Finding Your Way Through Therapy
Turning Trauma into Strength: Dr. Hayden Duggan on Resilience for First Responders
What if your traumas could become the catalyst for your greatest strengths? Join us on an heartfelt exploration with Dr. Hayden Duggan, a remarkable psychologist and founder of Onsite Academy, as he shares his compelling journey from being a firefighter, paramedic, and EMT to becoming a beacon of hope for public safety personnel. Dr. Duggan’s experiences with the Boston Police Stress Support Unit and Boston EMS Peer Support Team set the stage for an eye-opening discussion on mental health and resilience. Adding a unique twist, we delve into his intriguing connection to France, offering a rich historical context to his impressive career and personal life.
We recount the emotional toll and transformative power of the Worcester Cold Storage Fire in 1999, spotlighting the unexpected paths our lives can take when confronted with immense challenges. Dr. Duggan’s anecdotes about working in group homes and dealing with developmental disabilities provide a profound look at the significance of therapy. Emphasizing the critical role of mental health support, he shares a personal story of how the Rorschach test unveiled deeper struggles, including an alcohol dependency, underscoring the importance of therapy in navigating life's complexities.
The journey continues as we examine the severe impact of trauma on mental health through stories like Tim’s, a first responder plagued by PTSD after a heart-wrenching firefight. Dr. Duggan explains how structured debriefing processes and peer support made a world of difference in Tim's recovery, showcasing the necessity of tailored interventions for those who witness traumatic events. The episode wraps up with a call to action for creating ongoing support systems for police, fire, and EMS personnel, highlighting the dire need for programs akin to those available for recovering addicts or prisoners. This conversation is a crucial reminder of the importance of professional help in overcoming mental health and substance abuse issues.
What if your traumas could become the catalyst for your greatest strengths? Join us on an heartfelt exploration with Dr. Hayden Duggan, a remarkable psychologist and founder of Onsite Academy, as he shares his compelling journey from being a firefighter, paramedic, and EMT to becoming a beacon of hope for public safety personnel. Dr. Duggan’s experiences with the Boston Police Stress Support Unit and Boston EMS Peer Support Team set the stage for an eye-opening discussion on mental health and resilience. Adding a unique twist, we delve into his intriguing connection to France, offering a rich historical context to his impressive career and personal life.
We recount the emotional toll and transformative power of the Worcester Cold Storage Fire in 1999, spotlighting the unexpected paths our lives can take when confronted with immense challenges. Dr. Duggan’s anecdotes about working in group homes and dealing with developmental disabilities provide a profound look at the significance of therapy. Emphasizing the critical role of mental health support, he shares a personal story of how the Rorschach test unveiled deeper struggles, including an alcohol dependency, underscoring the importance of therapy in navigating life's complexities.
The journey continues as we examine the severe impact of trauma on mental health through stories like Tim’s, a first responder plagued by PTSD after a heart-wrenching firefight. Dr. Duggan explains how structured debriefing processes and peer support made a world of difference in Tim's recovery, showcasing the necessity of tailored interventions for those who witness traumatic events. The episode wraps up with a call to action for creating ongoing support systems for police, fire, and EMS personnel, highlighting the dire need for programs akin to those available for recovering addicts or prisoners. This conversation is a crucial reminder of the importance of professional help in overcoming mental health and substance abuse issues.
Hi and welcome to Finding your Way Through Therapy. The goal of this podcast is to demystify therapy, what can happen in therapy and the wide array of conversations you can have in and about therapy Through personal experiences. Guests will talk about therapy, their experiences with it and how psychology and therapy are present in many places in their lives, with lots of authenticity and a touch of humor. Here is your host, steve Bisson.
Speaker 2:Bonne année, grand année. Thank you, happy New Year, and if you want to look grand année, you can go ahead and look it up. My name is Steve Bisson. This is the premiere episode of season 11, or episode 133 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. Very excited to be here for an 11th season. I'm looking very much forward to you guys listening and if you're on YouTube, you're going to see that I'm going to try to do these intros and the outros that I do recorded like on video so you can see them. So this is my first time doing it. Any feedback is always welcome. So this is what I'm doing. But for episode 132, if you listen to it, as my guests talked about their experience last year on my podcast finding your way through therapy and it was really good, so please go back and listen to that. But episode 133 will be part one of two with Dr Hayden Duggan.
