Police Psychology | Know Your Hero

Posted: April 8, 2015 in Stories
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Know Your Hero

 

superman-logo-012a

Meet Suzie Sawyer–an unsung hero.

Heroes and heroism is important in police psychology. Let me tell you about one of my heroes. Over 30 years ago, Suzie Sawyer served as National Secretary for the Fraternal Order of Police Auxiliary and she proposed holding an annual National Memorial Service for police officers killed in the line of duty.  The first service had only 125 attendees.  To increase attendance, the National FOP planned a Board Meeting in Washington, DC, in 1983, and an evening get-together was planned on the eve of Peace Officers’ Memorial Day.    There were others, though, who found out about the party.  They were the people who came to Washington, DC, to hear their husband’s name read aloud at the Memorial Service…..the police widows.

So they are at this big police party and some of these widows began to cry.  The party mood was changing.  Suzie decided to take them elsewhere to preserve the festivity.  Little did she know she was doing something else as well.

Suzie loaded ten women in a couple of cars and they went to the DC FOP Lodge to talk.    Each widow told the story of their husband’s deaths, how the funeral was planned by the agency without their input, how difficult it was to go on with their lives, and how they had even had voices in their heads, and thoughts of suicide.  When they finished their discussion hours later, the ten women felt better and asked Suzie if they could continue having meetings.    Suzie was a little unsure of that request because, in those days, nobody in law enforcement ever talked about police death.  They buried their officers with pomp and circumstance, but once it was over, the families had to fend for themselves, trying to explain what happened to them and deal with the grief on their own.

Over the next several months, Suzie kept in touch with the widows who now wanted a national support group.  On May 14, 1984, Suzie started C.O.P.S. (Concerns of Police Survivors) to serve the surviving families of officers killed in the line of duty.   On May 14 ,1984, Suzie started a heroic journey.

“Get your butt up that tower,” barks Suzie Sawyer to the young widow at the C.O.P.S. Spouses’ Retreat.

“But I am afraid, Suzie.”

“What are you afraid of…making it to the top?   Put one foot above the other and get up that tower, now!”  A crowd of widows and staff cheer her on as the woman climbs.

The woman stops halfway up and shivers.  “You’re halfway there.  Think of how much you have accomplished already.  Keep going.”  The cheers rise; the woman continues to climb.  “See, there is nothing you can’t do if you put your mind to it.”

The tower is 50-feet tall and, yes, succeeding and getting to the top helps people realize how strong they are and that they can get through the grieving process.  Part drill sergeant, part psychologist, Suzie is always a sympathetic soul, determined, focused.  She is the ultimate positive person when you meet her, also.  Her personality is strong and infectious.  If she tells you that you can do something – you can and will do it. She helps you put in the effort and increase your self-esteem.

UnsungHero

Seek out the unsung heroes in your life and let them know how much they mean to you.

She got the grant money to make her organization bigger and financially sound.  You can’t turn Suzie down.  They own the building they reside in.  She has 13 employees budgeted, and, yet, it all started in the Sawyer basement.   She remembers people she only met once.  And people remember her.  I met her 20 plus years ago and I remembered her, even her name.  I had not seen her since, but her name came to mind when I started writing a blog.  She is a remarkable person.

With Suzie’s guidance, they run programs for the spouses of police officers killed in the line of duty.  They run programs for the kids of officers killed in the line of duty, and an Outward Bound Experience for teens and young adults.  They have programs for fellow officers, for parents, siblings, significant others, and adult children of the officers.  They give scholarships to surviving children and spouses wanting to study beyond high school; and they run a trauma education program for police officers across the country. If there is a need, C.O.P.S. will meet it. In all, they service over 30,000 families of officers killed in the line of duty.  And they do it with the same compassion as in the first forced meeting in the FOP Lodge in Washington, D.C.

And I am telling you, if you met Suzie you would not be surprised by any of this.  Her personality is that positive and that strong.  She is a true hero.  And so is her husband Buzz who puts up with Suzie having a passion, almost like another child, that takes a lot of Suzie’s time — the C.O.P.S. organization.

The Unsung Heroes in Your Life

You need to relish the heroes in your life.  You should seek out someone that has been a hero to you, and tell them.  If they are not alive, tell their son or daughter.  It changes you for the better when you do.  It will make you feel good, and it honors the memory.  People don’t do this enough.  I don’t know why.  Let me start with this article.

Thank you, Suzie, for making so many women climb that tower!

