Coaching Through Chaos Podcast

Ret. Capt Jeff Dill is the founder of Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance, a 501c3 dedicated to the prevention of suicide in firefighters and EMTs through outreach, education and fostering a healthier awareness of warning signs.

I thought I had a fair amount of initials after my name, but here’s Matt Shobert MA, EFO, CFO, MIFireE. Matt had been the Fire Chief for the Murrieta Fire Department (MFD) since March 2011, and has served as Fire Chief for two other jurisdictions prior to joining the MFD team. He holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Management, a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Management and an Associate’s Degree in Fire Science. He is also a 2007 graduate of the National Fire Academy’s Executive Fire Officer (EFO) Program, has been four times accredited as a Chief Fire Officer Designee (CFOD) and was recently conferred Membership into the Institution of Fire Engineers (MIFireE). Chief Shobert completed the arduous 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run - "140.6" Ironman Arizona in Tempe on 11/17/13. On top of that, he’s had a happy double-decade long marriage. He was living an exemplary life.

But everything changed on July 2, 2014. On that day, Chief Shobert was on a seemingly routine outing. He went out to a field to observe a brush clearing. Murrieta California is a hot, inland town and as any people are aware, brush fire prevention is a high priority in areas like this, especially in Southern California. The Chief was out by himself when the accident occurred. When you hear what happened to Chief Shobert, you can’t help but truly respect and appreciate his innate instincts to get himself help and his utter resiliency. The Chief shares the details of his accident for the first time publicly with me on the podcast. Please listen to hear Matt tell his story in his own words.

Matt went through several surgeries and still may be tasked with undergoing a few more. As you heard in the episode (if you didn’t listen yet, click here to do so), Matt is put together physically, but his emotional wounds are healing more slowly. The struggle is real. Matt is dealing with effects of both Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Traumatic Brain Injury. He has done extensive emotional therapy under the care of a Licensed Behavioral Health Clinician since the accident.

He has gone through avoiding the area of the accident (which he was hard-pressed to do when he still lived in Murietta), nightmares, anxiety/panic attacks, angry outbursts, suicidal thoughts, slow thought processes and general lack of interest in leaving his home at times or going to places where there may be crowds of people. Though his emotional struggles are daunting, he is getting better each day. He has incorporated exercise, continues his talk therapy, calls on emotional support from his wife and others and credits his dog, Butters, for giving him some added support and love, as well as forcing him to get out of his home and walk him as a major part of his recovery.

Matt has recently begin to train to become an Ironman athletic trainer – to keep him fit and to get back into the athletic world he misses. He’s looking forward to training others to accomplish their triathlon goals. He also is focusing his life towards telling his story as he did on this episode. He wants to help others understand the reality of what it’s like to live with post traumatic stress, and also to allow those in the fire service who are dealing with it feel less stigmatized and to ask for help when they need it. Matt is dedicating his life to giving back and helping others. A true example of personal resilience and resolve and restoration of hope for his new future.

For more information on PTSD, please see our separate post on the subject here.

According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) of the National Institute of Health (NIH), Traumatic Brain Injury is described as follows:

"Traumatic brain injury (TBI), a form of acquired brain injury, occurs when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the skull and enters brain tissue. Symptoms of a TBI can be mild, moderate, or severe, depending on the extent of the damage to the brain. A person with a mild TBI may remain conscious or may experience a loss of consciousness for a few seconds or minutes. Other symptoms of mild TBI include headache, confusion, lightheadedness, dizziness, blurred vision or tired eyes, ringing in the ears, bad taste in the mouth, fatigue or lethargy, a change in sleep patterns, behavioral or mood changes, and trouble with memory, concentration, attention, or thinking. A person with a moderate or severe TBI may show these same symptoms, but may also have a headache that gets worse or does not go away, repeated vomiting or nausea, convulsions or seizures, an inability to awaken from sleep, dilation of one or both pupils of the eyes, slurred speech, weakness or numbness in the extremities, loss of coordination, and increased confusion, restlessness, or agitation."

Linked-in: matt-shobert-ma-efo-cfo-mifiree-ironman

email:         [email protected]

Fire Fighters Behavioral Health Alliance:  FFBHA

North American Fire Fighter Veteran Network: NAFFVN

Fire Fighters Wellness Initiative: IAFF WFI

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder via National Institute of Mental Health: PTSD/NIMH (http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/)

For local support in your community, check out the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill's page on PTSD Resources: NAMI/PTSD

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke website offers a wealth of information on TBI, prognosis, treatment and resources if you or someone you care for is in need of help regarding their TBI (http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/tbi/tbi.htm)

National Resource Center for Traumatic Brain Injury : tbinrc.com

If you are enjoying the podcast and want to support it without it costing you a dime, there are 3 ways:

1. Share an episode on your social media
2. Leave a gret review wherever you love to listen to your podcasts
3. Use my Amazon Storefront Amazon.com/shop/drColleenMullen When you enter Amazon through my storefront. For every purchase you make for 24 hours, I will get a small portion of that sale. You were paying for it anyway, this way a small % of the sale goes to support your favorite podcast. While you're there, you can check out some of my favorite wellness-supporting products and apps! Enjoy!

