Lt. Col Dave Grossman’s Book On Combat Broken Down

In this episode, Andi breaks down the book called, On Combat by Lt. Col Dave Grossman. The book dives into the physical symptoms that occur in your body in combat and the stressors in a 911 life which is very different from that of the civilians.  

What You'll Learn:

➡️Gut and its relation and stress.

➡️Parasympathetic backlash where the body shuts down for maintenance

➡️And a lot more! 

Favorite Quote

“It is time to cut through the baloney and learn what really happens in combat, so that a generation of warriors is raised to be mentally and emotionally prepared to go into this toxic realm. ” Lt. Col Dave Grossman

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Today, we're going to do things a little bit differently, and we

are going to break down a book by Lieutenant Colonel, Dave Grossman.

We're gonna be breaking down his book called on Combat.

Now, this book fascinates me every time that I go through it, I find

such amazing information out of it.

And the one thing that stands out with this book and the reason we're going

to be focusing on it today is that it dives into the physical symptoms

that occur in your body in combat and the stressors in a 911 life are very

different from that of the civilians.

And as a result, the physical things that you will experience under stress

can be very different from what civilians experience and because

these physical symptoms are not talked about and so much focus is placed

on the mental effects of stress.

You are often left thinking when these physical symptoms do start

popping up in you, that you have a mental health condition.

When a lot of what may be happening to you is "normal" in your line of work.

And without further ado, let's dive in.

"Research shows that if you have a load in your lower intestines,

during a highly stressful survival situation, it's going to go.

Your body says bladder control.

I don't think so.

Stinker control.

We don't need no stinking, stinker control.

What do you do if that happens?

You keep on fighting.

If you have dealt with injured people as a medic police officer or firefighter,

you know that a significant number urinate or defecate themselves.

It even happens to criminals.

Lauren Christensen tells of helping the feds do a forced entry of a warehouse

in which a powerful drug dealer stored huge quantities of drugs and

property stolen in countless burglars.

The drug dealer was a large boisterous man with a history of violence on his

comrades and law enforcement officers.

There was a high probability that he would greet them with a hail of bullets.

The raid was a big operation involving a score of officers wearing combat fatigues,

listening devices, and high tech weapons.

But the synchronized and explosive entry from all sides of the building.

So how did the big, bad drug dealer react?

When the cops crashed through the doors, yelling and pointing their

weapons, he froze copped his hands on the side of his face and squealed like

a little girl as a wet spot spread rapidly across the front of his slacks.

This is a normal stress response.

Let's call it a redirection of the assets.

The same thing happens to people in combat, but while a teacher can freely

admit it and even joke about it as in our mouth story, most warriors cannot.

They are too macho believing that such things just do not happen to them.

Wouldn't it?"

So, this dives into the gut and its relation and stress.

And this is one thing that when I am working with all of you first

responders that quite often is one of the most surprising symptoms

that you all do experience.

So let's dive into why this is happening first.

So with gut issues, anytime you're in a stressed state, when you are going to a

call, it does not matter if the call's cleared before you get there, your body

still had to go into a stress state.

You may be also in a stressed state from the admin at work.

You have to prepare as well for anything that may happen on shift.

So your entire shift, you could be in a stressed state.

If you can't get turn it off ever, you are in a stressed state, regardless

if you're on that hot call or not.

And when you're in that stress state, your body is sitting there and thinking

that you are in a major hot priority call.

And what happens is you don't really need to stop and have poop.

You don't need to like your colon doesn't need to be, to be working your gut.

Doesn't need to be doing its thing either.

So your stomach acid slow down and your colon slows down.

And this can end up where, when you are in that high stressed

state, you can soil yourself.

You can drop a load without even realizing it because that's your body.

Your body has actually relaxed those systems.

They've reduced the amount of energy they're giving to those

systems because you really don't need them to fight or to flee.

And we end up seeing a lot of gut issues.

So if you're starting to have mistakes we see is where, when you

have gas that can clear a room, you get indigestion, not bloating, where

I know for officers with the vests, sometimes as your shift is going on,

you're getting more and more bloated.

And these are signs that your stress system has been kicking

in and it may need some support.

