I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.

For those of a certain age the title of thIs post will bring back memories of 1989 cinema and “The Dead Poets Society” a classic film with many a meaning intertwined throughout. A certain irony that it also stars Robin Williams whose own struggles before his death are well known and relevant to the underlying themes of my blog.

Todd Anderson one of the characters has a number of issues but in this scene

https://youtu.be/IrvMrf-Pjhw

we see John Keating as the English teacher inspire Todd to see that he can speak out publicly and he has the desire and passion inside himself.

Later at the end of the film in this scene

https://youtu.be/j64SctPKmqk

after Keating has been sacked following the suicide of Neil Perry and the pupils have been forced to turn on Keating, we see Todd Anderson finally find the courage to stand on his desk and repeat the Walt Whitman line “O captain, my captain” almost as a final hurrah and respect to Keating for what he inspired in the boys.

In an earlier scene we saw Keating tell the boys “in this class you can call me Mr Keating or if you’re slightly more daring, O captain my captain.”

This was as he inspired the boys to “seize the day” (Carpe Diem) or ” gather ye rosebuds whilst thee may” from the Robert Herrick poem.

I have loved this film ever since it’s release.

As a 19 year old in 1989 it spoke to me and has been a film I have watched numerous times over the years.

During the last 12 months I have reflected on what this film now means to me and whilst it may not be the intention of the films writer and director these scenes and the whole film particularly inspired me to ensure I speak out and talk about my experiences.

Speaking out takes courage and conviction and bravery and we know that men in particular find it hard to speak about their mental health issues.

Statistics tell us:

In 2017, 5,821 suicides were recorded in Great Britain, of these 75% were males. Suicide represents the largest cause of death for men under 50.  Ref

We will never know if making men’s mental health less of a stigma would have stopped some of these suicides but we know that doing nothing will never change the issue.

“O captain, my captain.”

Todd stands on his desk and addresses Keating as “O captain my Captain” because at that point Keating has inspired him to be more daring to stand up and speak out. This leads to a number of the boys standing on desks and addressing Keating as “O captain my captain”

Imagine if we can make speaking out about our own mental health less of a stigma, if we could all stand on the desk and shout O captain my captain and it not be seen as a strange thing to do?

Now this may seem a very strange post and a weird way to address my own depression and the issues we face over our mental health stigma but I am happy to be the one that stands on the desk, why not join me “O Captain my Captain”.

https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/asktwice

https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/a-to-z/m/men-and-mental-health

https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/your-stories/man-up-getting-more-men-in-mental-health/

Start again continued

I spoke to a friend and colleague today who had read my start again post and said he was waiting for more, he felt there was more to come, I suppose he was right as I did say I would talk a bit more about the journey.

So we come to September 2018, I had returned from 2 weeks in Mallorca where I tried to relax, switch off and start the recovery. My emotions were all over the place, tears were easily found, anxiety was always near by, OCD was rearing it’s head and relaxing or concentrating was an issue.

It’s also important to note at this point as I omitted a vital word from my last post:

Depression

My GP had diagnosed moderate to severe depression. Now this was a shock to me as I wrongly assumed depression meant, lack of energy, can’t get out of bed, down all the time etc etc.

I now know that depression takes many forms and doesn’t fit into a particular bracket or box.

So onto my progress:

My first CBT session started with a question to me.

“So what has bought you here today”

An innocuous question, an open ended question, that led to many months of therapy.

My CBT professional said she would need to help take things apart so we could rebuild and in the process we would get me to a point of recovery. She never promised to make me fully better and I know I never will be.

my sessions were hard work, exhausting, frightening, safe, cathartic, enjoyable!! And at times it felt like I was going backwards.

I soon learnt the main areas we needed to discuss and focus on.

Surprisingly this wasn’t my good friends passing but more the events and actions from the previous 20 years of debriefing and my visit to London to assist with debriefing emergency workers involved in the Grenfell Tower fire. There was a link and it was the events and occasions where 1 to 1 conversations had led to some transference of trauma (secondary trauma).

I had numerous conversations in my head that I couldn’t vocalise without either choking on the words or breaking into tears and sobs. It was as if the words themselves had emotions attached to them and they wouldn’t come out without the tears and the feelings they had attached to them.

I believe now I was suffering some form of post traumatic stress reactions and had we not got help we were heading towards PTSD. (Just my opinion).

