Help, This Job Is Killing Me! Building Firefighter Toughness and Resiliency

Building Firefighter Toughness and Resiliency

Palm Beach County Florida firefighters respond to dumpster fire

By Jeremy Hurd

My father learned how to coach basketball as he watched and read books by the legendary Dean Smith, who coached James Worthy, Sam Perkins, and the great Michael Jordan. I watched these games with him, and I immediately became a Tarheels fan.

As a diehard University of North Carolina guy, it pains me to ever admit that a Duke Blue Devil might be right about something, but as I read Toughness by Jay Bilas, I saw so much that I agreed with about toughness and resiliency. His introduction and definition of toughness capture the essential principle that is key to developing toughness: “Toughness has nothing to do with size, physical strength, or athleticism. Some players may be born tough, but I believe that toughness is a skill, and it is a skill that can be developed and improved.”¹

Toughness doesn’t just happen, whether it’s on the basketball court, the battlefield, the workout gym, or the emergency scene. It takes time to develop, and it takes intentionality and determination over a long period of time to achieve it at a high level.

Slow But Sure

On the refrigerator in our childhood home, there was a magnet with a picture of a kid kneeling next to his bed praying, “Lord, give me patience, but I want it now!” Even as a child, I saw the humor in this, and I understood the irony. In this age of instant gratification, we see toughness the same way as we see patience. We want it, and we want it now. However, it takes time to develop toughness.

When you first begin to work out or do manual labor, blisters often develop on your hands. This pain eventually leads to callouses forming where those blisters were. They are rough, and they begin to protect you as you continue to push yourself and do harder work. That’s how toughness develops. You get knocked down or hurt, and you get back up and do it again. You develop callouses, you earn some scars, and you are able to deal with difficulties more efficiently.

Jesse Itzler, the owner of the Atlanta Hawks, ran an ultra-marathon, which is a 100-mile team relay race. His team had all the amenities like a tent, supplies, food, massage therapists, chefs, and so forth. He was enjoying his team experience and then saw United States Navy SEAL David Goggins running the race by himself with no supplies. He was carrying a chair, some crackers, and water. He finished the race with multiple injuries. Itzler invited him to live with his family for a month and stretch him mentally and physically. The resulting book, Living with a SEAL, shares the stories and the challenges he gave Itzler.²

Goggins often refers to the “40% rule” in podcasts and interviews. He believes that when you are facing the most difficult situation, you have a decision to make: You can give in to the mindset that tells you to quit, or you can stay in the situation and keep working. He says that when you stay in it, your mind expands, and it realizes that it has to find a way to overcome the situation since you aren’t going to give up.

I am not saying that you need to run in a snowstorm, do 1,000 pull-ups, or jump into a frozen lake (just a few of the things he made Itzler endure). When I work out and I am about to quit, the 40% rule comes to mind almost every time. I feel like I am done, but I realize now that I have only reached 40% of my capability. I would love to say that I push to complete exhaustion every time, but I must admit that doesn’t always happen. However, it consistently helps me push further than I did the last time, and I find that I am improving every time because I keep doing more than I thought I could do.

Mental Fitness, Too!

Physical fitness is great, but you can’t overlook mental fitness. Physical and mental toughness build on each other. When we continue to build toughness in physical exertion, it carries over to the mental toughness we need when facing difficult moments in our personal and professional lives. Work on both, and you’ll develop tenacity and perseverance in every aspect of your life.

Build a routine that allows you to be at your peak physical performance. Focus on healthy eating and overall nutrition. Develop a workout plan that allows you to be the healthiest you can be. You don’t have to train for a triathlon. If you do, we might have to talk, because that’s just crazy! Just be the best version of yourself. That is one of the best ways to prepare yourself for resiliency.

Stress

When I teach about mental toughness, I always ask the students to define stress. The most entertaining answer I’ve received came from the back when a firefighter yelled out, “My ex-wife!” After we all finished laughing, I told him that his ex-wife probably says he is her definition of stress as well. His ex-wife was simply a stressor. I explained that we often confuse stressors and stress. Stress is simply the response to stressors, and you can choose how you respond.

Victor Frankl, once a prisoner in a Nazi death camp, spoke often of what got him through that time and what he learned while there. In Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes, “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”³ Frankl described stressors as the stimulus that creates an opportunity for our response. It seems to be so understated when you realize that he is describing the daily potential death threats and torture as an opportunity to respond appropriately. Stress is simply our response to what we face.

Coping Skills

One of the most important ways we can prepare to make the right choice after facing a stressor is to develop effective coping skills. Coping skills used to be a foreign concept to firefighters, but they have become a part of our vernacular recently. We still have some work to do to make sure we understand what a coping skill is.

