Getting Better Sleep Both On and Off Shift
TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Brent Harding: Welcome to another episode of our Firefighter Support Podcast. We are excited to have with us today Dan Fast, a new clinician in town, Captain Seth Francis, and also, Seth Weaver joining us again.
Before we get into our topic, lets get an introduction from Dan and Captain Francis. Dan why don't you kick us off and tell us a little bit about you and how you got into clinician work.
[00:00:24] Dan Fast: Yeah, thanks. So I am the clinic director of the Logan Sandstone Psychology. And I got into this because, You know, I, I've experienced a lot of crises in my life a lot of death and suicide that I've been surrounded by and experienced my own mental health challenges over, over the course of my life.
And so, you know, in my journey, I found someone that helped me. Be better essentially, and or become better and grow into the person that I am now. And so I wanted to give back and be that one person for someone else. And so my experiences and background is in marriage and family therapy.
So I work a lot with couples and families and individuals as well, but the system of or the framework of therapy that I do is systemic. And we're all part of a system. We're all affected by everyone around us and we're not isolated from that. And so I'm a systemic therapist and I like to bring in a lot of people to do that work.
Because while something might affect you, it affects everyone in your system. And so it's important to incorporate that. So that's a little
[00:01:33] Brent Harding: bit about me. Yeah. No, that's great. Maybe just one quick follow up on that. Yeah. Please. Going through it yourself and kind of seeing what is kind of your Outlook on change.
You know, it seems like, like if once you experience kind of that change yourself getting from a bad spot to a better spot and then you just kind of have this renewed sense of what other people can accomplish and change from, no matter what's kind of happened to 'em in their life.
[00:01:56] Dan Fast: Yeah, that's a good question.
Let me say this. Most people come into my office expecting change and they don't know what's required of them to get there. At the same time, I didn't know what was required of me. And what I think that I've learned over the years in myself and seeing other people change is it comes down to consistency and effort and patience with yourself and resilience and developing some of those things.
So my outlook on change is, it's possible. A lot of people think that it's it's not. You know, I have couples come in and they're like, my husband can't change, or my wife can't change, or my kids can't change. But that thought in and of itself is limiting. You know what I mean? And so my thought on change is can you change?
Do you believe that you can change? And if so, then change is possible. And I think that personally if we're not trying to like grow and progress, I mean, we're gonna stay stagnant. We're not gonna, we're not gonna get to where we wanna be. We're not gonna be the person that we want to be. If we're st stuck in that.
Yeah,
[00:02:58] Brent Harding: no, I think that's a great point cuz I think a lot of times we just feel like naturally that change is gonna occur. Like if I just keep plugging along, you know, I'm these things in my life that I don't like, whether it's my relationship or certain behaviors I have or sleep deprivation or whatever.
Like I'll just keep plugging along and eventually it'll get better. But I think we misunderstand or maybe don't appreciate the value of having the right tools to facilitate the change. Right. Right. And so I think that's great and that's why we love having clinicians here is cause they have all the training in the tools and and things to give us a different perspective that even though firefighters think we know it all, There's probably one or two, maybe two things we don't know yet. And so we're hoping clinicians can kind of fill those gaps.
So,
[00:03:43] Dan Fast: yeah. Well, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having
[00:03:44] Brent Harding: me. Yeah. Captain Francis, tell us hello.
Tell us, give us the, a picture of the Deep Mind. Oh man. Of Seth Francis.
[00:03:52] Seth Francis: There's not a lot of deepness here. Seth Francis, captain paramedic, been with Logan Fire for 17 years. Volunteer firefighter before that for five years. I'm still a new captain going on two and a half years as a captain now.
So still learning quite a bit and
[00:04:09] Brent Harding: yeah. Where did you, I didn't know you were a volunteer, where, was you in mind doing that? In Minden? Yep. Cool. What was the transition like for you? Going from volunteer to full? Oh time? Oh man,
[00:04:18] Seth Francis: I was green. So green. It was it was scary. It was scary, but it was fun.
[00:04:24] Brent Harding: Yeah. Awesome. And tell us a little bit about your career with Logan. Did you kind of have, like, did you always hope you're going to promote up the ladder to be captain? Is that something that kind of you know, changed later on, or?
[00:04:35] Seth Francis: No, for a long time I wasn't I had no desire at all to be a captain.
I wanted to be an engineer and become an engineer. I went and got my medic to become an engineer, so, And then from there, it's just like, man, let's just keep moving on. And so here I am.
[00:04:53] Seth Weaver: Yeah. Battalion Chief next for Seth Francis there.
[00:04:56] Brent Harding: Yeah. We'll see. Speaking of couples counseling I don't know if that applies to like fire crews, but maybe we should do a live session.
We should probably have some counseling
[00:05:04] Seth Francis: for the two of us. A live
[00:05:05] Dan Fast: session for you too.
