Stress-tolerance, Overload, Vulnerability, Courage, and Help-seeking Behaviour
(22 December 23)
Have you ever been late for something important? Were once charged for being Absent from place of… because you had a big night and turned up late for a morning shift? I was actually charged in my early years for smiling, ffs! How about your first presentation on leadership course – or later, in front of a large and senior audience, when you realise you haven’t brought your tie; so you fashion one out of a black sock and hide its lack of length under your Navy woolly jumper? How did you feel when you turned up and your point of contact then told you they were going to start with a group photo, so to take your jumper off?
More seriously, have you been involved with treating a serious casualty? Have you been involved in a fire at sea – or at 200ft, hiding in a thermocline, while a Bear Delta (or was it Foxtrot?) maritime patrol aircraft has been detected by the Dabbers above your boat, and is smashing the Jezebel channels? What about approaching the gate of a Patrol Base in a combat zone before walking out among the enemy?
Can you remember what it felt like? Stressful right? But I have another question for you:
At what point does the stress dissipate?
For me, it was when I started work in earnest in each situation. Whether that was realising nobody had clocked I was late, when I began the lecture, or when I put my weapons into State 1, then patrolling out of the gate and starting my 5’s and 20’s. Not worrying about how I might be killed, but doing what I had been taught over the previous 5 months gave the best chance of not being killed.
This is what is colloquially known as the training kicks in. What it actually represents is stress tolerance. Something vital to military and Emergency Services personnel to function under massive stressors, and is linked to the Fight/Flight/Freeze [/Appease] response.
A single episode of acute stress generally doesn’t cause problems for healthy people; particularly those who exercise good self-care and ensure they get to ‘open the tap’ to reduce the level in our stress bucket.
We learn stress tolerance in the military from our training; from basic training to pre-deployment training and on promotion courses, this tolerance of stress is trained into us. Pack marches, Combat Survival, Exercises and Sea Training; all are designed to instil in us an ability to perform under the highest of pressures – subjecting us to the kind of stress that would overcome most civilians very quickly.
We do this by numbing or shutting out anything that can break our resolve to be ready to get the job done when needed. Free-time. Family. Emotions. Well, most emotions. Anger is okay, cos that helps us conquer those most despicable of enemies; anxiety and fear.
The military and Emergency Services are among the most noble of professions. Cap Badge rivalry is how we are motivated to prove that we are the best of the bunch. We are also motivated by the fact that we must never let our mates down; the team always comes first because that way we complete our task and the mission is successful. This gives our lives purpose. Is there any more noble profession than providing a nation with the security its civ. pop. need to go about their daily business? I personally don’t think so.
We push ourselves harder to be continually better, so that we can be proud of ourselves and our team. We train hard, so we can fight easy, so our boss doesn’t have to break out the old “Mate – you have really let the team down.” Uuurgh! What is the opposite of Pride? Shame. So; anger, guilt and shame are a-okay. They are the only emotions allowed because they will help us win the fight.
But how many of us have really had to fight, and how often? Whether that’s a deadly fire, the continual threat posed by natures greatest power; the sea, or by Terry Taliban who wanted to ruin our day.
So, even in benign times, we are required to keep up that tempo to reinforce that stress tolerance so we are ready to go at short notice; to the point that in the Readying, Ready, Reset cycle, how much reset time do we actually get? This is what keeps our stress bucket topped up.
And when we experience too much stress at one time, or experience significant stress for a prolonged period of time, this can cause us significant problems. That is what is meant by ‘problematic’ stress. Mild acute stress can actually be beneficial — it can spur you into action, motivate and energize you. But chronic stress often leaves no room for release; to de-stress.
Continued high levels of stress, or accumulated trauma, fills our stress bucket to the point of overflow; surface tension being the only thing keeping the water from spilling over. We may begin having issues with our routines or with our health; insomnia, self-medicating with alcohol or other drugs, and poor eating habits, in search of a dopamine hit to make us feel better artificially.
But once that meniscus at the top of the bucket is bulging with surface tension, how much does it take to break that tension?
Very little. The slightest touch from the slightest object.
The proverbial ‘straw that broke the came’s back,’ may actually be something incredibly unimportant and small, but the tension holding everything together gives, and the bucket spills out; sometimes dramatically.
Having been used to dealing with whatever is thrown at us during our lives and careers – often real brutal and incessant stressors – we now can’t believe that we ‘lost our shit’ over something so small.
That’s where our previously motivating emotions, shame and guilt, kick in.
MESHA’s Group Emotional & Relationship Skills (GEARS) course (Lane, 2020) cites Brabban & Turkingtons development of the ‘Stress Bucket Model’ discussing how prolonged stress requires an outlet, in order to empty – or at least reduce the content of – our stress bucket. This suggests that we all have a limit of our ability to cope with prolonged stress; whether a Clerk, a Ranger, SASR, Commando, or Submariner.
The problem now is that we have been overwhelmed and in the face of any kind of stress, no matter how previously insignificant, our mind is withdrawing back into survival mode: fight or flight.
How does this manifest? Anger… or?
Avoidance. Avoidance of anything that causes us stress; because stress is now interpreted as a threat. If we have been overwhelmed mentally, and have lost our executive function, this leaves the more primitive aspect of our brain take over to protect us. It makes an instinctive shortcut and interprets threat as something that is going to harm us, so when it detects a threat, it smashes adrenaline out and we feel the fight or flight mode. And what, in modern life, causes us stress?
