42 - Overcoming Trauma Together with Scott McPherson

Hey, I appreciate it, Conrad. Thanks for having me on.

Well, I am one. I'm a firefighter EMT for a department outside of Nashville, and previously was an Army infantry officer. I led a platoon during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm for the 82nd Airborne Division. And now I have the honor of leading up the efforts for First Responder Reboot, which is a peer-led approach to recovery from service-related trauma designed specifically for first responders and their spouses.

Actually, well over a decade now. Reboot started as an effort for combat veterans and their spouses at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, which is just up the road from Nashville. There was an occupational therapist there who realized that much of what the military was doing to help soldiers coming back from multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan was focused on post-traumatic stress as a fear and anxiety-based set of issues. While that's certainly a significant component, what she realized was missing was this whole conversation about the soul wounds of combat they had experienced. The fact that they had established these tighter-than-blood relationships with other soldiers and Marines, and they had lost some of them. And then they had seen the brokenness of the world firsthand, they had made life-and-death decisions, some of which didn't work out the way they wanted to, and nobody was helping them address those kinds of questions. So she and her husband, who was a CEO of a company at the time, started a conversation that evolved into a course where combat veterans and their spouses could come together in community with other people who get it and unpack some of their experiences. The course combined the science of trauma recovery with scripturally based conversations around major topics common to their experiences, like processing grief and loss in healthy ways, talking about guilt, false guilt, shame, regret, identity, and forgiveness of self and others. This combination of science and faith really hit home with a lot of people, and the effort started to take off. Soon we had multiple courses at Fort Campbell, then we heard from other military bases. The first was Camp Lejeune with the Marine Corps. They asked us to help set something up, and then it was another base after another. This effort with combat veterans really started to take off and was very effective. We started in about 2010, 2011 in a formalized sense, and then about 2018 realized there was a whole other population that needed something similar: the first responder world. It's not the same as combat, and there are a lot of differences, but there are a lot of parallels too. We're making life-and-death decisions with incomplete information in very compressed time frames, and in some situations, no matter what you do, the situation isn't going to work out the way you wanted. What we tend to find is that if we're fixers, we are called to calm whatever chaos is going on in someone's life. The question becomes: what happens when we can't fix it, when we can't calm the chaos, and we end up either blaming somebody else, or if we can't find anybody else to blame, we either blame God or we blame ourselves? All three of those results can be pretty toxic in somebody's life, especially accumulated over time. So that's where we translated what had been so effective in the military context to the culture and language of the first responder world. We still have the military course being used all over the country and the world, and also the first responder course that I head up the effort on.

Yeah, I think this is one of the key issues that we need to wrestle with when looking at post-traumatic stress in first responders. There are a lot of similarities and parallels, but also a lot of differences. A definition of soul wounds, or what's commonly referred to as moral injury, is a perceived or actual act of witnessing or being unable to prevent actions that transgress deeply held moral values. The key is it's both perceived or actual, so it's not necessarily that we did something wrong, although it could be. It could be that we failed to prevent something, or we think we failed to prevent something, or we failed to prevent someone else from doing something. You can imagine there are a lot of situations that apply in a first responder's career. Some of the categories of events that can produce post-traumatic stress injuries, but the kind of things that tend to lead more toward the soul wounds we talk about, are critical incidents with unfavorable outcomes, particularly untimely death. It might be a CPR call for an 85-year-old, you do your best, the person passes away, and you take that as part of the life cycle. But what happens when it's an infant? What happens when you're on a call for a teenage suicide because they were being bullied? What happens when it's a family of four going on vacation that doesn't walk away from an MVC, but the drunk who hit them does? Those are the ones that tend to stick with you and leave a mark you can't put aside and forget about. But it can be other things too, like betrayal. We put our trust in people and the organization to support us, and what happens if we sense they didn't have our back in a situation where we needed them? That can be an example. It can be that we failed to meet our own performance standards. We see ourselves as being 100%, perfect every single time, and if something bad happens, we start doing all the what-ifs: what if I'd done this treatment instead of that one first, what if I'd turned this light instead of that one, what if I'd gotten there a few minutes quicker? Ultimately, none of those have answers, but we can get really caught up in the what-ifs and eventually end up blaming ourselves for what happened.

Yeah, absolutely. Where I see that quite often is when somebody does reach out for help and then they're asked to turn in their badge or put on the sidelines, removed from the team. Somebody takes the hard step of saying, 'Yeah, I need help,' and then they're kind of put into another category of people other than being who they have their identity as. That's a really hard thing to get over, and I would put that absolutely in the characterization of betrayal of trust.

