also reading your energy. They're looking at how you're acting because then they know you set the pace and.
speaker-1: And I mean, you have to do that. Yeah. Times. Sorry, go ahead.
speaker-0: And I've ⁓ even had to have talks with my EMTs like, hey, I need this to get done. And they're like, ⁓ I'm sorry. You're just so chill. And I'm like, yeah, but I need you to do this now.
speaker-1: I put them on a CPAP, guess, you Yeah, man. And I have had it. Well, at least twice I can think of off top of my head, uh, times in my career where I have gotten in the back of an ambulance during a really bad run and just looked and just seen chaos and be like, everybody stopped. take a deep breath. We got this. Here's what we're going to do. You know, I need you to do this. I need you to do this. Whatever is orchestrating a band basically. Right. Right. Um, But especially if you're going to be a paramedic in a place where you don't have medics everywhere, you have to learn that skill. have to. You have to. Because either this job will eat you up and spit you out and you won't be able to function as a person, period. Or you're going to learn how to, at least when you're at work, do that. And you have to. mean, it's no different than the lieutenants on the rigs or the battalion chief pulling up out front of whatever. Could be a Mayday fire, could be whatever. He's got to manage that situation. He can't just get on the radio and start screaming and freaking out because it's going to, what would that do to a fire scene? If the battalion chief showed up and just screamed and gave no clear orders and just freaked out, what would happen on a fire scene? It'd fall apart. What's the same thing for us as a paramedic too. If you don't orchestrate the band, they're just going to start playing. You know what I mean? It's going to get away from you and then you're going to look like an idiot.
speaker-0: Yeah. sound like fifth grade recorders.
speaker-1: Yeah, I knew he was gonna- yeah, yeah. Right.
speaker-0: But I think too that that plays an important key in how that run affects the the person too if you if you do a good job of ⁓ You know leading the band so to speak and you know that you did everything that you could and you gave it your all You did you did the best you could? ⁓ Then it doesn't really matter the outcome at least to me if I know that I did my job the way I was supposed to the outcome doesn't I don't care. You know, I shouldn't say I don't care. I wanted to help them, but if I couldn't help them, then that's it was out of my hands. But if I show up and I'm just total trash and that person dies, I take that personally, you know. The people I'm working with are trash then I take that personally.
speaker-1: Right. There you go. There's a there's a medic survival. You know, medic survival scar right there. Crap company. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That may be true for some guys for sure. Yeah, man. You you do what you're supposed to do and there's nothing else to it. And, know, it is what it is, man. You know, we get put into. impossible situations all the time. You know what I mean? Doing this for a living. Especially in a city like where you work and yeah, man. You just, you know, you got to do what you can do with the resources that you have, man. I mean, there's really nothing else to do it besides that. But I think that's why, you know, we're here to talk about mental health, but brings me to another point on this job is like, that's why people should take knowing your job seriously. They really should. Cause it's on you. You know what I mean? And I was brought up in a way on this job. It's like, ⁓ you don't do this for awards. You don't do this for the, you know, you do this because what you're supposed to do, it's no, I look at going on a squad call or going on a house fire or whatever you want to call it, right? Some call where you got to fix somebody's problem, right? Yeah. It's no different than your car breaks down and you take it to the mechanic, right? Sure. The mechanic fixes it. He charges you that charges the tax, right? People pay their taxes. ⁓ You don't care that that, you know, he was under there for 12 hours of the ranch and your bolts were rusted or whatever, you know what I mean? Or you were, but you know, you were just like, whatever, man, I paid you for the service. Thanks. And like, yeah, that that's an honestly, that's, think I personally think that's the right edge to the fire service should have. Like you shouldn't be doing this because. You know, you think you're like a hero or some, some weird like that. you should be doing this because you generally like believe in what you're doing. You know what I mean? Not because you want, you know, you know, you want to.
speaker-0: Yeah, whatever you got
speaker-1: you know, get some award or whatever. Cause you see that all the time on this job. I know you do. know I've seen it. So like you just, it's what you're supposed to do, man. It's just, ⁓ you know, you, we deal with people in the worst situations of their lives. They're losing their property. They're losing a loved one, whatever. You just try to make it better, man. You know? And, ⁓ and then that's it. That's pretty much how I think at least the add to the Fire Service should be. Now I could be wrong and I'm sure there's a hundred guys that disagree with me, but it is what it is. So that's a whole other rabbit hole. Yeah.
speaker-0: If you're in a shitty situation and the first thing that pops into your mind is like, I'm going to get recognition for this. Yeah. You're maybe doing the wrong. Right.
