Therapy for Police Officers: Protecting the Protectors

The Policing Experience:

The tones go off. Your ears perk up. Your call sign is the first one called. It’s in your beat. It’s a domestic with a weapon involved. Adrenaline spikes and that feeling in your body, the slight worry or fear gets pushed down.

Now you’re enroute. You’re going 33. Updates are coming in and things on scene haven’t seemed to cool down yet. Other officers are assigned to the call. Those feelings come up again, worry and fear only to be pushed aside again.

You arrive on scene.

The music is loud. The TV is blaring. The couple is screaming at each other. The kids are crying. The dog is locked in a back room barking. The smell of leftover cigarettes and fried food stains your uniform. You and the other officers on scene spend the next hour and a half on the call. Adrenaline comes down, but hypervigilance remains. Sadness and anger creep in. How could they do this with the kids there? How are the kids living in this environment? Is the dog okay? Emotions get pushed aside to handle the call.

10-95. They aren’t happy. Screaming and yelling everything they can in an attempt to crack you. Deep breaths. Emotions shoved down.

Time for paperwork. You don’t have time to process everything that happened because you have to get the paperwork done before you can go home. Your focus is in and out. You’re exhausted.

Now you get home. Your other life. The more peaceful one that doesn’t make sense after everything that happened today. You lay in bed. It’s so quiet. The emotions that you felt today are there, but they won’t go away.

This is just one call. Not the one the day before with the overdose or the one tomorrow with the DOA.

The emotions begin to pile up, left unprocessed, leaving you feeling alone, and isolated. You’re struggling to sleep, you question what you’re doing with your life, you feel angry and disconnected from loved ones.

You’re a police officer who helps people with their mental health daily, while struggling with your own. It’s a mask you have to put on to make everything look okay.

I’m a therapist for police officers because I’ve been a police officer.

I know what it’s like to experience all of those emotions at once while throwing them all aside to handle the call in front of you. While it’s honorable, it’s also exhausting.

How Therapy Can Help Police Officers:

• Processing Trauma:

  • Officers can begin to process and cope with traumatic experiences. This doesn’t always mean re-living the event. Through therapeutic support, police officers can reduce symptoms of PTSD and promote emotional healing that was once tossed to the side.

• Stress Management:

  • Therapy offers tools and techniques to manage stress effectively. Officers can learn relaxation exercises, mindfulness practices, and coping mechanisms to handle high-pressure situations while also prioritizing their own well-being.

• Improving Resilience:

  • By building resilience, police officers can better adapt to challenges and bounce back from adversity. Therapy can enhance emotional strength and ability to cope with stress.

• Enhancing Communication Skills:

  • Therapy can improve communication, helping officers navigate difficult conversations and build stronger relationships with colleagues, family, and the community. Officers are taught from day one in academy to hold it together. To hold everything together and to put others before yourself. By learning to communicate (and yes, I mean emotionally), police officers can rebuild their relationship with themselves and the important people in their lives.

• Promoting Work-Life Balance:

  • Police officers don’t often get days off. Even on RDO’s, they remain hypervigilence, ready to respond to any situation. This is exhausting. As a therapist working with police officers, I want to help officer prioritize setting boundaries and self-care methods for a healthier balance between work and personal life.

• Addressing Substance Use:

  • For officers struggling with substance use as a coping mechanism, therapy offers support in overcoming addiction and developing healthier ways to cope with stress that don’t leave you feeling like shit the next day. (Especially in Wisconsin!)

My Approach for Therapy with Police Officers:

I want you to feel confident in your decision to choose me as your therapist. This begins with establishing a trusting therapeutic relationship. Trust me, I know this can take some time. What I can promise you is that you are safe in session with me. You don’t have to hide or put on a face when we meet. I know what it’s like to feel like you have to.