Speaker 2:Dr Hayden Duggan wrote a few books, but Dr Hayden Duggan also is the founder of the Onsite Academy in Gardner, massachusetts, a residential trauma treatment and training program for public safety personnel. He's the team clinician for Boston Police Stress Support Unit and is the chief psychologist for the Boston EMS Peer Support Team. He's worked in many fields. He is a former firefighter, he's a paramedic, he's an EMT. He will talk about that, I'm sure, during the interview, and I'm going to separate it in two because I know this is recorded. You know we recorded it and I know this is a two-part episode for me. So I know he's going to talk about that. He's going to talk about that. He's going to talk about other of his experience. But just a fascinating guy. This is a guy I've been chasing down for about six months to have this interview. But Hayden is a genuine person, very interesting, and here is his interview.
Speaker 2:Well, hi everyone and welcome to the first episode, episode 133, of Finding your Way Through Therapy. I am Steve Bisson. You've known me for a while. Season 11 is upon us and I have someone who we you know he's a busy guy, I'm a busy guy. We finally got together. I'm excited beyond any possible imagination anyone could have. But uh, dr hayden duggan is someone who has been referred to me by so many people how how great he is. He started a bunch of different things that I'm going to let him talk about, but I told him before this interview that it's an honor for him, for me to talk to him and he returned the favor and I'm like no, believe me, it's my honor. He said people said good things about me and I said who's lying and why are they lying to you? But at the end of the day, day just very happy to have him.
Speaker 3:Welcome to finding your way through therapy. My pleasure great to be here, my friend and um, as we say, I'm not any busier than anybody else, just less organized hey, welcome to the club right, as witnessed by the fact that, although you sent me multiple email I mean mean multiple text messages, et cetera I still, on the day in question, said oh yeah, it's 1030. Just anyway.
Speaker 2:You know it was funny when I saw you at that 30, I was actually in a session I'm going to share this with the audience and. I saw you're like I'm waiting and I'm like. I told my client. I'm like can you wait one second? And I responded quickly because I'm like he's going to sit there for like 30 minutes. I can't do that to them.
Speaker 3:I would have, that's me, and I had moved somebody to 12, from 1230 to 1030, so that we could anyway the other way around.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter.
Speaker 3:But here we are Great to be here, steve, and I'm glad to know that it should be salt and not pissing.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. See, you know, I know you went to Canada in November, so now you know, how to say everything in French suddenly. That's what happens when you go to Canada. Well, actually I lived in France for a while. Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:I mean great. I'm actually one of the few people that really, really loved it. I was in the south of France, where it was mostly rural and farming people, and they were fabulous, so anyway that was. I don't want to go to the other side, yes, and where they say 55 is not 5 or 5. It's 5 or 5. 5 or 5.
Speaker 2:Yes. And then Paris, and where they hate the Parisians as much as Americans do.
Speaker 3:Hate them with pure white hatred. Pure white, hot hatred, I should say.
Speaker 2:That's what I tell people all the time. I said you wouldn't be surprised how much most French people hate the Parisians, except the ones in Paris.
Speaker 3:Which is awful because it's such a gorgeous city, but anyway, people kind of suck at that.
Speaker 3:But, that's not all of france at all. No, you know, and we must remember, it was the french soldiers that dunkirk, at the very end, that saved our asses and are responsible for like 300 000 british troops getting off that beach because and all those french soldiers died and they stood there and took the oncoming German fire which, had they used tanks, they would have broken through, but they didn't because they wanted to save the tanks for later. So, yeah, that was the French, and remember our own revolution, and the French came just in time. Anyway, I'll shut up, that's not what we're going to talk about.
Speaker 2:We could talk about history all forever, because I love history. It's part of one of my favorite things. Learn about history, as my old man used to say when he was alive. Learn about history because those who don't know about it are doomed to repeat it, and I don't want to repeat history sometimes.
Speaker 3:Indeed. And you know, my wife says if you ask me what the weather is, I give you the history of meteorology, so it's terrible of meteorology, so that's terrible.
Speaker 2:Well, you know we've been. You know I I kind of like threw a lot of like great things at you and obviously you returned them back. But maybe people know about me and they know I'm not that great. How about and I'm joking, of course um, how about you talk a little bit about who you are and tell me about yourself?
Speaker 3:well, well, wow, that's a not interesting question, but I'm a mental person, as we call us in the first responder world. Yes, I'm, I'm duly diagnosed. I love the kind of work you do. We both love doing treatment and I like crisis intervention work. I go back to the days when in the 70s that was great stuff Wrote a couple of unread books and I won't inflict on you what was about empathy and the others about crisis intervention, long since out of print.