So when you're having diarrhea, constipation, IBS issues, quite often,

that is a common occurrence and it is when you do have long term stress,

it really does become a part of that.

So not realizing that this is a stress symptom, it's not a mental thing.

This is your body actually preparing to fight or flee.

Then, you're better able to start then diving in to figure out

the tools on how to combat that.

And so this dives into a story about during 911.

And let's listen to this next one that will give you a little bit

more of an insight into how this does affect first responders.

"A few months after the September 11th, 2001 attacks, I had the privilege of

training a group of federal agents.

One of them had been at the world trade center during the attack.

It came up to me after I had thought about loss about one ladder

control and said, "Thank you.

Now I understand what happened to me."

Then he told me his story.

He and the other agents in his office were able to evacuate the building.

After the hijacked airplane had hit it.

They were wearing their tactical gear and assisting local police when the

first building began to come down.

At first they didn't know what to do.

And then they realized that they had better as he put it run like hell.

He said that black cloud of smoke and dust envelope them and darkened the sky.

He couldn't breathe and was losing consciousness.

Then the cloud passed and he turned around, went back into help.

Then the second building began to collapse.

I found myself admiring his ability to find humor in the situations.

He said, "But now we'd gotten to be experts to falling buildings,

and we knew exactly what to do.

We turned and ran like hell."

Again, a black cloud enveloped him and darkened this sky.

And again, he thought he was dying as he began to lose consciousness.

But when the cloud passed, he once again turned around and headed back in.

A few hours later, as he was climbing through the rubble, someone kept him on

the shoulder and said, I'm your relief.

And he was directed back to a cleanup point in a gym.

The thing that I always wondered about he said was why everyone there

had cracked themselves except me.

Now I understand you said if there's a load in the lower intestines,

it's gonna go just before those bastards hit our building.

I had taken a really good morning visit to the bathroom.

Probably no event in human history has been reported and

studied more than the 911 attacks.

And yet almost no one knows that apparently most of the survivors

lost bowel and bladder control.

Does just diminish their courage?

Not in the least, but if it ever happens to us, it would be good to

know that it is perfectly normal.

It is time to cut through the baloney and learn what really happens in combat.

So that a generation of warriors is raised to be mentally and emotionally

prepared to go into this toxic realm.

As we shall see, loss of bowel and bladder control is only the

tip of the iceberg when we examine what really happens in combat."

So let's just repeat what he just said.

We need to cut through the baloney and learn what really happens in combat

so that a generation of warriors is raised to be mentally and emotionally

prepared to go into this toxic realm.

As we shall see, loss of bowel control is only the tip of the iceberg.

When we examine what really happens in combat.

And that's the thing I've been working with you guys since 2018.

And the symptoms, the physical stress symptoms that come in.

Most are unaware pretty much all of them are unaware of all of the stress

symptoms that they are experiencing.

They didn't realize that they were stress symptoms, the anger, short fuse, the

loss of bowels, diarrhea, constipation, all the gut issues, indigestion.

The amount of first responders that come to us that are taking proton

pump inhibitors and antacids when their doctor never, ever even tested

them to see if their stomach acids were high because the same feeling of

indigestion that feeling that's coming up is the same feeling that you can get

when your stomach acids are too low.

And we have never once, not once since we have started this program in 2018,

tested an officer, a first responder, fire, EMS, corrections, we've not

tested one where they have shown high.

We've not even had any test normal.

Every single one has tested low.

So these are things that you need to be aware of because as Lieutenant

Colonel Dave Grossman does say, this is only the tip of the iceberg.

The loss of bowel control, all of the gut issue are the tip of the iceberg.

There are so many different layers to what is going on in your bodies

with stress, with long term stress, with the stress that you endure.

And being able to tackle it, being able to put the right systems into

place, starts with you actually understanding what these symptoms are.

And that is why we're here today.

So the next thing we're gonna dive into from this is he's gonna dive

into about a parasympathetic backlash.

So before we dive into this, let's go over what a parasympathetic is.

So you have two branches of your nervous system when it comes to

your stress, your sympathetic nervous system is your stress nerve.

