038. We Don't Understand Trauma - Joey Scrivani [Part 1]

In Part 1 of our two-part series with Joey Scrivani, we embark on an eye-opening exploration of trauma, PTSD, and resilience within the firefighting community.

🔥 Join your host, TJ, as he and Joey delve into the territory of firefighter trauma. Together, they confront the harsh reality that many firefighters struggle to understand the profound impact of trauma on their mental and physical well-being.

🌟 Prepare to be enlightened as Joey shares his firsthand experience with PTSD and its physiological effects. From panic attacks and disassociation to sleep issues and anxiety, Joey provides a candid glimpse into the silent battles fought by firefighters in the aftermath of traumatic events.

💡 Learn resilience methods as Joey explores practical tactics to soothe the mind and body, empowering firefighters to cultivate greater resilience and well-being. From breathwork and meditation to alternative therapies and self-care practices, this episode offers invaluable insights for firefighters seeking to fortify their mental and emotional resilience.

🔍 Together, let's unravel the layers of trauma and resilience within the firefighting community, shedding light on the path to healing and empowerment for firefighters everywhere.

As a patron of Keep the Promise, you're not just supporting a podcast—you’re joining a community of like-minded, aggressive firefighters who want to be the best at their craft. You’ll gain access to daily workouts, weekly mindset meditations, and early access to the insights you need to stay on top of your game. Support Keep the Promise and take your place among firefighters who know that our st

Support the show

>>> Shop Keep the Promise! <<<

Get 15% off your purchase at Rescue 1 CBD with code KTP at checkout!

Learn how to make your own custom fire helmet shields with the Helmet Shield Workbook

Listen to the end for a special shout out to our Patrons!

Get the FREE guide to minimalist firehouse workouts.

Links and resources:

• Join the Keep the Promise community
• Follow us on Instagram
• Check out our sponsor TJ Leather

Transcript

TJ: Ladies And gentlemen, welcome to today's episode of the keep the promise podcast. I'm your host TJ. And today, as I'm sure you have seen in previous episodes, we're going to discuss that taboo topic in the fire service. We're going to be talking about post traumatic stress. We're going to be talking about growth.

We're going to be talking about different approaches. To treat firefighters as a whole being, because that is what we're all about. We are all about creating those resilient, well rounded firefighters. And here with me today is a man who has been there, has done that and has been a firefighter and has.

Taken the plunge to help other first responders grow from the stress I'm not gonna spoil his story my homie Joey Scravani Joey welcome 

Joey: good to be here. Excited to have

this 

TJ: It is an honor to have you here. I keep looking at your video, like I said, that you being in Florida and I'm here freezing my face off in Maryland and makes me miss the Sunshine State. But, hey, I'll be there next week, so I'm sure I'll text you and be like, I'm sweating my balls off, bro, I'm done 

Joey: Yeah, right? I need to get back to the cold.

TJ: So, as we get started, tell me a little bit about yourself, about your career and anything else, family, anything. Set the stage for us, shall 

Joey: Okay. Um, I was originally from South Florida. Um, right out of high school, went and got my EMT, fire, and paramedic. Um, at the time, there was no jobs down south, so I started applying everywhere. I ended up getting hired in a small one station department up in North Florida. Um, I worked at that small department for about a year and a half, and then got hired at the bigger department in the area.

I worked there for about 10 years. Um, and eventually was diagnosed with PTSD and now I'm about 3 years out of the, of the fire service from that, um, diagnosis.

TJ: So, you know, we're just gonna, we're just going to rip the bandaid off. How did you end up with, with that diagnosis?

Joey: Um, it was a long time coming for sure. Probably, I mean, I think a week on to my, on to the job. My first job I had a, a young man get hit by a car, total evisceration, you know, guts out on the floor. I'm first on scene. I'm trained as a paramedic but never ran a call in my life. I'm working as a BLS first responder and you know, guy dies on scene and from there, the way the department handled that was basically, we went out as a crew, had some drinks, made some jokes, and pretended nothing happened and that kind of set the stage.

Um, for how I saw trauma in these traumatic calls be treated for the rest of my career. Um, the people I looked up to, you know, set that example. You, we didn't discuss it with our wives because, well, we were the ones that signed up. I don't want to burden her. Um, we didn't really express anything. We just, we repressed everything.