One of the simplest ways to develop a coping skill is to find something you enjoy that is healthy for you and others. You must determine what works for you, whether it’s golfing, taking a nap, going for a swim, getting in a good workout, or meditation. There are so many ways to cope, but we often view them as a second thought with no intentionality. Coping skills can help us deal with anything that comes our way, and we need to develop them and use them.

Post-traumatic stress is often associated with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but PTSD need not be the ultimate result of stressors that overwhelm you. All firefighters will have stress reactions to difficult calls, which is the definition of post-traumatic stress. But not all firefighters will have PTSD.

I get frustrated when I hear so-called experts infer, “Since you’re a firefighter, PTSD is coming. You might as well get ready for it.” PTSD is something that affects many people, and it doesn’t mean they are weak or incapable of dealing with stressors. They simply haven’t built resiliency and post-traumatic growth, two terms with separate, distinct definitions; people smarter than me can explain the difference. I use them interchangeably because I think it simplifies our thinking; they build on each other.

We must figure out how to overcome what would normally overwhelm us. For me, resiliency is the ability to bounce back, deal with difficulty, and rise from the ashes. For me, post-traumatic growth is the next step because we come back stronger than we were before we faced the stressor. It is the ability to get better from something that could or should have destroyed us. Neither term means that we will never be sad or overcome with emotion. If loss or tragedy befalls us, we are allowed to mourn and expected to cry and grieve for the loss. Resilience does not mean denying reality; it means that we acknowledge it and choose to overcome it and grow from it.

I grew up in Kansas City only a few miles from Arrowhead Stadium, and I have been a lifelong Chiefs fan. In recent years, it has been even more fun to be a Chiefs fan because we have Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes leading this team, and I finally got to see my team win the Super Bowl! After Mahomes made it to three straight American Football Conference Championship games, won the Most Valuable Player award, and set records, people presumed that he was not capable of having a bad game. Even when he wasn’t at his best, the team was never blown out.

As the 2021 season progressed, there were some bad games, and Mahomes faced criticism about his play for the first time in his career. I do not think there is any comparison between a sporting event and the life-and-death situations that firefighters face every shift. However, there is a significant analogy to be made regarding our response to difficulties.

After a few games that did not go well, Mahomes addressed his team in the locker room and took ownership of his own play. He told his teammates that he needed to play better. He didn’t call them out; he held himself to a higher standard.

The result of this type of ownership from a leader had an impact on those he was addressing. Alex Okafor referred to this after that speech: “To see our main leader take responsibility and not point the finger, it sets a precedent for us, and we know we need to put our head down and work.”⁴

It is rare for a superstar quarterback to take ownership and not pass the blame onto his teammates. There are a lot of opinions about how to build and grow resiliency, but the first step is to own your part and commit to getting better.

Dealing with Stress

Firefighters mitigate some of the most unspeakable emergency incidents and experience horrific scenes that are impossible to forget. The only way to avoid these situations is to not be a firefighter. Since you’re reading this, I am presuming that you want to do this job. So, if we are going to deal appropriately with stressors and build resiliency and post-traumatic growth, how do we plan for and build resiliency? There are a few things that every firefighter can do to prepare for and react appropriately to difficult situations and the stress that results from these calls.

Develop coping skills. This sounds simplistic, but it doesn’t come naturally. Each person must determine what hobbies or interests can help him deal with the overwhelming negative stress reactions we can have after a series of bad calls or after that one extreme call. What works for your co-worker may not work for you.

My dear friend Dustin Hawkins finds his peace working in the botanical garden he has created at his home. He pulls weeds, cleans the area, tears out old flowers, plants new ones, and studies all about his garden. It calms him, and he will tell you it is something he looks forward to regularly. It is also a go-to coping skill when he is struggling emotionally. I decided to crash his party one day and practice his coping skill with him. It … did … not … bring … me … peace. I enjoyed the labor and felt good working up a sweat, but I was ready to be done and do something fun. I learned quickly it was not going to be a great coping skill for me.

On the other hand, I like going out to the driving range and hitting some golf balls to get rid of some stress, and Dustin thinks that is boring. We all cope in different ways, and that’s okay. Don’t force something to work for you. Evaluate what works and implement it in your life.

Practice your coping skills. Don’t wait until the difficult moment comes to use a coping skill. If you wait, you won’t know what to do, and that typically leads to your doing nothing and hoping the problem goes away. Decide early in your career what you will do to cope with difficult situations and the resulting stress. There will also be different levels of stress that you will face based on the stressor and how it affects you.