The most memorable session that sticks with me was when my therapist asked me why I wasn’t getting the words out. My answer “because if I start I may start crying and not stop” ” I might end up on the floor a jibbering wreck”

“And what’s wrong with that” was the answer. “In this room you are safe and in this room you can let go”

So we headed into numerous sessions where we slowly picked apart the issues, memories and stresses and rebuilt them into a place where I could talk about them differently and be in charge of their impact on me.

The support at home was vital and reassuring and kept me in a safe place.

Now CBT isn’t for everyone and I’m not saying it’s the answer to depression but for me it started to make a difference and I could see a way ahead. That been said it wasn’t easy, it still isn’t.

Acceptance of what was happening to me, and is still, was the biggest challenge, but I learnt to accept every offer of support from the professionals and question nothing. This was a massive step in my psyche as I wasn’t really the type to just accept things!!!

Around this time my work GP, at every meeting, would ask me about suicidal thoughts, as I am in the high risk bracket as a male in his late forties.

Now whilst this was never a thought in my head, his explanation of the risk factors of Helplessness and Hopelessness made a lot of sense.

If you feel you are in a hopeless situation and then feel helpless as in no one to turn to for help then I can absolutely see how suicidal thoughts can happen.

I am extremely fortunate in the fact that I have a strong family unit and friends and colleagues who were there for me in lots of different ways.

I never felt like the situation was both hopeless and helpless.

For this I am thankful and for this I will be forever grateful to the people around me that were there. If you have someone to turn to, to talk to, someone who you can cry on or sit with whilst you collect yourself then keep hold of them.

If you can offer this support and keep your own mental health then do so.

So as we hit 1 year since I booked sick from work and accepted that stress, depression and anxiety was what was happening to me it’s time to reflect on the journey and look to new horizons.

I’m happy to say I’m coming out the other side, there are still days when things build up again and I use my techniques from my sessions to combat these. I hope this update has completed the previous post as I would like to move on to other areas and thoughts over the next few posts.

Please leave a comment, ask any questions or suggestions on things for me to blog about.

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
Marcus Aurelius

“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Marcus Aurelius

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master;
he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.” Epictetus

Start again

So after a 12 months that has both tested me, broke me, made me reflect and also shown me I’m not invincible I’ve decided to really give the blogging a good go.

So as an update here is the last 12 months from my side.

On the 13th July 2018 I received some news that shook my world, broke my resolve and caused the mask to not only slip but for it to shatter and become unrepairable. One of my very best friends from childhood took his own life. Statistics will tell you that 47 year old males are in the bracket for suicide risk and whilst we all probably know someone of that age and gender do we really know what’s going on.

I’m not going to ponder on my beloved friends life or family as that is personal and private , but my reaction, my journey and the changes it has brought to my life, I feel are worthy of sharing.

This may well be a cathartic and very selfish blog but recent events have shown me that maybe sharing my story will help at least one person and if so then it’s worth the time to write it.

Within 30 minutes of hearing of my friends passing I was wanting to get ready for work as I had a meeting arranged! It was only my wife’s persistence and determination that made me realise what a ridiculous view of the world that was.

Work and work pressures had led me to prioritise work and meetings over my own well-being, I had always thought I was good at defining the line between work and leisure/family and regularly lectured to younger colleagues about “turning your phone off”,”you don’t get paid to work these hours” etc etc. However what I realised in July 2018 was that my work and my family life had become intertwined like an ivy growing up a tree. Work and it’s pressures, it affects and pace had taken over.

I was ill, I was burnt out and I couldn’t see it.

So I made the decision, or more realistically my wife made the decision that I shouldn’t be at work.

Now as someone who has worked in public service for 26 years and not had any significant time off (operations aside!!), it was a big leap to suddenly go off work and visit my GP who diagnosed workplace stress and anxiety and signed me off for at least 3 months, this led to 4 months and 5 months and it was 6 months before I put the uniform/mask back on.

during my absence I went to CBT provided by my employer and over a number of intense sessions and months of talking, crying, laughing, revisiting emotions and pulling myself apart with professional guidance we got somewhere and started the rebuilding.

I will try over my blogs to give a sense of the journey and sitting here now looking back to my first entry on this blog. I can see the photograph I started with and it reminds me, life is precious, friends are precious, family is everything and being kind and nice to people is the most important thing you can do. listening, hearing, connecting and been there is sometime all thats needed.

sometimes however that isn’t enough.

“If you love someone, the greatest gift you can give them is your presence.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

A sense of belonging!

As its Mental Health Awareness Week 2018 I thought I would start again with my blog and hopefully get to achieving a regular blog over the coming months.

