Archive for the ‘Mastering Emotions’ Category

Police Psychology:  Dehydration

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D  ABPP

My head was beating, one of those really bad headaches that only come every once in long while.  This one was different though.  I had a little vertigo when I stood up, so much so that I was having trouble standing and needed to lie back down.  My heart was racing: I was extremely tired, in fact all I wanted to do was sleep.  My thinking was all messed up, like I was in a fog and couldn’t concentrate.  I was craving a roast beef and tomato sandwich from a street deli back home.  I hadn’t been to the bathroom in a long while, a couple of days.  I wasn’t going now because I couldn’t stand.  My joints were badly aching.  I was sure I was coming to the end of my life as the century had just turned and I was 43 years old.  My father only made it to the ripe old age of 45.  Besides, I felt I was needing to die to feel better.  With help, I made my way over to the infirmary at McMurdo station, where a physician’s assistant diagnosed me with the Antarctica Crud, a sort of flu-like disease people seems to get on first visiting the continent.  I went to the bathroom on the way out and noticed the tiny drops of urine were deep yellow, almost brown.  Then a thought occurred to me.

“Um, excuse me,” I asked the infirmary staff.  “Could this all just be dehydration?”

“Not if you are drinking your 6 liters of water.”  They snapped back.

“Six liters!!  That’s a little more than eight 8-ounce glasses I was always taught.”

“This is the coldest, driest pace on earth.  You need three times as much water.  Didn’t they tell you that?  People die from dehydration here.” (more…)

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Police Psychology:  Emotional Extortion

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

A baby cries in her bed.  The parents run in and comfort her.  She cries again, and they comfort her again.  She never experiences crying alone because when she cries – she is comforted.  The parents may even stay in her room or move her to their room to make sure she is comfortable and doesn’t cry.  The parents do so to be good parents and it is sort of common.  After a while, the parents say (or their doctor tells them) let her cry and she will learn she isn’t going to be comforted every time.  The crying pains them, but they do it and eventually the child learns to fall asleep without crying.  But, maybe the parents never let the child be alone and when she is a toddler she throws a tantrum, or when she is a pre-teen she throws an emotional fit and the parents come running to comfort her.  They are locked into and controlled by their child by simply being a good parent.  They are trying to keep their child calm and steady, making sure they don’t have too many negative emotions or maybe just trying to keep calm in their own life.  This is one of many ways Emotional Extortion starts and it is painful when you are on the wrong side of it.

Now, given the Aumiller rule of “few things have a unitary cause,” this isn’t the only way for Emotional Extortion to start.  Basically, when a person gets emotional and causes others to acquiesce, and it happens repeatedly, over and over again, that is Emotional Extortion.  So, the parents who want to keep their kids calm or make it so they don’t get embarrassed by a tantrum is one way it happens, but it happens adult to adult as well.  The guy who doesn’t want to hear his wife’s tirade for being home late or because he didn’t do something the way she wanted, that is Emotional Extortion.  If he changes his behaviors, it is Emotional Extortion.  The wife that tires to not upset her husband because he goes into an anger rage and thus she changes her behavior, that is emotional extortion.  The key is that when you change your behavior to keep the other person’s emotions in check and it happens repeatedly – those are the factors that make it Emotional Extortion. (more…)

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Police Psychology:  The Accused

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

This column has been known to cause some stir for the politics being read into it, but mostly the column is apolitical.  However, I am very nervous and followed the senate confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh closely.  It started for me after the allegations of sexual misconduct when he was a teenager were well in motion.  It wasn’t the sexual misconduct that caught my attention, it was the people with law degrees saying the onus of proof lies on Kavanaugh.  In other words, the accuser should be considered telling the absolute truth and the accused should be mounting a defense, if he was even in the vicinity or can remember where he was on that specific date 35 years ago.  Scary stuff!!  Especially for someone who works with the public.  And to make it even scarier, the senator from Hawaii Mazie Hirono said “he is very much against women’s reproductive choice,” therefore he must have committed the act he is accused of.  That sent a chill down my spine.  He has an opinion against her opinion, so he must be guilty of attempted rape.  Imagine if they believed everything against cops that is thrown out there.  Oh wait, they already do!!

If we have learned anything from Ferguson, or Freddie Gray, or any of the big cases is we must wait for an investigation, or at least the second half of the videotape.  Essentially, a case must be investigated before it is set out in public.  The “rush to judgement” is something cops deal with all the time, and there is not really any training for it at this point that I am aware of.  How do you handle being under such amazing scrutiny and now find yourself going crazy?  It is interesting that the accusers will say you have got some guilt when you falter under scrutiny, but isn’t that normal.  The accusers will say you must have done it when you get angry or over emotional, but again that is a normal emotion to being falsely accused as well.  Then there are those that pile on with other accusation or even made up lies which will cause more emotion and more of the appearance you are just starting to lose it.  We don’t really know the truth in the first place, but the destruction an accusation can do can make an entire life unfold.

Okay, so I have said nothing new.  Now let’s talk about what to do if you are accused.  F. B. Meyer who was a famous Baptist minister in England once said: “We make a mistake in trying always to clear ourselves. We should be wiser to go straight on, humbly doing the next thing, and leaving God to vindicate us.” The cops I know have a different standard: you can tell a man is guilty by the effort they put in to prove they are innocent.  I am not sure either is right, but both should be considered. (more…)

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Police Psychology | Christmas

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

 

 

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This is a PTSD technique used by a colleague of mine from Detroit, Michigan using a work of art from Francisco Goya found in Museo del Prado in Spain.  I have seen this work of art live a couple of times in Madrid and never would have made the connection LaMaurice did:

Police Psychology:  The Folly of Fear

 LaMaurice H. Gardner, Psy.D.

This is a picture called the Folly of Fear. Now in the background of the picture (in the past) you can see Spanish soldiers engaged in combat. They are beside the tree fighting for their lives. You can see the front of a cannon just to the left of the left most figure. They are at war.

 Now, in the foreground of the picture (in the present) you can see these same Spanish soldiers. What are they being confronted by? What is that standing over them?

 “A Ghost.” (grim reaper, death, etc.)

 Yes. And what is a Ghost…. a Ghost is a memory from the past. (more…)

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