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | The Myth of Emotional Opposites

Posted: April 2, 2015 in Mastering Emotions
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The Myth of Emotional Opposites

 

Arrow

People tend to see emotions in terms of their opposites…but does this mindset negatively effect your mental health?

In therapy, while working in police psychology, I have learned that very negative people tend to suffer from “Shit City Syndrome,” meaning that their cynicism and view of life cause them to see all the bad parts of a situation.  Then they complain that they aren’t enjoying life.  Realize that your evaluations of the world cause you to create your world while you are evaluating it.  Essentially, if you see yourself in “shit city” you will live in “shit city” and lead a miserable existence.  It is sort of a turn on the self-fulfilling prophecy which is basically the evaluation of the self creates the self as you interact with the world.

To overcome this syndrome I use the Myth of Emotional Opposites.  I use this in my speeches, as well as, in my therapy.

I first ask the person what is the opposite of “pain,” and invariably get the word “pleasure.”  I ask then the opposite of “love,” and get the answer “hate.”  Finally, I ask for the opposite of “happy,” and get “sad” as the answer.  This is the setup, as I have gotten the same answers in a room full of mental health professionals, just like I’ve gotten the answer in a room full of everyday people.

I then have the person visualize that they have a compound fracture of the leg.  They fell over the doorway and broke their leg badly.  The bone is sticking out.  I ask them if they are in pain and they invariably reply yes.  Then, I tell them at the same time as they are writhing in pain waiting for the ambulance to come, their friend comes over and says, “remember last week when we were at that seminar with the fat guy (me) and we bought a lottery ticket.  Well, I just found out we won 134 million dollars.”  I then ask “Now, are you still in pain?”

I get stumbling when I ask this second question.  They can’t make sense of it.  Pain and pleasure are opposites; they can’t exist together.  Are you in pain or pleasure?  On the continuum line, pain and pleasure are on the opposite ends, so which is it?  You’re definitely in pain; you have a compound fracture.  And, if you are not in pleasure after winning 67 million dollars you’re a little weird.  I mean, you can’t be in love and hate someone at the same time, or can you?  You can’t be happy and sad at the same time, can you?

The Myth Revealed

Then I make my point, pain and pleasure are not opposites.  The opposite of an emotion or a feeling is not another emotion; it is the lack of an emotion.  The opposite of pain is no feeling.  The opposite of pleasure is no feeling.  The opposite of love is indifference; the opposite of hate is no feeling.  And this simple concept can lift you out of Shit City.

You see, the natural tendency for people is if there is a negative feeling, they don’t allow positive feelings to exist, or they reduce the positive feeling so much it has no value.  Emotional Shit City!  But our life has many different facets and we can be unhappy about say the relationship in our life and be happy about the amount of money we earn.  Or we can be sad for a loss in our life, but still enjoy the joys of an errant rose or a nice email card.  Our need is to focus on the parts of life that are going well, and allow time and other healing methods to happen in the bad areas.

Remove Stress with this Powerful Technique

Opposites

Find the good things in your life, and focus on them, instead of letting the bad overwhelm you.

Now it may sound a long way to go to teach a concept most people know that is common sense.  But remember, people don’t live with common sense.  In fact, common sense is not common at all.  They lose commons sense in emotion.  This technique has had a profound impact on people going through a grief process, people having problems with a teenager, people who have lost a love in their life, or even people after a critical incident.  It lessens the load and gives them permission to have some fun without feeling guilty because they have one bad thing in their life.  It is a powerful technique and can stop a person from feeling overwhelmed and consumed with something that happened to them. Implementing such a technique can help put the happiness and simplicity back in your life. 

Good luck with it if you choose to try it.

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | The Principle of Entropy

Posted: March 27, 2015 in Avoiding Being a Missing Person
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The Principle of Entropy

 

Entropy

Entropy as a mental health concept can help explain that if we don’t actively work to keep things organized, they will revert into a state of disorganization.

On the theme that scientific principles and theories have mental health correlates that we should pay attention to, I would like to add another scientific principle that can help us with police psychology called “entropy.” Let me put this second law of thermodynamics in a simpler form for us to understand.

Entropy is a measure of disorder or randomness. The principle says that a closed organism or system will look to reach its most disorganized state unless energy is provided to keep it in line. Essentially, unless we apply work to keep something organized in the fashion we want it organized, entropy will look to undo the organization and make it more random. We are doomed to live a life of disorder unless we work to make it orderly. A real shocker there I bet you are saying. This science principle has been applied to information theory, business theory and even to explain aging when the body starts to deteriorate and fall apart. I believe we can look to our own lives to see the explanation of entropy.