If you want to interact with Colleen more personally or stay up-to-date on her other podcasts and happenings, you can follow or friend her on:

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

Listen to Shrink@Shrink to learn about love and life through the movies every month.

Ladies, Look for the upcoming Embrace Your Inner Leader Podcast  The Embrace Your Inner Leader Podcast every month to get empowered and inspired by unique female stories of success!

You can buy the book: Stop Bitching, Just Lead! The 60-Day Plan for Embracing Your Inner Leader

If you want to work with Colleen for personal 1:1 coaching to help you conquer the chaos in your life, just reach out through CoachingThroughChaos.com click on the Contact page.

Thanks for listening!

The 3 authors educate us about IRRELATIONSHIP: if we want to understand obstacles to intimacy, emotional investment, and healthy caregiving in mutually satisfying relationships, we have to have a basic understanding of the building blocks of irrelationship ...

A veteran himself, Rick's mission is to help our new generation of returning combat veterans re-acclimatize to the society and freedom that they have been protecting. He challenges us to stop the stigma of PTS(d)...

Dr.Mullen is interviewed by Samuel Hatton of CourageHubhttp://www.couragehub.com/chaos-to-clarity-colleen-mullen/ Bravery. Courage. Action. Despite fear. — The Courage Hub is committed to helping individuals gain more excitement and adventure in their lives. This is done through a podcast called Courageous Self-Confidence, which encourages and inspires you in who you truly are so that you can have a […]

source: Coaching through Chaos.

Eric Zimmer, host of the One You Feed podcast, speaks candidly about his past, recovery and his journey

We live in a society in which hearing about murders on school campuses 40 times this year is outrageous on one hand, and numbing on the other. Forty times just this year in the United States people – both kids and adults- went to their school campus to never return home. Those are numbers that are hard to comprehend. It is also campus shooting #142 just since December 2012 when the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School happened - that’s about 1 a week. Is this our new normal? Does it have to be so? That 142 does not take into account the numbers of shootings between 1999 when the first of the modern day campus massacres happened at Columbine. We, as a society can do things to stop this – Ill give a few insights as to that, but first I should put my knowledge of the subject in context for you.

I spent 3 years working as part of a development team of what we hoped to become a School Violence Prevention Institute here in San Diego. I became the historian of the project. I followed the stories and looked for what we knew of the shooters before and after they acted, the circumstances of the shooting and what the fallout was afterwards in the communities. For as much as there have been shootings on school campuses prior to Columbine, that tragedy in 1999 formed the new M.O. of what has continued since, so we studied all the shootings between 1999 and 2011 when we completed the book.

In all the cases in which the shooter was a current student we know 5 things:

1. There was concerning behavior that was not coordinated by school personnel (i.e a security guard did not tell a teacher of an incident and a teacher did not know a security guard also knew of a concerning incident, or a teacher and a school admin did not know they each had concerns about a student)
2. There were social media postings, writings or videos that spoke of killing or targeting specific groups of students.
3. There was easy access to guns.
4. There was suspicion of, or documented mental health concerns.
5. There was a history of bullying and/or social isolation.

We worked on and developed The School Violence Prevention Program as a book which school personnel could be trained on. We, as a team of clinicians and other interested parties conducted research and data collection. Our project lead, Dr. Jim Madero is an expert in workplace violence prevention so he had a lot of expertise in the area of violence prevention. We gathered the information and collective expertise and developed a community-based team approach to preventing school violence. Dr. Madero had the opportunity to present it at the Virginia Tech hearings where it got favorable feedback. Back here in San Diego, we shopped it around a few school districts and even did get it implemented in a district as a pilot trial. The problem was that, although many schools wanted it, they didn’t have funding for it. Why do they need funding? Why can’t we do this for free? There are trainings and meetings that need to be coordinated. Teachers and other school staff will need to leave their posts for the training, local law enforcement needs to attend (they are part of our prevent team plan) and experts need to train the staff on the protocol. Even in a world in which we could have them all gather and train them on a webinar, there are time and equipment costs involved in the production of the training material.

The team dream was to get legislation passed in which the state mandated schools to have violence prevention programs. That’s where it all fell apart. After an unsuccessful meeting with a legal adviser in LA and no legitimate supporters that could help back the implementation of the program, we have been at a standstill 2012. We are just one group of professionals out here in southern California – I would venture to guess there are dozens of teams around the country like us developing programs. We need a way to get these programs implemented and school personnel trained! If anyone is listening who may be able to help that come to fruition, you can email me [email protected] and Ill put you in contact with our project manager to help us take action.