Your parasympathetic nervous system is your resting nerve.

And the thing is, is you need both.

The sympathetic nerve is the one that gets you in that hypervigilant state.

It's the one that is keeping you high alert.

It's the one that allows you that focus and all of the adrenaline

pumping out that you need when you need to be alert, stay safe on the job.

But then after that what's supposed to happen is your parasympathetic nervous

system is supposed to kick in and relax you but sometimes it's very, very offset.

And you get this like crash after, and that's what we are going to be diving.

So when he talks about the parasympathetic backlash, that is when

the parasympathetic nervous system like kicks in, in high gear and you can't

help, but fall asleep after a trauma.

"Parasympathetic backlash.

The body shuts down for maintenance.

Taken from a correspondence to Colonel Grossman.

I was part of an arrest team of seven veteran drug agents.

We were doing hotel buy-bust where our informant inside a hotel room would

order up several pounds of drugs.

And when the bad guy showed up, we would watch the deal go down via

video camera from an adjoining room to watch the actions go down in front

of you and just watching and waiting for the bust signals all the time

looking and listening to your target.

Raised our stress to the point of almost being able to touch it.

After the first deal was made and the arrest signal was given, we made

entry from the adjacent room and arrested four suspects and seized

two pounds of methamphetamine.

As we were taken the suspects out into the parking lot, a car pulled up driven

by an associate of our bad guys when he backed up and headed for the exit.

Some of the officers ran after him and I ran to cut him off.

The car changed paths and headed straight at me.

I noticed the backdrop for my shot thinking I was going to

have to kill the driver, but my teammates were in the line of fire.

I jumped out of the way and the car passed right where I had been standing.

I jumped into a car and we began a chase eventually

finding the car in a church lot.

As I drove to it, I began to get the shakes.

No problem.

As I knew that would happen.

By the time we searched the church, I figured I had experienced three or

four adrenaline rushes on the way back to the hotel, I felt very car sick,

dizzy, and I had a terrible headache.

I knew it was a backlash from the activities.

So I began tactical breathing that helped for a while with the headache

and business, but I was still very tired and had a hard time staying awake.

What bothered me the most was I knew what was going on and

why, but I couldn't stop."

So understanding that backlash is where you have so many stresses

over and over and over in your day.

Going to different calls and they're cleared when you are

on specialized tactical units.

I mean, we have an episode that has come out which was with one of the guys

from tactical unit that we work with our program and call outs two in the

morning, having to do warrants arrests.

Like all of the things that are going on when you don't know how to be switching

yourself in and out of those stress states then you are constantly dumping

and dumping adrenaline into your body.

And the thing though is that, that is quite different for those

who are in combat and in war and police officers, fire, EMS when you

are on a call, cause quite often, those calls are very, very quick.

So here is Lieutenant Dave Grossman breaking that down for you.

"It can be a different story.

For police officers and other warriors who are not in sustained combat.

When the average law enforcement officer gets into a gun fight, he

often has trouble sleeping that night.

Why did those infantry soldiers in Korea have trouble staying awake at noon?

But the average law enforcement officer, after a gun fight cannot get to sleep.

The difference is what has happened to the adrenaline dump in the combatants' bodies.

The soldiers went through six hours of grueling combat where they burned up

every drop of adrenaline in their bodies.

The police officer had the same adrenaline dump flooding through

his body, but his combat event took only a few trigger pulse to resolve

leaving him with the adrenaline, still surging through his body.

For the officer to sleep, he must first come down from his adrenaline rush.

Have you ever sat on the edge of your bed at night with your mind

spinning, your heart pounding, and your body raring to go?

That is what residual adrenaline does to you."

So with that, we can talk as well about fire in that fire, depending on the fire

calls, while it can be a really long call.

For police as well when we were going through the protests,

those were long hours.

We had the trucker protest too.

The thing is, is that some of it is stop and start.

It's not continual as fighting a fire would be.

So, you get these dumps of adrenaline and you haven't been able to

actually use that adrenaline.

So we get into that aspect of it.

I mean, my husband says that he never ever goes to a call or every call that he

does go to, he considers that it's as if it has a gun, even if it seems like the

most benign boring call, you never know.