[00:05:06] Seth Weaver: I love them, but I, let's do at the same time, it's, it confuses me.
[00:05:09] Brent Harding: Yeah. Well, so one of the things we wanted to go over today and me and Seth. I had a chance to go to a conference in Reno where they talked a lot about sleep and the impact that has for better or for worse on firefighters and both on and off shift. And so, Seth, you got your, you took much better notes at the conference than I did.
I said some notes. Yeah. Why don't you kick us off a little bit. Tell us a little bit about Some of the things that we walked away with from the conference and what kind stood out to you? Well,
[00:05:37] Seth Weaver: it was pretty interesting. It was over cognitive behavioral therapy for sleep, insomnia is what the main point was.
But there was a lot of facts in there that I don't think many of us realized or happening with this with our sleep. So, 40% of firefighters have a sleep disorder is what the study found with 80%. Not knowing that. So those are pretty high numbers whenever you look at it. I think last time I read there's something like just over a million firefighters in the United States.
And then there you got another 300,000 that are just EMTs or paramedics specifically on the medical side. And so you look at that combination, that's a large number that have sleep disorders. And if you know firefighters, we don't like to do tests, we don't like to be analyzed. And so I'm imagining that number's pretty low because there's a lot of'em out there that just said, Nope, not doing this.
And so we don't know. So if you look at those numbers, a lot of us don't know that they do. But the effects of sleep insomnia are great. We already have enough scares. We've already talked about cancer. Poor nutrition, health. Whenever we're not getting enough sleep or getting enough quality sleep, you know, we all nap.
But if it's not quality sleep it leads to obesity, it leads to cardiovascular disease anxiety, depression, take a hit there too. And then diabetes even. Comes out of it and then we get into our mood swings. So how we interact with people and our families and stuff are huge too that come in with insomnia.
So it was pretty interesting to listen to him kind of talk about that and then he got into kind of ways we can improve it. So I'm a big fan of like, if I know how it works, then I can fix it. You know, I don't like just listening to people teach me how it works and I can fix it. And so we went over the sleep cycle and kind of why we need each stage of sleep and if we don't get it, what's happening to us.
So it was a good conference.
[00:07:28] Brent Harding: Did you, did it have a good definition in there for what? A sleep, like what classifies as a sleep disorder like does that mean on average you're getting so much? Yeah,
[00:07:35] Seth Weaver: there was a few. The biggest one was like their sleep different. Deprivation where you're not getting enough sleep.
Sleep insomnia is where, and correct me if I'm wrong, you might know a better definition, but it was you're not your ability to not go to sleep or get a quality night's sleep. So whenever you do fall asleep, you're not sleeping well. So maybe you're only getting into stage one and REM sleeping.
You're not hitting stage two and three and you need. Everything to get it proper. You can't just have nitpicking stages there and
[00:08:04] Dan Fast: so Yeah. Is that right? No, that, that's exactly right. And with that, with the steep sleep stages, there's four sleep stages, but you're supposed to have at least four to five cycles.
Of that each night. And so if it's fragmented and you're only getting like one or two, I mean that's that insomnia that we're talking about that can disrupt and create a number of those issues for people. That's
[00:08:25] Seth Weaver: why sometimes you get eight hours of sleep at night and you wake up and you're like, why do I feel like crap?
It's because you're not getting quality sleep. You're not going through that cycle a couple times like you should. You're jumping around and you're disturbing your own sleep and you don't even know it. Just by what you do during the day. That was the part I liked. You talked about some of the things you do during the day that affects you at night.
[00:08:45] Brent Harding: Yeah. In fact, that's one of the things that I remember from the conference is he pointed out that you have to have eight hours of sleep. That's a myth. Yep. Like really, it's more like four or five. As long as it's quality. Quality, right. But if you get four to five hours of quality sleep, there's no reason for you to.
I feel like you have to have eight or I think sometimes we get ourselves into a mental rut of if I don't get eight, then I've already set myself up for failure. For the day. And the reality is that's not true at all. Right? No. Like if you got a few good quality hours,
[00:09:15] Seth Weaver: you're, the national recommendation is seven hours of sleep.
Officially from the Sleep Foundation. But yeah, if you're getting good cycles all the way through, within that four to five hours, you're just fine. There's no problems there.
[00:09:28] Brent Harding: Yeah. And so, and anybody can chime in on this, but what, like during sleep, I. There's specific functions your brain is doing.
It's not like your brain shuts off during that time. Right. From what I've understood, it's like while you're getting good sleep, you're kind of banking those memories. Correct. Right. Is that right? And it's almost like somebody compared it to like doing a firmware update on your phone or computer.
It's like when you're sleeping, it gives your brain time kind of process stuff, kind of install the new updates so that when you wake up the next day, you're kind of. I don't know, at full function or whatever.
[00:09:59] Dan Fast: Yeah. I mean, there's a number of things that the brain does, like cell regeneration for when you're asleep.