Um, Yeah. you know, put the uniform on, acted like we're the heroes, nothing could can bother us and we kept it moving. Um, so I did that, you know, for another 11, 12 years. Um, and probably seven or eight years into the job is when I started to notice that, you know, I just didn't, I didn't want to get the keys for the box anymore.

I didn't want to, I just didn't want that responsibility. I started to have less. compassion for my patients. You know, when I first started, I was big on, you know, do all, do everything we gotta do but now, we're on the way to the or the hospital. Can I get you? Can I turn the AC on? You want the lights off?

Can I give you a pillow? You wanna hold hands? You know, being a human and honestly, that that human aspect is one of the most healing things we can do for the people in these situations. over time I just had less and less to give to where I got to the point where I just, I just had nothing. I had nothing to give to my patients anymore.

Um, and so seven or eight years into the job, I realize and I'm having issues. I don't want the keys, you know, I'm anxious going to work, but it took me a probably another two or three years before I spoke up just from fear of being shunned. Uh, not knowing what would happen if I said anything. Um, and you know, not even just recognizing myself until it got to the point where I was suicidal.

I was having panic attacks on the way to the station. Um, at the station, I would, I would be trying to self soothe by doing breath work or meditation, uh, exercise and all these things. But I was doing it alone, which was, you know, that's, that's part of the problem. We have so many people suffering in silence because we think we're the only ones.

Um, but in reality, we're all dealing with these things. And if we can start to see vulnerability as a strength, we could share our traumas with each other and grow from them. You, you mentioned the word resilience, right? It's not, being resilient isn't doesn't mean you're impervious. It just means you can bounce back.

So, having traumatic events and then having skills or tools to deal with those traumatic events is what makes you a resilient firefighter.

TJ: When you went through your, through that first traumatic event and the ones that I'm sure followed, how did, was there any official? Department response. And what I'm trying to get to is that see, see if you guys were dealing with the system approach or the peer support approach. I'll listen to yours first.

I'll give you my two cents on, on the two of them. When, when you finish.

Joey: So, we uh probably I had two major incidents. Um, right before I put in my claim and those were kind of the cherry on the top of the, of the Sunday. And literally we, we had a two car MVA, both cars on fire, man ejected. I knew the guy who was the drunk driver who killed the other guy. He was completely fine on scene, obviously messed, you know, um, out of sorts, but no injuries.

Um, I was, I pronounced the guy dead, put out the fire, do all the stuff. This is, you know, 2 3 in the morning, finally get cleaned up, back to the station, 5 or 6. We got to be up at 7. I roll out of the bed, 7 15, and what do you know, all the chiefs are in the station, in the kitchen, as I'm rolling out, you know, exhausted, and it's, hey Joey, how you doing?

I'm good, chief. Okay, box checked, end of story. And, you know, that's pretty common, from my understanding, in the fire service. I think we were starting to parrot the mental health thing. You hear it's okay to not be okay, all these, all these sayings. Um, but I think we're, we're not really, we're not really doing the thing.

We, we just like to talk about it. But when you have a situation like that, where I just went through a traumatic thing, I kind of get ambushed in front of my crew and, you know, in front of all the chiefs. Are you okay? Of course, I'm just, yeah, I'm fine, chief. I'm good. That, but that right there has a, is a complete misunderstanding of how trauma works, how people need a safe space to express, to actually show vulnerability.

Um, and when you have the older guys on the job who have never modeled that behavior, It becomes very hard to, as a younger guy on the crew, to show that vulnerability because, well, everybody I look up to, I've never seen them show any emotion. I've never seen them cry. I've never seen them be vulnerable.

So, I think we're, we're missing the boat, honestly. We're, I'm glad that it's starting to be a normal thing that we talk about mental health. Bye. where it really hit home for me in my healing journey was starting to understand this idea that the body keeps the score and that trauma lives in your body.

The issues are in the tissues. Um, repression literally keeps that energy stuck in your body and to heal from these things. We have to be vulnerable enough to express our true feelings, which is does not happen in that scenario in the kitchen. How you doing? Good chief. You know and that's they check the box and that's it or then like you say you have these schism teams or peer support where I don't know any of these schism people.

