Editor’s note: Laurel Kays is the Manager of the Fire Learning Network (FLN). In this blog, Laurel reflects upon a recent training series hosted through FLN and the Fire Networks to address the stress and fatigue experienced by many in the fire profession.
There is a song from a 1970s animated Christmas movie about how you have to “put one foot in front of the other, and soon you’ll be walking out the door” that I have been singing to myself a lot over the past 6 months. The week of Thanksgiving I fell while running on my go-to trail and sprained my ankle fairly dramatically. I’ve spent the past six months in physical therapy slowly progressing from crutches and a boot to running on flat ground in few minute increments that grow a little longer each week.
None of this has been particularly fun, especially for someone who uses exercise as a primary ADHD coping mechanism. But the “one foot in front of the other” mental framework we have for acute physical injuries does make treatment at least a little more bearable. Healing is never perfectly linear, but you follow the protocol and know the trajectory is (usually) upwards towards better.
This sort of framing is similar to what I heard in a recent training offered by the Fire Learning Network and broader Fire Networks through a group called the Responder Alliance. Their training frames what is often spoken about as mental health instead in terms of something called stress injury, a term created by a Canadian Lieutenant Colonel in 2001, in part to provide a framework that placed mental health challenges on par with physical ones and therefore reduce stigma and improve treatment and outcomes. Stress injury refers, according to the illustrious Wikipedia, to “persistent psychological difficulty caused by traumatic experiences or prolonged high stress or fatigue,” and is particularly associated with those in high stress jobs such as first responders.
According to the Responder Alliance, something like Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), perhaps the most widely known aspect of stress injury, is just the most extreme end of a spectrum (see image below). There are a range of behaviors and symptoms that can signal particularly to those of us working in intense, stressful jobs that we are approaching a dangerous place and need to take action to reorient. There are likewise tools provided by the Responder Alliance to develop your own “treatment plan” to either keep or push you back towards a safer place. These “green choices” in Responder Alliance terminology are highly personal and could be anything from a daily run to meditation to meeting up with a friend.
The Responder Alliance also provides ways to apply this framework to team or otherwise work settings. You can find a full list of their resources on their website here. They suggest strategies such as having an anonymous way for colleagues to indicate their current status through the color system shown in the Individual Stress Continuum. Team members can let leadership or each other know what “green choices” look like for them so those can be built into schedules or otherwise enabled.
This kind of practical, behavior focused framework really resonated. One of the most difficult parts for me personally in thinking through how our fire community could better address and discuss mental health is how to do so in a way that feels safe. When I think about how to talk about mental health it is hard to avoid things like the impact of past experiences, diagnoses, and therapy language. There is an underlying current of understanding and unpacking deeply personal experiences and emotions in a work setting. Even for those like me who are incredibly fortunate to work with thoughtful, understanding teams this simply may not be the sort of thing we want to open up during the workday. Tools like color coded wellbeing descriptors and green choices, while simple, offer a way to communicate about these issues in a safe way that can also open the door for deeper, more specific conversations when appropriate and useful.
None of this is intended as a criticism for those who find framing around mental health more useful. Different things work for different people and circumstances. But if you have been struggling with how to practically incorporate promoting wellbeing in your place, consider looking into the Responder Alliance and their stress injury framing. These tools provide a pathway not only to better address these issues in a safe way, but may also open the door for people to address them personally who were previously unwilling to do so.
After half a year of singing “one foot in front of the other” through twice a week physical therapy while watching prescribed fire season pass by, the end seems to be in sight for my ankle recovery. Mental health is more complicated, of course. There is no end goal, no point at which you go to a doctor and are pronounced well with a clear bill of mental health. And for so many of us right now the world is a hard, frightening place.
But the framework of colors and green choices has been a real boon for me. I wrote a list of my own green choices, and I’m trying to do them the best I can; walking my dogs, swimming, hugging my partner, sewing, connecting with friends. These don’t make every day good, or every day a little better than the last. But they are my locus of control, and a framework that reassures me that however I feel on this day, I’m doing what I can to put one foot in front of the other.
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