Archive for the ‘Police Stress’ Category

Police Psychology:  No More Drama

by Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

I had pneumonia!  I just got over it I guess, although I hack as I write.  One off my staff caught it on a cruise to Russia, and I woke up with it on Saturday last week, in case you were wondering why there was no communication from me for two weeks.  It kicks your butt.  Makes you think it might be your last cold ever — that you’re gonna die!  And that always puts a new perspective on life.

I remember writing about the “moment of truth” in my book Keeping It Simple. (I’ll send you a free copy on .pdf if your write me.)  I wrote about an imaginary time when you are told you have one month to live.  What do you choose to do with your life?  Dream of all the possessions you never got, or mourn that your life was over, or spend the last few breaths with loved ones and people who have been close to you.  Would you look to complicate your life or simplify your life?

Of course, everyone is supposed to say simplify.  That’s what books do is trap you in the premise of the book.  And it was written in the early 90’s when I was a pup in my late 30’s, so it made sense to write it that way.  But what I didn’t know back then, and it takes a while to realize, is that some people just look to “create drama” in their life, re3gardless of the situation.  And as much as you tell people to simplify, drama is always created by these people.

I have written about them.  I called them “Brain Eaters” and I took the side of how to not let a Brain Eater rent space in your brain.  But I have never addressed the person that always finds a lot of drama in their life.  And there is no better place for drama then the holidays, when you are forced with people who often think they have a say in your life because of the family you were born into.

So, let’s get down to it.  If you wake up and say there is a ton of drama in your life over a long period, what do you take a look at?  I am constantly telling people the first step to simplifying is to get a few empty garbage bags and start tossing things out.  Well, unfortunately it is the same with too much drama.  Reduce the complexity by lowering the amount and type of people you are associated with.  If there is someone that constantly creates drama that can be purged from your life, purge them.  If they can’t be purged, limit the amount of effect they have on you, or essentially make them less important.  That is step one to reduce drama, but sometimes that means backing off from long-time friends or even relationships that are constant drama producers.  You’ll end up better, believe me.

The next step in reducing drama is to reduce the amount of extra organizations that you are playing an active role in.  Just like if your kid was overly stressed you would cut them back a soccer league or two, or a dance troupe, sometimes you have to make a decision to stop being president of the motorcycle club or the South Eastern Georgia Patrolman’s Fund or the professional organization that is creating too much drama in your life.  Often you love the organization but some of the people are just too needy or demanding.  If you find yourself stressed to the max from the drama of a volunteer job, or thinking about it constantly, sometimes you have to leave it.  In my experience, what often starts as a pleasant job has a shelf life and if you are beyond the shelf life, it just might be over.

Finally, turn your focus on your loved ones.  Tell them you will help solve their problems, but they must take the drama out of it.  You will only have to remind them every 90 seconds, but after ten or twelve times it will go to 2 minutes then three and eventually you won’t have to remind them as much.  Focus your attention on helping them.  Most readers of mine tend to be caretakers.  They take care of other people and enjoy it when there is no drama.  Let people know you will help, but you want a drama-free zone.  You see simplifying the drama in your life is really simple, but people mistake simple for easy.  Simplifying means giving up and that is simple, but not always easy.

 

Site Administrator:  Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology:  Sleep – What’s the Point?

by Douglas Gentz, Ph.D.

 

Sleeping doesn’t make much sense from a, “survival of the fittest” perspective. How does it benefit an animal or a person to become completely inattentive to their environment – helpless to fight or flee – for six or seven hours out of every 24? Reason suggests that over millions of years those members of any population that slept the least (or not at all) would have been more likely to survive to an age old enough to reproduce and pass their genes to the next generation . . . So there must be a very good reason for the fact that all animals, including humans, have to sleep on a regular basis. The reason has been a mystery until the last few years.

All the cells in any animal’s body take in nutrients (glucose) and O2 to provide the energy the cell needs to work. As a result, every cell produces waste products that have to be moved out of the cell and eventually released from the body. The normal pathway for “emptying the cellular trash” starts with the waste products being carried away from the cell by lymphatic fluid, collecting in the lymph nodes, transferred to the blood stream, and then transported to the kidneys for filtration. Eventually, those toxins are “liquidated” from the body in urine. (more…)

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Police Psychology | Stress Inoculation:  Not Just for Gunfights

by Patricia A. Robinson, Ph.D.

Sonoita, Arizona

 If you Google “police stress inoculation shooting,” you’ll get about 300,000 results, with titles like “Why your firearms training MUST include stress inoculation drills.” Acute stress induces the so-called “fight or flight” response, stimulating the sympathetic nervous system and the adrenal-cortical system to prepare you to deal with the proverbial saber-tooth tiger about to pounce or the drug dealer drawing a pistol.  Without getting into the physiological weeds, we are familiar with the effects of the acute stress response:  pounding heart and rising blood pressure, tunnel vision, loss of fine motor control, auditory exclusion, and so on.  If you’re not prepared, these responses can wreak havoc with your shooting skills.

Trainers introduce artificial stress (e.g. time pressure, shoot/don’t shoot decisions, scenarios) in firearms training to ensure that when the real thing happens, an officer will still be able to perform, even under acute stress.   The middle of a gunfight is a bad time to be trying to think through step-by-step how to draw and fire your weapon or what to do when a malfunction occurs—your responses must be automatic.  With acute stress, when the gunfight is over (or the saber-tooth tiger has decided on a different entrée), our bodies return to normal. (more…)

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Police Psychology:  27 Symptoms of Anxiety

 

 

 

Site Administrator:  Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | PTSD 4:  Flashbacks

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D.  ABPP

 

Of course, you are going to think I’ve lost it on this one, but it shows some merit.  And it makes some sense logically.  Researchers in England  say that flashbacks from traumatic events can be moderated through playing Tetris right after the event occurs.  That’s Tetris, the video game where you move puzzle pieces in all directions to make lines or blocks. etc. Makes you wonder if Candy Crush can be used for Ragin’ Anxiety and Donkey Kong and the Mario brothers could be used to sew up Open Heart Surgery!

So the thought is this: by playing a video game after a serious traumatic incident, you are stimulating your eye movement and concentration and that causes the brain to not be able to spend all its time to store long term memories, thus it doesn’t keep coming back into your head as much.  In fact, in the medical journal called Molecular Psychiatry in March of this year told of a study that gave people Tetris after a traumatic incident and others were given a placebo or basically nothing.  The Tetris group had 9 flashbacks the next week while the nothing groups had 23 flashback the next week.  Pretty significant!  Oxford University in England and the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said just 20 minutes of Tetris right after a traumatic incident was all that was needed to greatly reduce all PTSD effects.  Scientific America reported the same effect in their study.  In fact, case studies are cropping up all over saying that Tetris therapy is great at reducing flashbacks if given in the hospital after car accident, witnessing shootings and even rape.  Let me get this right, (doctor calls out to nurse):  scalpel…suture…bandage…Gameboy.  This doesn’t make sense to me, but let’s look at it a little closer… (more…)

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