But it to, what you're talking about as well is the brain is logging the experience of the day, storing it in long-term memory or things that, that it's gonna need to recall essentially to protect you going forward. Right. And that's why we know that people that you know have experienced trauma.
Typically they have a hard time falling asleep because the brain is having a really hard time falling asleep or staying asleep. The brain is having a hard time logging those things. Right. So yeah, in addition to that, cell regeneration and things along those lines to be able to help you.
Properly function. I mean, when we think about sleep, it is a biological function. There is a necessity for us to get proper sleep so that we can do the things that are necessary throughout our day. And without that, we run into those problems. Anxiety, depression, obesity, diabetes. Things like that.
[00:10:58] Brent Harding: Yeah. So maybe Captain Francis give us a. A picture of, I mean, having the most experienced firefighter here. How, cuz it's sometimes it's good and well to talk about all the ideals, right? It's ideal to get X amount of hours of sleep and hit all these cycles. But shift work kind of screws that up.
Especially B shifts. 72, I swear you guys are up every single night, like
[00:11:21] Seth Francis: one day weren't all night. We're our worst enemies on sleep too. You know, at work we'll stay up and. Shoot the shit or watch a movie and then we'll try and go to bed and it's after midnight and then what happens? We have a call. So it's like, you know, we probably need to do better, go to sleep a little earlier, but you know, it's kinda like a little vac cave when we're away from home.
Enjoy each other's company. But yeah, I believe we're our own worst enemies on that we could do
[00:11:48] Brent Harding: a little better. Has it changed at all for you over the career, for different sleep patterns, like maybe year one and two where you didn't have that many calls behind you versus now you have, you know, a ton of calls behind you that maybe you're getting
less
[00:12:03] Seth Weaver: sleep now?
Yeah. No
[00:12:05] Seth Francis: I, well, I'd say I, I'm getting the worst sleep now as I have ever. Just being a captain, I'm up listening to the radio making sure everybody's okay. If I've got a crew out on a transfer, I can't sleep. But I'd say my sleep is worse as a captain now. But I still get, you know, that good.
Four or five hours hopefully.
[00:12:26] Brent Harding: Yeah. And so maybe we can jump into some of the. The things that we can do to get better sleep. I know one thing that I I don't know if this is from the conference or from something else I was looking at, but I was talking specifically about firefighters and shift work and while it's never ideal to have to get up in the middle of the night, the attitude that you have when you wake up.
It's either gonna, well, it's a catalyst either way. For positive or negative. And so if you wake up and you know, you're getting a call and you're just super angry and frustrated and you're just, you know, some frequent flyer, not that it ever happens to you guys, but Riverwalk Parkway. Just kidding.
No, never. But, You know, and, but that just propels the negative aspect of having to get up in the middle of the night. That's just like pour gasoline on the fire. That's a lifeless,
[00:13:14] Seth Francis: right? It goes downhill. You've gotta wake up and even if you've only been asleep an hour, you gotta have that mental, you know, like, Hey, Kay, let's go on a call.
Yeah, let's, and then things go good. But if you do wake up and you're just pissed off, it's.
[00:13:26] Brent Harding: Yeah. That
[00:13:28] Seth Weaver: never happens
[00:13:28] Brent Harding: at B 72. Well, it's hard, right? It's super hard to maintain that attitude. But if you think about it, this isn't just about like trying to be the ultra optimistic person, but it's actually for my wellbeing.
The guy, the article I was reading, credit it to an airbag, right? It's never good to get in a car wreck. Right? But if you can maintain a semi positive attitude when you get up in the middle of the night, it just makes it a softer landing on your body. Versus this jarring, I mean, imagine cracks with no airbag that's gonna have much more significant injuries than somebody that had an airbag seatbelt, all the protections.
And so they just kind of framed it as our attitude as that kind of protection for mental wellbeing.
[00:14:08] Seth Francis: Yeah, definitely a positive attitude is what you need to have in the fire service on those middle of the
[00:14:12] Dan Fast: night calls. Well, and I'm sure it also helps like work to be better as a team.
[00:14:17] Seth Francis: Oh yeah.
If you've got someone that's woke up and they're just pissed off it, the team doesn't function.
[00:14:23] Brent Harding: Yeah.
[00:14:23] Dan Fast: Throws that dynamic off and then it makes it hard to work together.
[00:14:27] Brent Harding: Yeah. I just trust the captain's gonna fix it. I the captain take you this. We got it. We'll put
[00:14:32] Seth Weaver: a bandaid on it. We're good. I mean, this is a story about life though.
Like in everything, you have a choice. You can choose to be happy or you can choose to be negative. So if we just keep implementing that into whenever it's tough, which it's tough at 4:00 AM whenever you're going on. Like a dumb call. It's tough to choose to be happy to go on that call. But if we can do it then we can do it with everything in life.