Speaker 3:And then I well, how did I get into emergency services? My old man had a heart attack and he survived it. He was a bull, very strong, and I didn't know what to do. I felt really stupid and I was in my late 20s, I guess at that time. I happened to be home when it happened and so I said well, I'd like to be an EMT.
Speaker 3:I had no background in emergency services at all. My brother's in the military, maybe I was about 28, I think 26, 28. Maybe I wanted a uniform, who knows? My local department was hosting an EMT course, a little bit like the draft. They said, yeah, no, you can take it free. It was expensive in those days, but you got to give us a couple of years of service on the ambulance. I said, sure, it's fine by me, and that's how it all started. I got on the meat wagon, as we call it, and I actually liked it a lot. Not that I was all that good at it, but I liked it. And then you know well, when you're there you got to do the firefighter one deal. I said, oh okay, so I didn't know anything about fires, nor did I want to Scared the shit out of me.
Speaker 3:I figured oh well, I got to do it. So then I took the plan. I became a call firefighter for a department. Back in those days, when most of the departments were heavily called, we didn't have as many professional full-time firefighters. It was very busy A lot of fires in the 70s. My God, I loved it. I loved firefighting to the point where and I did it part-time so it helped me get through graduate school I was on scholarship. Where'd you go for graduate?
Speaker 2:school Harvard, excuse me.
Speaker 3:That's just why I don't tell anybody.
Speaker 2:I know A little bird told me you wouldn't talk about it, so I figured I'd just say it. You opened it up.
Speaker 3:I was very, very lucky. I went to a program called Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. It was an experimental program, clinical Psychology and Public Practice. It was an experimental program. It lasted about 25 years and you couldn't be part of the program unless you were willing to do public practice, work for public agencies Later on. If you want to do private practice, that was up to you, but you had to. All our internships were in public settings.
Speaker 3:So it was a good beginning to learn. You know, working in places like DYS or jails or working for locked state hospitals, things like that. That's where I sort of started. But the other side was the firefighting side and I loved it and to the point where I applied to go full time would have been my career. But they were adding a lot of firefighters and there was 14 guys in front of me who had been. You know they were townies. They grew up, lived in the town, fought fires as Eagle Scouts, became part-time firefighters. They were way ahead of me so I was hopeless so I didn't even try them. Later on I became part-time. I was very happy and retired as a deputy many years later. But I tried to never forget where I came from. So those are the two sides, the duly diagnosed, either a psychologizing firefighter or a firefighting psychologist. I don't know which, um, but it did I tell you how.
Speaker 2:About a great human that's? Always good that's a good, that's a good start for me one thing it does is for me, for this old dude.
Speaker 3:it kept me very humble because, um, there's no real place to hide in the fire ground and you can be as arrogant or foolish as yourself you are. And so the defecation you hit the roadie blades, to put it politely, and you ran out of air and there's zero visibility. You suck on your mask and you lost the wall. You have no freaking idea where you are and you feel like you're going to lose bladder control. In fact, once I did. And then you realize okay, this, this stuff is real and it can kill you and uh.
Speaker 3:So let's, let's not get too, let's just stay right size, you know. So when nature overwhelms you, I think that's a good experience. But anyway, um, yeah, I stayed in for almost 40 years, on and off retired, in a little small town which I love, where I live here now um and uh, and was a part-time deputy, although when you're on, when you have that standing, you're always that standing, you're always on call because you're always listening, with a third ear to hear. You know, did the bus get out of the barn, the ambulance, or who was on engine two and et cetera? Oh, I better get going, because that's not the crew we want for that. So my family just put up with all of it that. So my family just put up with all of it. And everybody in emergency services knows they miss Thanksgiving's. They're running out the door on Christmas Eve, your kid's birthday party, oh, dad's gone. You know, children of first responders, let alone spouses, really are a different breed themselves in terms of resilience, in terms of just getting used to. You know, dad loves to do this, her mom loves to do this. They're nuts, but it's the way it is.
Speaker 3:I always remember one thing too, and it wasn't fighting the fire, it was CISM. The night of the Worcester cold storage fire my chief came by and said get in To me and my wife, we're going. And we got there at about eight o'clock. The fire had started at 613. And by the time we got there all six firefighters were declared lost. And that was a night that I'll never forget. We did all death note notifications with Kathy Minahan and my wife who had lost her husband in a Charlestown warehouse fire, ladder 15, over 20 years ago. So a sidebar is that after the coal storage fire, valerie and Kathy started a group for spouses who lost a loved one in the line of duty, called the Wings Group. Winners in's a need of grief services. But that night we were so stressed, I guess, or so shocked, that when we came back at 4 am, um, and we went back and spent the next eight days there in the tent, um, we drove right past our driveway.
