¶ Resilience and Compassion in Public Safety
We get compassion fatigue because you hear too much , you see too much and then it becomes another domestic , it becomes another shooting call and you can lose that compassion , and that's something that we have to guard against and practice resiliency and learn how to be resilient and how to survive so we can maintain compassion when we need it .
Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience . I'm your host , Manya Chylinski . My guest today is Tony Harrison . He's the founder of the Public Safety Group and has a long history in public safety , including working as a dispatcher and as a deputy sheriff .
We talked about resiliency and treating it the aftermath of trauma versus trying to prevent people from feeling traumatized , and he said one of my new favorite phrases , which is talk it out or you will act it out . I think you're really going to enjoy this conversation with Tony .
Thanks so much , and find us on Apple Podcasts and if you like what you hear , we'd love for you to subscribe and leave a review and if you'd like to help us shape the podcast for the future , we've got a form that I'd love to get your feedback . Just a few questions . There's a link to that in the show notes . Thanks so much , hi , tony .
I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today . Thanks for being here .
Oh , you're welcome . I'm glad to be here .
Well , before we learn a little bit more about who you are , I would like to know if you could have any superpower . What would that be ?
That would be to fly . Oh , how come ? Yeah , I used to have these dreams years ago of me not really flying , but more like gliding through the air . I didn't have the ability to propel , but I was gliding . So , yeah , I'd like to fly .
I love that one . There's such a sense of freedom in that . Yeah exactly , I love it . All right . Well , thank you for sharing that , and now we just want to know who are you and what do you do ?
Yeah , I'm Tony Harrison . I work in public safety . Started my career when I was very young as a dispatcher call taker at a very small agency in Oklahoma , a very affluent community , a place called Nichols Hills .
We're going to midnight shift and it was before we even had Nimal One , so it was just taking emergency calls and dispatching those worked there for a number of years and did other things and other agencies at Nimal One centers went to another city outside of Oklahoma City called Midwest City .
There we dispatched police , fire and medical , spent a few years there and then a good part of my time is that Oklahoma City Police Department and the police department dispatching there and ended up being a supervisor .
I've also worked 20 plus years as a part time deputy sheriff for a sheriff's office , okay , and now I own the public safety group and we do dispatcher training all across the United States .
Oh wow , you have public safety in the blood . What was it that got you interested in public safety when you first started ?
I was in high school and I filled out , you know , one of these career surveys that sometimes they have you do . And then , after that , one of these departments reached out to me , that Nichols Hills Police Department .
They were forming an explorer post which is part of the Boy Scouts , and so I was like , sure you know , and they do a lot of education and how police departments work , and did a lot of schooling , and part of that was allowed to work in dispatch along one of their dispatchers and learn about dispatching .
So I did that , you know , when I was 16 , 17 , and when I turned 18 , they offered me a part time job filling other people's shifts . I was still in high school and I was working at the police department as a dispatcher . So , and then , shortly after graduation , I went full time .
Wow , that's great , and I imagine you have heard it all in these calls that you have gotten .
Yeah , you know it's over the years . You know it's thousands and tens of thousands of calls . We didn't get many when I worked at Nichols Hills .
Obviously it was a very small , small town , but you know you throw in a good many years at Oklahoma City a major city , and you get it all and then spending a lot of time out as a deputy and at the sheriff's office . We did a little bit of everything , from patrol to courtroom to civil to prisoner transport , mental health transports , you name it .
So you get a wide , wide variety there as well .
You do You've had an opportunity to see people on their worst day , on their second worst day , maybe some folks on their best days too . What do you think about the word resilience ?
Yeah , I think it's the ability to bounce back , the ability to absorb , the ability to move on . You know , those are the words that kind of come to me , the definition that comes to me Okay .
Now , you are a consultant these days , but you did a lot of work on the front lines , as a dispatcher , for example , and I would think that resiliency is a key trait that one might need as a dispatcher , given the kinds of traumas and difficult situations you are learning about . Am I understanding that correctly ?
Yeah , absolutely , and you know so many of us we think of the trauma coming when we are adults , but so many people it doesn't start then . You know it starts a lot earlier and people seek out careers where they can help or stuff like that . So very few of us in public safety come in a blank slate . You know nobody comes in a blank slate .
You know we already have our own experiences in past .
Right .
