Stress, Spirit, Science

Reviews for “Resilience During the Pandemic

Readers love it…

An exceptional job sharing a lifetime of wisdom at a time when his insights are needed more than ever. Nick has a special ability to teach some of the deepest, most important topics about what it means to be a healthy person in today’s world, and he does so with insight, strength, and compassion. (Dr. David Black, CEO of Cordico)

Amazon reader praise

I’ll be reading this…

Where Have All the Heart Attacks Gone? asks a New York Times story. Fewer people are showing up in U.S. emergency rooms with cardiac issue and strokes. Same in Spain. What’s going on?

Perhaps people just don’t want to go to the emergency room, but — and this is anecdotal, of course — a friend tells me that his mother’s high blood pressure disappeared since she began sheltering in place. Maybe…

I released Resilience During the Pandemic for Kindle and paperback a few days ago and the reviews are great. I was able to produce it fast because I’m under contract to write a bigger, related book, Stress Into Strength (HarperCollins Leadership, 2021).  The reviewers are describing it better than I could!

Insightful and Practical:A no-nonsense guide to managing stress, with a focus on the…

Building resilience means experiencing stress and recovery, which are widely misunderstood. A first step is to let go of destructive myths.

Myth 1 — Stress is toxic and reveals weakness.

Thinking of stress as “toxic” or a problem to avoid is bad for you. Life is hard. Feeling stress is normal and unavoidable — and that’s okay. Outside of truly traumatic events, stress is necessary; we…

Excerpted from Nick Arnett’s upcoming book, “Stress Into Strength: Resilience Routines for Warriors, Wimps and Everybody in Between.”

Don’t beat yourself up for feeling stressed, anxious, and not resilient enough – you are far from alone. Although we are living in the most technologically connected culture that has ever existed, many of us are sorely lacking habits that address isolation,…

States with Peer Support Shield Laws

Now that California has passed legislation making fire and law enforcement peer support “privileged” conversation (participants can’t be compelled to testify about them, with exceptions), there are at least 23 states that have such laws on the books. In 2017, the Utah Office of Legislative Research and General Counsel assembled a summary of the laws that were in place, showing 22 states, what’s…

Self-Care Resources, videos

For a new resiliency training course this week, I have gathered up some resources.

Self-Assessment

Self-Care Assessment Worksheet (St. Andrews)

Similar worksheet (Brown)

Similar, with more assessment and change tools (Texas Tech)

Proqol – Professional Quality of Life – many resources. Check out Compassion Satisfaction and Compassion Fatigue test.

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale– lifetime…

Surgery is stressful. Even before they start cutting into your body, something stressful is going on – a disease or other problem that led to a surgeon’s office. Except for the most minor health problems, most of us have limited understanding of what’s going on, what can be done about it and what the outlook is. “Not knowing is hard,” I frequently say, to acknowledge the stress that arises from…

On Becoming a Wildland Firefighter at 60

Friends who know me as a software and intelligence product manager and executive have asked how I ended up doing wildland firefighting with Spring Valley Fire Department. Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same question. It tends to pop into my head in situations such as hauling a 45-lb. pack up a steep hill in 90 degree weather and the air filled with smoke. I joke that that’s when I question my…

Let’s use more dogs!

Yesterday I led a workshop on integration of dogs with crisis response, CISM and peer support, which arose from the successes and relationships that we had with dog teams when I was working for CAL FIRE on the North Bay fires and others. Here are some quick notes on ideas and insights.

Spartacus, a 120-lb. Akita with K9 First Responders, visiting Las Vegas Fire after the October 1 mass shooting.

Who’s disconnected?

I found hope in a Reader’s Digest articlelast week about school shootings, just when I needed it. On the day of the Florida shooting (which was also Valentine’s Day – and Ash Wednesday), our crisis intervention team had gotten a call from a school principal, asking if we could send someone to a staff meeting early the next morning. She was concerned because several teachers were having strong…

Resilience is Like the Flu – It is Contagious!

If you are involved in helping others with stress and trauma, you surely have been taught about “vicarious” or “secondary” trauma. Our brains are wired for empathy, so we feel what others are feeling. People who work with traumatized people begin exhibiting signs and symptoms of traumatic injury themselves. We warn of the risks of compassion fatigue and burnout. However, we rarely acknowledge…

A resilience framework – connecting up, down and around

All of us are surrounded by sources of strength, resistance and resilience.  The better connected we are, socially, physically and spiritually, the more stress and challenges we can handle.

You’ll see this theme repeated in my classes and writing. For example, last month, I mentioned “Look up, look down, look around,” which is a wildland firefighting safety lesson about watching out for danger,…

If you follow me, you know that I’ve been looking at the role of dogs in critical incident and trauma responses. A couple of years ago, while working for CAL FIRE at the big Lake County fires, I noticed, as did the rest of the peer support team, that dogs are excellent

K9 First Responders Brad Cole and Spartacus (showing off) at LV Fire & Rescue.

icebreakers. The fact is that few firefighters…

(Message delivered at New Creation Lutheran Church, Sunday, December 17, 2017)

“Where are you?” That’s the first thing God says to a human being in the Bible.

Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

He…

15 Days on the North Bay fires

I’m still decompressing from the North Bay fires, but here are some thoughts on the experience.

I’m grateful for CAL FIRE’s trust. It is a privilege to work with its Employee Support Services team and CISM leads. They are devoted, compassionate, hard-working people, without exception.

If there was a big story coming out of our deployment , it was the dogs. Two years ago, chaplains brought their…

Peer support act is dead (for now) in California Assembly

AB 1116, which would have created privilege (legal confidentiality) for CISM and peer support, is dead for this session of the California legislature. However, it is expected to come back in the 2018 session.

Although the bill passed the Assembly and several Senate committees, no agreement had been reached on how to define the training standards required for CISM or peer support team members to…