Tag: blue trauma syndrome

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Blue Trauma Syndrome 2024

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When I wrote the resilience building textbook Armor Your Self: How to Survive a Career in Law Enforcement several years ago I coined the term Blue Trauma Syndrome (BTS) as a means of discussing all the many factors that erode an emergency responders resilience. I used it to go beyond the simple label of “stress” as a catch all, and frankly far too simple, a description of the toxic effects of this career that eat us up from the inside out.

I want to raise that term again in 2024 to renew our on-going quest to make our law enforcement and other emergency service professionals as healthy, effective and resilient as they can be.

If you read my previous article “The High Cost of Unwellness in Policing” then you know about my beliefs regarding the importance of building resilience within our profession and you know that I believe that it’s not as simple as many people think. I suggest that many police agencies are just “Dabbling” in wellness without any clear strategy nor set of metrics by which to measure their effectiveness.

What I would like to do today is to CHALLENGE YOU to pick up this discussion in your agency, team or with a couple of peers and see what YOU THINK.

WHY?

Because, analyzing and discussing the challenges… Continue reading

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Plant the Seeds for Comprehensive Fitness Today!

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It’s the beginning of a new year and everyone in the world is thinking about improving their physical fitness. You on the other hand are a police professional and you know that you have to think of yourself as a professional police athlete who trains all the time, and will do so for the rest of your life. You do that because you know that this career is filled with hidden dangers that can be toxic to your physical and emotional health. You know that in order to adequately Armor Your Self™ against the negative side-effects of this career you must strengthen and condition your Self mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually every day.

Sure, you know all this, but it’s hard to do. So why don’t you use this new year to recharge your batteries and set some fresh goals to take care of yourself. Why don’t you create a positive mindset of comprehensive fitness for your Self and get started today.

How do law enforcement officers stay healthy? Continue reading

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Blue Trauma Syndrome

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EDITORS NOTE:
The following material is from the new book “Armor Your Self™: How to Survive a Career in Law Enforcement“ to be published later this year by John Marx the founder of CopsAlive.com.

At the Law Enforcement Survival Institute we define “Blue Trauma Syndrome” as a spectrum of negative physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health-effects manifested by a career in law enforcement. Blue trauma syndrome most certainly has it’s roots in large or cumulative doses of negative occupational stress and manifests many negative physiological, mental, emotional and spiritual symptoms.

Stress makes for an interesting enemy. You can’t see it, you can’t touch it and most times you can’t even describe it. But it is there, and it attacks us every day. We must defend ourselves and armor ourselves from it’s effects otherwise a careers worth of battle fatigue will overtake all of us. I know that I am speaking in generalities here but I think a proper amount of introspection will reveal this is true for the vast majority of us.

Now you can read all the research that’s out there (and there isn’t enough) on the effect stress has on law enforcement officers but it still doesn’t give us enough information about what stresses will get to us. Part of the problem is because the same stress will affect each officer differently and it’s… Continue reading