They come in. They weren't on the call with me. They don't know what I'm dealing with and they're just trying to you know kind of kind of just talk about it instead of. Allow you to release and express these things. So, a lot of the stuff I did that has become helpful for me are what I would call body based trauma release techniques.

Um a bottom up versus a top down approach. So, something like talk therapy is a top down approach and you can almost get stuck in your mind. This is kinda what happens with PTSD. You get stuck in a loop. of playing this same story out. So when you're asked about the call, the same story triggers, which can shut down the body and keep that trauma stuck.

Um, stuff like ice bath, sauna, breath work, uh, trauma release exercises, EMDR, uh, neurofeedback, these other type of techniques go to the body and allow that trauma to release, um, prior to that story starting to loop. So, this is what I see the fire service needing to go do is go to the body to express these traumas which for firemen who are already the tough guy mentality who are afraid to be vulnerable. When you go to the body and your body starts to release these feelings, it's a lot more of a direct way to address that trauma. as opposed to I just ask you about what happened. You tell me the same old story, but we kind of stay stuck in the head, right? We're dissociated from what we actually feel.

TJ: So I want to get into these techniques for handling trauma, you mentioned something you said that's not how trauma works. Tell me, tell me about how trauma works.

Joey: So for me, and this is, you know, it's, no one needs to listen to my opinion, but if you, have you ever seen like a dog or something shake after a storm or You see people, you may have seen it responding to traumatic events where someone's shaking or crying. Um, that's literally the body releasing that, that stuck energy.

So trauma is, it happens in the body and Because we haven't understood trauma and we're afraid to be vulnerable and show our true feelings Most of us keep it stuck I know I saw a lot of guys in the fire service myself have like restless leg syndrome You see a guy a lot of guys would like they do this like jaw thing kind of like a twitchy jaw and essentially that Comes from having this stuck energy that wants to be released um, so There's a man named basil vanderkirk He has a book called The Body Keeps the Score and it talks about the, the mind body connection, how they're one thing and how traumatic events affect the body and that it's almost like a uh, I'm sorry man, I kind of lost where I was going and my computer's about to die.

Let me plug it in real quick.

TJ: All right, do your thing.

Joey: Alright, start me off again. You, your question.

TJ: We're talking about ways of dealing with trauma, but you also mentioned when you were telling a story, hey, this is not how trauma works. So how does trauma work?

Joey: Um, for me, trauma is a, it's a, it's an experience you, that happens in the body. So when you respond to a traumatic event or something overwhelming, there is an energetic shock to the body. And if that energetic shock is not dealt with, if it's not expressed. It stays stuck in the system and it starts to cause dysregulation.

So PTSD, what I started to understand and what gave me a, uh, path toward healing was understanding that PTSD is a dysregulation of the autonomic nervous system. We have the sympathetic parasympathetic and, um, a man named Peter Levine, he wrote this book called Waking the Tiger, and he ex, he explains how.

He was in the savanna. He saw a lion chase a gazelle. The gazelle got to safety. Once the gazelle was safe, it shook, its body just spasmodically shook for a couple minutes, and then it goes on its way like nothing happened. So, he hypothesized that lion chasing the gazelle, traumatic event. That's you running to the fire, that's you seeing the traumatic call, whatever it is.

The body has a natural way of releasing that's that trauma, that shaking, um, that crying, all these kind of, you know, techniques through the body. Um, and if it's not released, it stays stuck in the system and causes dysregulation. So, that allowed me to understand, okay, I need to get this out of my body.

It's one thing to just talk about the traumatic call Bye. If I don't feel the feelings that I felt in that moment, maybe the helplessness, maybe the despair, whatever it is, those feelings stay trapped and they cause that dysregulation. You know, maybe I end up putting on, I become more angry than I, than I realize.

And that anger is kind of a way to mask that feeling of helplessness that I had in that moment where I'm sitting with a guy who's pinned, you know, by a car. And I just gotta sit there with him. So, understanding that trauma affects the body. The issues are in the tissues. The body keeps the score. These ideas gives you another way to deal with your trauma.

Um I think talk therapy is great but if that's not combined with a technique to to express those repressed motions, you're you're missing the boat.