Speaker 3:You know they talk about, when you're having a real post-trauma symptom, perceptual distortions which I'd never really experienced, even in the size of things, and they also talked about deja vu and jamais vu. You know that I'm referring to something I think I've already seen, but I actually haven't. I've never been there. But jamais vu is also being in a place. I should know it's familiar but I don't even recognize it. There's 31 chemicals in the stress response and they are powerful and they can have effects on cognition. It was 4 am. We're driving down a dirt road in Hubbardston and I drove right past my own driveway and my wife looked at me. I looked at her. I said where are we? She said I don't know where you are, but we just passed her own driveway. That was a powerful, very powerful night. So yeah, you kind of stay right size in those things. I don't know how I got off on that. Let me shut up.
Speaker 2:We were talking about different things in your career, retiring and all that. And I think that for me, you know, worcester, massachusetts, december 3rd 1999, will be etched in stone in my head and the Worcester Six is something that's very near and dear to me, because I was watching TV, I was working in a group home that day.
Speaker 3:We've had similar experiences, yep.
Speaker 2:And remember, like as a when I came into this field I wanted to work with kids. I end up in a developmental disabled home with people who have Pratt or Willie, and I'm watching this and I'm like now I have this intense urge to go and help mentally, not physically, because I don't have that capacity for people with first responders. So when people ask where you fall you know how did you fall in this job? I say ask backwards, it's not even what I wanted. And for me, know how did you fall in this job? I say ask backwards, it's not even what I wanted. Um, and and for me it's realizing that things that really hit you are just those things that you got to remember. So I don't know if that was like the um. Oh, my god, this is what my calling is, so to speak. But it was certainly an acorn that was planted in my head, because all I can do is think about what are the other fight like? I didn't.
Speaker 3:I knew the other towns there, but I can't imagine being in the city of Worcester, a firefighter, knowing your six brothers are in there and I can't imagine We've had a very close relationship with Worcester fire for years for that reason and a guy named Spike Wallace who's since passed away, but he was an amazing guy. He was a Vietnam guy who was wounded and he was on Cambridge rescue a very smart, intelligent, an amazing guy. He was a Vietnam guy who was wounded and he was on Cambridge Rescue. A very smart, intelligent, just great guy. One of the founders of critical and stress management in the Commonwealth. He and I were in the tent right at the bottom of the building, so they stretched yellow tape that when you came off the deck, every one of these places has a name for it. You know Worcester was the deck and New York was the pile and Oklahoma City was the pit, and when you come off these things- on the job.
Speaker 3:I don't mean as doing the stress work. You know there's usually a place where you go for like racks and a rehabilitation center. So that was ours in the tent, and Spike was the person who kind of got us started in doing that kind of stuff at the Cold Storage Fire. We were there all eight days and we've always had a close relationship with all those Worcester folks. However, I identify with what you did because that's how I started. I started working after I got my degree. I started working for DYS, started working group homes, ended up working for the Retarded and then I ended up ending a first marriage after 13 years. It had its shelf life. We went separate ways. We're still very cordial today, thank God, and we co-parented our kids. But at that time I went into therapy because I felt like I was a mess, plus I was drinking a lot.
Speaker 3:That's how I dealt with my stress.
Speaker 2:Now here's another dual diagnosis you were talking about.
Speaker 3:That's true, and I think this was when I was 36. How I got into it is interesting. I had a supervisor at Children's Hospital where I did my postdoc, who was great, and she said, listen, hey, you got to learn how to give the Rorschach. And I said, ok, it's my least favorite instrument, but so I had to take it in order to give it and one of the cards.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to stop for a second. Rorschach is a is an interpretive test where it's ink blocks for those who don't know what it is. Is an interpretive test where it's ink blocks for those who don't know what it is. It's a very much interpretive, unfortunately not very reliable or valid testing, but I just in case people don't know what it is. Part of finding your way through therapy is to make it as clear as I can about what therapy looks like, what we're talking about, so I apologize for it.