speaker-1: Yeah, you probably got the wrong job. You probably got the wrong job. Yeah.
speaker-0: And, you know, it's, ⁓ I've had the opportunity of, you know, being in a situation where the best possible outcome, ⁓ came out and my lieutenant was very adamant about putting me in for an award. And I'm like, that's, this isn't why I do this, you know? And I'm like, if you really feel led to do it, then you can do it. And. ⁓ I don't know if he listens these or not, but the jerk made me write my own disposition For the award and I'm like this is horrible. But ⁓ yeah, you know and then they ended up giving somebody else anyway, so worked out in my favor, but ⁓ You know, you're right the whole time. I wasn't sitting there thinking like I'm gonna do this right because I'm gonna get an award That's not why we do this job man Like and if it is why then go do something else because you're not really trying to help ⁓
speaker-1: Yeah. And I've been I got voluntold to go get an award this past ⁓ January, whatever it was. You know what mean? I didn't want to go. just got, hey, you have to go to this. And it's like whatever medical director wants you to go. So it's like, OK. You know what mean? And it was awkward the whole time. It was awkward getting the award. don't, you know, I mean, think I did anything that was worth any sort of recognition. I just did what the public expects me to do. something went wrong. I showed up. I made the situation better, which is why you pay your taxes. You know what I mean? So it's an awkward situation, I think, for a lot of guys to be in, because like, I don't want this. You know what I mean? Like, it's my job. You know what I mean? So, yeah, I get it. I get it.
speaker-0: ⁓ well getting back onto the mental health, if there's a guy, ⁓ maybe he's a fireman, maybe he's not. but if there's anyone out there that's kind of on the fence about, ⁓ you know, whether that, whether or not they should get treatment, ⁓ you know, what would you say to that person?
speaker-1: would say just give it a chance. You know what I mean? You never know. Worst that happens, you show up somewhere, you waste, you've used your insurance, who even knows it might not even cost you anything, but you waste, know, waste a little bit of money, whatever, right? But you're like, it's not for me because it could also change your life. You know what I mean? Just because, you know, maybe I'm not exactly. I don't know else to call it. Besides, not maybe I'm not doing therapy the right way, right? Like I'm not. talking about a bunch of emotional stuff or like, you know, anything like that. Cause I really don't know if it's for me, somebody else that might walk in the same room and just be like, this is awesome. You know what I mean? Let's talk about this. Let's talk about that. And you have the ability to talk about whatever you want to talk about. mean, I, you can, you can say, ah, I don't want to talk about that. You know what I mean? Now the therapist might push it and that's their right. Cause it's their job. But at the same time, you just, ah, I want to talk about that. I don't know what to say. You know what I mean? Yeah. And if they have that much of an issue with it, then you need to just go to a different therapist. Sure. You know what I mean? I kind of already talked about screening them, but screen them. You know what I mean? Test them. You know, know guys that have told me that they've been to therapists and they told them one story and the therapist started crying and they preferred them. So, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like I know. Personally, I know somebody that that happened to like one story and it's like, by the way, this is one of like 70, you know what I mean? Like this one of pages that I have wrote down, I told you one story and you started crying and said, you can't handle this and send me to somebody else. And then that guy's like, well, apparently therapy is not for me. And walks, you know what I mean? Yeah, That's them. Um, as bad as that's going to sound really, uh, you should, because once you open the can of worms and you start talking about stuff, you don't want to get like halfway through and just be like,
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Oh, you can handle it. You know what I mean? Like, you like, want it right? Yeah. You you want to know that the person's going to like, be okay with it. And like most therapists themselves are in therapy themselves and probably go talk to their own therapists about the crazy clients that, know, they have to deal with or whatever. Yeah. Um, but yeah, I mean, my advice to them would be just test it out, man. I mean, worst that happens is like they can't. It's not like you walk into a therapist office and you have to sit there for an hour. I've left therapy early. I've left at like 30 minutes before I'm like, I don't want to be a little hour. See you later. You know what I mean? Like you don't, they're not allowed to like keep you there or something. You know what I mean? You sit down and you're there 10 seconds. Nope. And you get up and walk out. They can't do anything. Like it's not, it's not how therapy works. Therapy is you want to be there and you're, you're putting in the work. So no one's going to like chase you or like. stop you from leaving. may ask as or something I can do to change the situation. You know, mean something like that, but they're not going to be like sit down and tell me about, know, tell me about your PTSD from work or whatever. It's not, it's almost like they're casually trying to get you to bring it up. You know what I mean? But you decide what you do and what you don't want to talk about. So
speaker-0: So you're very much in control.
