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Health & Fitness

Here We Go Again- Another September 11th Anniversary To Get Through

Sept 11 is coming up this Wednesday. This infamous anniversary means different things to different people. The folks to whom I dedicate this blog are the firefighters, officers and first responders for whom that date still haunts with bad memories and feelings of internal disturbance.

Recently I began working with a client who is still a firefighter and who responded to the call that day. She (yes!) wanted to have me help her with traumatic images and paralyzing sadness that stir within her on the anniversary of the attacks and linger for several days after. Every anniversary the same pattern has continued for her and she is finally ready to seek relief and start feeling better.

Most of my clients don’t wait over a decade to talk to a professional about feelings that leave them so uncomfortable. However, firefighters are truly a different breed. Most of us civilians will never have to burden ourselves with the deep guilt afflicting heroes who walk amongst us. Police officers, firefighters, and first responders are driven by passionate feelings to help others—even risk their own lives for others, and can feel devastated when bad things happen to good people and they can’t do anything to help. Of course, they do typically help many people but they often reflect more on the folks they were unable to help—this is one of the hallmarks of heroes.

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Some of the heroes who responded to the awful events unfolding that day lost their lives. Firefighters consider the men and women who they work with as their extended family members—even having bonds that are deeper, stronger, more meaningful, more complex and even more enjoyable than their blood relatives. Firefighters, officers and similar others “get” each other in ways that ordinary folks—you and I –do not, cannot and never will. If I offend my “regular folk” comrades, I apologize but we are not cut from the same cloth as those who serve our country via the military or as emergency responders.

The thing about hero-types is that they are selfless creatures. They run in the direction of danger while mere mortals, like me, run away from danger. When most folks were running away from the destruction, smoke, falling debris, air to dirty to breathe, and death, the heroes were running up the stairs into the heart of the chaos. For too many on that day, it would be their final call. They died at the scene. I think of heroes as sheepdogs and I think of ordinary citizens, like me, as the sheep. We sheep need our sheepdogs to protect us from wolves. Sheepdogs are bred to somewhat resemble the sheep they protect but they are very different animals, indeed. Sheepdogs hang out with the sheep but are vigilant and always scanning for wolves on the horizon. We lost too many sheepdogs that day and that has consequences that reverberate deeply and permanently. For a while the ratio of wolves to sheep was far too high and the sheep felt unsafe, unsettled, and were very fearful. The great thing about Americans is we know how to raise sheepdogs. New sheepdogs emerged and went off to war abroad so that the sheep in the homeland can be safer. The sheepdogs that did not die a physical death that day died in perhaps more painful ways—overtaken by complex grief that causes feelings of numbness, loneliness, and unbearable feelings of loss.

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If you are a firefighter, officer, or first responder who is quietly suffering—as noble heroes often do—I urge you, I beg of you, please get the help you need. I know it is not your nature to be taken care of, but we need the “whole” you to be present with us again. You getting the help you need for you actually helps us—we need you still.

**I have the expressed written consent and permission of my firefighter client to write this blog.

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