Adjustment Reactions and Stress

Over the past few weeks I’ve watched the stress levels of flubies increase markedly as the never ending grind of prepping continues and we endure the Chinese water torture of following the news. We go days with little or no new information, and then have a day or two where we have a deluge. Then it goes quiet again. And the endless debates and speculation often open nightmarish doors, further draining our mental resources.

I’m no shrink, so I can’t offer psychological advice, per se. But I was a paramedic for a lot of years, and trained medics as our EMS’s in-service instructor. There are a lot of parallels between that experience and this one. So perhaps I can offer some friendly advice.

Medics (in my day) worked 24-hour shifts, sometimes pulling a double, or 48 hours. A busy shift was easier than a quiet one. During a busy one, a crew might run as many as 20 calls. Staying busy beat waiting for the next call to arrive. Early on in most medic’s careers, they tend to speculate and worry a lot about what the next call will bring. Will it be a car wreck, with explosive fuel leaking from a ruptured gas tank onto a hot exhaust system? Or perhaps a kid drowned in the deep end of a pool. The scenarios were endless, and it gave us much fodder to chew on, often to our detriment.

The ones who made it, without cracking, were the ones who learned to take it call-by-call. We trained, we prepared, and then we let it go. Sure, we kept a scanner going in the bunkroom (much like visiting the flu forums) to keep up with what was going on, but we found diversions to keep us sane.

I had one partner who did Tai Chi, another was a martial arts specialist who taught me to use nunchukas, some read books, or watched Television, while others played games (poker was a stationhouse tradition). On our days off, away from the EMS, we almost all kept scanners going in our homes and our cars, and were ready to respond if need be, but we played hard, too. Windsurfing, skin diving, sailing, fishing, tennis, and competitive drinking were very popular.

Vacations were not just suggested by management, they were mandatory. When a medic started showing the signs of over work, or stress, they were told to take a shift off, and go recharge their batteries.

Occasionally, when a medic was perceived to be drowning in stress, I was assigned the job of riding with him or her to do an assessment. It would be up to me to make a recommendation to the administrator as to what corrective measures needed to be taken. Not all of the stress was job produced, as everyone had their own troubles that they carried with them from home. Not a happy assignment for me, I assure you, but a necessary one.

We didn’t have counselors or department shrinks back then. It wasn’t in the budget. And so if a medic ran a particularly bad call (one medic responded to his own father’s suicide by shotgun), we handled it in-house. We depended upon one-another in a way that, for civilians, would be hard to understand.

As far as dealing with a crisis, the one’s that survived and were effective in their jobs, were the one’s that developed a certain degree of irony and humor. I always knew my partner was okay, no matter how dire the situation, if he was making a joke. Many folks didn’t understand that, but the gallows humor that we, and the cops, firefighters, doctors, and nurses (who were the most outrageous) embraced, kept us sane.

As was put to me succinctly the other day by one of our members, in a war zone, Rambo cracks while Hawkeye Pierce survives. While I’ve always known, and embraced, that concept, I’d never heard it put so well before.

Preparing for a pandemic that may never come, or that may take months to fulminate, is fraught with stress and anxiety. Most of us are stretched physically, mentally, and financially to the breaking point. It is to be expected that this will take a toll. And no one is immune. Not you, or your family, and certainly not I.

If I could offer any advice to flubies, it would be to finish your preps, and then take a deep breath, and find a way to relax. This could be a long haul, and we all need more in our lives than waiting for the next shoe to drop. No, I’m not suggesting we stop watching, or posting, or remaining vigilant. We all need to keep up to date, and to have a flu-friendly outlet.

But for our own mental health, we all need some balance. You can’t sit on `ready’ 24/7, with adrenalin coursing thru your systems with each new news report. Over time, that could be as deadly as the virus.

Take a tip from an old medic. Walk away from the computer every once in awhile, and find a diversion. Don’t forget to live life while prepping and waiting for a crisis. And try to keep your sense of humor, no matter how bad things might appear.

Do those things, and you will be better prepared, no matter what comes our way.