speaker-1: You are very much. that's going to be so something that funny. You bring that up something that I've learned through my own therapy. And then through just like research is that. Yeah, that word right there. That's what we all have the issue with. That's the baseline of it is control because what do we do? We go to work and we get put in these ridiculously terrible situations. And what do we do? We figure everything out, right? Like sort everything out. We organize the or organize a band or whatever. and direct it, right? So now when you're the one that's not organizing the band and directing it, and now you know that somebody's sitting across from you trying to figure you out and you're not in control of any of it, it's tough. It's tough. That's it's, it's, it's a character flaw that you're to build doing this for a living. ⁓ and the longer you do this for a living and don't address it, it's going to get worse. You know, ⁓ but it's an issue that we have. It really is. It's an issue that we have, ⁓ probably I'm going to, don't really know if there's a first responder that would go to therapy and not have some sort of control issue with, with the room. Sure. so the best thing that you can do is find a therapist that's okay with that dynamic, right? Because there's a lot of therapists that don't want to deal with us. They don't want to talk to us. They don't want to deal with us. They want, you know, the 19 year old in college who's got PTSD from a breakup to come in so they can validate their feelings and tell them how hard their life is. Even though mommy and daddy are, but you know, whatever, you know I mean? We see it all the time at work, right? How many times we go to a call, rolling around drunk talking about, I, my, you know, my boyfriend or girlfriend cheated on me and now I have PTSD and you know what I mean? Like that's. what a lot of therapists actually want to deal with because it's easy and they think that's real work. it, you know, when it comes to people like us, you know, like that kind of thing, wouldn't even, we wouldn't even talk about that in therapy. You know I mean? Like, yeah, whatever. So, that's kind of like why you need to screen who you're talking to, right? Because you have people that are going to tell you like, ⁓ you have a you know, control problem. This is a character flaw. We need to address this right now and they're going to push it. And then like, that's not, that's not going to work. That's not going to work for people like us. You know what I mean? You have to try to find somebody who's willing to just deal with that part of it and then deal with it slowly and later basically. Right. Cause you're going to walk in and you're not going to be okay with somebody with a college degree sitting across from you telling you, you don't know what real life is basically. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to be cool with that at all. Would you be cool with that? Co no, no. You'd be like, you have no idea what real life is. I see real life every day.
speaker-0: Yeah, you don't know what real life is. Yeah
speaker-1: Right, right. Like you went to what? Some college. Okay, you got your little college education. You know what I mean? You think you understand me? You don't. And that's, I'm going to say, dude, for first responders, a majority of the time, that's right there. That, that is the issue that either they figure out with their therapist, they go to a different therapist or they walk from therapy completely. Like that's what it ends up. It ends up at control. It ends up at your version of reality. And Some can handle that and some can't. you need to find one that can. So I would encourage guys too, if you do go and you have this bad experience that I'm describing where it's, you know, you go to some therapist that thinks you should just start vomiting your feelings on day one. And if you don't, you're resistive and you're a problem, then just leave, but don't write therapy off in general, find another therapist. You know what I mean? Because they may not even understand on Like how thin ice they really are on with people like us, cause we'll be quick to walk. You know what mean? Well, you know what I mean? Like, all right, see you like we're not the, don't feel like a majority of us that do like this for a living that are already sketched out with like what therapy is in general, a majority of us, I don't feel like are going to argue with therapists. just going to leave. You know what I mean? Like we're just going to walk out. Like I can tell you from personal experience, my, like I've had a therapist say some things to me and I didn't argue. was like, okay, you know what I mean? Whatever. You know what I mean? Like I'm not going to sit here and get into some like, cause there are people like, know, most normal people, they show up to therapy probably, they, you know, they just completely depend on this person. And if they say something they disagree with or like push something, they just like, like I They just have like mental breakdowns. I can't believe, you know what I mean? Like that's not our first responders are. We're just going to sit there and take it honestly. Really? Are you really going to sit there and argue like I'm paying to sit here? Like, I really going to argue with this person on top? Like, no, like you're just showing me your true colors. Now I know what you truly think. You know what mean? Which is what we're trying to get out of them because we're trying to figure out if we can trust this person or not. Right. You know what I mean? And, ⁓ you know, so if you have a good therapist and something went wrong and You don't go in swinging and like, ⁓ why did you say, you know, you're just like, hey, like, why, what was that all about? If you have a good therapist, they're going to apologize to you and they're going to be like, hey, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant this. And they may feed you a crock of bullshit by what they meant, or they might tell you the truth, whichever, but they're going to at least try to repair it and make it better. ⁓ and if you have a bad therapist, they're going to sit there and going to tell you your problem and you don't want to do the work or whatever you want to call it. And I mean, it's serious, man. It goes one or two ways. Like, you know, you want an honest take on therapy. This is, this is the honest take. If they don't try to fix it and don't understand that, like, you're probably different than most clients that walk through that door, ⁓ then go to somebody else, man. Go to somebody else. You know what I mean? But don't.
