A question many of you might be asking yourself is why does this guy not just keep a personal journal, why does he need to air his baggage out online? That is a very good and fair question. I have kept journals for years and most have never been shown even to my wife, and personal journals work for me but what I have come to realize is that although PTSD is something I have, it is also something that is bigger than me and bigger than any of us as individuals.
It is my hope that by blogging it will allow my family and friends to have a better understanding of who I am now and why I may act in ways that may seem strange to them. This blog is also a place to share my journey so that others like me might come to realize that they don't have to live in the shadows of fear any longer, that there is a place, a community where they can come and step into the light without the anxiety that they won't belong or that they will be misunderstood. I want this to be a place of healing where no one has to be alone. I would like to use this as an opportunity to promote awareness of PTSD in the paramedic community and to chip away at the stigmas that go with with the label.
On a personal level this blog allows me to open up on my own terms, allowing me the freedom to work through the demons, nightmares and ghosts that haunt me on a daily basis without having to express them to you in an intimate face to face discussion. The blog is also a small but very important active step for me to begin the healing process by becoming more socially active. Many of you will say that using social media is hardly being socially active but I can assure you for me it is more social than I have been in the past 6-8 years. (Baby steps). Over time these posts will allow me to look back and reflect on where I have come from and where I am going.
As time goes forward my hope is that these posts will be a place to meet new friends and colleagues. It is often stated that no man is an island and that true healing is often found in the context of community, it is this community that I hope over time may provide you and I with some of that healing. I would like this to be a place where anonymity is honoured and where love, compassion and mutual respect can flourish in community. Hopefully you will provide me with feedback that lets me know you understand me, but also you can provide me with expressions of agreement or disagreement just not judgement please.
As I continue to flesh out the reasons for choosing a blog over a personal journal I can't but hope that this blog will bring an awareness of the stressors of the job to both the community of paramedicine, and also to the greater communities that we work and live in. I want the public to gain a better understanding that paramedics are not invincible and that we are impacted by what we see and do and these often leave lasting impressions on us, over time they can be quite debilitating. This blog will also provide you with the opportunity to gain insight into how I function as a paramedic, I will describe to you some of the calls that I was involved in. I will bring you into my world and explain what thoughts I had at the time of the incidents and also provide you with my current thoughts and the impacts if any the calls have had on my life.
To Paramedics and your families I hope to provide you with a place to vent, learn, share, heal and grow. In the life of this blog I want to provide us all with a community that knows there is a path of healing and encourages men and women to walk this path and to reach out for help when we feel we are lost or can't go on. This blog will have some reference materials for all to freely use and in time I hope to have a website and facebook page that will have links to as much information that we can gather so that you also can heal and eventually be whole again.
Finally my friends I want to encourage you to not give up, don't be afraid to reach out to others if you are hurting and if you don't know who to reach out to please reach out to me through email, never feel you have to take this path alone.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0FjYWS3Enwk
This is an absolutely an awsome idea! My father was a paramedic for 25 years so I know first hand the kind if stress you fine folks can get into on a daily basis.. That being said 99% of all calls dad would never talk about, those he did however you can see a sense of release in his eyes, after his passing I found his note book of so many calls he has been to... Right there I found the reason he never talked about those calls I always wondered about seeing him come home at 30am, sit at the table, have a drink, and cry.. You all have full support for everything you do!
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