Pretty much everything!
How is that shame and guilt doing now?
In time, it becomes a spiral of loss that we can seemingly now do nothing about, so we don’t recognise ourselves anymore. We feel weak. We feel broken.
If you haven’t suffered it, you have no idea how damaging a loss of perceived self-efficacy is to military personnel and veterans; particularly to those who are used to taking high-stress situations in their stride.
We had purpose; we had identity; we had a strong sense of self-efficacy.
Now we feel incapable; we don’t know what our role is anymore; and if we are medically discharged, we have lost our ‘tribe’ – our identity.
This is why it is absolutely vital to manage our stress – both acute and chronic.
Effective stress management involves avoiding the stress bucket overflow scenario, by identifying and managing both acute and chronic stress before it overwhelms us.
If we are going to take on help seeking behaviour when we are ill or becoming ill, we need first to admit to ourselves that we may have an issue. Perennial high-performing individuals think they’re mentally bullet-proof; because they always have been. They have proven time and again that nothing can crack them.
When cracks start to appear and we begin to notice them, what quality do we need to show in order to accept that we might need help?
Here’s a clue from someone of whom you may or may not have heard. They define vulnerability, in this sense, as:
“…emotional exposure. It’s that unstable feeling
we get when we step out of our comfort zone or
do something that forces us to loosen control.”
Professor Brené Brown.
Professor Brown is a world renowned exponent of the belief that we have to walk through vulnerability to reach courage.
Courage is an ADF value, is it not? I imagine it is also a value of most people in the Services, whether recognised or otherwise.
Of course we have to remain confident in ourselves and our abilities to carry out the work we do in the military, but here is a world renowned researcher saying that there can be no courage without vulnerability.
But hang on, we’re talking about a profession where we may have to show courage every day during a deployment to a warlike theatre, or in e.g. Cops’ case, every time they step out of the door; can they really afford to be vulnerable?
Okay, let’s look at it another way:
Does it take courage for a veteran, a military person, or an Emergency Services member – let’s say someone who has performed strongly their whole career – to walk into the Health Centre and say “Can I see someone about my mental health concern.” You bet your tight, brown puckereds it does.
So like most things, it is horses for courses.
When we step out among the enemy, or we are sat in our submarine doing something tricky and we hear a maritime patrol aircraft drop a bunch of sonobouys, we need to be on our game. We need to bring to bear all that stress tolerance we’ve learned so well and we need to get the job done.
But once we are outside that environment, we need to empty our stress bucket, at least a little, so stuff doesn’t get ugly.
It is at these quieter times that we are allowed to show vulnerability – even if it is just doing a self-check. The more self-checks we do, honestly – and showing the vulnerability to accept when we might need a little help, the better chance we have of keeping that stress tolerance intact. Once you’ve conquered that, follow through on the conclusion and get that help. Find a therapist that works for you (it may take a few, so either be prepared to try more than one – and, if you’ve not travelling well for some time, be ready for quite a few sessions and again; be vulnerable in their company.That is real resilience.
Adapted from subject matter covered in MESHA’s Group Emotional & Relationship Skills (GEARS) course (Lane, 2020)
The Finest ESO… in the World? Probably
(15 December 2023)
Resilience. It is… everywhere. At least, it is being talked about everywhere. Some would have you believe it is the silver bullet to all our work/life balance problems. I’m not sure it isn’t just a resource to be utilised to wedge in a few more tasks per day.
My favourite description of resilience comes from an English footballer: Bouncebackability (Dowie, 2004). But I’m not convinced that we’re getting it right regarding resilience; it seems to me that we’re being told, Make the most of your downtime because it is only going to get less. If we’re really serious about mental health and wellbeing, I know it is a complex beastie, but I don’t think the resilience method is going to cut it. We need more than that. Or at least we need to focus more on one particular part of it; and that part is psychoeducation.
For the past two or three years, I have had the fortune to be Facilitating transition and wellbeing courses for Military & Emergency Services Health Australia (MESHA); an organisation like no other I have ever encountered. Not only have they provided VESPA with an account to receive donations (that reminds me…), but they are all about outcomes for their key stakeholders; and their key stakeholders are veterans, ADF personnel, First Responders and their families. They don’t chase the big money or fashionable projects; they have a proven history of educating the industry of what the next important thing is going to be. For me, they are the David Bowie of Services’ mental health and wellbeing; they are the followed, not the followers.
I do this casual work because I have lived experience. Experience of a wide variety of military theatres of operations, I was trained to Paramedic standard as a Maritime Medic (though I did far, far more logistics and primary care than paramedicine) and I managed operating departments, and my father was a Firefighter. Mostly though, I work for MESHA because I also have a history of an acute mental collapse, where finding my way from the airport security gate to the aircraft door was beyond me.
My work with MESHA has taught me that in the military, and probably the Emergency Services (but you’d have to ask my father about that and he popped his proverbial over five years ago), that understanding stress tolerance and how the military are trained to cope with all the crap that can be thrown at them and remain content, is key to better veteran wellbeing. They have also shown me that they’re not about image or trends; they are about research-based outcomes that improve mental health and wellbeing.
I am a bit of a fan, obviously. You should be too.
Tune in next time… it may be a while, when I’m going to discuss what I learned from MESHA about stress tolerance, courage and vulnerability.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
VETERANS AND EMERGENCY SERVICES PARABIATHLON AUSTRALIA 