Breach Your Mind
Explore life's depths and unlock the secrets of mental well-being on "Breach Your Mind." Join us as we navigate the intricacies of the human experience, offering insights, inspiration, and practical strategies for a fulfilling life. Get ready to breach the barriers of conventional thinking, embrace self-discovery, and nurture your mental health. Let's embark on a transformative journey together. Welcome to Breach Your Mind.
Breach Your Mind
Behind the Yellow Tape: A Dark Memory Revisited
Join me in this gripping episode as I delve into a haunting case from my early days as a rookie—a double homicide that tested my resilience. At the crime scene, I appeared unfazed, but little did I know that the experience would leave a lingering impact on my psyche.
Months later, an unexpected revelation came to light—my subconscious mind had been on high alert, anticipating potential threats. Realizing my anxiety allowed me to face it head-on and conquer its hold on me. Tune in to learn how I triumphed over my anxieties and emerged stronger than ever before.
Team one stand by Copy. Team one stand by Breach, breach, breach. Hey guys, welcome back. So on the last episode we talked about how I felt after working one of my cases or work in a case, and this week I wanted to do kind of the same thing. You know, I'm hoping to lead somewhere else with it, but for now I want to go with this one.
Speaker 1:So many years ago now, back when I was, I'd been here or been on my job for probably three years We'll go with three years, so still very much rookie and we're on night shift, late in the evening I don't remember exactly what time it was. We're at the office and one of our dispatcher sticks her heads out the door and she starts yelling for my sergeant. He goes running down the hall and not long after he's running back saying come on, we got to go. They dispatch the call and the only information we had at the time was that there was a woman who was crying out for help as best she could. It was difficult to understand and she was saying that her husband was shot or that she had been shot. That's what it was Said that she had been shot. There's only information we had. So we didn't, you know, didn't know what we were going to. All we knew is there was a woman that was saying she'd been shot and dispatch was having a hard time understanding what she was saying. So we're racing to try to get there. I think, when I look back at the time and looked at the, the call logs on it, I believe it only took less than 10 minutes for us to get there.
Speaker 1:You know, in the, the job we do, you know, response times make a difference in public safety and we were trying. We were trying to get there as fast as we could and on this particular road it actually crossed over another main road. So one road on the right, one road on the left, and both roads on the right and left have the same name. So we needed to know, you know, which side of the road, based off of the numeric, we needed to go. Unfortunately, we didn't have the technology we do now where you know we can pretty much pinpoint a, an address.
Speaker 1:So while we're getting there, as we get close to the road, sergeant comes over the radio and he says all right, you guys go to the right, we're going to the left. Whoever comes up to the house, call it out. Okay, so that's what we did. So me and the guy behind me we got to the road on the right, we made the right, they went to the left. We're starting to go down the road. We're noticing that the numbers are going down, and where we started at was not the house we were supposed to be at. So get on the radio. Hey, this is definitely not it. It's going to be on your guys side.
Speaker 1:So we turn around and beeline it back across the road, get over to the other side of the road and we catch up to the other units, using the spotlights, trying to locate the address, trying to find the numbers on the mailbox. And as we get there, you know we, we know we've got somebody that's been shot. So we want to try to keep, you know, the cover of darkness to to our benefit. So as we get there, we cut off the lights, pull into the driveway and, guys, when I tell you it was dark once we got out of the cars, especially considering we had the headlights on and then the interior light cuts on. When you get out of the car, you know your night vision really gets hampered with white light, with a lot of different color lights, but especially with white light, your night vision really gets hampered. So when we get out I mean you, you couldn't. Once you shut the doors, we're. We're so deep in the woods you couldn't see your hand if you'd put it in front of your face hardly.
Speaker 1:So we're getting out, you know, we're quietly shutting the car doors and we're trying to make our way up to the house, and all of us kind of heard where the other one was. So we just kind of stacked up on one another and put our hands on our backs, on each other's backs. As we start approaching, we start getting toward the house. And as we're approaching, I want to say that there was, there was one light on and it was. It was pretty dim when we started up toward the house. Obviously, once we got into the, the area of the house, that was brighter. But as we get to the house, you know I'm towards the, the end of the stack, the, so multiple people in a line. We call that a stack. So we're toward the. I'm toward the end of the stack. It's me and, I believe, one other guy. And as we get up there, you know most of the most of the shifts peels off, they go in through the garage and they're starting up to go inside the house.