TJ: And I think we are agreeing in the sense that we both feel that what we're doing right now, especially in the fire service is very, I don't want to say one sided, but it's incomplete because yes, talk therapy and like you and I, Talked about before. I'm, I'm a big proponent of, of talking to somebody, talking to a specialist, talking to a therapist. There's still something that gets left behind. I know mine always pushes me to continue doing the things that are healthy, continue going to the gym and do yoga and journal and meditate and whatever helps basically open up that, that pressure relief valve, make sure that that I'm not going to blow. And what we see is, In the fire service is that we get caught up in these ideas of like, Hey, we're going to do system or, Hey, we're going to do peer support. And then what, what else? Because we're seeing that trauma manifested in physical ways, but we're only addressing. Like you said, that top down approach. Hey, yes, chief. I'm okay. Excuse me. Or like, hello, peer. Uh, I would like to talk to somebody real quick, but other than that, I'm good. And you still have that restless leg.

You still have that heightened fight or flight response. Um, And it's, it's so interesting. You were talking about the gazelle being able to shake it off or the people that we see on scene who are basically releasing that trauma by having those reactions that we normally look down upon.

Joey: we, for us, that's a weakness, right? If you saw

TJ: it is.

Joey: on the, in the truck, which you have in that, you'd be like, something's wrong with them. But that is a, it's a normal process and it's tough because as the first responder, you have to keep your shit together in those moments. But if you understand that, okay, I'm taking, I'm taking this energetic shock.

I have to then on the back end when the calls done, I have to release it. Um, and if you don't release it, it's gonna stay stuck. And that's the part that I think we're missing in the services. We haven't put together that the mind and the body are one thing. We are talking about it, but okay, how do you actually release it?

You know, I mean if, I don't know if you've ever done any breath work or ice baths or, Um, a technique that was very helpful for me was called Trauma Release Exercises, TRE, and it's that same mechanism that the gazelle has of shaking off that energy, um, I could put you through 20 minutes of movement to stimulate that same release, to where you're literally laying on the ground and your body starts to involuntarily shake.

The body has an amazing intelligence to where as it's shaking, it will go through the body and find where that trauma is stuck. And as it releases that, then the, the thoughts, the feelings come. Um, and it's almost like you shake up a snow globe and now all that, that trauma is up in the air and now it could be released.

But if we're just talking about it and you never shake the body up, it just stays stuck. Um, so these, I, I, if you in probie school put someone through a TRE or a breathwork and they have a cathartic release, they can no longer think that, oh, I can see this dead kid or this hanging and I'm cool. A lot of the guys, a lot of the older guys used to tell me, man, you got to compartmentalize.

You got to put that in a box. Okay, where, how? You got a special box in your head that it doesn't affect. Um, but that's the old strategy and that is this repression, dissociation, tough guy attitude, um, that they're, they're missing. You know, I, I thought I was fine for a long time until I had a breaking point and then the services that were being given to me, medications, talk therapy.

were helpful, but I was still stuck in a fight or flight state for 95 percent of my day. I'm hyper vigilant. Um, just, you know, angry, quick to emotion. And until I went to the body and had these releases, I was not able to settle. And then once you have those experiences, it's like, all right, dude, get after it.

Like You want to do this job. You want to be fit for service. This is the necessary um, back end of running those calls. You have to get it out and there's a, you know, there's a ton of ways. Journaling is one talk therapy, but every fire station should have an ice bath, a sauna. They should be taught breath work, meditation.

Um, these things that can, I call it skills before pills. Um, So, we gotta give the guys some skills, right? Like, you, you go to, you start at the department and they, they teach you how to do the triple layer load and how to hold the nozzle and how to, you know, catch a hydrant and all this shit, but we don't, and we, what we say is, you're gonna see some crazy shit.

And then we kinda rah rah about it, but it's like, yeah, you're gonna see some crazy shit and, look, these are the negative ways to handle it, alcoholism. infidelity, spousal abuse, suicide, um, alcoholism, all these things that are kind of a norm in these hero fields, police, military, fire. But those are negative ways to deal with stress.