speaker-0: For sure.
speaker-1: This is something that could save somebody's life one day. So even if you're someone like me, where you really don't think this is your thing, like I don't really know. I'm kind of like in a position right now where I'm like, I'm semi disengaging from it, but then I'm semi like, maybe I should stay like I'm in this weird area, right? Like, I really don't know what I'm doing. ⁓ Just because that's where I'm at doesn't mean that the guy that's on the verge of doing something that he or his family is going to regret or it's going to hurt. Might walk in that same office and have, it might save his life. know what mean? so don't knock it. Yeah. Even if it's not for you, like, I don't think it's for me. I'm not going to sit here and bash therapy and be like, ⁓ this is terrible. Nobody should do it. You know what I mean? Yeah. It just depends on where you're at really in life, where you're at, like being in touch with your emotions kind of like, you know, ⁓ and. You know, it's not, It's not necessarily going to be a fun experience. I can definitely attest to that. You're not going to therapy to talk about anything good. You're not going to therapy. Like Cody's not going to go to therapy and like, man, I love my wife and kids so much. My life's great. You know what I mean? You're going to therapy because you're like, Hey man, I got something bad to talk about. I just need to be comfortable enough with you to talk to you about it. Right. And honestly, man, there's different approaches of therapy, kind of like I talked about earlier. So there's the no self-disclosure completely closed off. And if you ask them a question about them, they're like, well, what made you think of that? You know what I mean? And then there's the ones that will try to relate with you because they understand. And those are the ones I think majority of guys are going to want is the one that like actually tries to build up some sort of rapport with you. You know what I mean? To like make you understand that like, yes, although I am your therapist, I am a human. You know what I mean? Like you can know things about me to help, you know, get you to talk about stuff. but then, and I, I don't want to knock the other side of it though. Like there, may be guys that don't want to know anything about their therapist because it'll throw them off and they just want to go in there and talk. But you have to figure out when you start, if you decide to start which, what you want and what you're looking for.
speaker-0: I think you make a really good point to that. Go ahead. everybody's different. And if, if therapy is for you, then go to therapy. If it's not right, then don't.
speaker-1: Don't but don't knock it for other guys. That's not fair
speaker-0: Don't determine what's right or wrong.
speaker-1: I think it's my thing. I really don't think it's my thing at all. I really, I think I'm in the 20. think it's like something like, ⁓ the number I read is like 70 % of people that go to therapy. helps 10%. It makes worse 20%. It makes, ⁓ no difference or it's not for them. I really think I'm in that 20. It hasn't made me worse. That's for sure. But I definitely think I'm in that 20 % of like, I really don't think it's going to help me. Sure. But I'm not going to sit here and I'm not going to knock it because the next guy that goes to that office story might save his life. Sure. Right. And that's what's important is if it is going to help you, if you're in that 70 % of it's going to help you, um, there's you can go on YouTube and look up firefighter EMDR. I mean, there's numerous stories of, guys that, or if you're a police officer, you know, police officer or veteran, whatever, uh, there's numerous guys that have success stories on YouTube that are like, yeah, I did EMDR and it, you know, The things that we see are always going to be with you, but it can at least maybe decrease the stress on your central nervous system. Cause that's what it turns out to be. Like this whole thing comes back to your central nervous system. Right. And this is something to talk about how it's therapy, you know, made you, you know, learn things about yourself or whatever. Um, we do a job where for 24 hours a day, every third day, our central nervous system is in fight or flight mode, whether you like it or not. Uh, let me, you're at 16 still. Yeah. Okay, when you make it back to quarters on unit 16 and you lay in bed, are you really going into a deep sleep on unit 16?
speaker-0: Well, I there's times when I have to be woken up.
speaker-1: But you know you're getting back up and that's busiest, any busiest, ⁓ ambulance at night, you know, like when you lay down, I've been on just like you plenty of busy ambulances in my career where you lay down and you know, within the next 20 to two hours you're getting back up more like 20 minutes, but yeah. So, you know, you lay there on your phone and you get tired and then, you know, it's just the whole thing of trying to fall asleep in a firehouse and a busy firehouse. But what you don't realize is you take that off duty with you. Like dude, I like I talked about this on Tom's podcast but like dude last year, dude I went I had the whole like month of July off dude. I went to Charleston saw some old friends had a sweet Airbnb of the pool dude went to the Bahamas like Dude, I was off from like July 5th to like August 1st. Like I didn't go you know what I mean? Yeah, and um, I Wasn't relaxed once You know what I mean? Like I wasn't relaxed like dude. I was in fight-or-flight mode the whole time
speaker-0: Yeah.