And then you throw on a life of public safety . And so many people like me you know you're not just doing one thing , you're doing two jobs , three jobs . And so many people like me you know , and it's in high stress areas , you know I don't take a part-time job doing something . Very low stress , you know .
You pick another very high stress area where you're exposed to even more trauma .
And that you know high stress . I think about those kind of jobs as a dispatcher or first responder as well . Many of the public safety positions I would imagine are incredibly high stress and that resiliency is an important skill to be having and compassion is an important skill to be nurturing as well .
And you know there was a term I learned about several years ago called compassion fatigue , and so many of us in helping professions we get compassion fatigue because you hear too much , you see too much and then it becomes another domestic , it becomes another shooting call and and you can lose that compassion .
And that's something that we have to guard against and practice resiliency and and learn how to be resilient and how to survive so we can maintain compassion Right when we need it .
Wow , compassion fatigue that's something I have . I've heard that term before . What can someone in public safety or a helping profession like you do , like you're in , do to prevent or at least mitigate the impact of compassion fatigue ?
Learn about it . You know , know the symptoms . Compassion fatigueorg is a website that I learned about years ago and we have to see it and I think it was originally found in nurses but we see it in these other professions . But lucky I had people that knew a lot about mental health .
They call it that in the day , but the Oklahoma City Police Department had a peer support program 30 years ago . Oh , that's great , yeah , and I got involved in that early on and it helped tremendously when , when events did happen , I had knowledge to know about what to expect .
I had learned some some coping tools and mechanisms that have , you know , helped me a lot along the way . And , you know , I want to do some more teaching on , especially to our younger professionals , how to avoid it . You know what can you do Instead of teaching people what to do once they have it .
Yes .
Let's prevent the disease , you know let's don't treat it . Well , we need to treat it . Let's treat it for those that have it , but let's give people the tools to prevent it when it's possible . It's not always going to be possible . If we can prevent the disease , we don't have to treat the disease . You know you don't have to deal with it .
You know and you know you have have people that you know , like me , that you know I'm going to be exposed to incidences , so I should get this training early in my career . I can take care of myself , but you do have so many people that probably listened to this podcast that you know they're in a profession where , all of a sudden , they or in life .
It may not be their profession , but in their life something has come along and now they've been traumatized by it and it's not a part of their work . It's not supposed to be part of their life . You probably are a great example of that .
Right .
Surprise . Yeah , you know you're going about your normal day , minding your own business , trying to have fun , and bingo , bingo . All of a sudden you're in the middle of this . Yeah , so then then it becomes learning the tools , how to become a survivor , right After it does happen .
Right , so you mentioned earlier on you were talking about trauma that a lot of folks in the helping profession may have some trauma in the background and and that might be one of the reasons they're in a helping profession and then certainly in public safety , you're dealing with other people's trauma which is also traumatizing to you .
What do you think that people misunderstand about the concept of trauma ?
Oh wow . I was at a conference just this week and and one of the keynote speakers says you know , we choose to pick up the stress and you can choose to put it down . Now I believe he's right . When it comes to everyday stresses , you know driving to work , you know the memo my boss sends me . I think he's right on about that .
But when it comes to trauma , something happened to me . I didn't choose to pick it up , but I do believe we can choose to put it down , and that doesn't doesn't mean it's easy , but I and this may be kind of deviating from your question I'm a believer that all of us are victims of something .
Okay .
Somewhere in our life we become a victim of something . Maybe it's divorce , maybe it's this , maybe it's that you know bad parents , good parents , you know traffic acts , whatever we're a victim and if it's something easy , it's easy to become a survivor of that .
But I also believe that there are some things that are so traumatizing that I have to make a conscious decision sometimes that this happened . I was a victim of that , but now I have to become a survivor of that and for some of us it is a conscious decision because some of us do live as as victims all our life of that event .
You know I never can get past the divorce . I can never get past . You know we didn't talk about it yet , but you know I was on duty at the 911 Center when the Oklahoma City bombing happened Wow , okay , and to younger listeners it's hard to believe . It's been 25 plus years , so some of them may not have been alive 168 people were killed .
19 children were killed , when one person on the Alfred Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City and I was talking to somebody that
¶ Becoming a Survivor and Finding Normalcy
lost his mom in it a number of years later and he had a sister and he had become a survivor of it . You know , becoming a survivor of losing his mom and his terrorist incident and I said his sister was still living in it she , she hadn't been able to find what I call my new sense of normalcy .
