Law enforcement officers are asked to handle high pressure situations with grace, quick decision making, and perfection.
One small mistake can domino into catastrophic consequences.
An error made in a single moment can cause years of guilt and regret.
Even a perceived mistake made in the moment can cause life long emotional distress. I have spoken about some of my own guilt that I live with, but I recently watched an interview with United States Secret Service agent Clint Hill. His story is a perfect example of how a moment can define a career, or more importantly, an entire life.
On November 22, 1963, Hill was assigned to protect the First Lady Jaqueline Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy. That day in Dallas, Texas, as shots rang out, he sprinted toward the presidential limousine in a desperate attempt to shield the Kennedy family. In the chaos of those moments, despite his courageous efforts, the irreversible tragedy unfolded before him.
For Hill, that split-second delay became a lifelong source of deep regret and emotional distress. He carried the crushing thought that if he had reached the car just a moment sooner, he might have saved President Kennedy’s life. This unyielding guilt haunted him for decades, leading to intense personal battles with depression and heavy drinking. His struggles are a stark reminder that the psychological scars of duty can be as profound as any physical injury.
Learn more from Hill’s firsthand account of his emotional journey by watching his revealing video interview here. Watching this video made me very emotional, as I can relate with much of what Hill talks about during the interview.
What did Hill experience during this high-pressure situation on that fateful day in 1963? I can tell you through personal experience:
It is all about moments.
One moment, I was training new police dogs; the next, I was driving to the worst mass shooting in United States history. Agent Hill was conducting a protection detail that looked like hundreds of others that he had worked before…until chaos ensued.
So how does a law enforcement officer prepare for similar moments like these?
Prioritize training. The foundation of any critical incident response is training to know how to respond tactically. Without consistent training, a law enforcement officer will not be able to do what is needed to be done in the moment.
Build the right mindset. This enables officers to be prepared for chaos at any moment.
There are two parts to building this mindset. The first is through critical incident training that focuses on mindset, like the Police Resiliency and Critical Incident Mindset course that we offer here at Bitsko Consulting.
We break down the most common emotions experienced during critical incidents, and how to mitigate them. Fear, anxiety, and tactical paralysis are real, and if you don’t know how to mitigate them in the moment, they can cause you to become overwhelmed, thus inhibiting decision making.
The next part is to look inward. Therapy is often looked at in a negative light in law enforcement. Officers either associate it with weakness, or that it is only necessary when walls break down and the daily trauma becomes too much to handle.
The main purpose of therapy is to provide tools that can be called upon during stress, anxiety, or other intense emotions. I say it in every class that I teach. You don’t pull over and do push ups on your way to a fight call to get stronger in preparation for what you will face, but that is often how we approach mental health. We make the mistake of not working on ourselves until our molehill is a mountain, instead of building the resilience over time to be able to recognize and regulate difficult emotions.
Intense, high-pressure situations will never get easier, but YOU can become stronger and more resilient. Building a more resilient mindset will not only allow you to respond to crises more effectively, but it will also help you process the emotional distress during the years after.
If you want to offer resiliency and critical incident training to your agency, contact us here.
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