And if we give people skills at the beginning and teach them positive ways to express this stress, you can then become more resilient. from running these traumatic calls, right? You can bring crews closer. If you and I run a shitty call and we see a dead kid or whatever, and then we have the relationship because we went through a probation together and we both are, you know, understand trauma and we've we understand that we need to express these things.

I could then express and cry to you or do whatever. And now, you know, I'm I'm stronger from that call as opposed to keeping all that shit trapped inside, putting on this facade that I'm great, you know, use the dark humor, make a joke, whatever. And ultimately it comes from a fear of being vulnerable. We've seen vulnerability as a weakness and a big part in my mind of changing the culture of the fire service is taking vulnerability and seeing it as a strength.

Um, so You're not a tough guy if you can't show emotion, you know, a real man can, can go to the fire and get shit done and, and help the person that's trapped in the car or whatever. But then you can also be a full spectrum human and have some emotions, you know, and until we change that, we're going to keep having guys kill themselves, you know, left and right.

And it's a shame. And so much of it could be prevented. Yeah. with some information and some skills, you know. So, a lot of what I, at the end of my career, we had um, you know, PTSD support groups kinda coming around and they would talk about it but as firemen, I think we need to do right? Like, you and I can talk about trauma and releasing and all this stuff but if I put you through a breathwork session and you had a cathartic release.

And as you released it, oh shit, this, this old call came up that I hadn't thought about in years, you can no longer then say that you're fine, right? It's, if it's not expressed and dealt with, it's stuck in the body and it is causing you dysregulation somehow, you know? Um, so yeah, that's, that's my ideas on that.

So, if you've enjoyed what you heard so far, Please take a moment to leave a rating and a review. It only takes a few seconds and it makes a huge difference. Thank you so much. And now let's get back to the show.

TJ: I love the part about taking care of ourselves on the back end, because the best analogy that I can come up with is we show up to that fire, right? We start pulling hoses, we start throwing ladders, breaking down doors, using tools, you know. Going through our BA cylinders. And then what happens? The fire goes out, pack up our shit, go home.

And then we have a couple of hours worth of cleanup, right? I always say that being the first arriving engine company at a working fire is amazing for the first five minutes. And then it just sucks because then you're stuck on scene and then you have to go back and clean all the hoses, re rack everything, wash it.

Like do, Especially if it happens late at night and it's cold out like that happens to be here. You're like, fuck me I'm gonna be awake for the whole rest of the shift But we all push through that right? We all rally together. We all Get all the shit done and clean up after the fact we for generations of firemen we have not done that ourselves and It is something that we do it for the apparatus we do it for our equipment You Why not for us right what I I went I go back to to a post that I made on threads a while back that it's um, Like we we love to glorify special operations and special forces and big badass green berets navy seals all that stuff So one of their core tenets is that people are more important than equipment Hands down you give one of those badasses a spear or me a rifle You Who's going to have a better outcome, the dude with the training and the spear, because like the caliber of that person is more important than whatever fancy machine I might be wielding. And that's something that that's an attitude that we need to have permeating us. That it's, it is the people who count when the equipment starts breaking down, when shit doesn't work, when life throws us a curve ball on that scene, that one wild card is always the people because we can, you know. We can observe what's going on.

We can orient ourselves, make that decision, boom, take action and change the outcome. So in the similar way that we clean the apparatus after the fact that we rewrite the hoses and clean the ladders and the tools, we need to take that time to Release. And I'm not saying, Oh my God, you're having such a rough time because you had a little room and contents fire and, Oh, now you need to go shake it off type thing. But we're talking about the longterm effects, the longterm of seeing the squalor that we walk into the, the guy who's only a couple of years older than you, who's got a chronic illness and now his floor is covered in piss and he can barely take care of himself. And you're looking at him going, Fuck me, like that could be me or like that old couple who's like the wife just dropped out of a heart attack and the husband is beside himself.

It's not really that like crazy. Oh my God, everyone's dying thing, but it still affects us and it should affect us because we are humans. We, we are tribal beings and we need to, we are here for that compassion for, for, for being empathetic towards our fellow humans. So I think it's. Yeah, I, I just want to come continue pounding on what you said that we need to take care of things on the back 

Joey: Yeah. I kind of right. We do truck, truck checks, right? You do daily maintenance. You, do you have a daily maintenance for your mental health? You know, is it, do you have a way to check in with your body and know if you're in a stress state and that's skills we have not been taught, which, you know, they're simple skills like to understand, um, Like a lot of us in the fire service understand the nervous system and the parasympathetic and uh sympathetic.