I mentioned the driving range, and I try to use this skill once every week or two. There are moments when I simply need some quiet, some music, or maybe a silly sitcom rerun. There are other, more significant, moments when I know I am struggling or will be soon if I don’t deal with the emotions I’m facing. That is when I focus on prayer and sleep. These two coping skills work very well for me when I need help. I know this, and I plan for it. When I have a firefighter funeral or a significant loss that is affecting me, I will set a time to practice one or both of these coping skills.

Listen to yourself and those who love you. Listen to your gut. When you have that feeling that tells you something is off, do something about it. Don’t wait for it to get worse. Firefighters tend to think they are invincible, and because of that we don’t want to admit something might be wrong that needs to be addressed. You also need to listen to those who care about you when they see that something is wrong. Don’t discount the opinion and gut feeling of those who know you best.

Don’t isolate as a stress response. Talk about what’s going on in your life. Those same people who love and know you are the first people you can talk to about the issues with which you are struggling. I am fortunate to have a spouse who gets me, understands me, pushes me, and is brutally honest when I need her to be (even if I don’t want her to be). Christy is a personal trainer who knows how to coach and push others while demonstrating a never-ending drive. She uses this drive and her training experience to have real conversations about life. She knows when I’m struggling even if I don’t tell her about it, and she knows how to ask me in the right way to get me to talk about it. Then she listens. She doesn’t fix it; she listens. She lets me vent and supports me. I am so lucky to have her by my side, and her faithfulness and loyalty to me give me the confidence to be open with my struggles.

Maybe you don’t have a spouse or a significant other who understands you or cares about you the way I’m describing. Find a friend, a co-worker, or even someone who is outside the fire service you can talk to whenever you need it. We all need someone to talk to about this stressful job we do.

Please don’t discount the possibility of talking to a professional; it has been so taboo in our culture for so long, but it needs to change. Clinicians, peer supporters, psychologists, psychiatrists, and chaplains who have been trained in firefighter awareness are ready to help; seek them out. If you don’t know where you can find one, e-mail me, tell me where you live and what you’re dealing with, and I will work with the people I know to find someone close to you to help. There is no reason to keep stuffing our feelings and trying to figure out how to live and survive. We can thrive and be the most resilient people in the world. Make sure this is how you live your life.

True Story

I wrote this article as I prepared for my 2022 Fire Department Instructors Conference International presentation. I spent about two weeks writing, editing, and improving the article so it was ready. I saved it multiple times as I edited, and I closed it out one last time prior to e-mailing it to the editors at Fire Engineering. Later that evening, I typed out my e-mail and clicked on the paperclip to attach the article. My computer started blinking and doing some weird things I had never seen it do before. It stopped, and then I proceeded to attach the article …. It wasn’t there. There was a folder that said “Help” with a few unique icons after it, but it wouldn’t open. I tried a few different methods to retrieve the document, and it was nowhere to be found. Some choice words came across my mind, and my frustration level was extremely high. I tried in vain for more than an hour with no success.

As I sat there racking my brain, I realized that this was just one more opportunity to be resilient. It didn’t come right away, and it didn’t come naturally. It rarely does. You must work at it and develop it with practice. I can’t write about resilience and speak about post-traumatic growth and then not practice it when the opportunity comes. Yes, I said opportunity.

It’s all about perspective. As I sat on the couch deciding how to respond to the issue I was facing, I shifted from frustration to laughter. It was hilarious to think that I was considering losing my cool over the loss of an article about resiliency! It was alarming to think that I was not going to put into practice everything I had just written. I decided that the article was not what it supposed to be and this was an opportunity to write a better article. So, as I got on a plane to go see my Chiefs play in person at Arrowhead for the first time, I decided to write a new article and use this as a chance to show resiliency and help others learn how to build it.

Everything in our lives happens for a reason. We may not see that reason right away, but we must look for it. I hope that my minor inconvenience results in a chance for others to learn and grow. It forced me to stretch and to grow as well, and isn’t that the goal?

Endnotes

1. Bilas, J. (2013). Toughness: Developing True Strength On and Off the Court. New American Library.

2. Itzler, J. (2016). Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet. Center Street.

3. Frankl, V. (1959). Man’s Search for Meaning. Simon and Schuster.

4. Allen, Q. (2021, October 28). Patrick Mahomes confronts teammates following dismal performance. ClutchPoints.com. https://bit.ly/3y1awNF.

Jeremy Hurd is a battalion chief with Palm Beach County (FL) Fire Rescue and has served in the fire service for more than 18 years. He has been a chaplain, a team member for CISM and peer support, and deployed to many emergencies nationwide to assist and support first responders and families of victims. Hurd instructs firefighters on leadership development and mental health awareness.

Help, This Job Is Killing Me!