November 25, 2019

Below is a lesson from LinkedIn about the importance of emotional adversity, as well as our key learning.

The Blue Courage team is dedicated to continual learning and growth.  We have adopted a concept from Simon Sinek’s Start With Why team called “Learn, Share, Grow”.  We are constantly finding great articles, videos, and readings that have so much learning.  As we learn new and great things, this new knowledge should be shared for everyone to then grow from.

THE 4TH HIGH LIABILITY

By Sean Wyman – Law Enforcement Officer at City of Tallahassee Police Department

In law enforcement we train in three key high liability components. The first one is firearms utilization, the second is defensive driving, and the third is defensive tactics. For the last 18 years I have been a high liability trainer. All three of these are key components and there is a lot of topic threading in between them all that connects the dots. 

Today I want to talk about the 4th high liability that does not get talked about. The 4th high liability is emotional adversity management. A large majority of organizations in my profession train 90% of the time on the top three but less than 10% of the time on the 4th one. Have you ever thought about that? I remember being in the academy 20 years ago. 

The instructors would discuss the detriment factors in our profession. They would share how we have the highest suicide rate, depression rate, divorce rate, and addiction rate. They never explained why this happens. Sadly, we have been unconsciously incompetent to this question for to long. Fast forward 20 years later and nothing has changed.

Continue reading here.

Key Learnings:

• We have the highest suicide rate, depression rate, divorce rate, and addiction rate.
• We have to respond to the calls we are sent to. When we arrive, there will be an experience — positive or negative — no control over that.
• There are short- and long-term effects of emotional adversity we face day in and day out.
• Without an emotional management system in place ahead of time you are set up for failure.
• We go out and get triggered or trigger others in our community without realizing why it happened. Imagine realizing in the moment that you were triggered, causing a negative reaction, and can control your reaction?
• Most law enforcement organizations have little to no training that focuses on the officer’s well-being.
• As of Oct. 16, 2019, we have 173 officers who have killed themselves this year. Ten of those officers came from one agency
• Focus on a building an internal Tactical Emotional Adversity Management System and start standing up as an individual, agency, organization, and profession and say enough is enough