Speaker 1:Me and the guy with with me Continue on. We're going to go ahead and start checking the exterior of the the residents. We want to see if there's any threats. We want to see if there's any evidence. You know we're we're just trying to do the best we can with the limited information that we got. And as we start going around the house, we get to the back side of the house. I look down and notice that there's a phone wire that's been cut. I don't know if that's relevant or not. I never heard. Um, you know, after the case was over with, I never heard whether that was any relevance or not, but I did. I did see it and noted it. We continue on.
Speaker 1:There's several outbuildings on the property and me and this guy go and we start checking these outbuildings. Now, mind you, when we're looking for these outbuildings, the primary thing we're looking for is is an individual. We're looking for anybody that may be a threat, anybody that may be injured. You know that's our primary Responsibility. When we first get on a scene like that, we're trying to make sure Anyone that needs help gets it and anyone that is a threat, that we're able to detain them or stop them from being a threat. So we're checking these outbuildings.
Speaker 1:The other team, or the other part of the shift, is is inside the house and we hear chatter come over the radio. That was my sergeant calling back to our dispatch and letting them know that we needed an ambulance and we had one female. So once we finish checking the outbuildings the guy that was with me we turn and we beeline it back to the house. And you know, obviously I can't speak or won't speak on what the the rest of the shifts saw, but you know, as we started coming up to that door, that's when you notice the broken glass. You notice the broken glass, the broken window, excuse me and as you step inside You're just hitting the face with this overwhelming smell of gasoline. The floor is real slippery. You know, to us it was very, very Immediately evident that someone had poured gas all over, or gasoline all over the interior of this home, or at least where we were. But it was, it was overwhelming, I mean it. It slapped you in the face just as soon as you come through the door.
Speaker 1:We're getting through there and you know, I see my sergeant. He's, you know, helping the, the female that's in the home. He's helping her hold a rag on to her face. She had received a gunshot to her face and was bleeding pretty heavy, so he was helping keep pressure on that. They'd already cleared the home and as I walked through the home um, you know, to see if there was anything that I could pick up with my eyes without manipulating anything, I stuck my head in one of the rooms and there was a deceased male laying on the bed and, okay, so this is a homicide. This, this is. This is not just Um, an aggravated assault is what we call it here, or an attempted murder, this is, this is a homicide. Now, and I back away and moved down the hall, look into another room and there's another male who is deceased. Both males had been shot and were deceased there. There was no ability to help them whatsoever. Both, if I recall correctly, both, have been shot in the head.
Speaker 1:So, seeing this, you know, the ambulance gets there, the fire department gets there, we get the victim out of the home, the living victim out of the home, and we back out of the house. Then comes the, the Concern, after we've already notified our investigators. We've notified the crime scene unit. Um, you know, our command staff has all been Made aware of what's going on. You know, typically we back away and we just continue to hold the scene.
Speaker 1:But as I, as I sat there, as we sat there, uh, I mean, we gotten talking about the, the overwhelming smell of gasoline and how much gas had been spread throughout that home. And of course, that's when you know it kind of runs through your head, is. You know, was someone trying to set the house on fire? Well, they're trying to set the house on fire Before we got there. Were they trying to set the house on fire to get rid of any evidence? Were they trying to bait us? You know, were they waiting for us to get into the house and then set the house on fire? And, you know, maybe they just got spooked and and ran off. You know, all these thoughts are going through my head as well as the rest of the shift, and you know, then we got to thinking well, there's still the potential for a fire and inside of that home Is the only evidence that we're possibly going to have right now. It's the only place we know where there's going to likely be evidence of what happened in that home. So we get hold of the fire department, we get the fire department to Bring some fans out and they put some fans on the doors to help draw out fumes inside the home. That way, you know, we don't have this build-up of gas fumes inside the home and, you know, potentially have a bomb from something going off or or whatever. Either way, we didn't want any more evidence getting destroyed, you know, because of something that at least was preventable at the moment, which was, you know, just drawing the gas vapors out. So they're doing those things Eventually, our investigators get there, the crime scene unit gets there, all of our command staff shows up and you know, now we're in a holding pattern Because at this point there's there's nothing for those of us that are the first responders, there's nothing more for us to do.
