Show Notes:

Welcome to season 2 of Behind the Line! We are kicking off this season with a big topic: suicide prevention in the workplace for First Responders & Front Line Workers. As we head into this series, I anticipate it will bring up some discomfort, and possibly some grief for those who have been impacted by the loss of co-workers or others due to suicide. Today’s episode will cover some of the requisite skills we’re going to need as we walk into this topic together for the coming month. I’ve included some additional resources and tools for each week of this series, so come back to the show notes to find more, and please share this series with others in your life. 

Friday September 10th is Suicide Prevention Day – learn more about First Responder trauma and suicide risk prevention here.

During this episode I identify the high risks for First Responders and Front Line Workers in developing increasingly complex mental health concerns and risk for suicide as a result of burnout and related difficulties. If you haven’t yet, please check out our Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist & Triage Guide for self-assessing burnout and risks for related concerns. Share this resource within your workplace and to those you know in First Response and Front Line work.

As we navigate into this difficult topic, today’s episode focuses on four key pre-requisite skills that we’ll need firmly in place to go through this series together: Clarity; Boundaries; Bravery and Empathy. For each of these we identify what it is, how it relates to suicide risk prevention, and ways to practically integrate each skill starting NOW.

Clarity. Clarity can seem like a fairly simple and straightforward concept – to be clear about something. But the challenge with clarity is that it doesn’t come without some effort. Clarity doesn’t tend to just land in our lap – it requires that we carve out some space and time to shut out the noise and focus in. We need to get clear, we don’t just stumble into it. To work on our wellness and develop skills to reduce the risk for suicide and the mental health concerns that tend to lead toward suicide, we need to cultivate a routine to stepping back from the noise and chaos to get clear about the challenges we’re facing, the impacts those challenges are having on our wellness and our lives, the needs we may have in the midst of these challenges, and the strategies for supporting these needs by using or developing supports, resources and tools. I say often that we can’t address problems we aren’t aware of – this is what clarity is really about – seeing what is happening, getting clear on breaking it down and figuring out what needs to happen to reduce or resolve it. 

Feeling caught in a never-ending spiral of meeting unreasonable demands from our employer and the public, mixed with sacrificing so much of ourselves to the work, along with the detrimental impact this tends to gradually have on our relationships with spouses, children, family and friends can set us on a trajectory toward hopelessness, helplessness and powerlessness - and this is a dangerous combination. Prioritizing time for clarity and working to anchor to the things we value and leaning into being the person who lives out our values can be protective - it can help divert us from the trajectory and keep us rooted to hope, connection, and empowerment.

So how do we implement clarity? Start by doing two things – first, download our Beating the Breaking Point Indicators Checklist and Triage Guide– print off several copies of the self-assessment page. Next, set aside some time in your calendar on a monthly basis to start. Each month during this time, use the self-assessment to see where you’re at. Use this to ask yourself some key questions about the areas where you seem to be struggling and what you can do to help support those areas more proactively for the coming month. If you want to dive even deeper, have your spouse/partner or a trusted person in your life fill out the assessment as they see you and ask for their feedback on ways you may need to be focusing on supporting your wellness differently. This is a practical way you can start carving out time and space for clarity and a structured tool that can help prompt questions to kick things off. As you feel more comfortable and confident in this process, you can grow your questions to consider additional areas of your life not covered in the indicators checklist to further refine your clarity as it pertains to your life and the person you want to be within it.

Boundaries. We talk a lot about boundaries out there in the world. It’s one of those topics that we’re really good at paying lip service to but tend to be less skilled at actually meaningfully engaging. Boundaries often bring up fears for people about offending or hurting other people’s feelings; worries about creating distance in relationships and alienating people in our lives. It also tends to bring up stuff in our culture about humility, self-deprecation and servitude and believing we need to be giving and gracious towards others. That said, they say that you can't pour from an empty cup, and it's true. If we don't set limits to protect our cup and what's in it, it will quickly be dumped out and run dry. And then what? Then we are at higher risk for burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, posttraumatic stress, anxiety, depression, relationship difficulties, and yes, suicide. 

Boundaries have two pieces:

1. Internal Boundaries: these are limits I set with myself. Limits like, I'll only stay at an event for an hour to ensure I'm home in time to get the rest I need; I'll only pick up shifts a maximum of twice in a month to ensure that I value my days off and carve out "me time";  and so on. These are boundaries that I may never speak outside of my own head, but are limits I set within myself to identify what I value and how I will go about reflecting that value and protecting it from getting swayed by things outside of my values.

2. External Boundaries: these are more like the classic boundaries we think of that we set outwardly with other people. It may include boundaries with co-workers about our willingness to engage in debriefs, or limits with others in our lives around the questions they ask about our work (eg, "have you ever shot somebody?"), or a million and one other examples of limits that need to be set to teach those in our lives how to respect us well and care for our values alongside us.

When we engage in identifying areas where we need boundaries (internal AND external), and when we work at enacting these consistently to protect what matters to us, we get to lean into what matters to us more and more, and feel less and less constrained by distractions and needs that aren't our priority. We get to live more of the lives we long for, and this helps to protect us from some of the hard things I mentioned earlier, like burnout, compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and concerns leading to suicide.

To implement this skill, I want you to find some time and make a short-list of people who tend to overstep your boundaries or ask a lot of you; or situations where boundaries would help protect your time, energy and values. It’s a short-list, so...