Speaker 3:No, I apologize for just throwing it out there. I should have explained the same thing. So, yeah, it's a projective test but, as you say, it's not very reliable, but it can be interesting. In my case it probably, you know, saved my sanity because I'm the color shock card. There's one card that everybody freaks out on where they see a monster, whatever.
Speaker 2:I a monster, whatever. I stopped talking. Oh, and I stared at the card. That's not interpretive, by the way, that the roshak, I think, is interpretive, but when you see people's reaction to it, that's something you can visibly observe and I think there's psychological value in that.
Speaker 3:You're not kidding and I went someplace else and I got the lits in on me all lump and throat.
Speaker 1:And I'm looking at this card.
Speaker 3:The room got very silent, still started to spin a little bit. She was very kind and very nice to me, said Hayden, I think you need to see somebody. So she got me to a fabulous shrink. I loved him because he swore he was a combat vet. He was. I thought he was the director of outpatient psychiatry at McLean. Just a down to earth guy, right, really made me feel cared about. And I'm saying all this because I was not doing any treatment myself yet I was still working for state agencies and I was doing 90 hours a week and what do you know, I got an ulcer and it was in the midst of losing a week.
Speaker 3:And what do you know?
Speaker 3:I got an ulcer and, of course, I was in the midst of losing a marriage and was also drinking myself into oblivion, not knowing that I had an alcohol problem, until my sponsor eventually said to me Hayden, you might not think you're an alcoholic, but you'll do until one comes along. In the meantime, why don't you just start dealing with it? But, anyway, physician, heal myself. So he said to me, the shrink said you're working with the retarded and I said yeah, I'm going to link this to CISM and understanding why incidents bother us. He said why are you doing this to yourself? Are you at this this many hours? You have an ulcer now and you got 90 hours a week. What, what? What are you? Are you trying to make them all unretarded? He said what connection do you have to this? And my God, it was like I just got hit with a two by four. I had a younger sister who was retarded and she died and I was eight years old when that happened and I never got to live with her because in those days the prevailing wisdom of pediatrician was stick them in institutions. We wouldn't do that now. She died in institution and I guess that had a much deeper effect on me than I knew. So he worked with me many years, a wonderful guy and eventually I got in the fire department, continued to be a psychologist living in the town that I was in.
Speaker 3:We had a working fire, which there were many in those days, and I just remember you know Captain Copeland on the phone on the radio, who was the brother of Don Copeland, who was a famous weather forecaster at that time. And Copeland, as we called him, was very quiet. He was a tough guy, kind. You know. If you got three words out of him you were getting a lot. And I just remember I was not on duty. He tore past my house licensed siren. I just heard him say on the radio very quietly, step on it. People trapped. That's all Kobe had to say. So I dropped what I was doing. I was only a block from the fire station.
Speaker 3:So so I got on H 24 first, which I liked because I was the only one that could drive it, because you had a double clutch on upshifts, and I really enjoyed it. Captain Belmont got in the seat next to me, a couple of firefighters. We arrived unseen and I won't tell you the story of the fire, but it was whipping. We had fire blowing out under the eaves. Basically, what had happened I'll be brief was that a family was coming back from a skiing vacation. They drove all night. Dad went to work. There was about 7 o'clock in the morning. Mom got out of the car it was February, there was ice, there was snow and she's unpacking and the daughter. The daughter, little Kimberly, 12 years old, said Mom, just go into the house, I'll be upstairs, okay, mom's unpacking. Literally like five minutes later the whole house erupts. What we forgot is that fire goes up and out. Yeah, so here we see the second floor with smoke puffing out under the eaves and we think the fire's on the second floor. So we said to the mother where's your daughter? She said she's on the second floor. We did a balls-up search on the second floor Zero visibility. I found the family dog, golden retriever, dead, threw it down the stairs. We had two firefighters injured. Finally we had to bail out down the stairs. Over ladders All fires go out eventually, right, but this one was ripping and it was surrounding down from the outside, so finally it went out. And then they said, doug, you know, take a kooker downstairs and do overall in the basement. So I'm in the basement picking through, you know, drop down from the ceiling, sharp like snow lower blades and everything smokes beginning to lift, and over by the cellar, sharp like snow lower blades and everything Smoke's beginning to lift, and over by the cellar stairs, I see what looks like a garbage bag. I said, oh, what the F is that? And it was like figure ground distortion, like you're focusing an old slide projector. Whoa, that comes into focus. That's a kid. The charge remains of a kid. Was in a focus? That's a kid. The charge remains of a kid.