Speaker 1:You know, we're literally there to answer questions that any of the investigators may have, so on and so forth. So we're standing around and One of the guys on the shift he was new, you know he'd he'd been in public safety for a little while, in the sense of, you know he worked with the jail division. He worked as a jail officer for a little while and then went through the academy and and became certified and now he was working in the job with us. So he was still in what we call field training, for for those that aren't familiar with it, it'd be similar to on the job training or OJT. So we have field training and he's still in field training. And this is, you know, mind you, somebody who's not long out of the academy, somebody who's never seen things like this before Walking into a scene where you know it's one thing to have one person who's you know, needing medical aid because they've been shot, but we've all gone to a double homicide and it was an attempted triple homicide, you know, that's that's a lot for somebody's brain to kind of take in.
Speaker 1:So we're standing around and and he looks at us and he goes. I, you know, I kind of Kind of feel like we should be talking to somebody and you know I had three years, like I said, roughly on the job at the time and I look at him. I'm like, what do you mean? And what do you mean? We need to talk to somebody? What the investigators already here who you want to talk to? He goes, no, not like an investigator, like Like, maybe we need to talk to a chaplain or a priest, or I said Okay, because at the time it wasn't dawning on me, because I was fine, you know, I, I wasn't feeling anything Regarding what we seen, what we saw, what we experienced, what we smell, that it was done over with, we were safe. That's, that's all that mattered to me. But obviously it was bothering him and I hadn't considered that. So I finally was able to pick up what he was putting down and I walked over because our chaplains we have a agency chaplains Our chaplains had a couple of our chaplains that showed up and I walked over to the one that I was, you know, very familiar with and I said, hey, do you?
Speaker 1:Uh, you think maybe, maybe come talk to us for a second. I said I think at least one of the guys is kind of having a little trouble, you know, maybe come over and and talk. He's like sure, no problem. So he walks over and, you know, I kind of gathered the shift up and we walk off to the side, away from everybody, and, uh, he was really good, still is, and he's, he's really good at breaking the ice and, and you know, kind of getting the conversation started regardless if it's a tough conversation or not. Um, you know he's really good at at doing that and so he just he went right to work. So he gets in and you know he starts up conversation and he's like guys, you know, I just kind of want to give you all a chance to kind of talk about, you know how you may be feeling, what you saw, whatever. And uh, you know he looks at me and of course I couldn't really help out much because at the time I I wasn't feeling anything. I'm like no, I'm, I'm good, it's.
Speaker 1:It's another scene, you know, and, and I know to those of you that don't work in public safety, safety that comes off as callous, you know it comes off, is not caring and it's. It's by far not that it's not. We do care. You know, if we didn't care we wouldn't do the job that we do. We wouldn't be in this profession if we didn't care. But you get accustomed to seeing things so much that it doesn't phase you like it does everyone else. You learn to cope with it, you learn to deal with it, you compartmentalize it and you push forward, or else you're not going to make it in the job. So to me it was nothing. You know it was.
Speaker 1:It was another scene. Yes, it was a, it was a double homicide and people have lost their lives. There was another one who was fighting for her life and as bad as that was, as bad as it was for the person still fighting for her life, as bad as it was for the individuals who lost their lives and that entire family, you know it, it wasn't phasing me and it's just because, you know, three years in, I've been on multiple scenes where there were individuals who were deceased, either it be a wife or a baby, or whether it be because of a natural cause, because of whether it be because of a self-inflicted injury. I've been around death quite a bit, so it just wasn't really wasn't wasn't really affecting me. And we move around and we come to the FTO and you know, he's like, you know it's just kind of, just kind of messed up and he gave his feelings about what he was feeling and what he was. You know what he experienced and we talked for a little while longer and you know, eventually we we ended the conversation and that wasn't the end because this scene pushed on, you know. Mind you, we came on, you know, early evening.
