At some point, if you haven’t already, you may look back over your career and think, “Man, I wish I would have written some of those things down.” Those realizations will occur more and more frequently as the years and experiences accumulate in your rear-view mirror. You will be chatting with the crew over coffee and the conversation turns to a building fire that you fought together. You remember the fire, but some of the details escape you. Or maybe the crew is reminiscing about the antics of a former shift member and they turn to you and say, “You remember? You were there.”
The reality is, over time, our minds and memories become cluttered. Years of mental and emotional compartmentalization manifest themselves into ruminations about the heroics, catastrophes and escapades that have homogenized and faded. It is unfortunate and sad.
My father, Fred Finazzo, was a firefighter in Madison, IL, until his death in 1994. Unfortunately, he passed away before I was old enough to realize all of the aspects of firefighting that go far beyond fighting fire. I never took the opportunity to ask him questions and hear the stories of the situations that he experienced, but seldom spoke about. I would give anything to have an account of his career, written by him, describing the responses, his feelings, the guys at the station, and his interactions with the public. Unfortunately, those stories, with him, have passed.
Memory and stress
Located near the center of the brain is a small area called the hippocampus. It is largely responsible for memory and spatial navigation, and it also plays a large role in emotional regulation as well. As we age, its performance declines. Recall, especially related to events that happened years ago, becomes more difficult. Another aspect of the hippocampus is that it can shrink due to stress. The body releases cortisol (“the stress hormone”), which restricts generation of the new neurons in the hippocampus. Stress affects our memory.
What does this mean to firefighters? To say our job can be stressful would be a gross understatement. It has been well documented that repeated exposure to traumatic and high-stress incidents can manifest into negative effects in the bodies and the lives of those experiencing them. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association acknowledged post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as an official diagnosis. And it has taken the fire service decades to acknowledge the fact that PTSD has, and continues, to plague our members.
Further, firefighter suicide is growing at a staggering rate, and we, as a profession, need to do more. In a 2016 award-winning research paper by Overland Park, KS, Fire Department Battalion Chief Alan Long, he states that, at the time of the publication of his paper, his department “provides no suicide awareness and prevention training to address the mental health and emotional well-being of its emergency response personnel.” Sadly, this is the case for the majority of fire departments around the country. The good news: We are catching up. Since the publication of his paper, Chief Long’s department has taken great strides to combat PTSD, and other departments are catching on as well. The fire service, in general, is making significant progress to get in front of post-traumatic stress, and we are finally embracing the legitimacy of PTSD in first responders.
Benefits of writing
There are many ways to curb the effects of PTSD: speaking with a trusted colleague, counseling, exercise, meditation and several other activities and processes that can help you manage the traumatic events you see every day in a healthy way. There is one method, in particular, that has been proven to ease post-traumatic stress, boost memory, spark creativity and elicit mindfulness—keeping a journal.
For many, the idea of keeping a journal seems daunting, even juvenile. It is, in fact, the opposite. Journaling combats the age- and stress-related shrinking hippocampus. It serves two purposes. First, it allows you to document your career. Being a firefighter is unlike any profession in the world. You are asked to be a helper and an expert in more areas than you ever considered. Do you remember when you dreamed of hopping on the big red truck and answering the call to help someone shut off their water? Or responding because someone smells something odd? Or perhaps because their smoke alarm was chirping due to a low battery? Probably not. Your story likely begins as a child seeing the fire truck racing down the street and you envisioned the firefighters heroically rescuing people from raging infernos. While you may encounter some of those highly cinematic events, it is also in the day-to-day responses where you help the elderly who can’t help themselves or actually remove the cliché cat from a tree that you earn the title of “hero.” It is in those moments that the story of your tenure as a firefighter is written. All too often those stories fade with time. Writing it down helps to preserve those moments.
The other aspect to journaling is arguably more important. Being a first responder, you are subjected to tasks, sights, feelings and situations that most people could never dream. The people whom we are paid or volunteer to protect sleep in their beds at night with the peace of mind of knowing that there are guardians standing by, never knowing that as they sleep, you are in another part of town fighting a fire, performing CPR or trying to extricate someone, clinging to life, from their wrecked car. You take in, with all of your senses, tragic and traumatic events at an alarming rate. And what do you do with all of that? You tuck it away. Compartmentalize it. Why? Because it’s what we do. We’re firefighters. If we can’t handle the job, we should have never applied, right? Wrong. We are human beings who process stress and trauma just like anyone else. The difference is that we are subjected to it on a daily basis and need adequate coping mechanisms in place to manage it.
I have to admit that I’ve never been consistent at keeping a journal. I’ve started a few here and there over the years but never wrote in them with any kind of regularity. Recently though, I have made a conscious effort to jot things down at the end of my shift. There are a few things that have helped my consistency. First, I give myself permission to not have much to say. Something remarkable does not necessarily happen every single shift. In those instances, I will write basically just that. But I do write. Getting into and maintaining the journaling habit is the exact same mindset as the sometimes-elusive workout routine. Make yourself do it every day and it soon becomes second nature. Second, I found a journal that works for me. For some, a book filled with lined pages is all they want or need. Sadly, I need a little more structure and prompting. I found a journal that asks a few general questions, thereby removing the burden of trying to come up with something to write out of thin air. This is just what works for me. Find what works for you.
Pick up the pen
British novelist William Makepeace Thackeray wrote, “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.” We have chosen a career that is not only worthy, but demands to be documented and remembered. Our chosen profession also has the potential to be emotionally corrosive if we are not careful. Establishing the habit of isolating a few minutes to write down the highlights, low points, thoughts and notable moments of the day will not only pay dividends on your mental health, but your children will also be glad that you documented your experience so that you could someday share some of it with them.