Mental health is something we should all take seriously and should appreciate that mental health can come in many forms and many guises.

My personal experience of my own mental health is mainly historic and linked to a fire engine crash (of which I was a passenger) in 1994. This crash and the subsequent effect on my mental health led me to my journey into psychological debriefing and its current format within West Midlands Fire Service.

However what I want to talk about today is belonging and community. I am re-reading “Tribe” by Sebastian Junger at present as it is a book that resonates with me on may levels.

The lost sense of community and belonging we face in society today is also translated into the workplace and the effects of this lost sense of belonging is evident in some of the things we see in Emergency Service Workers.

I have recently delivered a number of taster days to colleagues on my proposed “Harris Model” of psychological peer support and how I came to devise the model.

The important part of the taster days is the focus on Stoicism and ancient philosophy. Junger talks about a lost sense of belonging and community and that modern society is driving us away from this belonging. In fact Junger offers numerous examples of where tragedy and disaster led communities to forget differences and in the face of these adverse and disastrous conditions create a shared belonging.

Translate this to the modern fire service and we see a loss of the traditional watch based team where people generally lived close to stations and socialised more as a group. We now see teams living out of towns and cities and commuting in to complete a shift and returning home. Whilst this has some obvious advantages of a stable family life and a community close to home, it can create a loss or lack of belonging and community within  fire service teams.

The point of my taster days is to build a groundswell of colleagues who care for and understand that need, and, occasional desire for someone to just see how you are. In the face of an ever changing future and priorities it is vital that we take the time to care for each other and ensure we are there for others when needed. That extra 5 minutes you may spend just making sure someone is OK may well make the difference to how they get through their day or the week.

Your interaction can be the difference. please don’t waste it 

Taking the time as a manager, at any level, to ensure your team are OK, to enquire about them, to show you care, to mean it, to listen and empathise is your most important role as a leader.

My experiences within the Fire Service both professionally and personally have convinced me there is no other way. Creating an environment, a community, a belonging is where we can make a difference. Through trying to live a Stoic life by acting responsibly and with sound judgement I find that, in my definition,

• Acting responsibly is caring for others no matter who they are
• Sound judgement is ensuring that when required I use my time for others no matter who they are

I may not have all the answers and my personal approach may well be something you disagree with.

However as long as it means we talk,debate, argue or agree then we are communicating and we are showing that we have time for each other.

This is the vital element to anything I have written above.

I don’t profess to be perfect and I’m not saying that every day I approach people with a truly Stoic way but I can offer you this.

If you need to talk, if you need to cry, if you need to shout, if you need to sit silently. I will be there and I will listen. This is my personal philosophy and during Mental Health Awareness Week if you tell me you’re not OK then I will be there. 

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”- Epictetus

Kindness, Futility, Bravery and Normality

Its been a strange week since last Friday and has got me thinking and reflecting on the four words in the title.

Kindness, Futility, Bravery and Normality.

This has been a week where the realities of working for an Emergency Service have been highlighted and how we sometimes experience things beyond the normal range of expectations.  What I have also seen and experienced this week is the kindness of people, the compassion and bravery of my colleagues and the beauty of music and its effects, all coupled with a normality of existence that is worth reflecting on.

SNOW leads to kindness: I started Sunday scraping my car to take my son to work and shovelling the snow from  the road so we could get out, this led to clearing the neighbours path and making sure they were OK. Then other neighbours knowing I was on call Monday gritted the whole road as we live on a hill,

This is KINDNESS

In the spirit of passing it forward Joe and I then gave a lift to 2 random strangers at the bus stop because it felt like they needed to get somewhere and we had space.

This is KINDNESS

Life is sometimes Futile: 0230 the phone rings, hi Steve we are informing you of a factory fire/incident persons reported. OK book me mobile I’m on my way. fast forward to a team of firefighters and commanders risking their lives to save a life in some extreme temperatures and a dangerous situation. The teams had trained for such an incident but this didn’t detract from the danger they faced without question to try and save a life. Unfortunately in this instance we didn’t get the result we wanted and someone lost their life. The unfortunate and tragic death then led to my Fire Service colleagues making sure we dignified the deceased and made sure in every way we did the best we could do for them. I will not expand on the incident and the actions of the personnel there but I am thankful and grateful for their compassion, bravery and dignity in tough circumstances. This is BRAVERY and FUTILITY

Tragedy leads to Kindness: 10 hours later we are finally handing the scene over and making sure our people are OK. Within 24 hours my peers and colleagues had rang to make sure I was OK. One person in particular rang just to see I was OK, I was, I am, but I thanked him and told him to never stop asking because one day I may not be and we all may not be. I know its OK not to be OK and I want to make sure my peers and colleagues do also.