Um part of conscious movements is training people to understand the signals that the body sends you um to tell you what state you're in. So for example, a dry mouth, that's a stress response. Tunnel vision, right? We are told to have keep our situational awareness on scene. Tunnel vision is a stress response.

Chest breathing is a stress response. Uh, tension in the body, so shoulders up by the ears. Um, all these things are the language of the nervous system and the more aware you become of it, and then if you have some tools, like if you understand how the breath works and how a nasal inhale filling the belly with a long exhale is a down regulating breath, is a parasympathetic.

increases vagal tone, slows the heart rate, brings the system down. That becomes a tool that you can use, right? So you're going to whatever, a couple, three alarm fire, you know, it's, it's a, it's a big fire. On the way to the fire, you should be using your breath to down regulate so that when you get on scene, you're able to keep your situational awareness, right?

So like, you know, These tools, these skills to manage yourself will make you a better fireman. Um, so I don't, it's, we gotta, we gotta start giving the guys some skills, man.

TJ: not to mention the fact that knowing what those skills are and giving yourself permission to be aware. I think we, we have to talk to ourselves sometimes as if we are the rookie be like, no, no, it is okay to feel this way. It is okay to understand. I slept like there are times that I walk into work and I will declare to my shift.

I slept like shit. So I am choosing violence today. Everybody brace yourselves because I am going to be extra rambunctious and you're stuck with me for 24 hours, but giving ourselves that permission to say, I slept like shit. This is what I'm going to have to deal with. And most importantly, recognizing those things in other people.

You were talking about the restless leg syndrome. Boom. My buddy Josh immediately came to mind because there are times that I'm like, I am going to literally glue your leg to the ground. I am tired of you moving it. But if we look at his life, he has been through some stressful events or some traumatic events, and he's in that constant state of if I say flight, he's going to whoop my ass.

But he's he's constantly in that state of like fight, fight, fight, fight and recognizing those things. Those signs and symptoms in our shift mates and our coworkers and our people will help us better handle them. And it could be something as simple as like, Hey, let's just go chill outside the firehouse for a bit.

Like, fuck the phones. Let's just, let's just go out there and walk for a bit. Or, you know, Humor me for a second. Let's just breathe. Let's I would say let's do an ice bath, but they are officially banned in my fire department Because firemen being firemen one of them decided that he was gonna do it for like 15 minutes Yeah, like full blown I'd like I'd Like he got pretty hypothermic, alter mental status.

I mean, he's 

Joey: Leave it to a 

TJ: all laugh about 

Joey: right? 

TJ: Oh my God. Like risk management came in and said like, what? And it's now it's just one of those stories. I was like, well, we can't have ice baths now because we try to basically freeze ourselves to death. Well done guys. That takes skill, but tell me about.

Okay, let's we've talked about TRE. We've talked, we started talking about conscious movements. Let's run through a couple of these different approaches, these unconventional approaches, and we'll kind of treat it like a rapid fire thing. So Mention it and then you tell me the benefits, the drawbacks and how they have helped you.

Are you ready? 

Joey: it. 

TJ: Little rapid fire. All right, let's just start with the ice baths.

Joey: Um, so ice baths, if you've never done it before, as soon as you, well, before you even get in, your mind's already going to be telling you, no, it's too cold, it's whatever. So, it's a mental training exercise, you know, on top of all the physiological benefits. So Each time I get in that ice bath and I quiet that that voice in my head.

That's like don't do it. Don't do it It's too cold. It's whatever that is training me to be able to then, you know when I'm In a shitty situation in a fire, can I call myself and and and keep them keep myself in a good state, right? so But also once you get in that ice bath, you're gonna have a stress response.

You're gonna have that You That breathing, that high chest breath, which is a stress response, and the skill you can develop in the ice bath is being able to downregulate your breath. So as soon as you get in an ice bath, you're going to have that chest breath. The skill you should be practicing is can I downregulate to what I call the first gear of breathing?

