HEALTH & WELLNESS
LAW ENFORCEMENT FAMILIES CONTINUED FROM PAGE 69
In the law enforcement profession, there are few places where officers can feel safe and at ease. Logic would dictate that the primary place for this feeling of ease should be in their homes. Some officers can retreat there to mend, but not all. Many law enforcement families experience a form of domestic disturbance unknown in non-law enforcement families. It is brought home from work and manifests itself in the day-to-day events of one’ s personal life.
Wives turn into single moms due to dad’ s preoccupation with his work. They receive little support and, after a time, learn to live without it. In homes where the officer is female, a similar scenario takes place. Additionally, some officers stay at work late because going home is not a pleasant experience.
This is not a new phenomena or avoidance behavior. It takes very special people to make up a law enforcement family. We must help families to understand who law enforcement professionals are and why they think the way they do. Only then can their families support them, help them and, hopefully, change them.
All families have plans for achieving certain goals. Some of these plans are formal while others are not. These goals have been described as a“ purposeful pattern of moves toward a target or goal made by two or more people.” The family of a law enforcement officer is no exception. In many instances the law enforcement occupation can upset, alter or even destroy family plans or strategies for success. The officer must be considered a part of the whole – a concept more or less drawn from a family therapy approach – rather than be considered separately.
Police families differ in makeup as much as any other families. Thus, there is no more a stereotypic police family than there is a stereotypic cop. The police officer image of“ a flat foot eating a doughnut” has long since passed. Today, officers are more and more aware of their personal wellness, continue to educate themselves, often are computer literate and are among the brightest individuals in the country.
Within a strong law enforcement family, there seem to be attributes that consistently reflect a resilient unit and an adaptive ability imperative to survival. Consistent caring and appreciating of each other’ s service when the rest of the world seems like they do not care is essential. Defining clear roles and responsibilities, as they may change in the course of the shifts and the jobs and critical incidents on a regular basis, is key. Commitment to communication as a couple and with children consistently, as a law enforcement family unit, remains necessary. Community and family ties that offer support within the schools, churches, neighborhood and extended family must be utilized.
Law enforcement families must discover the family strengths on which they normally rely, and actually set goals as a family looking forward to happy and joyous times. They must maintain their spirituality and time together to practice their faith while encouraging each other by sharing positive statements regularly. They must bridle anger and encourage the sharing of life views, and engage in activities that enhance the family dynamic, the way a commanding officer would train a police unit.
There are some guidelines for law enforcement families in crisis, and activities that can be utilized as a resource for your law enforcement family:
• Prepare before the crisis. Identify what crisis may challenge your family and discuss what is viable to combat stress.
• Accentuate the positive. Identify and acknowledge that, although as a law enforcement family you may face a crisis, together this experience may allow you to gain positive intimacy and recognize your resilience.
• Walk“ a day in my shoes.” By walking a day in the other’ s shoes, a husband and wife can discuss a change in roles and traditional tasks, so that the husband may understand how his wife does more, and vice versa.
• Get out of the rut. Deliberately have new experiences. Create a new focus, a hobby, a volunteer activity or something to shift both of you away your problems and toward working together.
• Develop a familial sense of humor. Have a family funny night. Although sometimes in times of crisis it seems impossible or even awkward to laugh, you can allow yourself to relax.
• Store strength. Basically this concept encourages you to be prepared in specific ways with resilience ideas that have worked so far.
• Remind yourselves of what you used to enjoy together. Surviving crisis often can reroute us from our passions and loves, our hobbies and things that define who we are. Perhaps you can try fishing together, doing yoga, going to the gym or something that allows you to play together rather than just survive.
• Communicate more than logistics and specifics. Get back to loving language, talking about your renewed faith and rewritten core beliefs.
• Pray together. Law enforcement families and couples often rely on their faith as a foundation. Sharing spiritual strength is imperative to success.
• Encourage each other. With“ strength bombardment” of actions, renew the love between husband and wife by complementing each other’ s strengths. We may think we are being loving but sometimes our actions can miss the mark. Even our children have expectations of how we should show our love and often we miss those opportunities.
These activities may have, at different points in your law enforcement family life, come naturally. Just like many elements in our lives, we must attempt to schedule our“ caring days” into our busy lives. Find out what equals love to the members of your family, and then pick a few things to do each day for a period of time that specifically reflect those actions that say“ I love you” to your law enforcement family members who sacrifice and support you everyday of their lives.
Protect your greatest resource: your law enforcement family. They deserve to be rescued, too. d
Retired FBI agent and current police husband James T. Reese Ph. D. contributed to the authorship of this article.
70 NEW JERSEY COPS ■ JULY 2016