Okay , you know , after trauma and you probably had this question 100 times in your own experiences are things back to normal or things , yes , normal , yes . One of the most frequent questions and I used to answer it all the time yes , things are back to normal . You know , the sun comes up , I go to work .
The sun sets , or the sun sets , I still at work , but you know , because by then I was working to 3pm to 11 shift . Things are normal . But then it took me a long time to realize I can't go back to the way it was .
Yes .
When I woke up on April 19 at seven o'clock in the morning . I can't go back to the way it was at nine o'clock that morning because something happened at 902 that changed me Right and it changed me forever . Yeah , you know , and sometimes we want , I want to go back . You can't . Yeah , it's gone .
You know I can't go back to the way I way it was when my grandmother was alive . She was gone . But I can find my new sense of normalcy and I think you know that sometimes is easier for others . I think for some people it has to be a conscious decision , sometimes weeks later , sometimes years later .
Yeah , you know , okay , this happened and after traumatizing and horrible it was , it happened . But now I've got to live my life , I've got to find my , my new sense of normalcy .
Yes , and I can tell you that in my experience , the first time I heard somebody say the new normal , I just hated those words together . I just , you know , I also hated the word resiliency when I first heard it too , so it was more about where I was in the process than what those mean .
Yeah , but I really appreciate your interpretation . You know , because I haven't heard someone hasn't said that to me , and I'm sure you're not the first one . I've said that that you know they've been highly offended by it or pissed off by it .
You know , though , tony I think it was for me , I think it was just anger in general at the whole situation , and the words and those concepts were things I could grab onto and the things people were telling me oh , you're going to get back to your new normal or you are resilient to your tapping into resiliency .
Those were things that were kind of easy targets to get angry with , you know , and now I realize especially the concept of new normal . I just realized that our version of normal is shifting all the time with the things that are happening with us , but it's only when something big happens that we feel that break .
I think with our previous version , yeah , I think I like one of the things you said about . You know sometimes we're not ready for it . You know I'm not done with the grieving process or the process of anger and all the other stuff that we have to go through that . I've got to be ready for the new normal .
Yeah , and that's all . That's all it was . I was not ready when I first started hearing those terms .
Yeah .
Well , thank you for sharing about being at Oklahoma City . I imagine that was traumatizing for yourself and other dispatchers and and public safety officials that was . I do remember that day and I remember seeing it on the news and just being so shocked at that it happened in the scale of what happened .
Yeah , yeah , I mean , it just shows you what hate can do , mm . Hmm , you know and this is not not the podcast for it , but radicalization , whatever the radicalization is , when we start hating things or people or entities , that's a problem .
It is in your right . It's a conversation for another podcast in another day because it's it's so complex in some ways .
I think in some ways it's actually pretty simple , but yeah , so you know , I want to get back to something you were talking about treating people after trauma and sort of dealing with difficult times , but also trying to find a way to prevent them in the some of these things in the first place , if you can .
When I think about prevention , I also think about , like , the role of our institutions and our system however you want to define that in protecting us and in providing resources to build our resiliency , etc . So what do you think about the role of our systems and institutions in that ?
Oh , wow , I'm just kind of at that question , just thinking , you know , in late years in high school , maybe in college , when people do talk about health , do we do some education on resilience ? Do we do some ? Because I believe we're naturally , naturally resilient . The human body is resilient , the human mind is tremendously resilient and powerful .
But if we , you know , let people know that . You know , hey , bad things are going to happen in your life , yes , and when bad things happen , you can overcome , you can do x , y and z , you know .
I think it'd be great that if , if we could , and some of these basic health classes and include it Instead of you know , eat , eat , eat well and you know , do x , y and z and exercise , okay , well , yeah , talk a little bit about mental health as well .
Right right , our physical health is only a piece of it and our mental health is important , so that education piece is important . I can see that . What would you say is an important lesson about resilience , or maybe compassion , that you've learned because of the work that you do .
One of the most important things that I once heard someone tell a group talk it out , or you will act it out . Talk it out or you will act it out . You talk it out some way . You know it doesn't have to be with a therapist . Some people don't want that , some people aren't going to do it that way . Do you talk it out with a friend ?