And it just rolls into the next day and the next week, and whenever those really hard moments come. Once again, we've already been through it. Waking up at night and choosing to be happy we can keep it going.
[00:15:02] Brent Harding: Yeah. Yeah. And maybe even just telling yourself, I can you know, hopefully we'll get some ketchup on this in the morning or get a good nap or something, you know, if the captain lets us, but maybe walk through some of the other things that, some of the other stuff from the conference, those kind of bullet points that they gave us of some steps you can take to fall asleep faster. Yeah. And to get better
[00:15:21] Seth Weaver: quality. So I wanna talk a little bit about that sleep cycle. So there's stage one, which is a light sleep stage two, I just call it kind of medium sleep.
Stage three is deep. And then you have rem r e m after that. And that's the full cycle of sleep that you need to get that they talked about. And there's some contributing factors during the day that what we do, Determines if we get a full cycle or if we jump around. One of the things they hit on pretty hard was that alcohol lowers our quality of sleep and makes it more disruptive.
Most people think, Hey, let me have a couple of shots to go to sleep, put me to sleep. But what they don't realize is they're actually disrupting their sleep by doing that. The recommendation was within three hours of bed, you don't drink alcohol within three hours of bed because what happens is it puts you to sleep quicker, but as it metabolizes in your body, it actually does an adrenaline dump.
And so it wakes you up after a short amount of time, or it makes you kind of start stirring and get crazy legs in your sleep. And so that will affect your sleep quality. So why it might put you to bed fast, you're not gonna get the quality of sleep you need.
[00:16:25] Dan Fast: Well, and I would agree with that. And in it, in addition to that, conditioning yourself to do that every night.
And let's say there was one time where you didn't have the opportunity, That's gonna inhibit your ability to fall asleep, right? Then you're staying up later or longer and or not getting the rest that your body needs. Yeah. Whenever
[00:16:42] Seth Weaver: you drink, within three hours of going to bed, I believe they said you spend majority of your sleep time in rim, so you're not getting all the stages like you need.
You just sit in rim sleep and so it's not a quality sleep. You need your cycles. To go through. So that was pretty interesting. And they talked about a lot of us might take some melatonin or something to help us go to bed. Well, whenever they did a study about that actually increases your ability to go to sleep by 10 to 30 minutes.
That's it. That's all it does for. So you're going to sleep sooner for 10 to 30 minutes, but whenever you stop, you're right back where you started. So it does not fix insomnia. Puts a bandaid over, it helps you for that little bit, 10 to 30 minute window. But other than that, you're not fixing the problem.
So we need to look at, okay, what's causing me to have insomnia and how can I
[00:17:27] Dan Fast: fix this? Right. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but anytime I take melatonin to go to sleep, I'm back up in like 30 minutes, you know? Yeah. Like Jen sleep got you. A little
[00:17:36] Seth Weaver: nap and now you're up for forever. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that was some some good stuff they gave to us, just about those little things there.
But some of the changes we can make, you know, is like they recommended going to waking up at the same time every day. That was a big push they had as far as going to bed. They said that's gonna, you know, vary in our day-to-day schedule when we go to sleep, but they recommended make sure you're getting up at the same time every day.
It helps train your body to know when it's time to sleep, when it's time to wake up, and so it can start regulating going through those cycles for you. So, I thought that was pretty neat.
[00:18:12] Brent Harding: Yeah. Get something that's hard to do on shift all the time, but I think it makes it that much more critical if our sleep practices are good on the four off.
Like cuz we need it like those four off, we need the sleep because we know the two one are gonna be a little bit rougher. Right.
[00:18:26] Seth Weaver: But I even found it interesting, so whenever I was a probationary firefighter, I was determined to get up before everybody else. Even if I took a transfer at 3:00 AM and I got back at five, my alarm was going off at six 30 and I was getting up.
And I found throughout my day, I felt a little happier than normal. Now I'm not on probation. That drive to beat everybody up isn't quite there. So I come back and it's hard for me to get outta bed after a late night transfer. And so I'm sleeping till nine, 10 o'clock trying to make up for that late night transfer.
And I get up and I'm still grumpy and groggy and feeling a little bit more ill tempered than normal. And so whenever they started talking about getting up at the same time every day for that year, I was on probation and doing this, I meant like I did feel better. Yeah. I wasn't getting as much sleep at night, but yet I felt better in my days because, I don't know, I guess that's why I was helping my body regulate.
[00:19:21] Dan Fast: Well, the. A lot of people think that if, oh, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep the night before, so I'm gonna try and get some more tomorrow. Let's say you sleep three hours more than what you would normally do, so you wake up at nine instead of six, or something like that. That's actually almost the same effect of having jet lag.
Like your body's not used to that, and so you're kind of thrown into this, you're feeling more lethargic or irritable or things like that. And not feeling like you had a full night's rest feeling like, man, I could go back to sleep and Sleep the rest of the day, right? We have that groggy feeling so.
