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Lets talk about the mental side of Law enforcement for a second.
Normally I’d simply post the latest story of adrenaline pumping action but today I’m in a different mood.
Lets talk about “Post traumatic stress disorder”. It’s an extremely common occurrence amongst law enforcement and military personnel.
An officer may develop PTSD after experiencing an critical incident, or being exposed over a period of time to stress that he was unable to alleviate. These are two basic causes of PTSD with police officers:
1) Single event traumas
2) Stress over a long period of time that undermines the officers self-esteem, confidence and trust in his superiors and/or coworkers.
Why do I bring this up?
Let me take a moment to describe the night out I just had with my wife.
She was given some movie passes to see a sneak preview of the latest and greatest movie that happened to be out. Awesome, free movie. I couldn’t say no to that and decided to leave the house.
We got dressed and drove all the way to the movie theater. So far so good, casually walking into the theater and right on into the show without a single problem.
Upon rounding the corner of the entrance to the seating area of the movie I immediately notice that there are maybe 100 people or more already seated and watching us walk in.
I started to feel like a target, almost as if my life was in danger. I could picture someone in the crowd standing up and opening fire on my wife and I. I told her to hurry and and find a seat because she was simply standing still, looking around the theater for an open seat, stationary, not a care in the world.
Constantly scanning the room left to right and right to left I looked at as many faces as I could in case something happened which required me to remember such things. My wife found two seats in the very center of the theater and we started walking to them.
Sitting down in the seats I was surrounded by people I didn’t know and I started to feel as if the people sitting behind me were up to no good. I could envision them throwing popcorn or some sort of candy at me while I wasn’t looking.
This of course, all being in my head. I know logically this is all in my head. I know it is, but the fact that these thoughts keep popping up aren’t normal thoughts. Movies are some of the few places I can go publicly where I don’t feel like I have a huge target painted on my forehead because as soon as the movie starts my attention is focuses on it until the duration of the movie is over.
As soon as the movie finished and the lights came back on, I once again was filled with that urgency to keep moving and not be stationary, as if someone was just waiting for me to stop moving and attack me. I attempted to calm myself down and stay collected and once again, I knew it was all in my head. I fought myself to remember that what happens when I have my uniform on isn’t what happens to Joe Citizen and that no one is really trying to hurt me.
My wife simply walked with me and out to the parking lot. Keep in mind now, this is a mall parking lot and had poor lighting at best. I constantly scanned the horizon for anything out of place and watching the hands of all the people in the small crowds as we walked by them, as if they were just randomly going to ‘jump’ me.
Shortly after leaving the parking lot my wife said she was hungry and we decided to goto our favorite Restaurant right down the street from our house. Excellent, I was totally in the mood for a good Chicken salad and she was craving those buffalo wings that this food spot made so well.
Walking into the Restaurant I immediately saw it was packed and once again felt that wave of urgency to find a good tactical spot where I could see a lot of people and they could barely see me. I knew I was completely safe but my brain was telling me that I could be in imminent danger. A loud, noisy environment where there were just too many variables to consider.
Visibly you’d never know I was in such a state, but inside I was at code red.
Seated and now eating my meal, after every single bite of food I would look up and around, giving myself at least a full 180 degree view of the room with my back to the wall of course. My wife knows that me not looking at her for a whole meal isn’t a problem, I’m just keeping my guard up. Just in case that madman walks through the front door of the Restaurant and I need to protect my family.
What is all this non-sense I’m talking about you’re probably thinking?
After working in what can be considered an Urban war-zone for a prolonged period of time I’ve become emotionally numb to anyone that isn’t in my family or isn’t someone that I’ve known for a long time. I’ve seen death first hand on several occasions and have distanced myself so far emotionally that nothing really gets to me unless it directly impacts my life and even then I couldn’t show a weakness of emotion to save my life. More so, I have a serious “I don’t care” attitude about anything that isn’t important.
Also, I’ve lost faith in most of my co-workers. Trust is an enormous issue and the people I am currently working with, aside from Batman and my Sarge, I don’t know or trust. They’re all new. I go to work feeling like I am alone and have no real backup. It’s a feeling I can’t quite describe.
A major side effect of all this is a massive insomnia. Right now it’s 4:30AM and I’m wide awake. Even when I lay down I’m thinking and thinking until I can’t possible stay awake any longer and have to sleep from sheer exhaustion. Sleeping is a time of weakness for me and I’ll wake up at the drop of a pin. I lock all the doors in my house to include my bedroom door and always have one of my guns within 5 steps of me.
The bottom line I’m trying to get to is that I have what is known as a mild PTSD from the job. I trust almost no one, I rarely let my guard down and am constantly looking for new and better ways to relax and get out the stress from the heart pumping action and cold blood sweats.
What triggered this sort of behavior?
A mix of a few things, several incidents where I’ve had to physically engage someone, enter a house with an armed subject, chase people on foot over fences and into dark alleys alone, knowing the entire time in every single instance I could have been killed. The stress eats away at you if you don’t find ways to relax.
Some cops are drunks, some cheat on their wives, some kill themselves and most learn to cope.
I’ve learned to cope with the madness, I don’t suppress it but I also don’t deal with it as well as I should.
It has caused some tension in my home at times and is sometimes misplaced. I rarely lose my temper if ever at all but when I do it’s usually over the smallest simple thing.
What I’m trying to convey to you, as readers of this blog, is that there is baggage that comes with the job. There are reasons why cops seem to be a bit nuts. There are methods to our madness and if you saw or did what we do on a daily basis then you would have a chance at understanding why some of us are so out into left field that you can’t even relate to them.
I’ve been telling my wife jokingly that when I retire I want to move out into the middle of nowhere and live in an underground bunker type home miles away from anyone else. Of course thats ridiculous but at times I feel like leaving the house is just to much.
I don’t want you to think I’m crazy, because I’m really not. I don’t want you to pity me in any way, I choose my career path. All I want is for you to know, as a reader, that at times it really is hard to get up in the morning and put on that uniform. It’s hard to drive yourself to work knowing today you could die. It’s hard to leave your wife at home knowing that one of the few people that really love you will be the last person you see that day that cares whether you make it home at the end of your shift.
Sometimes I feel like Roland, the Gunslinger, chasing the man in black across the desert.
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