Do you know you’re being traumatised? Is the title of my latest blog article at danpronk.com. In it I explore how the stress inoculation of training as a first-responder, coupled with the desensitisation to traumatic exposures that comes with ongoing experience in the roles, leads to a decoupling of the objective and subjective experience of stress and trauma. Basically, the body continues to accumulate a chronic ‘allostatic load’ (wear and tear from cumulative chronic stress) but the first-responder may legitimately not have a conscious awareness of this happening. When the body does eventually show obvious signs of mental or physical health issues due to chronic stress, this creates cognitive dissonance, as the first responder hasn’t been aware of their stress load and therefore feels guilt and self-perceived weakness at their now-obvious health issues. My hope is to raise awareness of this disconnect between the stress the body is experiencing and what is consciously registered by first-responders hopefully encourage them to practice adaptive resilience interventions and seek psychological support as preventative measures well ahead of mental and physical health issues. . . #resilience #resilienceshield #firstresponder #stress #stressrelief #stressmanagement #ptsd #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #allostaticload