[00:19:54] Brent Harding: Yeah. And there is some ways to make up for it. It seemed like in the class they talked about, you know, a good way to nap is as long as it's before 3:00 PM and less than an hour, I think, right? And so, oh man, I'm no good at that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no naps at 7:00 PM That doesn't work. Dang.
Okay.
[00:20:09] Seth Weaver: Yeah, so they talked about a couple of naps we can do and there's one that's made for you. It's called the coffee nap. It applies to energy drinks. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. So, there's a few things. They talked about how to improve our sleep time. But basically it's, we all have bad habits whenever it comes to sleep.
And they say it's time to get rid of those bad habits and put in good habits when it comes to sleep. And that's all it is. It's not our bodies. Oh, I can only fall asleep here. No, it's a habit. And so you just gotta unlearn it and force yourself to learn a new habit. But some of the things they talked about, like naps cannot disrupt our nighttime sleep.
So they recommend like limit naps to less than 45 minutes. And after like 3:00 PM don't nap after 3:00 PM try to get it done before 3:00 PM If you're going to nap, they said the optimal time, 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM is that nap time. So everybody put that on your schedules now up on the board, 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM Can you just pass
[00:21:00] Brent Harding: that on to all the battalion chiefs like
[00:21:01] Seth Weaver: we have to.
This is safety nap for that time. We're turning off everything. Power naps, which are 30 minutes, they consider, they get you to stage two in your sleep cycle. And so you'll hit stage one and stage two for your power nap. Then they have a restorative nap, which is a 90 minute, which is usually one full sleep cycle.
But the coffee nap I thought was pretty cool. So you drink a cup of coffee and then like that, and then you go immediately to bed, lay down and sleep for 20 minutes and then get up. After 20 minutes. And what that does, they said it gives a better caffeine effect. So your adenosine re receptors get kind of a refresh and they absorb that caffeine better.
And so you get a better kick from the caffeine whenever you get up after 20 minutes. Now,
[00:21:44] Seth Francis: do they recommend taking naps in the same spot? Nope. Or matter bed. Like
[00:21:50] Seth Weaver: in bed. Huh? In bed. So that was another thing they went over. They said the bed is for two things out there. It's for sex and it's for sleep.
That's it. No cell
[00:21:59] Brent Harding: phones not on shift work. Okay. On shift work. It's just for sleep. Just for sleep. It's just for sleep. Ok. For sleep. Little disclaimer
[00:22:05] Seth Weaver: there. Got that out there. So they said no cell phones. Don't lay in bed. Don't look at your phones. Don't watch tv like they were even recommended. Don't get in there and read books like.
Whenever you lay in bed, you should train your body to know, Hey, I'm laying in bed. It's time for sleep now. Because anything else you do in that bed is training it to think it's just a comfort place. It's a lounge. We got recliners for that. And so they said, don't nap in the recliners.
Whenever it's nap time. Go to your bed. They said the bed should be there for naps and for sleep. And that's it.
[00:22:35] Brent Harding: And that's probably a tougher stigma, I think, in the service. Cause you feel like if you go to your room to sleep, you're. Being a little bit more, even though it doesn't make any sense, but you just feel like you're being more lazy than if you just take a quick nap in the recliner.
Right. Or you're being more, or like less social or whatever. And so that's probably something that's a little bit of a hump, I think, for most crews, right. To be able to do. Cuz the norm definitely is like, I'm gonna take a quick nap. Go get some target solutions in the recliner real
[00:23:03] Seth Weaver: quick, and, but I don't know about y'all.
I'll lay in that recliner and I'll fall asleep sometimes, and I'll always feel like I'm on the verge of sleep, so I'll be down for an hour and I just still wake up feeling like total crap because I'm like, I was just at the verge of sleep the whole time. The TV's going, people are moving. Like I can never get.
Like that. Snoring. Yeah. Somebody's snoring, like they're dying
[00:23:23] Brent Harding: next to me. There's a couple people in the apartment that they can just fall asleep like that. They can, you know,
[00:23:28] Seth Weaver: just they're out. And once again, it goes back to like, yeah, they're asleep. They're laying there asleep. But yet they have to sleep for three hours or whatever it may be.
Like it's not that quality that we're looking for. And so that's what I'm hoping to educate everybody on. Like, yeah, you can go to sleep, but it doesn't mean you're getting the sleep you need. You need to get quality sleep where you're going through those sleep cycles and restoring everything.
So one
[00:23:51] Brent Harding: thing that jumped out at me too, with the whole Like keeping everything to your bed and just as far as sleeping there is if it's not working. If you haven't fallen asleep in like 20 minutes, you have to get out of bed. Yeah. 30 minutes. Just don't lay there and wait to fall asleep.