speaker-1: Yeah. And you don't realize that you are in, cause I had no idea, dude. You know what mean? Like I had no idea that like my central nervous system was wired this way or any of that. And then I go to therapy and I learn about at least like the neurobiology of it. I'm like, ⁓ I'm like, that's why I'm like this. You know what I mean? Like you don't especially, and then more you work like you, you work and then you run a business and you have kids and you're married and You have to try to plan a podcast around when your wife wants to go to the gym or when you care, you know, when you kids are in school or, know, yeah, I know you got a dog, you know, you, your central nervous system is constantly firing and it never truly relaxes. Yeah. And something that therapy can do. Cause I know, cause a therapist that I see, uh, told me about this is like, so, you know, isn't exactly an exercise that like I personally been like, yeah, I'll do that. but they've at least shown it to me. are ways it's, there are ways to relax your central nervous system that can be taught. You're basically, you're activating your vagus nerve. It's your parasympathetic nervous, which most guys watching this podcast that have been to medical school, we all know about the vagus nerve. We all know about that. So there are certain things that you can do like breathing techniques, you know, that can calm your central nervous system down.
speaker-0: You're essentially forcing the central nervous system to shut off because of parasympathetic
speaker-1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And that can be extremely helpful. That can be extremely helpful. Even if you don't use it at work, but like you get off and you get in your vehicle to go home. Right. And you're just like, okay, I'm going to try to disengage from work. Right. So I'm going to do this parasympathetic nervous system or Vegas nerve exercise that, you know, my therapist taught me. And then, and then you do it. Maybe that helps you disengage on your, you know, on your drive home. you know, before you go home and deal with your wife and deal with your kids or whatever you got going on in your personal life. You know, I think that is something I almost think. Like I said, my therapist, the one therapist or my therapist, whatever I call that I saw or see, they told me about that. And I kind of was like, I'm not going to do that. And then of course I leave therapy and I YouTube it I'm like, Oh, this actually works. You know what I mean? I just didn't want to do it in therapy. You know what I mean? Because I'm stubborn, you know.
speaker-0: to walk her to know I'm doing it.
speaker-1: Yeah. I'm not going to let you see me do this, but I'm going to do it. You're not going to know about it. You know, mean, now, of course, I'm sure this is going to get shared all over the place and they're going to see this, but regardless, uh, you know, like it. So even showing up to therapy, if you show up to a there, you know, a therapist office and they give you that, and then you don't do it in front of them like me. And then you walk out and you get home and you YouTube it you do it at home and you're like, Oh, this works. You know what I mean? Like, cause it actually does work. You're, you're, you're literally, you are stimulating your Vegas nerve is what you're doing. And that's. That's not anything mental. Like you have to talk about that's just biology. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a mechanics in your body. You can't control it. Right. It's like a smack in the head. You're going to feel pain. You know what I mean? Like, so yeah, man. Yeah.
speaker-0: It's mechanics in your body. It is crazy that you talk about that though, because I've noticed that when I do sit down to relax, ⁓ like last night I sat down to ⁓ kids are going to bed. Aaron was getting ready for bed and I was just like, I'm just going to sit down and chill for a minute. And then I sit there and like five minutes later, I'm like, I need to go do this or I need to go get this done. You know, it's like.
speaker-1: Then the mind starts...
speaker-0: Right. Wanting to do stuff, you know.
speaker-1: And that's the problem with us is that like, even find this in myself because dude, I work like, dude, I've got, I'm, I got a bunch of jobs and involved in a few special teams, whatever. Like I'm constantly just go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. You never shut it off. Your body just learns over years. This is how life is right. Like I'm constantly in the go. Yeah. And then, so when it's time to sit down and your mind gets quiet, That's when issues with guys really start coming up because there's multiple pathways that this can go. There's like what I've noticed with myself, which is just, and I think this is common amongst most first responders is you get home and just disassociate until you go back to work. I mean, and that an example in case, you know, somebody doesn't know exactly what I'm talking about would be like, you come home from work, you see your wife, you see your kids, whatever, but you're not you. You're not in your head and you sit in reclining, you turn on the TV and you're just basically like zoning out. Right. That would be like disassociation. I don't think there's anybody that's going to watch this that's been doing this for any significant amount of time. This is they haven't done that before. I know I have. I'm sure you have. Right. I mean, like you just associate. And then when you go back to work, you know, Chris Wheeler comes back, Cody Hill comes back and it's like game time. Right. That's one way it goes. Another way it goes. guys start running into addiction problems. They start running into, you know, whatever sort of thing they're going to get involved in in their personal life. That's not good. Like, because what is that? That's a distraction because you don't want to sit there in the quiet and just let your mind race. Right. Because then you start thinking about not only because you brought up a perfect point here. Not only do you think about. Oh, this guy, do that, you know what mean? But then you said, you know, that's that's when runs start hitting you is when you're sitting there by yourself or.