Speaker 3:And what had happened, steve, was that she decided to go down to the basement where they had a rumpus room and just watch tv. They've been up all night. She wanted to relax for a minute, lay down the couch. She hit the light switch. Gas had been escaping the entire time they'd been on the vacation. That one flicked the switch and it was a gas-fed fire. It exploded but it went up and out. Nothing we could have saved there if we'd known. But we went to the wrong floor, right, you missed it. So I ended up shoveling the remains into a body bag, didn't really think much of it. You didn't at the time.
Speaker 3:Just do your fucking job and shut up, so shovel in. I remember being surprised at how heavy the internal organs were the liver, the lung, the heart, the kidneys, stomach. And then I didn't think much of it, because what do we do? We went out and got drunk. That's how we handle stuff in those days. In fact that's what was encouraged Put out the fire, step over the body and go get drunk. So, eddie West, I was going to tell you where you can find a Bloody Mary breakfast at like 10 o'clock in the morning by that time at the Concord Traffic Circle, yeah, howard Johnson's, they would see us coming in, looking like we looked. They'd say the back room, there we go, the back room. They'd keep us away from the other customers. Why am I saying all this? It effed me up to a fairly well.
Speaker 2:Feel free to say the whole word if you want to. I don't do editing on there's. No, uh, there's, no, there's, I don't. I don't do, uh, editing on that I appreciate that.
Speaker 3:So to finish this up and thank you for listening to it, it's a little long-winded, but it was a seminal event in my life right, that's why it's not long-winded, if it's seminal in your life, but good it didn't work out too well, um, and I did have nightmares and flashbacks, as you would have expected, only because I was so up close and personal with her. And I finally went into therapy and I had to get sober because I was drinking myself into a stupor trying to get rid of that stuff. And, as they later teach you in the trauma work, alcohol is not only central nervous system depressant but it does make flashbacks and nightmares more vivid. The colors are more vivid and it'll knock you out and put you to sleep, which is what I wanted because I couldn't sleep. But then you wake up three or four hours later, fitful, you're still in your bdus, you got shit shower shaving, you get to roll call, I get to work seven o'clock and you go for years like that no sleep, alcohol, up down, up down, adrenaline exhaustion. Adrenaline exhausted, medicated, go to work over time. That doesn't work too good.
Speaker 3:And so what happened to me is, about eight years later, my department said to me because by then I was doing some of this work, I had become a forensic doctor, I was working for the courts, I know JL, this is a long story, but I wasn't working with kids anymore, which had been my career for like 15 years or the retarded, but um, for a job. It was the courts and it was a good job and I enjoyed it. But, um, my department said you know, there's this new stuff called critical stress management and, uh, you want to take a look at it? Uh, because if you do, we will send you folks to be helped. At that time I happened to be the veterans agent in town. I was seeing vets free. My idea of helping them was to sit on my porch and drink Jim Beam with them. That was great. I thought it was great.
Speaker 2:They loved coming to my house.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd go see you for therapy too.
Speaker 3:That's why I stopped drinking too, so now I'm getting sober. You've taken away my best friend. I can't sleep. I still got the images, but at least I'm not drunk and there's no order of alcohol in the courts. So I went to this program 1989 this was and it was taught by Vicki Harris, who was one of the early instructors in critical distress management, and she was a fabulous speaker. And I'm there wrapped with attention in a room of 155 firefighters, nashville, new Hampshire, and I'm learning a lot. I'm way up the back row and she gets to the Hackensack Fire. I'm trying to talk about triggers and events and how you connect dots. And the Hackensack Fire was a famous fire in the CISM lore because what happened was it was like the cold storage fire in the sense that there was a wide open space in the garage. When they first came in, there was no smoke, nothing. They had their masks hanging down. What they didn't realize is the fire was ripping in a crawl space between the ceiling and the roof, which was concrete and sealed completely.
Speaker 3:So, the fire had no place to go but down and we couldn't have vented it because of the roof. So they walked in, the Hackensack firefighters, and it was one engine crew with a lieutenant and five guys, and they got way far in. All of a sudden there's a reason I'm telling you this it broke through and the fire came rushing down, just like what happened to the firefighters. I know, you know the story, the Cold.
Speaker 1:Storage.