Speaker 1:Our shift started at five, which meant 12 hours later, five o'clock in the morning, we were supposed to be going home. However, that wasn't the case. Because of the scene and because of the investigation that was ensuing, we couldn't leave, we had to stay there, we had to be available for questions if needed. And the morning pushes on. You know, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, someone made a breakfast run. We were standing out by the road near one of the fire trucks, sitting there eating scrambled eggs and grits from one of the local kitchens, and which was funny, because my sergeant is a Yankee and he was not a fan of grits, so that was that was enjoyable, to watch him try to eat grits that early in the morning when he definitely did not like them. We get through breakfast and we push on, and now we're getting close to lunch. You know, mind you, we'd already been there 12 hours. You know, now we're looking at another six, seven hours later and we're still there, we're still on the scene, we're still in the same clothes we were. You know, we hadn't gone anywhere, we hadn't left.
Speaker 1:Finally, you know, we talked with the investigators and talked with the command staff and they said all right, guys, head back to the office, go ahead and knock out your reports, get your reports done and then you guys are free to go home. Okay, so that's what we did. You hit it back and we all sat down and I remember we were sitting there in the computer room and it was quiet. Literally the only thing you heard was a loud noise. Literally the only thing you heard was the tapping of the keys on the keyboard.
Speaker 1:You know, normally we were all in there, or there were multiple, multiple people in there all working on reports. There was some kind of laughing, there was some camaraderie, there was, you know, some kind of jocularity going on at the time and we were all just just beat. You know, there was, there was nothing less than us. So we sat there, we typed over our reports and once we were done, you know, sat there with Sarge and we went through them to make sure everything was grammatically correct. All the boxes were filled in, everything that needed information, had information and just made sure the reports were complete. That way when we left, you know, there was no need for phone calls or anything like that for any obvious things we could have taken care of. Good to have taken care of. We get it done.
Speaker 1:Everybody leaves and I remember I got home and I crashed like I was out, walk in, take the uniform off, grab a quick shower and done. You know, there there was nothing and to me that was the end of it. You know it's another scene. It was a really, really long day, but it was just another scene. You know, wasn't wasn't the context of what the scene was was new, but the fact that there were deceased individuals, individuals with gunshots, that was stuff I'd seen before. So you know it was it and we moved on and I don't remember remember exactly how long it was after that case. I do know that they had still not at least let it be known who the killer was.
Speaker 1:And I'm coming outside and it for many of you that get that heard me talking about this when we were talking with Pete. You know, you heard me say it. Then I'm a right-handed guy. I do everything right-handed. I can do things with my left hand, but I'm a right-handed guy. You know eat, drink, you know, whatever. It's all right-handed.
Speaker 1:So one morning we're on day shift by this point, and I'm coming out of the house and I was doing the same thing I always do come out of the house. I've already locked the door knob. Come out of the house, pull my keys out, lock the deadbolt and you know getting ready to walk over to my car. Well, as I shut the door, I'm trying to get the key into the deadbolt and it just wasn't happening. I couldn't get the key in the deadbolt. I'm fumbling with the keys, trying to figure out which key it was. You know thinking maybe I just had the wrong key and I'm steady fighting with with this deadbolt. And I just remember thinking why am I having such a hard time? I never had this, such this much of a hard time with this door.
Speaker 1:And I looked down and I noticed that I'm using my left hand. That was it something that? It's not that my right hand was holding something, so I had to use my left hand. I was just using it. I didn't know I was using it and wasn't, until I looked down to continue to try to investigate why I was having such a hard time.
Speaker 1:That I noticed I was even using my left hand and I'm looking at it and I remember thinking why am I using that? You know that's that's out of character for me. It's out of character for me it's. It doesn't follow the pattern of events that I go through on my normal routine going to work. So why would I break that pattern? And as I sat there for a second you know, again, this took seconds but as I sat there, I looked down and I noticed that my right hand was resting on the grip of my gun and that struck me as odd because there was no threat. It's not exactly comfortable to, you know, sit there with your arm raised up like this. So why was my hand on my gun? I couldn't fathom as to why I would, one, be breaking my normal pattern of events and, two, be prepared to draw my gun when there was no threat.