Those are the ones that can sometimes turn on a dime and the ones that may

sound like they are the most hostile may be cleared by the time you get there.

So you never know and you do always have to be on high alert.

For EMS as well, I mean, while you're tending to somebody that

needs you then you also have to be on alert for the crowd.

You don't know what the crowd's gonna do and how they're gonna

react, especially family members or somebody close to the victim.

All kinds of stuff.

So you have to be on such high alert all the time and be around, but you're

doing this for shift after shift, after shift for your entire career.

And so what happens is at the start of your shift at the start of career,

we say this kind of happens like what he's explaining here of these

dumps, these happen in the first like, five years or so of your career.

But after that, especially after having kids, once you have kids as well,

that's another hit and your sleep totally goes down the drain as well

for the first few years, at least.

And your brain starts would because you have all of these adrenaline dump.

And your body has to keep cleaning it up.

So you you're dumping it, clean it up, dumping it, clean it up because

you're not getting rid of it.

Over time your brain says "What the heck is happening.

This is absolutely ridiculous."

We need to start turning down the amount of adrenaline that we're pumping out.

It's cortisol that they're pumping out and stuff.

It needs to start turning that down, which is also your energy hormone.

So what we find is what Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman is speaking of is what a

lot of responders experience in the first five years or so, some of them can get

up to 10 years depending on the service, depending on how it is but I mean like

in a large city where you're having calls back to back, 24 hours with EMS and fire.

And you do have calls all through the night, like high call volumes.

What we find is all of these adrenaline dumps, it hits you

earlier into your career where they don't start hitting you anymore.

You don't start, you don't get as many of those dumps.

Or we find that at home is where you're absolutely drained.

You don't even have the energy at home, but you can on a

call if you really needed it.

The thing is, some have told me that if they have to turn it on fast, they can't.

If they know their lights and sirens going to a call, they can build it

up as they're going to the call.

But if they were, let's say manning somebody in a hospital.

And something happened out of the blue when it'd been like

for four hours, just dead.

And you're sitting there with nothing happening.

They don't know if they could turn it on that fast, like they used

to earlier on in their career.

And that's because that adrenaline dump starts getting smaller and smaller as

your brain keeps slowing that down.

So the mistake is really not understanding how to be supporting your body, how

to be turning off that adrenaline dump as soon as you can and how to be

supporting yourself when you do have that adrenaline dump so that your body

doesn't start turning it down over time.

All right.

Let's now start diving into sleep.

And I don't think that this one really needs an introduction.

"Sleep deprivation is the best way to physically predispose yourself

to become a stress casualty.

It has been linked to mental health problems, cancer, common colds,

depression, diabetes, obesity, and stroke.

As it relates to job performance, sleep deprivation, impairs reaction time,

judgment, vision information processing, short term memory, performance,

motivation, vigilance and patience.

On the other hand, research shows that sufficient sleep combined

with the nutritious diet, lots of fluids and exercise are critical

for a long and healthy life.

Unfortunately, our society is full of sincerely diluted people who

honestly believe that they can get by forever on four hours of sleep.

When you take Mr.

I-Can-Go-Forever-On-Four-Hours-Of-Sleep and put him in the timeless environment

of the sleep lab, he immediately begins to catch up on his sleep debt.

He may sleep up to 12 hours a day until he is recuperated.

And then he sleeps seven, eight and nine hours a day on

a normal, healthy sleep cycle.

Scientists used to say that you could not catch up on lost sleep

but now we know they were wrong.

Dead wrong.

As in killing people wrong.

Your body builds up a sleep debt.

And just as you can catch up on dehydration and malnutrition,

you can catch up on sleep."

So, this is where we dive in.

So he is speaking about sleep deprivation and he says that the

best way to physically predispose yourself to become a stress casualty

is sleep debt, four hours of sleep.

And with the responders that I speak with, many of them are only able to

get four hours of sleep on days off.

So we're not talking about when you have 24 hour shifts.

We're not talking about when you have, 12 hour shifts with OT and there's

less spend optimal time to get sleep.