speaker-0: I'll be agonizing.
speaker-1: You know, you're disassociated from your family and you're in your house. And then, yeah, that's that, that right there is the problem with, with where, where guys start making bad decisions. Right. And I think it's something that people need to know that they're doing. Cause I didn't know I was doing it, dude. I was going home and just, I've been going home and just associating every day of my life since I was like 19 years old. You know what I mean? And so like I've spent my whole twenties just.
speaker-0: Autopilot.
speaker-1: autopilot, literally, like I just work, take a vacation every now and then. And other than that, I just, you know what I mean? Like when I'm off, I'm just like, when do I go back to work? You know what I mean? Like there's no, there's no like any part of you. ⁓ and that's another thing that I think we should talk about real quick too, is that, ⁓ it's, it's almost like a, ⁓ something that I've learned myself in therapy is it's almost like a, it's, like an identity crisis, right? Like, like what is Cody Hill like? outside of work, right? And then you really sit there. Cause that's something that a good therapist who's trying to deal with people like us will ask you like, okay, you're Chris, you're in therapy and you're a fireman and you're a paramedic and you're this and you're that or whatever. Right. And that's what you are. Okay. Take that away from you. What are you? Yeah. And then most guys sit back and are like, and then you just kind of stare at them. Like, what do you mean? It's like, well, what are you? Yeah. Like what's your identity besides doing this for a living? What are you doing in your personal life? Do you any hobbies? Do you have anything that identifies you as you other than doing this for a living? Right. And I think when most people get asked that question right there, they're going to have the same reaction. Kinda I have had, which is like, well, what am I? I don't know. Spent my whole 20s only focusing on this. Right. You know? so if anything, therapy could even teach you just how to figure out who you are, like try to maybe help you find a hobby besides picking up overtime or whatever. So. Yeah. You know, means like, what's your hobby? I don't know. I'm signing up at my part-time job when I'm not at my full-time job. know what I mean? Like, I don't know, you know, so, or yeah. So, ⁓ yeah. So it's helpful with that for sure. You know what I mean? Cause I mean, I think even me just saying that question, if someone's watching this, they might actually sit back and be like, what am I besides this? You know what I mean? Right. And, you kind of got to try to start to form an identity outside of. just doing this, right? Cause you can spend your whole life just doing this, but this is where the problem runs in with the suicide on retirement. You take this from you and this is all you have. Right. And now you get your pension or your retirement or whatever, and you're sitting at home and you're not working. And now it's like, Whoa, like what am I, who am I? And what did I just do for the last 25 to 33, 40 years of my career? Yeah. You know what I mean? And look at all these things that I lived through. And I know those thoughts are real because, I was 20. I mean, you remember, dude, when I had shoulder surgery, like I was 24 years old, dude, I mean, and I was off and I did, I went through some dark times while I was off, man, some super dark times. And it was the same thing. It was like, it was like an identity crisis. It was a, your mind finally slowing down. You're not going to work because, you know, you take a week or two off, whatever. Right. But when you're off for six months ish, you're like, whoa, you know what I mean? Like, you're not like, and then this would ⁓ go along with people who are retired. Now you're sitting there you don't have any tasks to do. You know what I mean? Like my task was to go to physical therapy three times a week for an hour. Other than that, I wasn't allowed to do anything. I had to sit at the house. Yeah. You know what I mean? And you do it then, you know, you start thinking about some of these calls that you've been on. You start thinking about like, who, like, who am I? You know I mean? Like, these thoughts come up when guys retired too. And that's how like, You know, I'm not saying I can like relate to a guy with 25 or 30 years on the job that's going through that. But what I'm saying though, is that I at least understand at least somewhat what those thoughts are like. Yeah. You know what I mean? And I know what it's like to be like, cause I remember, dude, I remember when I got hurt, I remember I stopped at a 13th one time and I saw, um, you know, Mario's there's Anders was there. All those guys were there, man. Good. By the way. And, I remember telling them, I'm like, would take an ass kicking on unit four tonight. And they're looking at me like I'm crazy. You know what I mean? I'm just like, dude, I would man. So, you know what I mean? Like my mind's just racing. I want to occupy it. You know, and when your mind races, when there's nothing for it to do, you know, you, like I said, you just associate, you get into personal problems or you just are like me you just stay at work. That's another coping mechanism. You know, the guy that, well, There's not really part-time stuff down there, but let's just say the guy, like for me, it's working like a hundred hours a week, right down there. It's the guy that's picking up 36 hours of overtime every four day, right? Like he just keeps working, keeps working, keeps working. Unless he really needs the money. That guy's really just trying to keep his mind occupied. So he doesn't have to see, you know what I mean? That's, that's, that's what a lot of it is. And I know like, even when I was down there, like I did that and I was trying to buy a house, but at the same time, like a lot of it was just keep your mind occupied, stay busy. You don't want to keep going to work. You know what I mean? Just.