Otherwise you're messing up that. Yep. So
[00:24:07] Seth Weaver: They said 30 minutes as well. So the study showed you lay in bed for 30 minutes. If you can't fall asleep, get up, go do the dishes, fold laundry. Most times we lay there cuz our brains are spinning at a hundred miles an hour. Right. I think we've all had that.
We lay down and we can't shut it off. So they said, you go do these tasks to help slow down your brain and after you've done one, go try again for another 30 minutes. And you keep repeating that process until you fall asleep. But the key there was they said you shouldn't be going to bed until you're drowsy, so you should be on the verge of falling to asleep and saying, okay, now I'm going to bed.
So you can go lay down and lights out. Yep. So that'll help retrain your brain as well.
[00:24:42] Brent Harding: It's kind of, amazed me how much, I mean, how much, we're kind of like animals in our dogs. Like if you're training a dog to do a certain task, right? The pattern is everything. And if the dog knows you do this task or this behavior, you get this reward and you establish this pattern, the dog's gonna be locked in and we'll do exactly what you need to do because you've established a good pattern.
But, Then your kids or spouse or somebody like, gives a treat at the wrong time and starts breaking that pattern. It is a ton of work, right? To bring the dog back to that established pattern. So it's just kind of impressed me, like we're not much better, right? Yeah. Like for us to train our bodies.
To sleep, we have to have that pattern. The pattern of this place is just for sleeping. It's not for looking at the phone, not for any of that. If it's not working, get up, go do something else and so it's almost like our goal is to protect that pattern, establish the pattern, and then do everything we can to protect it.
And so, and then it's just, you know, it's almost seems too simple to work, but. I think we overcomplicate things a lot sometimes, and really just by being intentional about the pattern we have when we're trying to fall asleep, I think can go a long way in getting to that quality sleep cycle.
[00:25:55] Dan Fast: Yeah.
Yeah, and I would agree with that. There's a concept that I believe James Clear brings up in his book atomic Habits, and the idea is like habit stacking. And so when we're talking about sleep hygiene or behaviors that help us fall asleep easier or better, one thing. You gotta do is do a number of these things in order, right?
Kind of as you're talking about, we're conditioned to kind of follow these patterns but we also have to do 'em consistently, right? If you were just to do these patterns, you know, two days outta the week, it's not gonna prove to be that beneficial for you or that effective for you. But if you're trying to do this as much as you can that your schedule allows or things like that you're gonna be able to find that consistency in being able to fall asleep.
Right. So I think that's super important. And if we're not like stacking these things like we're stop eating food at a specific time, or we stop drinking caffeine at five o'clock cuz you know you're gonna go to bed at midnight or things like that. And then you have like this routine where you are doing, you know, whether it's meditation or other things to really wind yourself down, to calm yourself down so that when you're able to enter into.
That drowsiness, right? It's like, okay, I can go to sleep right after that. Yeah.
[00:27:06] Brent Harding: So, yeah, and I kind of wanna circle back to Captain Francis'. Point is, you know, sometimes we're on shift that is like a little bit of a break. We get to step outside of our normal life. And so I think there's room in the pattern for that connection with our crew.
You know, movie time at night, like, like no one's gonna want to disrupt that to go to bed early, to get, because I'm on my pattern or whatever that I want to, I don't wanna break that pattern. And so I think the human connection side of that is just as important in my opinion as the sleep side. But it just seems to me like there's room to adjust your pattern and especially I love the like control the time you get up and not necessarily the time you go to bed.
Yeah. Because that's the part, no one's getting up early to watch a movie, right? Yeah. Like you control that part. But as far as hanging out with the crew and that time kind of family time. Time.
[00:27:54] Seth Weaver: Yeah. He said we'll make all that up. All that will come into play as long as I'm going to sleep at different times.
As long as we're getting up at the same time every day, it'll all kind of come out with the wash, so to speak. But yeah, just those simple habits. Like I love staying up with the guys, but I could probably not bust open an energy drink at 11 o'clock like Captain Francis here. Just watch me, man. I love it. I just, I don't know, it's like, put it away, man.
Yeah, he does. Me dar. I'm like, no, it's movie time. Let's go. And you know, but yet movie's over and I'm still wide away cleaning bed, y'all staring at the ceiling. I could probably do without. So it's just changing those habits of myself. That I know I can improve my quality of sleep and still enjoy the quality time with the
[00:28:33] Seth Francis: crew.
Now, what do you guys think about banking hours of sleep? Can you bank hours in anticipation of not getting good quality sleep?
[00:28:42] Seth Weaver: They never mention it, but what they did mention was something if we are sleep deprived, so remember sleep insomnia, sleep deprived, two different things. If we're sleep deprived, then.
It takes up to three days to recover from being sleep deprived. Oh man. Three full days. So as far as banking, like one night of some extra sleep, I don't think does much for us because like we said, if we are sleeping in, we're still kinda not doing ourselves any favors. By sleeping in, as Dan mentioned, we need to get up at the same time every day and kind of keep our body in that cycle.