Do you talk it out with a family member ? Shoot some people . You can talk it out by writing it out , you know , but get those thoughts and feelings out . Another person once told me you tell a secret , you cut it in half , and so many times we bottle up emotions but by telling people about it you cut it in half , you cut its power in half .
You know , and if you learn to talk it out some way with somebody , we don't bottle it out and we don't act it out . And we act it out so many times in violence , abuse , alcohol , other substances , and you start to see other mental health issues , et cetera , et cetera , or physical health issues . So that's you know .
And sometimes when I teach I said if you remember
¶ Talking It Out for Resiliency
anything else , you remember that that if something happens , you find somebody to talk it out , and sometimes in public safety . We don't talk it to other people because we don't want to burden our wife , we don't want to burden our husband , we don't want to burden our kids with these problems .
So we don't talk it out , we don't tell them what we saw or what we heard , we don't tell our coworkers the full extent of what happened and you know it just gets put in the bottle and put to the side and you know , sometimes it's years later the bottle explodes .
Yes , and you have trouble at a time when then you're not gonna be able to connect what's going on today with the original thing that you were kind of squashing .
Yeah .
Oh good , Thank you for sharing that . We're getting close to the end here , so I am curious what is giving you hope these days ?
You know , I'm a half glass full guy . I believe things are good Even when things are bad , and I've been to the bottom . But I've been to the top and you can't enjoy the top unless you've been to the bottom . Yes , so I do have hope . I have hope in our country . I have hope in people . I believe that there is a higher power .
I do believe in God and if certain things didn't happen in my life , I wouldn't be here where I am today . You know the path I thought I wanted to take at some point in time . That didn't happen . Well , if it would have happened there's a good chance I wouldn't have met my wife . There's a good chance I wouldn't have my son now .
So things put us on a path and we don't understand what it is , but we're on that path . Sometimes we don't like it . Right right , but we're still on it .
Right , oh , thank you for that . There is a lot to be hopeful about , so I'm glad you shared that . Thank you , and what would you tell your 18-year-old self about resiliency ?
You know you got this . Let it happen . You know , enjoy the ride . You know there were times that were bad , but I've got a great life . You know I've got a great wife , I've got a great son . There is a road and you got to walk the road .
You know , and something else I learned a long time ago is there's almost nothing that can happen to me that hasn't happened to somebody else .
Mm-hmm . Yes .
Virtually nothing , and if somebody else has already survived it , the road's already there . Yeah , the road's already paved , I just got to walk . It Doesn't mean it's easy , right , but I don't have to make a new road , I just have to walk the road that somebody else has already paved .
Right .
Because it's so easy in our world to think , well , it's only me that's going through this or it's only me . Yes , and I've experienced in my life those 1 in 100,000 , those 1 in a million , so , oh , you'll go . You know that this will never happen to you . Well , you know I've had two or three of those events happen to me .
You know in my career in public safety that you know you talk to people and they , you know people say , oh well , you know most people go through their entire career without doing that . Well , yeah , well , I've done it here , I've done it there , I've done it . You know I've done it everywhere . So you know I don't . Maybe I'm a black cloud .
I don't think you are to me Not to stop you from what you're saying , but I think you just have a real understanding of how to deal with some of these things that happen in your life , and I like what you would tell your 18-year-old self about resiliency .
So and I very much like your thought about you know this very few things that can happen to me as an individual haven't happened to somebody else and there is a way to get through it , and somebody else has gotten through it . Well , thank you for sharing and thank you for this great conversation .
I could talk to you for so much longer , but just about at the end of our time . How can our listeners reach you if they want to learn more about you or your work ?
Yeah , the website for the companies , www . publicsafetygroup . com . Or you can email me , . You can reach out through the website or email me , and I'm more than happy to talk to anybody I can help in any way . I'm more than willing to help .
Excellent . Oh , thank you so much , and I'll put a link for both of those in the show notes so folks can more easily get in touch with you . Tony , thank you so much for this conversation .
Thank you for having me and thank you for what you're doing .
Oh , thanks , all right to our listeners . Bye , and have a great rest of your day . Thank you for listening . I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did .
So if you'd like to learn more about me , manja Chilinski , I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences , and I do this through talks and consulting .
I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency , compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil .
If this is something you want to learn more about , visit my website , wwwmanjachilinskicom , or email me at manja at manjachilinski , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter . Thanks so much .