speaker-0: Right.
speaker-1: on the call, let's go to work on the call. You know what I mean? So you can find yourself in a cycle like that. And then when your mind learns that like, this is how I'm going to cope with the stress of doing this or the stress of, you know, whatever is going on in your life, that's not a healthy way of dealing with it. And then you can run into some problems down the line and you end up in therapy at 28.
speaker-0: Well...
speaker-1: Yeah. So,
speaker-0: ⁓ So is there anything else you would like to throw out there for the audience? I know you had mentioned that you're working with Tom on starting like a peer group.
speaker-1: Mm hmm. Yeah. So ⁓ a couple of things. ⁓ as someone across this place, it's called the safety forces center. ⁓ for this is going to be obviously for Northeast Ohio guys that see this. ⁓ the safety forces center is in Akron. It's in Summit County. ⁓ I know one of the therapists there and she was telling me that if you go and you're some accounting, I believe resident or you work in some accounting, the weekly therapy sessions are completely free. So I don't know, say Yeah, so I don't know, like they'll see you for free and they'll do telehealth or they'll do in person. I don't know, you know, how they fund it. I don't know if it's like grants or tax base. Like I really didn't ask her that much about it, but she's telling me about it. ⁓ and then a friend of mine, Tom, who's podcast I was on before he runs a rise up and fight ministries. And I'm going to give the links to both of these places to Cody to put in ⁓ the description of this video. ⁓ We are in the process right now of attempting to start a peer support team for Cuyahoga County, which is like basically the Shelby County of Ohio, right? It's like the Memphis of Ohio, right? You know, Cleveland and all the suburbs or whatever. so there's a two day class that the safety forces center is putting on. I, for me, it's in May. I think it is. I got to look at the exact dates, but, um, you go through a two day class. Tom is a certified chaplain. Um, and he is going to start this. I guess, I guess it's kind of like a nonprofit type of deal. And then we're going to try to get some guys that want to be on the support team, want to go get this class. So if somebody's spiraling or having some bad thoughts and. two in the morning and you got an argument with your wife and your hammer and you need somebody to talk to you like whatever you call us and we'll come. You can call me. I mean, anybody knows you can call me day or night and I'll show up. But regardless, you can call us and we'll. Hopefully talk you off the ledge enough and then get you to a therapist that wants to work. ⁓ we have Tom kind of already has a list from what he's doing. ⁓ and we're going to start probably knocking on doors of therapists this summer and going, Hey, we all like working for free. So, know, you want to deal with severely traumatized firemen. ⁓ you'll get paid for the therapy sessions, but we need you to come volunteer your time when you could have other clients and go to a fire station for free. Give a lecture on. relationships or EMDR or trauma brain, whatever you want to talk about, but it's always fun asking people to work that works for there asking people that work for hundreds of dollars an hour for free, but we are going to be trying to do that. ⁓ Fortunately, there are people, there are people out there that care that are willing to help. We have already started building a list of, of therapists. know he's got The one that he sent me to, we've got another friend of mine and his that used to be a fireman actually that he's I think graduating this year. He's gonna be one potentially, think maybe still gotta talk to him, I don't remember now, but we're trying to get a list of people that care about people that do what we do for a living and wanna talk to us and... Yeah, man. So I just want to give a shout out to both of those places, I guess. ⁓ And if you are in the Northeast Ohio area and you are interested, especially if you're in Cogut County on being on a peer support team or you want to know what the training is or whatever, ⁓ just reach out to Tom and I. ⁓ You can message him at Rise Up and Fight Ministries. You can just message me on my personal Facebook. It's just Chris Wheeler or whatever. And I can point you in the right direction. And then if you need therapy for some reason and you see this, please, by all means, give me a call. have at least four therapists right now that I know of that in my personal life that I can send you to that know how to deal with people like us. And I just don't. You know, I mean, we went through a suicide while I was there. There was a recent suicide around here. Then there's, you know, I just don't. It's it really saddens me to see somebody make a decision like that and just wonder like, you know what I mean? Like, what could we have done to stop this?