And so, I mean, I don't know. I'm not an expert on it. They didn't talk much about it, but I'd assume just from the information I know, like that's a tough one to do.
[00:29:26] Brent Harding: Well, and it seems like our mindset needs to shift from counting hours to counting cycles. Right? Like quality like that. Yeah. It's not about the hours you spend sleeping, it's about how many of those quality cycles that you make it through and get that quality sleep.
Cause I'd imagine if you've got on your four off, if you have four solid. Quality sleep days, then you could probably survive a rougher too. Yeah. Better than if, than if you didn't do that. But yeah, I don't think it, and from what I've understood, I don't think it works as, I missed three hours here, so I'm gonna make up three hours here.
Yeah. Ahead of time. But it certainly helps to have to come on shift or to like, like even the night before shift, you know, this may be my last good night's sleep for a couple days. I'm gonna make sure it's awesome and I go to bed on time and whatever. Right. So that I can. Function
[00:30:14] Seth Weaver: at my best on shift.
Yeah. I don't think it's as much banking hours as it is having a relaxed state of mind. Like, all right, I'm going to bed now. This is gonna feel good. I already felt tired. And more or less you're like mentally getting prepared to come in and get your butt kicked all night, you know?
[00:30:27] Brent Harding: So when and just kind of wrap up on, on this Part of sleeping, which I think is probably the hardest at times throughout your career in firefighting, is those moments when you are laying asleep or laying in bed and, you know, some of those rougher calls start coming back.
And some, like for me, it's weird. It's like sometimes it's a recent one, but a lot of the times, It's just weird. It's like you'll be laying there and it's like, this call from like six years ago, like comes back and it's like, why is that in my head right now? You know? And then that keeps you from sleeping.
What and this goes for everybody, but just kind of what I have you done or what have you found been most helpful as maybe some of those calls start creeping back up in the middle of the night to kind of. I don't know, process it or to get through it so that, you know, cuz sometimes it seems to linger for a long time, but
[00:31:17] Seth Weaver: you got 17 years on.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:31:19] Seth Francis: I wish I knew I would like to have that answer as well. Yeah. Because sometimes they do come back and you
[00:31:25] Seth Weaver: just gotta tuck 'em away and I don't think I have a healthy way to cope with it because like, I woke up at 4:00 AM from a bad dream this morning. So I'm laying there. What I do, I distracted my mind.
I pulled up my cell phone and started scroll on Instagram. Well, I think until I forgot about it. And then I fell asleep again and got like two more hours of sleep. So, and I think
[00:31:43] Brent Harding: that's it, right? Like, we're gonna find a way to cope with it. It's whether the coping is actually helping or just kicking the can down the road.
Yeah. Because like, like we've talked a lot about the sleep and we did the conference, but for me, like, I can't remember the last time I fell asleep just because I wanted to. Yeah, it's always. Like I fall asleep watching something. Yeah. And whether it's at home or on shift, like even if I go back to my room, everybody's going to bed, I'm usually watching something on my phone and I'll wake up with my phone.
That's
[00:32:07] Seth Weaver: that habits,
[00:32:08] Brent Harding: that's those habits. And so it's of those habits. Right. But it's been my way to like turn off my brain so that I don't think about this other stuff, this other baggage while I'm trying to fall asleep. It's distract myself. And like you said, some guys it's alcohol or some guys, you know, whatever they're trying to do, but they found some way to fall asleep.
But There's gotta be a better way, Dan, solve our problems. Yeah.
[00:32:29] Dan Fast: Let me help you. Right. So a lot of what you're talking about too is like these, whether it's flashbacks or these anxious thoughts that you're having, whether it's right before bed, when you're falling asleep, or even when you are asleep, you'll wake up from having some of these nightmares or these images fresh in your mind.
And. That activates the brain, right? Because the brain has a hard time differentiating between what's reality and what's going on when you're dreaming some of these things, right? And so, I mean, doing a lot of trauma work or even working with thoughts, specifically thoughts that are anxious thoughts being able to use things like C B T or there's, you know, specific modalities out there like EMDR or.
A r t accelerated resolution therapy that can help kind of process those images so that they don't disturb you so that when you do lay down to go to sleep that they're not as strong or they're not as present. Cuz those absolutely will disrupt those regular cycles that you need and, So being able to go to that.
And so that's kind of where we come in, is as clinicians, we're able to, we're trained in that, or at least a number of us are. And we work with people through those so that they're not disrupted by that. Because what we know is if people's sleep is disrupted they're at a greater risk for suicide, for anxiety and depression.
And that kind of just perpetuates itself. And so if you're never fully taking care of these things, They're always gonna be there. Just like you guys were talking about. You kind of just push it away and it works, right? Like, you'll whip out your phone and you kind of aren't thinking about these things anymore.
