Gazette - Emotional survival for police officers

FEATURED SUBMISSION

By Kevin M. Gilmartin, PhD

Policing has always been considered a highly demanding profession in terms of stress and strain.  After all, no one calls an officer for assistance because things are working normally.

The work day of a law enforcement professional can range from mundane encounters with the public to intense situations such as searching buildings, making high-risk arrests, and detecting bombs or narcotics. But it is this very lack of mundane predictability, combined with a desire to assist one’s fellow citizens, that attracts many officers into the profession.

To function tactically during high-risk operations demands a high level of expertise. For the most part, the officer masters the necessary safety skills to survive these situations. However, the law enforcement profession presents a unique challenge for the officer who must develop different skills — many of which go beyond street survival — over the course of an entire career.

Responding to high-risk calls demands an elevated level of alertness, engagement in the moment, quick thinking and the capacity to perform well under high stress. This is not unlike what a professional athlete experiences during competition. However, there is often a long-term cost of being able to perform in these high-demand situations: failure to survive emotionally.

Many officers who begin their careers with unbridled enthusiasm end up, over the course of their careers, suffering problems in both their personal lives and their long-term relationships with their agencies. Is there a connection between the type of officer who, early in his career, likes the emotional intensity offered by police work and the officer who may experience personal and professional difficulty as his career progresses? The answer is yes, and here is why.

When the officer is engaged in a potentially intense situation, he is, physically speaking, functioning at an elevated level of sympathetic branch autonomic nervous system arousal. This is the part of the brain that controls functioning when the individual is in at-risk situations. This state is not unpleasant to experience, and competent field officers function best in this mode, just like the professional athlete whose performance improves when the game is on the line.

The officer who excels at work may, unfortunately, be the off-duty officer who has not gone fishing in three years, has a mountain bike with two flat tires and has a treadmill that has had clothes piled on it for the last three months.

The downside of being able to perform well in intense situations is that each action has an equal and opposite reaction. A police officer who must make split-second decisions at work doesn’t even want to think when he returns home at the end of a shift. The sympathetic branch basically turns on when alertness is required and the parasympathetic branch — which promotes rest and energy-conservation — turns on when detachment and disengagement is the order of the day.

Although these physical reactions are absolutely normal, the problem for police officers is that, when at work, they are not called to engage when “normal” situations are taking place. All encounters in the field are potentially high risk; only hindsight tells us if no risk was actually present.

During work hours, a police officer must be able to move quickly into the sympathetic autonomic range of functioning so that a split-second tactical decision to shoot or don’t shoot is made with confidence and expertise. But similarly, when off duty, the transition from the sympathetic branch to the parasympathetic branch is pronounced among police officers — more so than in other people. This produces an officer who can make a very rapid decision in the field, but at home when asked, “What would you like for dinner, honey?” can only respond with, “What ever you want to cook honey, I don’t care.”  

It is this level of disengagement during off-duty hours that typically spells doom for both the personal life and the long-term job satisfaction of many excellent police officers. And, as the officer becomes more competent in the field, he can become more incompetent in the skills required to function while off duty due to the reduced levels of activity and engagement in the officer’s non-work life.

Some officers interpret or explain this disengagement as simply “feeling tired,” and they compound the problem by spending their personal time in a sedentary state, watching television and detaching from others. They become reinvigorated only when they are plugged back into their work. As the years go by, their personal relationships suffer because they experience those relationships only in the detached states of apathy and indifference. Many marriages and domestic relationships fail as a result.  

The officer who excels at work may, unfortunately, be the off-duty officer who has not gone fishing in three years, has a mountain bike with two flat tires and has a treadmill that has had clothes piled on it for the last three months. Not only is this sedentary lifestyle detrimental to the officer’s physical fitness, but it will also reduce his professional effectiveness. 

Another important factor is that the officer’s skills and competencies are tied to a role that is ultimately controlled by his police organization. When that agency faces times of change or transition, this can create significant emotional impact for the officer who defines himself by his profession. Again, this impact is even more pronounced as the officer becomes more specialized. How many special-assignment officers have spent years embittered because management transferred them out of narcotics, K-9 or SWAT against their will? This disillusionment can colour the rest of an officer’s career if he is trained only to face tactical
challenges and not emotional challenges.

An officer must be able to focus his awareness and skill development in areas of emotional survival to maintain both professional and personal life competencies. The solution is not to engage less in the professional role, but rather to commit more to the non-work roles. 
Here are three quick emotional survival strategies for police officers that can positively impact their personal and professional well-being:

Have a plan for managing your personal time. 

Do not wait until you “feel like doing something” to engage in an activity. When you return home after a day of being in the engaged, alert state, you will never feel like doing things. Spontaneity does not come easily to an off-duty officer. Use a calendar or write a list of activities that you will engage in off duty. Do not wait until the feeling moves you, because it won’t. Just get up and do it. You will feel better and have more energy.

Off-duty disengagement and inactivity impact not only your own personal health and welfare, but also that of your domestic partner and your children.

Give yourself an absolute minimum of 30 minutes of non-stop aerobic exercise daily.

This serves two functions. First, it physically breaks the inertia of parasympathetic disengagement and permits other activities to take place. Second, it provides the necessary long-term benefit of physical well-being and stress reduction. Walking or jogging with your spouse is also far more beneficial time for any relationship than sitting and staring blankly at a television set. Off-duty disengagement and inactivity impact not only your own personal health and welfare, but also that of your domestic partner and your children.

Invest in non-work-related skills that you control.

This gives you the ability to can handle the emotional bumps and setbacks that always come whenever someone is heavily committed to a role that an agency controls. The best police officers are also the best fly fishermen, the best moms or dads, the best Harley riders, the best hockey coaches. These are activities you control, and you must engage in them even when every fibre of your body tells you to just sit, watch television and do nothing.

Remember, it is not a matter of caring less about work; it is a matter of caring more about the non-work roles. Police officers who keep their strategies of emotional survival as well-tuned as their strategies for street survival become the best all-around survivors.

Dr. Kevin M. Gilmartin is a behavioural sciences consultant who spent 20 years working in law enforcement. He is the author of the book Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement: A Guide for Officers and their Families (E-S Press, 2002).