Go no further than your desk to realize that entropy can affect you. If you haven’t worked to keep everything in line, your desk will look like mine with papers and pens all over the place. I admit, I like having some disorganization on my desk, but where is the level when I am willing to clean up or apply work? My desk quickly goes over the level I want it to be, in fact it may only take a day sometimes to get to be a mess. Ever notice how life is so much harder when you have to look for everything all the time? How about your teenager’s room if you’re like most parents of kids. Don’t be surprised to have the argument: ”Clean your room, Suzy”, “Don’t touch anything dad, I am studying entropy in school.” Maybe not, but if they are a very bright quick thinking kid, they can get you to think with that for a second or two.

Entropy in your Life

But let’s hit closer to home. Careers have “entropy” also. If you don’t do the work on your career, you end up in the same places for a long while without any direction. Now you can be working, but without applying work to advance yourself, not just doing your job, entropy will take over. You may have to send a memo to tell someone you are doing a good job, or let people know in other ways you are accomplishing something. There is more to work than the task of doing a job. If you want to advance, you must keep people aware of your good deeds.

Let’s talk about your relationships. Want to know what entropy looks like in marriage? Divorce! If you are not doing the work to compliment your spouse, bring home a flower or other gift occasionally, make a special evening, or whatever your spouse likes, entropy will take over and that is not good for anyone. People don’t stay when there is few rewards. (So send me a cookie sometime so I keep writing).

Remove Stress by Fighting Entropy

messy-desk-sipressHow do you fix it? I teach the concept of entropy very simply then ask, “what is the work you have to do to make your marriage work,” or “to make your boss like you” or “to be happy?” People will come up with some bizarre things, so you have to act as their filter. I might tell them how to reward their spouse or let the boss know when you’ve accomplished something. We all have different levels of disorder and we have disorder in different areas, so I ask “where does entropy work hardest on you?” As people get the insight of entropy, they start thinking about what is NEXT for them to do rather than living in the problem. That is always useful in therapy or in self-development.

So exorcise entropy from your life and you will move forward more productively in the future, and maybe you won’t have as much to complain about. But then again, maybe you like to complain. We’ll get to that in another blog.

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Police Psychology | The Principle of Relativity (or something like that)

Posted: March 20, 2015 in Motives and Opportunity
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The Principle of Relativity (or something like that)

 

jet plane

Objects moving at the same speed may not notice they are traveling at a different pace than the people around them.

I like to teach that scientific principles and theories have mental health correlates that we should pay attention to in both police psychology and all denominations of the mental health field. Scientific theory is highly dependent on observation (both inside and outside of experiments) and many of the principles can apply across situation observed in nature. Since many people have problems with science, let me put the concept in a simpler form.

If you and I are flying in a plane, and you choose to toss me a ball, even though we are traveling at 560 miles an hour through the air, the ball will go directly to me as if there was no motion at all. Essentially, because we are moving at the same speed, there is no motion between us and we can act as we regularly would despite being in a plane going 560 or more miles per hour. Now scientists will argue whether this is covered in Newton’s laws, Einstein’s theory of relativity, or even Aristotle’s or Galileo’s theories on motion explains this, but I extend to you that if I toss you a chocolate donut or a bagel with cream cheese in a plane going 560 miles an hour, you will still catch it easily unless I throw it badly. Name it what you want, but bodies that are moving the same speed do not feel motion unless there is something moving at a different speed, such as the wind if you were standing on the wing of the airplane.

I find human interaction is regulated by this same principle. When an officer is assigned to a special unit, such as sex crimes or emergency service, they are moving at a speed that the rest of the world may be a step or two behind. The same happens in business when working on a fast-paced project. It is easy to communicate with other people in the unit or on the project, but it will be more difficult to communicate to people outside of the unit or project. We often find when a spouse comes home and the pace may be slower or just focused elsewhere, they may get very irritable, or impatient. Trying to get a lead on a murder suspect that is time-sensitive is a different pace than waiting for your 7-year old to pick out pants to wear to school or coming home to an indecisive spouse trying to make a decision about dinner that night. Tempo is important in writing, in sports, in speaking well, in holding attention of people, and in life in general. Many people can adjust what they are thinking about, but don’t have a clue about adjusting to the tempo of life from work to home. The other problem occurs when someone comes home and ratchets down to zero, with really no sense of the pace in their house. When you lose tempo, just as in a song, no one can make music together.