But it doesn't mean it's gone. Yeah. It's just gone for the time. Right. And it'll come back. And so being able to process through these things with a mental health professional I think will prove to be beneficial for anyone that's struggling with something like this. Yeah, and I think
[00:34:24] Brent Harding: you said it at the beginning, right?
Like when we're trying to sleep, it's our brain's time to like process the experiences of the day, right? Right. And so, yeah, on a traumatic call, especially if we had one that day, like our brain's gonna be working overtime while we're trying to sleep to try to. Process that. Yep. And so it makes sense to talk to a trained professional to help get the correct processing done.
Cause it seems like, I don't know from some of the, I mean, it's not like nothing's an overnight fix, but just seems like the more I've been able to process some of those calls, the less they come back, or when they do come back it's not, Nearly as impactful as it was once it's kind of been through that correct processing mode.
[00:35:10] Dan Fast: Well, and a lot of people struggle even reaching REM sleep. Like there's a lot of people that don't make REM at all. Right? They don't make it to that stage, which is why, so REM stands for rapid eye movement. Right. And a lot of the trauma modalities that are out there right now activate that rapid eye movement.
So when you go in and do these, that's the how your brain is processing these images. And if it's unable to do so, we have to do that in real time when you're conscious to be able to activate that. And the cool thing about the brain is the brain knows how to do these things, right?
Sometimes there's things that get in the way of being able to do that. Right. And so we kind of implement those modalities in a therapeutic setting to help people do that. Right. It's fascinating. It's, yeah, it's crazy. It's been
[00:35:59] Seth Weaver: neat. I can speak from my personal experience where for a long time I never remembered my dreams, and I think that was my way of coping for a long time.
As I just finally started blocking everything out, I could wake up with a bad dream. And I'd wake my wife up and she'd, oh, what's wrong? I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just had a bad dream. I don't know what about, couldn't tell her anything about it. And I've been doing that a r t therapy. I'm dreaming and remembering again, which has been really weird.
It kinda shifted the brain, but at least now I know like, Hey, I'm processing these things again. Like they're coming back and now I can talk about 'em. I can work through 'em and. There are things that I don't think about anymore, but yet there's still some, so I could just, I'm going through my bucket and I'm clearing it out as I go. But it was pretty interesting to see how my brain adapted once I started doing a r t. Yeah. That's powerful.
[00:36:46] Brent Harding: Yeah. I'm glad I'm not crazy cuz I did a r t for the first time, like three or four weeks ago and my sleep was so weird after that. Yeah. Like, like I, and it's just weird dreams, but like, I, like I never before that had like, yeah, same thing.
Like I'd wake up, I didn't know if I dreamt or not. And now after that, for at least a couple weeks after doing it, like I would wake up and I'd remember the dream for like the first couple minutes and then it would like and then you can't remember it anymore. Yeah. But I didn't make the connection until you said it, Dan, as like r e m is like, And then a r t or basically the same thing, a RT is like a conscious like rem.
Yeah. And I'll tell you what. And so that makes so much sense going into
[00:37:21] Seth Weaver: it. I was telling her, I was like, you can't hypnotize me, you crazy lady. Like I was, sounded very redneck. Like, you ain't gonna fool me. No. And I let her try it. And sure enough, I came outta there thinking like, oh, that was just weird.
That didn't help. Yeah. But then I tried to sleep and I started doing these things. I was like, okay. It did, it had
[00:37:37] Brent Harding: effect, did something right. Because the whole time I felt the same way. I was like, yeah, I don't think I'm doing it right. This isn't working. And I didn't wanna. Tell him, I was like, I don't look like a,
[00:37:45] Seth Weaver: she's asking me to like assess myself.
And I was like I felt like once again, I don't know what to do with my hands, you know, back down
[00:37:51] Dan Fast: again. And it's totally weird and people are super skeptical of it too. Right? But in, in that process of therapy, it's like, trust your brain. Cause your brain knows what to do and it's gonna feel weird and it's gonna feel hokey, but like, yeah, the brain.
The brain is so powerful. Right? And so we just have to trust that. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:38:09] Brent Harding: Well, and I think that's a great way to, to end is just remembering that, you know, we really already have all the tools we need. Like they're there. Our brain is capable of fixing itself and sometimes we just need that little extra coaching.
And that can come from, you know, the peer support team, which is exactly why we're here. Doing podcasts and trying to help support people in any way we can, whether it's privately by just providing some of the information you want to kind of do the self-help on your own. Or providing access, easy access and private access to all our vetted clinicians like Dan and the others on the website.
But we hope that anybody that's listening is willing to reach out and talk to any one of us. Cause we're always happy to at least get you pointed in the right direction and get you started on. A path to better sleep if nothing else, so. Oh yeah. Thanks everybody for being here today, and we'll catch you on the next one.
Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.