Yeah, I think the key is that we have to be open and honest with ourselves, with God, and with others about what we've been through. A commonality with the way God created the mind to work is that it works in terms of words. As all these events happen, in many cases there's so much emotional and sensory impact, whether it's critical incident stress or moral injury. If we're not intentional, we can end up in a cycle of what we call deny, cry, numb, and run. We deny there's anything wrong. You could go on the worst call of your life, somebody comes up and says, 'Hey, how's it going?' and you say, 'I'm good, I'm fine.' There's this process of taking what happened and trying to act like it didn't have an impact, so we try to cram it way down deep in a box hoping it'll never leak out. Then the next call comes, and we pack that one in, and over time that box can get leaky and even bust wide open. When it does, it starts to have an impact on our life, career, and relationships. It can happen pretty suddenly, becoming overwhelming. As first responders, the only really acceptable emotion is anger, so it tends to come out as anger. Then we're confused by this, so we do what we know how to do: numb. That's where alcohol, substance abuse, prescription or non-prescription medications, overwork, taking all sorts of overtime shifts, pornography, all sorts of things we do to try to numb ourselves and not feel what we've been feeling. Ultimately, that will fail, and when it does, that's where we run. It can be running from a relationship, running from the career, and ultimately the worst form of running is running to suicide. Unfortunately, that's the reality when we start to lose hope that there can be anything else. So to answer your question, what we do is come together in small communities of first responders all over the country. Peers lead them through a course where they can explore the impact of their service experiences and what the impact has been on their life, and begin to look at what trauma exposure does to the mind, body, and soul from both the perspective of science and scripturally based faith conversations. I just want to say that we're not pushy, but scripture does speak directly to the heart of a wounded warrior, directly to the heart of a wounded sheepdog. If we can show them how that works and allow them to wrestle with some of these questions, over the span of the course you see these people coming to a whole different trajectory in life. That's a cool thing to be part of.

Well, we see ourselves as being super people, super men and super women. We're the ones who are fixing situations, so asking for help somehow goes against that whole identity. The reality is that in many agencies, it continues to be the case that there's the attitude of, 'If you can't take it, just get out, suck it up, and drive on.' That just doesn't work. That's one of the things I'm so glad that your efforts, the movie, and all the other folks you've had on this podcast are trying to change that narrative and take a different approach that recognizes the reality of the impact the career has and provides different ways for people to heal, not just sit there and suffer in silence. We're fixers. We don't want to be the ones asking for help. There's also fear over what will happen to my career if I do say something, and unfortunately, that is too real of a concern for many people even today.

It is. It's changing slowly, but it is changing. As younger generations come in, I think it will continue to evolve and change, but it's a slow process. It would be great if we could flip a switch and everything shifts, but it's going to be more of a generational shift, I think.

Ultimately, they've got to come to a place where they're at least willing to be open to listening. I find that the spouse is often the key. They're often suffering in silence themselves, they don't have the community around them like we might have at a station, and they're seeing it. They know there's something wrong. We go on a bad call, we come home, we don't want to bring that ugliness into the house, so we don't say anything. Pretty soon, that divide in the relationship starts to build, and all the other stuff of life gets poured into it, and things tend to spiral downhill. Often, it's the spouse who will sign up first and basically say, 'Either you go, or I'm gone.' That's enough to get them to come. You may see them in the back of the room, arms crossed, not wanting to be there, but then somewhere around four or five sessions, something clicks. Now they're leaning forward, engaging in the conversation, and by the end of the course, they're asking how to learn to lead the course. That's a really cool thing to see transpire over time, but they've got to get there first. Sometimes, folks graduate from the course, see the impact on their life, and tell a buddy, 'Hey man, you need to go check this out.' So they come because somebody else said they ought to. Ultimately, it comes down to somebody saying, 'Yeah, I want something different,' and that's a decision they have to make.

Yeah, that was the deny, cry, numb, and run that I was referring to before. If we're not intentional about these things, that's the natural thing for us to do. That's why we're trying to equip people with a different set of resources, a different set of tools in their toolkit, to be able to respond in different ways that aren't so destructive to their life.

We welcome anybody of any faith background or no faith background. Remember, we came from a program designed for combat veterans, many of whom are not coming from a faith background either. We designed the course to be upfront. We tell them, 'This is coming from scripture. You're going to hear about Jesus, you're going to hear about God. We're going to be talking about scriptural references that are relevant to the conversation.' But it's designed not to be pushy. It's designed to give people exposure to things we think are really going to be helpful for them. We just tell them, 'Look, take what is valuable for your faith, for your journey, for your life. Take what's valuable for you.' What's really important is that they're getting from it what they need. It's not our agenda; it's really just focused on serving them.

