By Aaron Greathouse
My marriage was in shambles. My kids didn’t want to be around me. My family preferred the days I was on shift. I was a ticking time bomb, and every little thing set me off.
My wife begged me to get help. I took it as nagging and had a million excuses not to listen to her. At her wit’s end, and knowing I would only continue to spiral, she gave me an ultimatum: “You can get help, or we can get a divorce.”
I agreed to attend a First Responders’ Bridge retreat with my wife. I went into the event thinking I would just get my wife off my case, but I left with a new sense of connection to her, a will to be better and a sense of hope knowing that I wasn’t the only one experiencing this pain. I was connected to resources that I had no idea even existed prior to attending the event. And most importantly, I recognized and accepted that PTSD in first responders is real, and it’s OK to get help.
Breaking through the pain
One of the life-changing moments from the retreat was watching Jo Terry share her story — and the story of her husband, Firefighter Chip Terry, who died by suicide in 2017. Her words broke through to me. Everything she shared about her husband being a “jackass” — that was me. Jo spoke about the pain her and her children have endured since Chip’s suicide. In that moment, I could see my funeral, and my kids and wife enduring that pain.
Jo was in a small group session with all the firefighters’ wives and later said she felt connected to my wife because she recognized the pain she was experiencing and didn’t want her to end up on the other side of that pain as a widow. Jo said the hard but necessary things to get my attention and move me to take action.
It was with Jo’s help that I started down the path of healing. I used both traditional and unconventional methods, including therapy with a first responder-focused therapist who does eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, and I got a stellate ganglion block injection – all to address my PTSD.
I’ve been a firefighter for 17 years and have experienced many rough calls. Some just stick with me. Some are the reason I wake up from a nightmare sitting straight up covered in sweat in the middle of the night. I needed help.
With the guidance of the therapist, EMDR has been a crucial tool for some of my worst calls, the ones that keep me up at night, the nightmares, the triggers. Anger was my only emotion. I’m now able to understand my triggers and more effectively manage my emotions when something comes up. The most recent holiday season was the first when I didn’t completely lose my head over a Thanksgiving Day call from 2017 that always came back to me during the holidays. I credit this progress to EMDR and its process of working through the pain.
Understanding EMDR
EMDR is a technique used to treat traumatic memories and other distressing experiences. Specifically, EMDR therapy involves moving your eyes a specific way while you process traumatic memories. EMDR’s goal is to help you heal from trauma or other distressing life experiences. According to the Cleveland Clinic, the first clinical trial investigating EMDR was in 1989, and dozens of clinical trials since then have shown this technique to be effective.
My first EMDR was quite a positive experience for me. My therapist was able to find a specific traumatic memory to focus on and then able to get me into a meditative state to recall the traumatic memory in greater detail. She guided me into a bilateral stimulation (rhythmic left-right eye movement) while we processed the memory. According to the American Psychological Association, the eye movement activates both sides of the brain and leads to a reduction in the vividness and emotion associated with the traumatic memories. In other words, it allows for the processing of thoughts that are “stuck” in our memories, making us feel like we are reliving the incident over and over again. EMDR seeks to get us “unstuck” so we can process the thoughts and move on from them.
We went step by step through the memory with vivid detail to help me process it. Once we processed the memory, we went back over the memory at a later appointment to see how distressing it was to me. The distressing rating did go down based on processing the memory.
‘My life has changed so much’
Going to the retreat with my wife was the best thing I ever did, and the decisions that followed that first with meeting Jo – getting the SGB, going through first responder-focused therapy and EMDR –truly saved my life. My life has changed so much, and I’m thankful for a clear view as I continue to work with the therapist and do EMDR to be a better dad and husband.
WATCH | Jo Terry: ‘PTSD does not have to end in tragedy’
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Aaron Greathouse is the fire chief for the Licking Rural Fire Department and a lieutenant with the city of Saint Robert Fire & Rescue in Missouri.
