YOUR BRAIN NEEDS A FIRMWARE UPDATE - AKA: Sleep
Sleep -- both the quantity and quality -- is crucial to our brain health.
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Sleep -- both the quantity and quality -- is crucial to our brain health. |
Sleep provides time for your brain to create new learning and memory pathways.
Although you cannot control interrupted sleep on shift, you can control your attitude. If negative emotions arise when your sleep is disrupted, you are increasing the damage happening to your brain. Controlling your attitude is the best thing you can do to mitigate the damage done by circumstances out of your control.
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1 - Establish a bedtime routine. This trains your body to sleep through a repeated pattern of activity.
2 - If you are tossing or turning, GET OUT OF BED. Staying in bed messes up the training pattern you are establishing in step 1.
3 - Your bedroom at the station should be for SLEEP ONLY. If you study, play games, or watch movies in your room impacts the training pattern you are establishing for your body to sleep.
4 - If you need a nap during the day, keep it to less than an hour and before 3pm.
5 - No caffeinated products after 6pm.
6 - Find a clinician you can meet with regularly. By getting an expert that can help you keep your brain tuned up you are giving yourself the best chance for QUALITY sleep.
3 Reasons to Meet with a Clinician
-Eric Shields
1.It’s an outlet for your mind in the appropriate setting.
Instead of releasing pointed frustration at those we love and care about, direct it to a therapist. While being invested in your wellbeing, they stay at the office. You can vent and blow off steam in an appropriate, guided environment instead of creating a possibly toxic situation in your home. This allows the best version of you to be with the family while leaving unwanted negativity out of the home.
2.Unknown tools
A lot of work has been put into choosing therapists that were felt to be beneficial to our unique personalities and lifestyles as firefighters. Just like we get called to a cardiac arrest or house fire for our unique skills and training, these therapists have also been hard at work studying in their field. Many of them with a focus on FIRE, EMS, and Police personnel. They have mental tools and practices that you may never have thought of before. You don’t have to accept everything they may suggest but you will leave the conversation with more tools in your belt than when you showed up.
3.I’m normal?!
One of the most therapeutic things that speaking with a therapist can do is help you realize where you stand in life. Our internal dialogue can sometimes run rampant. This dialogue can be driven by anger, self-doubt, or guilt. If left unchecked it can cause serious issues leading to a lower self-esteem, destroyed friendships, or being “held back” in life. Speaking with a therapist can help you organize these thoughts in a healthy way. These internal dialogues are normal but sometimes we need to turn it into an external dialogue to really grasp what we are feeling. Let the therapist help you through this.
I encourage you to seek out a therapist. It may be life changing, or it may just be an opportunity to meet a new friend. Sometimes the meetings are simple and some can be eye opening. If you have even thought for a second that it may help you, please take this invitation to go for it.
