Show Notes:

Today we are continuing in our series on the impacts of trauma, and we are really trying to focus on the early indicators that alert us that trauma is starting to take a toll. The goal we are working toward is to be able to notice these earlier so we can catch them and intervene earlier and prevent ourselves and others from landing in my office…or worse. Your job as a First Responder or Front Line Worker comes with risks – we know that. It isn’t new information. And no one is better than the risks. Like I have said SO many times on the show before, nobody comes out unscathed. Nobody.

So given that the risks are real and that the promise is that you will be scathed by it – how do we minimize the scathing, or the harm to you that results from it? That is really what we’re trying to tangle with here, is how to we contain the scope of the impact. How do we limit the extent to which your beautiful, meaningful life – along with those of the people you care about like your partner, kids and family – is detrimentally impacted by the toll the work exerts?

We have talked so far in this series about several early indicators including hypervigilance – being on hyper-alert and the resulting fatigue; dissociation – your bring tuning you out to manage the degree of stress it’s experiencing for too long; and nightmares and flashbacks – intrusive ways your brain works at making sense of what it’s been through. Today we are talking about yet another indicator, and total honesty, I think it is likely the most prevalent and most salient early indicator of the lot. I see this one showing up more in my own life and in the lives of those I work with in the early phases of burnout, occupational and traumatic stress than any other category. And here it is: numbing.

If you listened to the episode on dissociation from a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that dissociation is kind of connected to numbing. Dissociation is a mechanism by which our brain overrides us and tunes us out so it can take a break from the immense stress response cycle and hypervigilance it was not meant to deal with on an ongoing basis. Similarly, numbing is a mechanism by which we choose to check ourselves out. It is also closely related to avoidance – the desire to not go near discomfort or sit in pain or suffering for any length of time. 

I mentioned a moment ago that numbing is one of the most prevalent and significant of early indicators…the other thing I should mention is that it is also one of the most ignored, justified, denied, rationalized and otherwise inappropriately excused of the indicators. And why is that? …Well, because the things we tend to use to numb, tend to be largely socially acceptable tools for distraction, comfort, and/or “coping”. They are behaviours and activities that make us “feel better”. They “calm us”. …Except that they aren’t being used to strategically support us, rather they are being used to temporarily mitigate our discomfort, interrupt our ability to process in favor of something that feels good for the moment, and over the long term, they cut us off from ourselves by distancing us gradually from interacting with our own thoughts, feelings, needs, worries, and more. 

So, what does numbing look like. Well – the easy to name ones that likely you would think of as obvious would include drinking and drug use. I would also include self-harming behaviours, and extreme type behaviours like constant partying, dangerous promiscuity and related activities. These types of behaviours tend to serve by temporarily chemically diluting our feelings of suffering, or temporarily chemically enhancing our feelings of elation in an effort to drown out our experiences of hardship that we feel ill-equipped to process effectively.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love a glass of wine while I watch trashy chick flicks on a Friday night. I am not saying that drinking is bad, or that drugs and medication are bad, or that having a good time and enjoying sex are bad. What I am saying is that when these things are used in excess or used explicitly to avoid our own experience, they can rapidly become problematic coping and lead into addictions that can be incredibly difficult to break. And I think we all know and see in others around us, the tremendous catastrophic effect that addictions can have on peoples lives. People lose partners, access to their kids, relationships with loved ones, the ability to do their jobs safely, and so much more. The cost can get steep, quickly. 

But beyond the obvious and extreme forms of numbing – there are a TON of other ways we numb, all the time. How much time do you spend scrolling on your phone? Does that time increase or decrease when your stress is higher or it’s been a tough day at work? How much TV have you been watching? Again, does this amount of time go up or down when it’s been a hard day? How much have you spent on online shopping? How many bags of chips have you eaten…or here’s a more timely one, how many candies have you stolen from your kids Halloween stash hoping they won’t notice?? 

The truth is, numbing can look like a lot of really common, normal behaviours. And more than that, they can look like behaviours that when used a very specific way can actually be a component of healthful coping…but when taken too far, become a new problem all their own. 

Recently I had a chat with my daughters kindergarten teacher. My daughter is the oldest in the class and is a force of nature by personality, I’ve been told the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Her teacher told me that they have been working a lot on leadership. She strained when she said the word. I asked if that was a whole class thing – no. It was not a whole class thing. My daughter is working on leadership. I asked what that means, working on leadership, and I was told that my fiery girl possesses an incredible amount of power over her classroom dynamic, and that she could either use those powers for good, or for evil. Those were the teachers exact words. They, apparently, are learning to use her powers for good, by helping kids to listen and pay attention rather than get into silly moods that have every child bouncing off the walls. …Side note, I am SO grateful not to be a kindergarten teacher and believe every single one of them deserves a freaking parade. I could not do that job.

I share this story because, as I have mentioned in other episodes, adults are just children in tall bodies, and much like my 5 year old daughter, we have to decide if we will use our powers for good or for evil. Will we make choices that maximize the value something offers us, or will we take it to extremes where it suddenly has power over us? Can we work to use tools to serve us, or will we overuse them to the point that we are serving them? 

Whether it is scrolling your phone or having a drink, these things can be nice, self-caring actions that can communicate to our brain and body that we acknowledge ourselves and acknowledge our need for a little bit of space or distance or distraction from what has felt hard, and welcoming of some chill, some enjoyment, some treating. 

But when it goes too far and becomes habitual to the point that we don’t know how to cope without it; exclusive to the point that we don’t know how else to cope if not it; or excessive to the point that it absorbs us and leaves little else, we have a problem.

And this is where the tricky part lies. Defining where we move from decently healthful normal coping into problematic unhealthy addictive numbing. Because most of us start many of these activities in the normal healthy zone. They tend to be occasional and enj...