This does happen in your job.

That is another conversation on how to support yourself and be prepared for that

but if you are living off of four hours of sleep, even on your days off, cause your

body is not allowing you to do it anymore.

Or you're not giving yourself enough time to get a sleep then that is where

that goes into mental health, cancer, diabetes, common colds, depression,

obesity, stroke, and it starts affecting your job performance with impaired

reaction, impaired judgment, vision, information processing, short term memory,

struggles, performance, motivation, vigilance, and a loss of patience.

And so that's where he does talk about, we never used to think that we could

catch up on sleep with sleep debt, but all the new studies are showing that we can.

And so there are strategies with 911 shifts, so that even when you're not

getting, like, even if you do only have four hours of sleep, making sure that it

is the best quality of four hours of sleep that you can get and then implementing

the right tools once you are off of that block of whatever was happening.

If it was a special operations whatever was going on there in

order to make sure that you are able to catch up on your sleep.

And if you don't, then that does dive into all of these health

issues, which can be career ending.

So we're gonna dive next into just pulling it up here.

Diving into court and four hours of sleep.

"Today's understaffed and overworked warriors carry guns, drive vehicles,

and make life and death decisions.

All the while suffering from sleep deprivation.

I guarantee that a sleepy police officer, or maybe even a sleepy peacekeeper will

one day soon make a questionable decision that negligently hurts or kills someone.

When the case goes to court, the lawyer will ask, "Officer, how much sleep did

you get the night before the incident?

How much sleep the night before that?

And the night before that?"

They will subpoena the officer's work logs to show the volume of overtime he worked

and they will show that he like so many other officers today had no more than

four hours sleep each night for the last 20 days or better yet from the accusing

lawyer's standpoint, he will prove that the officer had not slept for 24 hours.

And was therefore the equivalent of being legally drunk.

Then the lawyer will ask the jury what they think the officer would

do if he caught them legally drunk behind the wheel of a vehicle.

The result of such a lawsuit to the officer and the department

would be devastating."

It is.

It's devastating when things happen there's quite often when I hear

about first responders that passed away when they were on their way to

or from shift quite often to shift.

There are some research studies that dive into sleep deprivation and officers

and fire and they talk about when an officer or fire is sleep deprived.

The amount of mistakes and struggles that occur, um, outbursts like anger,

short fuse on calls that occur in the first couple of hours of shift are large.

So we often think, oh, it's the end of shift.

But if you're going into a shift, sleep deprived, it could mistakes that

can happen could be career ending.

Or could end your life.

Now, this is the part that I need you to understand is that.

Sleep struggles start as well.

In about five years into the job, a lot of this stuff is related.

Once you start really diving into it, what we spoke about earlier about the

body starting to shut down that cortisol that also ties into when of five years

often is when it comes into your careers.

When we hear that that's when the sleep struggle started tired and

wired, waking mid sleep can't sleep.

And many of you are trying to implement healthy sleep strategies but the thing

is, is we need to be diving deeper.

We need to lift that hood of your car, dive into that engine of your

stress system and start supporting it.

Start oiling and lubing the parts of your stress system that need the help.

Just focusing on a better sleeper routine is not necessarily going to help.

They will definitely be valuable.

Absolutely.

I'm not saying that they aren't.

But when you are solely focusing on strategies for sleep, sleep pills, sleep

aids, anything to try to get you to sleep.

And everything that you're researching is sleep, sleep, sleep of how, what can

I do routines for sleep, and you're not actually diving into the stress system,

diving into that cortisol, diving into the adrenaline dump, diving into the

parasympathetic nervous system and the stress nerve, the sympathetic nerve.

When you're not diving into all of these things and really looking at the

root cause and looking at how the gut is affecting all of this as well then

you will struggle with your sleep.

It's just a fact.

You will.

So if you are somebody who has tried all of those things, don't worry.

It's not your fault.

Those are the things that we are told.

They're the things that often work for a civilian, but these civilians

aren't working different shifts days and nights all over the place.

Their body knows when it's supposed to go to sleep.

When it's supposed to go wake up, it's not getting these adrenaline

dumps all of the time on shift.