speaker-0: Sure.
speaker-1: And there is a stigma about this. guys, guys, guys make comments about my first podcast. I'm sure guys are to make comments about this podcast. It is what it is. Yeah. But I, my heart's truly in the right place with like trying to make mental health better for us. I can only do so much. I'm a small voice in a big pond. You know what I mean? But whatever I can do to get people to people who care. You know what I mean? Cause there are. And as much as I sat here and said, therapists don't care. There are plenty that do. You just have to find them and know who they are and leave that up to us on the peer support team. When we make this team in the near future, let us figure out who wants to and who doesn't want to. And the trust thing, right? Hopefully the fact that we're firemen or I'm still currently a fireman and we can help guide you in the right direction. I hope you would trust that, that I wouldn't send you to somebody that is going to be like, surprised there's a fireman or cop with PTSD walking through the front door. I didn't know it was going to happen. You know what I mean? Like, so, um, those are my two shout outs. So safety force center in Akron and a friend of mine, Tom freeboard, who's running a rise up ministry. So, uh, the safety forces center, I don't think has any social media that I've found, but, um, he has Facebook, Instagram, and then a YouTube channel. Um, I did a podcast similar to Cody's with him. Uh, about four months ago or so. ⁓ And so if you want to see like what I had to say on there or whatever, you're more than willing to go watch, you know, that episode. So.
speaker-0: Absolutely. And like he said, I'll, link everything down below.
speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, and I'll send all that to you. ⁓
speaker-0: Absolutely. Well, man, thanks for, ⁓ thanks for taking the time and being willing to share your story. ⁓ like I said, if, if nothing else, I hope people enjoy the conversation, but I really hope this helps, ⁓ someone shift their perspective. And, and, know, like you said, if it's not for you, then it's not.
speaker-1: else man because that's bottom line is that's what this job is about man i mean you got to care for the guys you know what i mean you got to care for the guys you work with just like if you ever get promoted it's it's not about you anymore right same thing that i'm taking that same approach with this right it's not about me anymore it's about the people that we work with it's about keeping people mentally healthy as we can for them to get to a career and actually enjoy a retirement not you know what i mean have something happen in retirement
speaker-0: Exactly.
speaker-1: Yeah, so yeah, man, I appreciate you having me on. I think this was a good conversation. Hopefully guys will watch this and get something out of it.
speaker-0: that you all have enjoyed today's episode. I know we've really been hammering home the mental health this season, but it is such an important topic that we are too often closed, closed off from. ⁓ And Chris and I have a lot of the same perspective on ⁓ I don't believe that every person is broken. I don't believe believe that every person is OK. But if you are somebody that that needs help, ⁓ feel free to reach out and get that help. Don't be afraid because of what the guys in the firehouse are saying about mental health. And you don't have to tell them. You don't have to bring it to light with them if that's something that you're concerned with how it be taken. ⁓ As Chris said, we are very in control. These are These are issues that only we know that we're struggling with. If that's you, get that help that you need. And if you're skeptical about it, like Chris said, give it a try. Maybe it's something that can help you. Obviously there's still a small percentage of people that it doesn't help, but it doesn't hurt to try. Basically is the message that he gave today. ⁓ Like I said, him and I are similar in lot of ways. One of our similarities is skepticism of therapy ⁓ But he was willing to try it and he said May not work for him, but at least he tried right? So that's basically the message that that I wanted y'all to hear today was even if you're skeptical Give it a try and Just because it's not for you or just because it didn't work for you doesn't mean it won't work for the next guy. So just attempt to be an advocate for those around us that need it and that it is useful for. And let's quit cutting our own down and telling them that we just need to shut the fuck up and get back to work. Thanks again for tuning in. As always, check out enginehousedesigns.com for your custom fire service apparel needs. Link is in the description. Email me at engine house podcast at gmail.com if you've got some ideas for the show or if you'd like to be a guest and then make sure that you subscribe and get notified about the podcast so you can know as soon as the newest episode drops. Make sure you share the show with somebody. Maybe it's this episode or the entire show as a whole. We do have a Facebook group to ⁓ the engine house that you can join. All the new episodes get posted on there. You can join the discussion there if you didn't catch the live episode. And as always, stay safe and ignite the pride.