Managing the Tempos of Life

Metronome

Adjusting your tempo to fit that of others is important to maintaining the relationships in your life.

I have been trained in music. When I come across a tempo problem, I pull out the old metronome, a tool for staying on the beat. Actually, now I have a metronome on my cell phone that I use. I explain “tempo” describing from the airplane to the song. Then I ask them to give me examples at the different beats per minute on the metronome. What part of life goes at 140 beats per minute, what goes at 40 beats per minute? There is no normal so don’t worry about that. Our lives are regulated by beats per minutes from heart rates, to music, to our mental health. I explore that with the officers I see to get them to realize that the pace of their special unit may be different then their spouse and kids, or their social life. The key is for them to adjust, not to try to push everyone else at their pace.

Tempo is an important concept in your life, and it is a mental health concept as well, that can help you evaluate how to manage your time. Whether you call it relativity, or a law of motion is not as important as getting the person to attend to the natural pace of parts of their life. And if you can do this successfully, you will have a much happier and healthier life. 

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Book Review: Research in Law Enforcement Selection

Posted: February 27, 2015 in Books
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aamodt

Book review of “Research in Law Enforcement Selection” by Michael G. Aamodt.

I don’t do Meta Analysis and don’t do pre-employment evaluations.  Most of my life I have had little interest in either.  The mixing of the two for me should be somewhat like eating overdone beef liver cooked in castor oil and chasing it down with Campari (the Italian liquor that looks and tastes like transmission fluid).  So, when Mike Aamodt gave me a book looking at law enforcement pre-employment evaluations using meta analysis, I wasn’t sure I would have the stomach to read it.  But then again, Dr. Aamodt has always impressed me in his presentations with his humor and dry charm, and I always walk away with pieces of really valuable information, so maybe I could shove reading this new book of Aamodt’s between the 13th and 14th annual Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader. Who knows maybe I’ll learn something.

The first two chapters are about what a meta-analysis is and how it is done in this study.  Okay I have to admit, I am a closet Discovery/History Channel watcher and fought off those un-cool nerd tendencies throughout high school and college.  And I actually like research and stats, but please do not tell the other kids.  Dr. Aamodt’s two chapters on the meta-analysis are progressive and in simple enough terms that even a non-nerd can understand his concepts, but you have to have a little of that nerd thing to find it fascinating like I did.  The meta-analysis statistically combines all well-done published studies, regardless of statistics and methods, and weighs and balances them for an overall statistical analysis of effect.  It seems like a tremendous amount of work, but what a great idea to look at data this way rather than argue one study over another.  In the following chapters he looks at variables like cognitive ability, educational background, previous military experience, background problems, individual sub-test scores on personality tests, vocational interest inventories and a host of other constructs measured in pre-employment evaluations to see if they can predict job performance, academy performance and likelihood of problems on the job.  Without giving you any of the findings (buy the book for that), I found myself constantly saying, now that is interesting (ex., criminal justice majors don’t do better as cops or in the academy, or measure “x” really has tremendous adverse impact, or this subtest doesn’t discriminate at all, etc).  Dr. Aamodt has managed somehow in this book to answer a ton of questions, raise a number of issues and keep you saying, “Wow, I never would have thought that.”

In the final chapter, Dr. Aamodt lists the things we know, the things we don’t know, and what we need to find out about pre-employment evaluations.  For example, he tells you the one subtest that is the single best predictor of performance on the job (not what I expected).  He tells you the correlations between positive citations and civilian complaints.  He tells you the best predictors of academy performance, and talks about the end of a honeymoon period where some predictors start to really come through.  Every police psychologist, every police chief, everyone working in employment law, and every graduate student studying anything about industrial organizational psychology should read this chapter.  It is worth 100 times the cost of the book and it sets a way of thinking that should be a structure for all employment testing.

I testify on a lot on police cases and work with lawyers on how to cross examine psychologists.  I have already integrated some of Dr. Aamodt’s analysis into my work.  It is just that kind of book – filled with facts that should guide the practice of a profession.  He states in the preface he wanted it to be a resource book for the profession.  He has succeeded in a big way.  If you are in any way responsible for pre-employment assessment in law enforcement, you’d better read what he says in this simple paperback book.  You definitely don’t want to face some lawyer who has read it, or has been prepared by a psychologist who has read it.  This book is a resource book that should be required reading in the profession.

Maybe I should try that Campari again.  —- Nah!!

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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