Speaker 3:Fire, that whoomp, when that petroleum-based insulation let go. All at the same time the building called storage fire erupted. Same thing in hackensack. And these guys, they're firefighters. They put on their masks. The lieutenant took them to a, a paint locker, a closet in the back. They couldn't go back to the instance. They came in and they had a steel door. They closed themselves in and they couldn't get out because there was bars on the on the first floor window but they had comms. So this lieutenant is very calmly saying yeah, we're stuck in a paint locker here. If you can just rip off these, is these grates on this window, we'll be OK. But we can't go out the way we came. Nobody heard him came. Nobody heard him.
Speaker 3:In those days. They only had one channel on the fire ground and the chief was directing the fire from the outside. Multiple incoming units from other towns, his whole department there. Now this thing is ripping. It started out as just not even smoking the building possible fire is now a conflagration, but he's got a crew way in the back. This is before. We had good you know, procedures around keeping track of people in a large area, search, et cetera, and they couldn't.
Speaker 3:They couldn't get out and they they remained very dignified, just like the cold, the cold storage, the Worcester Six, right till the end. So he thinks like, okay, come get us, it's getting hot in here, we're running out of air, right, and you know when that ding, and then the mass sucks and then you start to ding, ding, ding, you're out of air so okay we're breathing off the floor, we're buddy breathing, and they get sounding more urgent.
Speaker 3:They never once lost their cool until finally it just stopped. Nobody on the fire ground heard them, but everybody in scanner land heard them, as true in the Worcester Cold Storage Fire.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Many of those families of firefighters lived in that area and they heard transmissions of the dying firefighters. So, although at that time the Cold Storage Fire hadn't happened yet, we learned a lot because the cops came on scene after it was out and said hey, don't worry, We'll take care, We'll get you guys out, you don't need to see that. The firefighters said excuse me, we take our own people out and they said well, let us take care of the buyers of the ME techs. We'll take care of it.
Speaker 3:They said no you're taking and there was a fist fight. So the Gemini team one of the first teams in the nation that was so well regarded with fire, cism team, critical and stress manager team as you know, everything's volunteer as a clinician, as a trained team that team came in and really had their hands full because they got to mend fences between police and fire. So that was a fire that was very emotional for the crowd to watch.
Speaker 1:To me.
Speaker 3:I started to feel nauseous, I had a rapid heartbeat and I really felt sick and dizzy. I got up and I walked out and I went to the water fountain outside and there was a very kind, compassionate EMT named Neil Bradwin from Boston AMS who had started their peer support team and he came up behind me, put his hand on my shoulder.
Speaker 3:I jumped like silly he said you're getting triggered, aren't you? I said yeah, but neil, I oh you introduce himself. I don't know why because, uh, I've never been in a huge, large area search like that, I've never been in that level of fire. He said there's nothing to do with it. When your body reaches a certain level of heart rate and fight or flight and increased blood flow of the muscles and all the stuff that's going on in your brain, you process information two to ten times faster than normal. It doesn't know that it's not back in something else. When else have you been that scared Kimberly Jollyfire that was easy for me. So. So at that point point I got cism trained.
Speaker 3:I did love working with the folks. Um, obviously we did everything free and I'm almost done the long story of how we got to the on-site. I got the help I needed, I did get sober. I stopped working on the department for quite a while, um, probably four years, and I just concentrated on doing this stuff. And they brought a firefighter to me and said you know, we're going to give you our very best. His name is Tim Tenney. 1991, the Nickel Street house fire in Gardner. It was the same kind of thing balloon construction fire, ie there's a space between the floors and the walls and the fire travels up that space.
Speaker 2:So in a balloon construction fire you look in the basement for the origin, even if it's in the in the ceiling in the third story, because that's where it started yes up the side of the building so, tim, and just just to stop you for a second, also to let everyone know that that's the construction that was very prevalent in the new england area for many, many, many years. So this is not something like people like said oh yeah, this is going to cause fires, it wasn't purposeful, but this is something of old structures of old new england from the late 1800, early 1900. So I just want to throw that out so that people don't go and wait a minute. Well, why did they build them that way? Well, yeah, duh, we didn't know any better. That's why.
Speaker 3:But right, I'm sorry. No, thank you second time. I thank you um, because I get cranked up and then I forget um that that's why I'm here.
Speaker 2:I'm just just sitting here just listening.
