We Have a Problem: Stress

Embracing Stress to Enhance Emergency Responder Resilience

In the movie The Matrix, we’re told that the first Matrix, designed to be a stress-free utopia, ended in disaster – nearly everyone connected to it was lost. Their minds rejected the program because no one could accept a happy world free from suffering.

Why? Because, according to Agent Smith, “human beings define their reality through suffering and misery.”

He only had it part right. While hardship and adversity are universal experiences, it isn’t suffering and misery that we crave – it’s challenge. Without hurdles to overcome or challenges to accomplish, life feels empty. Even meaningless.

Still, stress in the emergency services is seen as something to be mitigated, avoided, or ignored. That’s not surprising, when you look at the job. Among stressful occupations, comparison data shows firefighters and EMTs with the highest levels of job-related stress and burnout, hovering right around 60%. More than a third of EMS providers consider walking away from the job.

Studies show this stress affects our physical and mental health: Job stress is a leading cause of chronic back pain among firefighters, and half a stressful day raises the risk of cardiac fibrillation for days afterward.

What do we do with stress that is literally breaking us or worse? How do we mitigate it? How do we avoid it?

Short answer: we don’t.

“The New Science of Stress.”

Since the early- to mid-1900s, when the terms “stress” and “fight-or-flight” were first used, we’ve been told to avoid stress at all costs – that it destroys our body and mind and sends us to an early grave. We now know that stress isn’t as harmful as once believed. It’s actually necessary and beneficial – stress can help improve your health, your work, and your resilience.

That’s because “fight-or-flight” panic mode isn’t the brain’s only way of responding to stressful situations.

My last column mentioned Community Risk Reduction (CRR), which aims to reduce risks through Education, Engineering, and other programs. Let’s take an awareness-level educational look past “fight-or-flight” at other physiological stress responses:

“Excite and Delight” Response

Controlled scares or “recreational dangers” give an exhilarating, addictive adrenaline rush. Remember your first live fire evolution, or the floor drop prop at RIT training? Adrenaline. Higher dopamine levels help your mind experience these hazards as “thrills,” transforming “danger” into “fun” and enhancing resilience.

Tip: foods high in magnesium and tyrosine (dark leafy greens, avocado, meat, nuts & seeds) boost dopamine naturally, as do better sleep habits, and daily exercise.

“Tend and Befriend” Response

Humans are built to thrive in social groups: we regulate stress by suffering together and healing together. This is mostly because oxytocin, the “social hormone” released during stress, triggers your desire to seek friends or family when you’re threatened or anxious.

Loneliness is dangerous. Studies of trauma and suicide risk reveal that trauma itself isn’t unhealthy; going through it alone is. We’re stronger and safer with our tribe: social connection enhances oxytocin, making a firewall against anxiety and depression, and fortifying your resilience the way shoring stabilizes a trench.

Oxytocin is also enhanced by vitamins C and D and magnesium, aerobic exercise, yoga, and chamomile. Petting a dog for five minutes also increases oxytocin and lowers blood pressure.

“Challenge” Response

Embracing hurdles and struggles as opportunities to develop your skills or strengths shifts your brain from “fight-or-flight” mode to a “challenge” response, and can boost your focus and performance.

This builds a firewall against depression and anxiety, inoculates our “psychological immune system” against future stress, and reinforces resilience – our ability to rebound from stress or adversity both physically and mentally.

Engineering Your Mindset

Research consistently shows your beliefs about stress matter. A huge study from UW-Madison found people with high stress also had a high risk of health problems and early mortality, but only if they believed stress was harmful.

Highly stressed participants who believed adversity represented an opportunity for learning or growth had the lowest risk of death or disease.

This kind of mindset comes with intentional practice. According to David Bidler, president of Physiology First, “mental health is something you train”.

So how do we “train” for a positive stress mindset?

We start by recognizing and reframing stress symptoms. For example, pounding heart, quicker breathing, jittery stomach, tense muscles, and restless brain are symptoms of anxiety, but also of excitement.

Stress symptoms are meant to get your attention and give you energy, strength, and motivation. Reframing “anxiety” into “excitement” literally changes your physiology.

This positive “growth” mindset continues by seeking meaning in adversity and being actively optimistic about the outcome.

Struggles, for example, can build character and resilience. The more we face resistance, the grittier we become. Without it, our resilience atrophies like an unused muscle.

Hurdles build confidence. Ben Carson wrote that seeing “obstacles as a containing fence” makes them an excuse to quit. Approaching them as hurdles to overcome strengthens our resilience and our determination.

Failure, too, can build strength. Five decades of data reveals that successful people and companies start out by failing, often repeatedly. Viewing setbacks as a learning experience helps turn them into comebacks.

Leading Resilience

Data on trauma and suicide risk shows that trauma itself isn’t the problem; going through it alone is. Part of our job as leaders is to foster community, which helps crews better persist through adversity or trauma (remember “tend and befriend” and oxytocin).

Leaders also steer group attitude. Coaching crews to be energized by anxiety and to view hurdles or setbacks as resilience training prevents “avoidant coping” – unhealthy escapes used to numb stress or unpleasant emotions.

We’ll take a risk reduction look at another “problem area” in my next column. Until then, I’ll leave you with words JFK shared: “Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men! Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.”