Speaker 1:Thought it was weird and I grabbed the grab, took my hand off my gun, grab my key lock, my deadbolt, got in my car and as I was on the way to work, you know, I thought about it. It wouldn't leave me alone. I couldn't understand why I was having such a hard time with this and I was going over everything that I couldn't. You know, did I hear something? That I see something? When I walked out the door, did my eyes actually catch something suspicious? But because it wasn't enough to alert me and, you know, draw my immediate attention wasn't enough to make me feel like I needed to stay on guard, you know. So I kept thinking about it and ultimately, because I couldn't find anything, ultimately what it wound up coming back to is because of what I saw on that scene. You know, yes, I had seen deceased persons before.
Speaker 1:I had worked shootings before, in terms of self-inflicted. You know, I'd worked accidental shootings. I have worked a multitude of cases as a first responder, but I'd never walked into a scene like that, a scene where this was obvious malice, that someone this wasn't an accident someone wasn't cleaning their gun and accidentally shot their friends. Somebody wasn't cleaning their gun and accidentally shot themselves. You know, it wasn't a hunter that was pulling his rifle out of his, out of his vehicle and the trigger gets pulled because it was still loaded and the safety wasn't on. It was none of that. This was two people that were hunted down in their own home and shot while they were asleep. This was one woman who, by the grace of God, was able to move quickly enough that she didn't take the full blast of the gunshot, that the individual that shot her didn't kill her. The odor of gasoline throughout the entire home as the offender was either trying to set it on fire or destroy evidence. This is stuff that I had never seen before, you know, especially approaching up in the pitch-black dark of night in the woods and walking right into a situation like this.
Speaker 1:Guys, the the only explanation for what was happening with me was that, and witnessing that and seeing those things and smelling those smells and going through all of that that, while consciously I was not bothered with it subconsciously because I didn't know who was responsible for ending these individuals lives and nearly killing this woman my brain was telling me that there was still a killer on the loose, there was still someone who had the ability to kill me. Out there. Now, some of you may be listening to this or watching this and you think, well, duh, that's every day. That hasn't changed. Yeah, you're right, you're a hundred percent correct. I do not disagree with you, and that's no different than me telling people who say, oh well, I couldn't do your job because how dangerous it is. You have such a high rate of of death and this that any other you realize you can. You can, you know, die in your car on the way to your desk job. You can die in your car on your way to vacation, you can die anywhere. You know, I get, I get the fact that there's someone out there with the ability that could kill me every day. I get that.
Speaker 1:But at the time, because of what I experienced and having had not experienced it before, my brain was trying to keep me safe. Because I was not addressing it, because I had not voiced to anyone or even thought about it oh my own, because I didn't. I didn't think about it at all until people would come and asked me and ask me about things. I didn't think about it. I had one guy pull into my yard cutting our, our three-quarters of an acre lot with a push mower and this guy drives into my yard very rude, by the way just to sit here and talk to me about the case because it made local media. Eventually it would make national media. But he pulls all the way into my yard just to talk to me about this case and give me his theories or his. What am I? What were? Am I looking for conspiracy theories on what he thought happened? You know, I didn't care, I was cutting my grass. You just pull up in my yard Like, first off?
Speaker 1:Who drives up into somebody's yard, who just drives into the grass and not, like I was, by my driveway, which was paved, by the way. So I, like you know it was near my driveway and he just kind of pulled off no it like drove through my yard to get to me because he didn't want to stop, get out and walk over to me Just to sit here and talk to me about something, because he saw my vehicle, my work vehicle, sitting in the driveway. That's rude. If any of you ever get the idea that that's what you think you want to do, don't Know ahead of time. It's rude. You deserve to have somebody drive through your yard if you're going to do that to someone.
