Let Personal Agency Empower You

As First Responders, we tend to be very comfortable when we’re in control. We turn up on scene of whatever emergent, life-threatening situation is occurring and over time, with experience, end up feeling incredibly calm. Despite a high pressure, dynamic and evolving scene, we take charge, take control and manage effectively.

Which is why, after the rush of call has subsided and the adrenaline has worn off, feeling out of control, within our body or our mind, feels incredibly unnerving for us.

When we choose to take on a First Responder or Emergency Services role as a career, we rarely have the foresight to anticipate the effect and impact it will have on us down the track. Physically, mentally or emotionally. We’re too excited to get in amongst it and finally live that existence we’ve probably dreamed of for so long and worked so hard for.

Then reality strikes. The calls build up, the trauma exposure begins to wear, our health and relationships become affected, and we can be left in the proverbial boat, without a paddle or appropriate coping skill in sight.

As it’s been brought to your awareness throughout the course of this week, (2025 Firefighter Safety Stand Down Week) the roles we perform as First Responders impact us greatly. It changes our view of the world, our levels of arousal and hypervigilance, the kinds of people we end up wanting to spend time with, our mental health, our sleep patterns and hygiene, our level of fitness, our eating habits, our relationship and marriage dynamics, how we parent and our ability to cope.

This comes down to several factors. One of the predominant ones is, the nature of our everyday roles are essentially a continual, cumulative experience of and exposure to, trauma. An event, causing deep distress or is disturbing in nature, that is threatening, violent, frightening or harmful, the outcome and effects of which are out of our control and can be challenging to cope with mentally and emotionally…..sound familiar…?

“That’s a slow Tuesday!” I hear you shout. However much we grow into our roles and can be the calm in the storm of a situation as described above, doesn’t mean it doesn’t affect us.

For a long time, pairing “mental health and first responder” in the same sentence was taboo. The stigma attached to any member sticking their hand up and acknowledging they were struggling, was essentially career suicide. That belief still permeates many departments today. While the stigma battle is slowly being fought and members are beginning to realise and recognise the need to be open to self-care and accessing mental health resources, the actual battle against First Responders dying by suicide is sadly still being waged, aggressively. And I fear we will lose that fight if the culture and mindset doesn’t dramatically change sooner rather than later.

Recently I have been vocal about the need for First Responders to no longer view the concept of self-care as something frivolous. A practice that we don’t have time to bother with or as a luxury not meant for hardened people like us. It’s actually quite the opposite. As a population, we take pride in being able to perform our roles effectively and efficiently. We love when muscle memory kicks in and we barely expend any energy on the cognitions to perform our role. It keeps us safe and assists us in serving our community to the capacity we desire. That is, until it doesn’t. Until we’re beyond the point of exhaustion that no amount of sleep can fix. We’ve trained ourselves not to “feel” anything in the moment, but that means we don’t feel anything anymore; the tragic or the joyous. We float through life like it’s a dream, physically present, but not really connected to our loved ones like we used to be.

Experiencing and bearing witness to the tragedy and trauma, day after day, month after month, year after year, for multiple decades, takes a psychological and emotional toll. Equally impacting us physically, showing up in inflamed bodies, higher BP’s, poor memory function and damaged immune systems.

This is why I believe self-care for First Responders needs to be viewed from a different, more evolved perspective; as a necessity instead of a luxury. Imperative to engage in, to maintain our tactical readiness as responders, to be able to perform our roles in the way that is required. I coined a new term for this: The Constructive Care Movement.

“Constructive”, as defined by “serving a useful purpose” and “Care” as defined by “the provision of what is necessary for the health, welfare, maintenance and protection of someone/something”.

Therefore, Constructive Care serves a useful purpose in providing what is necessary for the health, welfareand protection of someone; namely First Responders.

Encouraging the Emergency Services community to buy in to this change of perspective and outright challenge to the old guard of “suck it up” attitudes, means empowering them through the concept of Personal Agency.

As humans, we all have the capacity of personal agency. It’s the ability of people to exercise their own free will; to make choices independently and most importantly, own the outcomes and consequences of those choices. It’s about living with purpose, intentionality and a belief in exercising control over your life, by the actions we take, decisions we make and behaviours we perform.

It is incredibly empowering when we realise we can choose to live with belief in our own self efficacy. Capable of showing up for ourselves and handling whatever strange or stressful situations life throws at us. When we engage in practices proactively and preventatively, it increases our ability to cope with stress, raising our resiliency, fostering our support network and resources to lean on in challenging times.

The trick to all of this is a simple one; it’s a choice. Just as exercising our sense of personal agency, participating in The Constructive Care Movement and practicing adaptive (healthy) coping skills and strategies is an intentional decision, so is the choice NOT to.

To not engage in ANY of that, after being informed, educated and made aware of the impact your work has on all aspects of your life…..is a choice. And let’s be very clear, behaviour is a language. Even if you’ve been on the job for 25 years, it’s never too late to introduce positive, healthier practices into your life.

So knowing the impact cumulative trauma exposure throughout your career can have on your mental and physical health, your emotional state, your relationships, your life expectancy AND the ability to continue to perform the role that you love….choosing NOT to engage in anything that’s going to help mitigate any of those factors, is behaviour that screams “I don’t care about myself or those around me” as loudly as if you used a megaphone to announce it.