We need reformation in several areas. The systems in the U.S. are broken – There are financial, communication and internal breakdowns.

1. Our mental health system broke in a way it has never recovered in 1993 when it was systematically unfunded and our long-term mental health facilities were forced to close. Those people still needed care and structure and our mental health system has been paying the price for that since then. Here we are 20 years later and it seems new funding gets put into street based program care for these people, leaving little room for the average high school student who’s depressed or feeling social isolated and ostracized because he’s been bullied. We need funding to help both the severely mentally ill and those that are falling through the cracks because they are not in “crisis”.

2. That leads us to our health insurance system – Although I personally like my health care coverage, I am not in need of what’s called a “higher level of care”. In regards to mental health services that means needing therapy more than once a week. Our system is set up to deny services to people unless they are already in crisis – We have a “treat the crisis, then step-down” system. We have lots of good Intensive Outpatient Programs in our communities, but I’ve witnessed more denials happen on the way up the system than on the way down. If a therapist or an MD refers a client for an Intensive Outpatient program, we need them to be practically on the verge of hospitalization in order to get the help they need. These programs usually meet a few hours a day, a few days a week. They are designed to provide a person struggling with emotional distress a place to come to talk about it, learn some valuable coping skills, and build social support through the camaraderie of the group structure. When a person has been hospitalized (the hospitalization criteria is that they need to be “in danger of hurting themselves or someone else”) they are much more easily approved for an Intensive Outpatient Program as a means of stepping-down in services. Why do we have a system designed to only treat when there is a crisis? Why would the insurance companies not look at what can be done to prevent the crisis from happening?
This is where I see that reform needs to take place in our health insurance system.

3. Then we have the educational system. Of course having a good, consistent curriculum will benefit our next generations, but first and foremost, they need to be safe. It is when people are safe that they can then settle in, focus and thrive. As I stated earlier, the way to get safety in place is to provide schools the ability to implement expert-designed safety programs in our schools that are community based so that there are very few pieces of the puzzles missed in the future.

4. The last system I will discuss and the one I think holds the most power is that of the media. I believe media can be our best friend and our worst enemy. In the event of major tragedies, the media can be quick to relay necessary information to help people comprehend what is happening. On the other hand, they can also give the recognition to these mass murderers that they so crave. Our mass murderers live on in infamy because our news media names them - and then picks over and publicizes every aspect of their life they can find. This needs to stop!

Long before the days of the internet and social media, we have the story of Kitty Geneovese which is taught in every intro psych class in the country. In 1964, Kitty was murdered in the early morning as she returned home from work. She was stabbed to death in the street. The story was that upwards of 30 people either heard her or saw her. For as much as there were a couple of phone calls to the police, the majority of people did not take action (There is now debate over how many witnesses existed). This idea that many people can observe something troubling happening and not take action is called the Bystander Effect – We think someone else will call it in. Well, I want to put a challenge out to everyone reading this and say, “Don’t let someone else call it in”.
What Can You Do? Don’t Be a Bystander!
• Advocate to your insurance company when denials are rendered,
• Don’t watch the continued news coverage of the shooter,
• Talk to your school districts and universities and find out what their safety protocols are,
• Talk to your local and state level politicians- find out what they’re doing to get mandated school violence prevention programs in your schools.

Form what I can find, Massachusetts is voting to mandate school violence prevention programs be implemented in its schools. Virginia mandates their state colleges to have prevention programs, and Ontario, Canada has mandated their schools have violence prevention programs. It s definitely a start, but we’ve got a long road ahead of us.

I can’t write about preventing school shootings without acknowledging the highly emotionally-fueled gun debate. It’s everywhere. I’m not really ready to jump into the politics of this. What we know is that a great majority of these shooters gained easy access to guns in their own home. I have mixed emotions about gun restrictions. What I don’t have mixed emotions about is gun safety. My take on it is that if you choose to own a gun, no matter what the law in your state says you’re allowed to do as far as locking it up or not locking it up, it is your responsibility to make sure it does not get into someone else’s hands.

We have systems that are failing us. We need prevention programs in place that are designed to protect our kids at school. We need school violence prevention programs in addition to “active shooter” protocols. We need media outlets to stop giving these mass murderers names and attention and we need a health care system designed to prevent mental health tragedies rather than treating the trauma that happens to our communities when they don’t. I personally hope we start seeing a movement towards positive change, resiliency and victory over these tragedies.

The CEO of Trilogy Integrated Resources tells us about the Veterans Network of Care portal, a resource repository for active duty service members, veterans and their families. NetworkOfCare.org provides a comprehensive multistate directory of resources not only for Veterans but also for many other groups of our population