In the nose, out the nose. Filling the belly, then the chest. That type of breath is a relaxation response. So you can use the ice bath to train your ability. To keep your nervous system calm, which is the same skill that, again, you're going to a traumatic event, you feel your body revving up on the way to the scene, you're aware of it because you've done the ice bath, and you, you've had that experience where your breath gets in your chest, and your, your mind's racing, and you've practiced simply using your breath to downregulate your body.

I call it leveraging your biology, right? We can. leverage the system to affect the mind. So ice baths, great for mental resiliency and great for the skill of using your breath, you know, on top, on top of recovery and all these things.

TJ: What temperature and for how long?

Joey: Um, I have mine just sitting out here in the back. I fill it up overnight. We get down into like the thirties and forties up here. So, I mean, honestly, anywhere between 30 and like 55. 60 degrees. It's it's enough like the colder, you know, necessarily the colder it is not necessarily the better it is. Um, any temperature that you can get in that's going to be challenging to you and that you can then bring your breath down is is how I use it, right?

So if I'm in 20 degree water and I have to get out before I down regulate my breath, well, then I'm not really training that skill. So, for me, whatever the temperature is, I'm gonna get in and I'm gonna calm my body until I can sit there in a nice, peaceful state and for me at that point is, okay, I, I overcame that challenge, I down regulated my nervous system, I kinda quelled that stress response and that's what I'm looking for um, with these type of sauna, ice bath, all these different modalities.

TJ: Okay, so you're not using like a full blown timer. You are saying I am getting in here. I am recognizing that my response might be different today from yesterday from tomorrow. I'm just going to get in there and wait until I can down regulate.

Joey: Yeah, I use it to, to calm my mind and to train my ability to use my breath to downregulate the nervous system. So I call it,

I call it nervous system training, basically. Right, a sauna is a similar thing, right, just with heat. You get into the sauna, or the steam room, after a while your, your mind's gonna be like, get the fuck out dude, it's hot.

Okay, can I become aware of that? And then can I use my breath to go a little bit longer, a little bit longer, a little bit longer. And that skill is invaluable in everything, it's invaluable in your relationships, being a father or a mother, being a first responder. Um, your nervous system is with you anywhere you go, right?

So, the more in tune you are with the signals this nervous system sending, and then the more skill you have in either upregulating or downregulating, that becomes, you know, empowering for you in, in other aspects of your life.

TJ: Okay, you already hopped into the sauna. I assume it's the same way. You don't, you don't do it for a certain amount of time. You just do it until you basically regulate yourself to that 

Joey: Yeah, I mean, I'll, depends, sometimes I'll go 15 20 minutes, but. The time for me is less important. I'm using it to train my nervous system.

TJ: And you're listening to that biological 

Joey: Yep. And that's, that's understanding what the signals are. Like I said, you get into that ice bath, you're gonna have that stress response. The mammalian dive reflex or whatever you're, that is a stress response.

That's the same thing that happens when you see something traumatic. We And we hold our breath and we keep it up top, up high, that type of breathing is going to send you into a stress response, which makes you less able to stay present on the scene. So the more in tune you get with that, and then the better you get at down regulating, you're able to keep your situational awareness on scene, and you're able to be more present as a first responder.

TJ: have you ever used a float tank or one of those like sensory deprivation chambers?

Joey: tank is amazing. I call it a meditation on steroids. So if you've never done it, you're in there, it's, you can't hear nothing. Lights are out. Um, you're floating. The, the water is the temperature of your skin. So you start to kind of lose the sense of your body. And for me, it was, it kind of puts you into that relaxation very quick.

Um, the first couple of times I did it though. Um, I would get what's called that amygdala hijack. And this is common for a lot of first responders. We, we can't settle. We don't know how to settle. We're so high strung with everything we do that stillness and settling almost becomes a danger signal to the body. Um, so a flow tank allows you to really settle your mind and settle your body and Um, I've had releases in there as well to where it's like you kind of once you let the defenses down, then all that stored stuff can start to come out and it becomes a process of okay, I can settle down and then these things come out as I release them.

Then my baseline, my home ability to come back to homeostasis gets better and better. And again, it's a skill, right?