Ask WYE – Issue 46 – Talking to someone who ‘gets it.’

This week Aaron chimes in about something we in the disciplines deal with more than we’d like: Talking to people who just don’t ‘get it.’

People who don’t know us will ask about the worst thing a Paramedic has seen or the biggest fire a firefighter has been to or if a cop has ever shot someone. They think they’re asking a simple question but it can unlock trauma buried deep inside of us.

So how do we talk about what we really feel? We find someone who ‘gets it.’

Aaron references the scene in the film The Hurt Locker, where Jeremy Renner’s character, a Gulf War EOD expert rotated back home, tries to explain to his young wife what he went through while deployed. She doesn’t ‘get it.’ In this scene at the grocery store he is startled by the abundance of choice compared to his deployment and is unable to process it in a healthy manner.

Justin and Jason agree with Aaron and offer some tips to deal with folks who are just looking for some war stories and how to gracefully remove yourself from the conversation, not unlike Shark Tank:

I’m gonna stop you right here. I don’t see this going in a direction I can be helpful with. It isn’t something I’m usually into and for that reason…I’m out.

The guys offer tips on:

• Filtering your day using the “TV Show” technique
• Knowing when to seek help outside your comfort zone
• Not using coping mechanisms to an extreme
• How to get your mother in law to stop asking if you were at a fire on the news

We want to know what emergencies you’re dealing with so we can help answer questions for more people, possibly too shy to ask.

Keep those questions coming!