And you also haven't been taught how to turn yourself in and

out, how to control that switch.

So there's a lot of other deeper things that we need to be diving

into with this, especially like when you're doing 24 hour shifts.

I know during COVID many services, fire, EMS, we're doing 96 when there

were stations out and neighboring stations had to cover for the

station that was out because everybody had COVID in the station.

96 hours were being pulled.

The stress, the toll that, that took on many bodies that we're

now seeing the effects that their sleeps is struggling worse.

Even though they're beyond exhausted the adrenaline dumps all of these

things start kicking in together and they really start affecting you.

Which brings us to this next one that we are gonna be diving into.

This is the last clip that we're gonna be taking from this book.

I do highly recommend you read this book.

It's actually not available in print anymore, but it's on audibles.

It can possibly get it from your library as well.

In audible format in audio and it is amazing in audio, as you can hear,

because Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman is an amazing storyteller as well.

But I highly recommend you listen to this whole book cause it does

put everything together in combat.

How so many things can be affecting you one way or another.

What we do on my end is we start working with things that help you preventatively.

We start helping you from long term stress.

What he's talking about is actually in the combat situation.

When you are fighting the fire, when you are dealing with a hot priority call.

These are the things that, that he is talking about and what we deal

with is getting your system strong to be able to withstand those things.

So this last one is really interesting.

So we've dove into gut.

We've dove into energy.

We've dove into sleep.

This is where sound and hearing can change.

And some of the things too.

Yes.

You know, you are chatting with your spouse.

And they give you a to-do list.

You're talking about things to do and you leave the room and you're blank

on what you were even supposed to do.

What was that task?

What was the honey do list just asked of you?

And things like this will happen with what I see with the long term stress.

What Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman here is speaking about is about an

auditory blink that may happen when you are right in the middle of a trauma.

He's specifically talking about gunshots.

So with what he's speaking about here, gunshots when he's talking

about a blink is where the auditory blink is like a blink of an eye, but

it's actually your ears blinking.

So there's moments of sound you may not hear.

So some may be where you don't hear your gunshot, but you

hear your colleagues gunshots.

Some are where you don't hear the gunshots at all, but you

hear like the bullets drop.

I'm not using the right technology, please don't hold me on this one.

But you hear certain sounds around you.

We'll just say it with that.

And you may hear all sounds around you, or it may just go completely quiet.

All of these things are normal and that's what he's gonna dive into right now.

"And a state trooper said, "Now I understand what happened.

It was so embarrassing.

I never told anyone about it.

My partner and I were on a one car roadblock.

A guy blows the roadblock at a hundred miles an hour.

We both fire one shot as we leap out of the way.

I called the Sarge and said, "Sarge, he's blowing the roadblock.".

And the Sarge tells us to pursue him.

I said, "Sarge, we can't pursue, honest.

Our guns just went pop.".

We thought there was something wrong with our ammo.

We actually took a pencil and ran it down the barrel of her weapons because we were

afraid there might be a bullet lodge.

How many warriors across the generations have fired their weapons

and failed to continue fighting because they thought there was

something wrong with their weapons?

When they could not hear the shots.

In this case, there was nothing wrong with their ammunition or their

weapons, but there was definitely something wrong with their training.

We have gone through centuries of the gun powder era and we are just

now informing our warriors that their shots might get quiet in combat.

As I collect data from literally thousands of warriors about

their combat experiences, this auditory exclusion effect is a

single most common occurrence."

So this is such a common occurrence and if we dive down, we break into it.

The body, how it reacts to stress.

This isn't a mental health issue.

This is your body's reaction.

Your body has these automatic reactions that it elicits when you are in a

stressed state for different reasons.

Soiling yourself, your ears shutting off, sleep getting disrupted, gut issues.

So many different things that we see in first responders where they start thinking

that what is happening is a mental health issue when there's that fine line

where you may be struggling with past traumas that have occurred on the job.

And I am not taking anything away from that, but understand that a lot of

what you're experiencing PTSD, no PTSD.

We see this in guys with PTSD and we see it in guys without PTSD who do

not have a PTSD diagnosis and have actually gone to check because of

symptoms that they were experiencing.