Speaker 1:But moving on, so I hadn't thought about it and my brain which is the only thing that makes logical sense to me my brain was like look, since you're not gonna take any action to keep us safe, I'm just gonna run some things in the background here. Okay, bud, I'm just gonna take care of a few things and you just go about your happy, little, merry life and I'll just keep us safe. Okay, you just continue being useless. That's what my brain had to have been thinking. Why else would I be standing outside of my door at a quarter after four in the morning with my hand resting on my gun and not just relaxed, tense, rigid, ready to pull, ready to find target? You know, everything that I witnessed and the fact that I had not addressed it had caused me and what I would guess would be some kind of anxiety. Now, this wasn't something that lasted.
Speaker 1:Once I realized what was going on, I was able to rationalize what happened to me, what I experienced, what my friends experienced, my coworkers experienced, what my community experienced. Once I was able to think about those things and rationalize why, in that one moment, I was standing there ready to protect myself. Like that, I was better. It never happened again Now. I can't tell you how many times it happened before that time, because I didn't even know it was happening then, but it happened then. And then, once I came to grips with everything and I told myself look, there's no reason for you to be concerned right now. You're safe and even if you are not safe, you're gonna do the best you can to take care of yourself.
Speaker 1:Once I was able to make those rationalizations, it didn't happen again, and there were many a times where I specifically made sure nope, right hand user, the key lock, the deadbolt, and we go. So literally all it took for me was just recognizing to myself what I had gone through and what I experienced and then rationalizing the realization that I wasn't the target that night. I may be the target someday, but I wasn't the target that night, nor was I the nights after that. The individual that perpetrated that crime on those three people wanted to go after those three people, not me. And after that I was better After that not that I was ill to begin with, but I didn't have that subconscious anxiety that was affecting me anymore. So it was just further proof that one we can experience and be exposed to traumas that can affect us and our personal life at work. We've talked about it before and this is just another example to show how that can happen. Again, this was something that I was doing subconsciously. It's not an action I intended to take but on top of showing how we can be exposed to these things, just simply doing our job, how many headlines have there been over the last several years about workplace violence? The church, I believe, out in Texas where the person walked in and started shooting up the congregation. They're just having church, they're in their place of worship having church and somebody walks in. These things can happen anywhere.
Speaker 1:Often enough, it's something as simple as having a conversation, like the debrief that we had had the night of to help my coworker, which I did find out that he apparently still didn't care to be down that road For the longest time he would not drive down that road. That was something I understood. I could understand that because of what I went through with the drowning case that we talked about last time. So I can understand that. But he went through some things after that. He still had some things he had to come to grips with and have a resolution. For him to get past that, it was just a matter of dealing with it. Like my case, it was just me addressing it. Was it something I had to go see a professional about or talk to someone about? It was just had to come to that resolution on my own once I realized there was a problem. It was that simple. It's not always that simple.
Speaker 1:There are plenty of times where individuals need more help and getting those solutions, those resolutions, help getting to that point. They can't get past what they saw. They can't get past that smell. That's the reason why so many people are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. They experienced a trauma that affected them in such a way that they couldn't deal with it, and because they didn't deal with it, it needed to be addressed. And because they haven't addressed this situation, it's causing them further and further traumatic incidents. It's causing them further stress. It's causing them to develop poor coping mechanisms, often enough that we wind up doing that. We wind up trying to solve the problem ourselves and develop poor coping mechanisms. Whether it's behavioral things, whether it's a substance, we wind up trying to help ourselves but in turn, we wind up causing more damage when we should have gone and actually talked with someone, when we should have actually gone and gotten help. And that's something that individuals. That's a decision that individuals have to make for themselves, but it happens and it can happen in the blink of an eye. It can happen at any moment.
Speaker 1:The only thing we can do is one mitigate the situation once it comes and then address it once we've successfully navigated the situation. Address it, whether it's individually, whether it's with a group of people that you trust, whether it's with a mental health provider, whether it's a member of clergy, it doesn't matter, but you address it. Don't act like I did. I was being Mr Macho Wasn't bothering me and truly I felt that it wasn't, but clearly it was, because once I addressed it I no longer had that issue anymore.