But let’s pivot to how easy it is to exercise your personal agency and put you in the driver’s seat of your own wellness. When you choose to take control of your health and participate in some Constructive Care, the options are endless. Just as we are unique as individuals and our experiences and exposure to trauma throughout our lives and careers is subjective, so are the practices available to assist in down regulating your system. Moving your sympathetic nervous system “fight or flight” response into the parasympathetic nervous system “rest and digest” is a process you can actively engage in.

We are thrown into our stress response every time we get that call on the radio or the tones go off. It’s an automatic function of our body, in response to the stimuli of that tone/siren/radio call that we can’t control, but calming our system down when we find out the job is nothing or we’re off duty and find we’re responding to things in the way we would at work, is a practice and a skill we can utilise at will.

Some simple strategies you can begin with, in the moment include:

·      Breathing Exercises – Box Breathing (AKA Tactical Breathing) or Deep Diaphragmatic Breathing

·      Body Scan or Progressive Muscle Relaxation

·      Grounding Techniques (5,4,3,2,1 Senses Strategy)

·      Take a sip of water (It engages our digestive system)

·      Humming or Deep Sighing

·      Cold Water – splashing it on your face or submerging your face in cold water for 5-10 seconds

Practices and coping skills you can begin to explore and engage in outside of your duties, that can help calm your system, regulate it better and when done regularly, work like strengthening a muscle in the gym (i.e. the more you practice, the stronger the skill, the faster you can relax your stress response, the less reactive that response is, the better you are able to cope) include:

·      All of the practices I mentioned above; Breathing Exercises, Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Grounding Techniques, etc can be engaged with in the moment or as an intentional practice you dedicate 5 minutes a day to

·      Bilateral Stimulation – Music

·      Mindfulness Meditation – can be guided or self-directed. (Leaves on a Stream is one you can find easily)

·      Yoga, Trauma Informed Yoga Practice and Mobility Exercises

·      Journaling

·      Practicing Gratitude

·      Getting out in nature/Green Space

There are two core things to point out with all the options provided;

1:             They are all practices that can be done alone, in solitude. If you find yourself reading this and realising you need something, but aren’t ready to acknowledge it out loud to anyone or would prefer to do something by yourself, look into some of these.

2:             They are ALL FREE! All of these practices can be done in as little as 5 minutes a day, in the comfort of your own home or a local park and can be researched on the internet. You can find bilateral stimulation music, guided mindfulness meditations and even yoga routines pretty easily, the choice is yours to put in the minimal effort to locate them.

Another option is Sensory Deprivation, which will often involve floatation tanks, that allow for the reduction of any external stimuli (stressful distractions), promoting relaxation. While clinically proven to be effective, a fee would most likely be involved to engage in this practice.

Lastly, another way to activate and engage your parasympathetic response is the term “tend and befriend”, which is essentially connecting socially with people you trust and feel comfortable with, or talking to someone. The weight of the roles we perform can get heavy. Talking to someone about your experiences, offloading some of the events you’ve seen or been involved in, can lighten your load significantly. Engaging with the right person is the crucial part here; you have lots of options, but it must involve two important aspects.

1.        You feel comfortable speaking with them, openly and honestly, without reservation, fear of judgement or shame.

2.        That person having the ability and capacity to hear the things you need to discuss in that open manner, with compassion, understanding, empathy and without judgement. (Vicarious trauma exposure is a risk when speaking with a civilian, but a professional should be well aware of this factor and have appropriate strategies to mitigate this for themselves).

You have the option of talking to a friend or loved one (if they possess that capacity), a member of your department peer support team, a helpline (crisis or First Responder dedicated), a life or wellness coach, or a clinician; be it a counsellor, therapist, psychologist or psychiatrist, depending on your needs. Being “culturally competent”, understanding the role of a First Responder, what your duties entail and the amount of trauma you are exposed to is something to consider and be mindful of when choosing a person to speak with, privately or professionally.

I know this has been a lot of information to take in, so feel free to mull it over. Save it, come back to it, reassess the options provided and see what jumps out at you. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means, just a place to get you started and able to recognise you aren’t limited in what you can do, even in a small way, to help yourself.

The key points I want you to take away, are that in 2025, no one is left in the dark as to how our roles as First Responders or Emergency Services Members can impact us. The data is in, the effects are significant and left unassisted, can be catastrophic.

But NOW we know. You may not have known when you began your career, but we do now. And knowledge is power. You are not wallflowers who watch the world go by, you are people of action, who have the capacity to take control of your circumstances and dictate the outcomes more than ever before. I want you to feel empowered by the notion of Personal Agency. I want you to understand doing nothing is as much of a choice as doing something.

Choose to recognise that Constructive Care for First Responders is not a luxury; it’s a necessity. There are so many options available to you, of practices and strategies and resources to help you cope better, increase your resilience, improve your mental and physical wellbeing, maintain better relationships and overall, enjoy a better existence.

As a population, we have been left to struggle for a long time. To battle not only the toll our jobs can take, but the weight of the stigma attached, to acknowledging when it felt like too much. However, courageously breaking through that stigma has begun and now we know, more than ever, the role you can play in your own story of wellness and healing.

You are in control. Make the choice. Engage in the practice that speaks to you. Decide your own outcome from the career you’ve dedicated yourself to.

(This article was originally contributed to Battallion 1 Consultants, as part of Firefighter Safety Stand Down Week, 2025. The theme was "Break The Stigma: Behavioural Health RESET" - Recognise, Educate, Strategies, Empower and Training.)

Reposted here, with permission.