This is KINDNESS and should also be NORMALITY

Music, Family and friends make life normal: fast forward another 6 hours and we are at the Liam Gallagher concert in Birmingham with family, friends and colleagues. I’m singing my heart out stood next to my son,my wife and her good friend singing “wonderwall”, “cigarettes and alcohol” and “Live Forever” thinking this is beauty, this is warming, this is reality. Thinking hours ago I was asking firefighters to risk their life, I was talking to the press about a tragedy, I was talking to employers about how a worker had died and making sure people were OK.

This is our NORMALITY

In all the work we do and all the debriefing and defusing I do and preach we always talk about “beyond the normal range of expectations”. My 24 hours described above wasn’t a normal day for me or most Fire Service personnel but it is a reality we face, and face knowing the outcome can change, the outcome can be positive or negative.

We need to ensure as professionals as families as friends and colleagues of emergency service workers that we talk, we ask, we watch, we listen.

I am ok, I hope my colleagues from the incident are ok and I will make sure we ask and we listen.

“Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.”
― Seneca

Is the bottom of your bucket ok?

“Every day the bucket a-go a well, one the day the bottom a-go drop out”  Bob Marley

The quote above is on my screensaver at work to remind me that it’s important not to keep dipping into the well without regularly ensuring your bucket is ok.

We appear in work life at the moment, particularly in the public sector, to have got into the habit of increasing the workload and expecting more from everyone. This is coming at the expense of work/life balance, family time, health and mind.

The intensity of modern work in all areas is constantly increasing and we are at times in a position of seeking short term highly effective gains at the expense of our people.

In a world of 24/7 connectivity, instant gratification, instant knowledge and a constant need for people to know what we are doing, have we lost the art of seeing the person behind the employee.

To build a strong and effective team as a leader it’s vital you don’t keep dipping the bucket in the well and that you don’t keep asking your teams to either.

Leading by example is the only way to begin to achieve this ideal. Constantly asking your teams what they want from you, reminding them that the work phone has an off button, that emails at 11 O’Clock at night are not what you want, that a working day is exactly that and not a day/night working day.

My own philosophy to leadership is that we need to look after our people, we need to make sure the bucket isn’t damaged, that we are occasionally going without water for a few hours so the bucket can rest and start to dry out.

If you follow the bucket in the well analogy through and the bottom of your bucket were to drop out,what s the answer?

• 1. get a new bucket instantly at a cost, making sure the bucket is the right size for the well, has the right pouring angle, has a handle for the rope, is at least as good as the old bucket. Oh and you will also have to tie the rope on the new bucket so it can actually work.
• 2. Repair the bucket: if you keep just repairing the bucket eventually it will fail and you not be able to repair it, yes it will have given you many years of loyal service but it wont be any good in any other role as its a bucket and the bottom will have dropped out.
• 3. Maintain the bucket properly: Use the bucket wisely and sensitively, making sure you give it time to rest and recover and drink from the well itself, will give you a bucket that lasts. The bucket will most likely give you a long and productive working life and will still be a bucket when you eventually upgrade to a newer model.

Leading is an art, it is a delicate art that requires careful handling and it is a privilege to be in a position to lead. So much so that it should be treated wisely.

The Stoics didn’t have to compete with a modern working life or emails or targets but Seneca did reflect on taking time for yourself.

Seneca:

“Nothing, to my way of thinking, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.”

 

 

Got to start somewhere

Welcome to my personal blog and my first attempt at writing something that others may want to read.

lets get the introductions out the way and a bit of history. My name is Steve Harris and I’m a 47 year old husband, father and fire officer. Husband for 23 years, father for 17 and fire officer for 25 and I love all 3 of my roles.

The picture below is a recent one from one of my best friends Julians wedding (on the left), I am on the right and Richard my other best friend is in the middle. The picture will most likely have no relevance to this first blog post, other than I will say apart from family I have known these 2 longer than anyone and although we don’t see each other so much lately, as life gets in the way, our friendship is still strong and I would do anything for either of these guys without question.

So why a blog and what do I possibly have to write about that you may want to read?

I hope to update you on my thoughts on leadership in the fire sector, my role in stress debriefing of Fire personnel, thoughts on philosophy and firefighting and other miscellaneous stuff.

please leave a comment if you want to know anything about me?