And once we start looking into the physical stress symptoms

that their body has just been telling them you're on high alert.

You're hypervigilant now you can't shut it off.

They cannot shut off that sympathetic nerve system.

That sympathetic nerve becomes so frigging strong that they can't turn

it off and that means that the body systems are all turning on 24/7.

That only need to be turned on when you need to be in a

hypervigilant state on call.

When you need to be on high alert, when you need to be in order to make sure

that your surroundings are safe, to make sure that you are watching everything

around you and can react super fast.

And so when you're yelling at your kids, when you're just all of a

sudden calm around your kids and yelling instantly, that is your body

being in that sympathetic state.

That is your body telling you that you are not able to shut it off.

And we work with guys that have been struggling as well in PTSD treatments

because they can't shut it off.

And we can dive further into certain studies where they're talking about

HRV is a marker that tells us it's the time in between heartbeats.

When you're stressed, your heartbeat's fast.

When you are relaxed, your heart beats slow, so that time increases.

When your HRV is low that means you are living in a stress state all of the time.

And what studies show is when you are in that too, that means you're living in your

sympathetic nervous system all the time.

When you are so low and the thing is, is that studies show that it is

really hard to make it through therapy.

To get through therapy sessions and therapy treatments

when your HIV is so low.

So what we have found is once we are able to start getting you to be able to

switch out of that" I'm always on state."

Be able to start controlling that switch to turn it into hypervigilance when

you need it and off when you don't.

That is when they start making headway in their PTSD treatments.

And we have guys that thought that they had PTSD, but didn't have

all of the criteria of PTSD and we're not given a PTSD diagnosis.

And we start working with them on their stress system and a

lot of their symptoms go away.

So from this today my hope is that you really do see that what happens when you

are in a high stress state is definitely more intense than a civilian's life.

And what happens in your day-to-day stress, your long shifts, OT, admin

stresses, going to calls where they're cleared before you even get there.

You've got family stressors, family guilt.

Knowing the signs that we have started talking about today, and

these signs here, snoring, tired and wired, waking mid sleep, anger,

anxiety, no motivation and drive, short term memory, constant injuries,

cold, flus, allergies, gut struggles.

The list goes on.

We get into hormonal, if any of you have tested for low T.

I'd love to dive into that further with you because the odds are your T isn't low.

It's actually just being stolen by other hormones that your stress system needs.

And so it's showing as low, but it's actually not it's because it's being

used for something else because you're using different hormones

in a stress state all the time.

So all of these, we are gonna be diving into more in our 911 Shift Ready podcast.

So if you have not followed us yet, follow this podcast, 911 Shift Ready.

And you will then be notified to make sure that your settings are there so

that you're notified of new episodes so that you don't miss a beat.

Being the wife of an officer, I want each of you to be able to

come home at the end of your shift.

And by come home, I mean I want you to come home to a house where you are

surrounded by your spouse and kids who you have a solid relationship with

because you are focusing on what it takes to be that resilient tactical athlete.

You're aware of all of these tools that you need in order

to stay strong on the job.

This is beyond exercise and nutrition.

What you need to do to support the stress of the day to day of your

job, especially if you are in high tactical units is a priority in order

to allow you to be able to shut it off and shut it on when you need.

So you can be who you need to be at home.

Be who you need to be at work.

And just last your entire career cause most of you, this is your calling.

Most of you love what you're doing, but if you are questioning, if you

have what it takes, know that you do.

It's just most likely that you are not implementing the right tools in

order to last your entire career.

All right.

I hope that you have enjoyed this episode of the 911 Shift Ready podcast,

breaking down Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman's book on combat.

If you liked the style of an episode, let me know, and we can do more

breakdowns of videos of books and things of other trainings to help you really

understand the deep parts of them.

You really don't have to be experiencing four to six hours of sleep and live

in a hypervigilant or anxiety state for the remainder of your career.

Make sure you know the signs.

Acknowledge them and take action to make sure that you do spend the least amount

of time on the job in a stress state.

And keep switching into that resting state so that you can last your entire career.

And be the parent and spouse that you want to be at home.