Speaker 3:No, that makes a big difference. Thanks, anyway, particularly with Victorian structures. So Tim and his partner, who was a Vietnam vet tank commander, went into this basement Heavy, heavy fire. My department was there but I was not on it yet that was how much that I was living and acting and they sounded the all out to get everybody out, because all three fours were fully involved Tim and his partner in the basement, because they'd been told there were three children there. The fire had actually started when the mom went across the street to play cards and drink with a friend, she left all three kids in this basement apartment. It was one of their birthdays. They tipped over a candle and started the fire.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I think the kids were. The baby was about six months old, the kids were two and four very little. Tim and his partner were not going to leave the ground floor. Again, zero visibility. They had what's called a rollover, not a flashover, but the fire was rolling over their heads all the way down the hallway and they couldn't for the life of them find these kids To this day. Tim, who's still the chairman of our board 30 years later, will tell you that he swears that he couldn't possibly have heard this. This over the noise of steam windows breaking, diesel engines, pumps cranking up, people talking, yelling through their masks, all the sounds of fire combat. He swears, and so does his partner, davy up guard, that he will swear that he heard as he passed one of the words uh, one of the the rooms.
Speaker 3:He heard a sound like this mom. That's what he heard and he couldn't have steve.
Speaker 2:There was weight, there was so much noise you couldn't hear a thing they went into that room and they found, under underestimated by the public, how loud a fire truly is it really, and they found both kids in there, so they carried both kids out.
Speaker 3:in those days um, we didn't have, um, a hyperbaric, a hyperbaric chamber in this day. So they got life led to me. They couldn't save the baby, unfortunately, so they said we're going to bring this guy I was still living and after then, what we're gonna? We're gonna bring this kid to you to do something, because CISM was very new. Then All I did, honest to God, was 60 briefings with him, the standard seven-phase model, which is not therapy.
Speaker 3:It's a treatment for a critical incident. It's definitely a crisis intervention treatment, but it's very structured. It's a structured discussion designed to have a very positive impact. All it's supposed to do is just lessen the impact of the event and jumpstart somebody's normal coping abilities. It was designed for people who are already pretty resilient. It doesn't work with civilians as well. It shouldn't be used with civilians.
Speaker 3:It's designed for people who've been there, done it, got the t-shirt, seen the baddest, maddest, saddest, and they can handle a tough fact phase where you've got to get them to look in the eye of the tiger and just describe sight, sound, smells, what they went through. They're able to do that, but you've got to do it as a group because they need that peer support. You know my telling some medic oh, I understand why you couldn't intubate that kid on a bumpy country road who was very anterior in his throat presentation. You get to the hospital, the nurse look. He said how come you didn't make the tube? My saying to him oh well, you did a great job. I'm not a medic, it doesn't mean anything. I have other things to give him, but not that or her.
Speaker 3:But another medic looking at him and saying hey, listen, I understand exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 3:If I had a dollar for every two I missed I'd be rich. That means something. So that's where we, you know, we began to realize okay, we have to do this as as a group where possible. But Tim came along. So I just did something you're not supposed to do, which is I use the model one-to-one. I had no choice.
Speaker 3:He had been in a psychiatric hospital for 30 days. His department didn't know what to do with him. He couldn't function. He had fluid PTSD and this was the best interior guy. They all said he was the best interior structure firefighting guy they had. So they didn't mean to do him any harm. But he was in a psychiatric unit, locked unit for 30 days, used $18,000 of insurance. He came back out and he still couldn't function Because they didn't address the trauma.
Speaker 3:You know being very well trauma informed. It's different from regular ongoing psychotherapy, which is fine for something else, but not for losing two kids in a house fire. All we did every time we start to talk. Steve, he'd get a blinding headache. There was such an overload of chemicals he was sitting on so much Like Eddie Lee from the old state police dress here used to say kid at the beach for the beach ball, the more you stuff it down more for you to take your head off when it comes out. Yeah, so he would just go out to his van he was electrician and he sleep in his van for 45 minutes. Then he come back in and he get it done.
Speaker 3:We went through all seven phases of a debriefing and he finished beautifully. He went back to work, never had another day where he lost any time due to trauma and he and I several years later said hey, tim, you know, sometimes the debriefing is not enough. It's great, but you got to have some follow through. But they can't. They won't go into ongoing therapy which I do, which you do, which is great, but sometimes they just won't do it. We need a place. We have halfway houses for recovering addicts. We've got halfway houses for the retired. We've got halfway houses, pre-release centers for prisoners what the F? We don't have anything for police, fire, ems.
Speaker 2:Well, that concludes episode 133 of Finding your Way Through Therapy. Dr Hayden Duggan, you'll be back next week or next episode, depending on when you listen to this, but he will be back for part two and I can't wait to hear that, and I hope you join me then.
Speaker 1:Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States.