A Fireman's Perspective
Total Release Experience® in the emergency services where do you start other than from someone who has been broken and joined that unique club no-one wants to be in simply wow, light and day difference to how I look at life now. I will try and be brief on my story.
I joined the Kent Fire and Rescue Service in 1994 aged 23, at the time felt invincible as you do, being a young man. Life and my career ticked by having good and bad incidents but never really noticing any mental challenges. In 2003 my life seemed to be going great and then crash, never saw anything coming. What would be the highlight of your career pulling someone alive from a burning building actually left me broken due to the conditions we endured. It took me 6 hours to get home such was my shame that I could not cope. I had counselling not knowing what to expect and to be honest felt worse from it as never had answers but believed it was making me better as I could now cope.
What I know now is time and your natural body made it easier not the process or help I received. As years moved on felt I was fine till January 2019 when a series of events left me in a very bad way, immense anger, breaking down in tears for what would be a simplest of issues, thinking of suicide. Yes, would say at rock bottom and that cross roads live or end it.
I got help through the fire service employee assist program which helped but more because that relief you’ve told someone who has listened. My subsequent CBT sessions did nothing to lift me from my depression. This is when I was introduced to the Total Release Experience® programme through a colleague who again had been in a bad place.
I didn’t really know what to expect but mentally everywhere was dark, my head was in a fog and couldn’t take anything in so was muddling through (the classic signs).
After the first session to this day cannot believe the change. My first Practice had no visions just an immense feeling of happiness, from being so down felt I was smiling like a Cheshire cat. My second practice lived a whole life of happy thoughts and visions, I couldn’t have been in a happier place. Walking from the workshop it was like walking from a dark room to brilliant light, the difference from the start to finish of the day. The subsequent days I could take things in again, could start to understand documents and just felt if this is life, I want some of this.You never notice the small changes and I hadn’t realised the world I had ended in.
Over the last 5 months I’ve carried on with the practice and this has been the key to dealing with my Issues. Things I struggled to talk about without breaking down have closure on them. The images never go but I can openly talk about the experience without issue. I’m part of a wellbeing committee for Kent and also a wellbeing champion, this is someone who is listed to help support or just listen to others if they need that friendly ear.
This course should be taught to all staff and new recruits as it’s a tool that would save allot of people like myself who endured a career of mental injuries that never manifest till it’s too late.
B Rails KFRS