Speaker 1:So if there's anything you can take away from this particular podcast, aside from, you know the fact that it doesn't matter what your job is, you can be exposed to traumatic incidents. Take away the fact that we need to put our egos aside. We need to put what we think we know and what we think we can handle aside and be honest with ourselves to be able to sit there and take it a good long hard. Look at what we've gone through Whether it's one incident, whether it's repeated incidents, you know. Take a good long hard. Look at it and start trying to come to grips with what you experienced and try to find a resolution for it. Maybe it doesn't need a resolution, maybe it already has a resolution from the time that you think about it, but at least think about it. At least give it the time and the respect that the incident deserves to make sure you're okay to figure out whatever lessons you needed to learn from that particular incident and move on to the next and if it's, if you're taking that time to reflect and to acknowledge what you went through and you make that determination.
Speaker 1:This is not something I can do on my own, or maybe I'll try to do it and then you decide later on. This is not something I can do on my own. Put the ego aside, guys. Push that to the side and go find somebody to talk to. Could be somebody you trust, be a co-worker, could be a friend, could be your spouse, could be a member of clergy. Find somebody you trust. And if you can't find an individual or maybe you're just concerned that if you express it to one of these individuals that you know it's going to affect how they see you, which is something that happens often enough, it happens a tremendous amount then go see someone. Go see a mental health professional, a counselor, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, it doesn't matter. Go see someone in the mental health field that can help you navigate whatever situation you're going through.
Speaker 1:You know I wrote a paper about it on, or paper on PTSD when I was still in school and I talked in there about children developing PTSD due to domestic violence in the home, and there were a lot of people that didn't know that that occurred. They didn't know that children could develop PTSD because of the constant exposure to domestic violence. How many people think about yourself, think about your friends? How many people do you know are sensitive when it comes to domestic violence? Sensitive not necessarily in the terms of they get upset, but you know, maybe when there's loud yelling you see them kind of shut down. Maybe when there's loud yelling and screaming like that, you know they too get amped up, even though they're not involved in it. You know, have you ever seen any of these things? You know it can happen.
Speaker 1:These traumatic incidents can affect you, regardless of when or where they happen. Doesn't have to be a work thing, doesn't have to be a home thing, doesn't have to be on the road thing, it doesn't matter. Yummy, people were diagnosed with PTSD just from watching 9-11 happen on TV. I was surprised by that. I never in a million years would have thought that someone could develop post-traumatic stress disorder because they watched something on TV. You know, having learned about it now, it makes a lot of sense. You know to think about, especially if you're a person that doesn't like horror movies. You know, think about that first horror movie you watched and how it made you feel. Did that possibly have an effect on you as you grew older, as you moved into adulthood? Now you know not necessarily that that's post-traumatic stress, but it's just an example of how something that you saw when you were a kid can still affect you as an adult.
Speaker 1:So these things can happen at any point and in any place, and the biggest thing we can do is acknowledge it, give it the respect and time it deserves to at least look inside, put our ego away and make the determination of how it makes us feel and then address it, regardless of how you need to address it. I mean, let me rephrase that Address it in a healthy way. Don't turn to alcohol, don't turn to illicit drugs, don't turn to pharmacology unless you've been prescribed a medication for something similar, you know. Address it in a healthy way and get a resolution for it so that you can continue to do whatever it is you're wanting to do in your life, whether it's continue to do your job, whether it's continue to be with your family. Whatever the situation is, it's going to help you be a better and happier you, and that's going to be better for everyone around you as well. Okay, so there you go, guys. Hope that one wasn't too long for you.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry if you've heard that story before. I tend to do that a lot, apparently from one of my friends. Tell me, but I felt like that one was kind of one we really needed to get out there, we really needed to talk about. Even though it wasn't that, you know, I guess the incident itself was a big incident, but the effect that it had on me and things like that, it's not great, but even something that minor, something that small, you know it affected my life and I didn't even know it. You know, think about it, guys. Have you been through something like that? Has somebody, you know, been through something like that? You know, it's the whole reason why we did this one. So, like always, I appreciate your time, appreciate you listening to me and until the next one, you guys, be safe, catch you around. Bye.