Yeah, I was kind of hoping you wouldn't ask that, Conrad. As I mentioned, I was an Army officer in Desert Storm and suffered a back injury that eventually led to me leaving the service. I wasn't too valuable anymore when I couldn't put 100 pounds on my back and jump out of airplanes. I really struggled with my identity when I left. I took off the uniform, and then who was I? I had a series of betrayals in life that really cut me to the core. One day, I found myself in this empty apartment. I had one chair and one of those little plastic outdoor tables. I had done what I knew how to do. I was in the middle of a drinking binge, and I had the bottle on one side and a pistol on the other side of the table. Obviously, I didn't end up doing it. I had a son that I wasn't prepared to leave. So I'd been to that place where taking my own life was a real option. When 9/11 happened and the pace of combat operations really picked up, we had soldiers coming back to Fort Campbell from the 101st Airborne and special forces units that had been doing multiple tours. I always had a heart for those who serve and their families, so I looked for what I could do to serve them. That's where I got connected with this effort that became Reboot, and I've just walked alongside them ever since.

It was one of those things, maybe an early midlife crisis. I saw an advertisement that they were looking for folks to come and do this. I missed the military, the camaraderie, the teamwork, the hard situations, and I thought, 'I could do that.' So that's pretty much what it was, and I've been doing it ever since.

Yeah, it's so important. First of all, one of the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress is avoidance and isolation. We pull back from everything: our relationships, friendships, the people we enjoy hanging out with, the things we enjoy doing. When we isolate is when we're at our most vulnerable. If we can pull people out of that isolation and bring them into a community of other people who are going to be real, open, and honest, there aren't a lot of opportunities to do that. You can't necessarily do that at the station, or at least you're hesitant to. So where are you going to be able to do that? For the spouses, it's even more important because they don't even have the work community where they can talk about what's going on in the house and how this is affecting the family. They need that community just as much. It's a rare thing to be able to gather a group of people together who may not have been on the same scenes but they get each other. They can appreciate each other's stories and the impact it's having on their lives, and they realize, 'Hey, I'm not alone. I'm not the only one going through something hard. Let's link arms and do this together.' That community is a really valuable part of what a Reboot course looks like.

Yeah, I've certainly had situations like that where people have graduated and gone on to launch wellness programs for their own department. One of the things we love to see happen is folks who graduate now want to learn how to lead, and they become leaders either on their own in a course or come alongside current course leaders as co-leaders. Maybe it's not in their station, but they are part of the change now because they're using their own network to say, 'Hey, you need to come check this out.' They've got another way to serve and lead. So yeah, I think that's a really cool part of what we see happen.

You know, Conrad, I could make something up, but we take confidentiality very seriously. This is also a place outside of the agency and chain of command where somebody can go. We don't talk about it like in the movie Fight Club. What happens in Fight Club, you don't talk about Fight Club. That's kind of the approach we take with Reboot as well, so if you don't mind, I'm going to decline to address that one.

We train peer leaders to lead these courses all over the country. The first thing we need is for folks to step up and say, 'Yeah, I'm willing to learn how to lead.' Really, anybody who is a current or former responder, has a heart for those who serve, is at a reasonably stable place of healing themselves, and is comfortable with spiritual conversations, we can train them how to lead a course. We have all the video materials, printed materials, and we supply them with what we call the Reboot Leadership Academy, an online self-paced training program to provide a foundation of knowledge for leading a Reboot course. From there, we coach them. They'll be in a coaching relationship with somebody like myself who has done it a lot, and they can lean on us for how to do this, what to do about that, problems, questions. We're there to walk with them all the way through it. Once they've got the course set up, outreach is the next thing: how to make connections with the people who will form that first group. We have a whole process for that, but it's a lot of legwork and getting the word out among the community. Often, it's something brand new, so just letting people know what this is and letting them select that they want to be part of it. In terms of getting somebody into a course, once they say they want to do it, they come to our site, register, get their own internet portal with access to all the materials, and we send them a field guide, which is a fill-in-the-blank place for them to reflect on what they're hearing. Then they're up and ready to go.

Great question. If somebody goes to rebootrecovery.com/responders and scrolls down to the place that says 'Join a Course,' there's a drop-down box that lists all the available courses someone can register for. Some of these are virtual. The one I'm running right now is a virtual course, and a lot of them are also in person in various communities all over the country. We've got two going on and two coming up in Canada now, so that's exciting.

Hey, Conrad, I appreciate the opportunity to be on here today. I just love what you're doing with the movie. It really is very powerful, and I appreciate your efforts in getting the word out. I'd love to have conversations with anybody who wants to know more.

[email protected]. That's the email. If somebody wants to get that, all they've got to do is shoot me a message, and we'll link up.

Just for anybody who's listening, if you're struggling, there's hope. There are a lot of different avenues, as you're hearing on this podcast, a lot of different people out there with a heart for responders who know some of the struggles themselves and want to be part of the answer. Don't hesitate to reach out. Don't hesitate to try something. If it doesn't work the first time, try something else. But don't give up the fight. And for anybody hearing this and thinking, 'I might be able to lead that,' reach out to me. I want to have a conversation. What we need more than anything else is people who have been there and are willing to serve the responders in their community. If that's you, then we've got everything you need to be able to do that, and we would just love to have a conversation.