67. We're All Traumatized. Now What?

It's not that I don't think trauma matters because it does, but it's our tendency to dwell on the problems we think trauma causes that I think really caused all the problems.

I started my answer at the camp with this same story of growing up with my dad being a naval aviator.

That can be a very dangerous profession.

It was definitely something that we were aware of, but it was not something that was dwelled upon.

And I don't know if that's because my mom grew up with a dad who was a firefighter.

Maybe her mom instilled the same awareness, without creating a story and making the judgment that, you know, this job is going to be a death sentence.

And that sounds pretty, like, crazy radical, I guess.

But I do know people who feel that way.

I worked in public safety.

I'm married to someone who works in public safety.

And I know that members of his own family have a really hard time with him being a firefighter.

And I always thought it was so funny because I just don't dwell on what people choose to do with their careers, right? People wanna do what they want to do.

I guess growing up, we always had an awareness of risk and consequence, but not catastrophizing, right? Nobody denied the danger, but nobody organized our life around it either.

I also used to do a podcast called 911 Delta Tethered for Life that was about life and times of being a 911 dispatcher plus any other public safety professional.

We interviewed policemen and firefighters and paramedics and the whole gamut.

And we talked a lot about trauma because it is a very... present thing in the public safety world.

Everybody is being traumatized every day.

And so before we really get into this episode, I want you guys to hear what trauma actually means, because a lot of people think that trauma is just a big, nasty, scary event, right? War, abuse, tragic accidents, natural disasters.

And yes, all of those things can be really traumatic.

But for some people, for some horses, something small could be traumatic.

An accumulation of small traumas can make a bigger trauma.

A trauma is anything that causes you to question your belief system.

We did an episode on the 911 Delta Tethered for Life podcast about post-traumatic growth and how that is actually a thing.

So just because we all have trauma and maybe we have some post-traumatic stress doesn't have to mean that we can't grow, we can't end up doing great things and we can't overcome this trauma.

We also need to realize that Everybody's reality is based off of their perception.