The Myth of Resilience
The conversations going on in the fire service about resilience aren’t really conversations around resilience.
They are conversations about a lack of resilience. That’s because resilience is a preventative game, not a reactive one. It’s something you invest in before you need it. This applies to individuals as well as departments involved in the high-stakes game of firefighting.
Dictionary.com defines resilience as:
the power or ability of a material to return to its original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
the ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes, etc.; buoyancy.
the ability of a system or organization to respond to or recover readily from a crisis, disruptive process, etc.
All three of these definitions point to a quality that was present before the disruption, which enables the ability to recover or adjust. Either you’re resilient when the blow hits you, or you aren’t.
Resiliency is best learned in a safe, low-pressure environment just like any other firefighting skill. Tie knots. Pull hose. Climb ladders. Suit up. Practice resilience.
It is not best learned while experiencing the fallout of a traumatic incident. Personnel coping in this stage are having to overcompensate for a lack of preparation. They’re taking the route of least resistance in a damage control situation and having to be experimental to see if “something helps.” Unfortunately, some of those routes don’t lead back to normal.
With the prevalence of trendy diagnostic labels like PTSD and C-PTSD, and unchanging suicide statistics, it almost seems more popular to remain un-resilient.
“The best prediction of how you’ll be two years after a major disruption, whether as an organization or as an individual, is how you were doing two days before. Build on the basics.”
Reactive strategies have a place on the spectrum of wellness solutions. However, relying solely on the manufactured stability of access to EAP, therapy, EMDR, or other modalities promotes overall fragility in the system. Prevention is the only way to get ahead of the problem because it addresses the root.
Stepping back, the larger picture reveals a complete lack of primary risk reduction strategies at the firefighter population level. The resilience strategies available are, in fact, secondary or tertiary risk reduction.
Self-command training, or actual resilience, can no longer go by the wayside anymore.
It’s time to train resiliency. Let’s incorporate it into academy training so that it becomes the norm for firefighter culture! Let’s promote it and invest in it from the beginning. Build on the basics.
Let’s distinguish the difference between true and manufactured stability here: being emotionally capable to do the job or emotionally incapable to do the job, with lots of crutches to rescue you.