Law Enforcement is NOT an Easy Profession
Whether you are a LEO or you are the spouse of a LEO, this profession simply isn’t an easy one. As a LEO, you clock into work with an immediate target on your back. You see things during your shift that a human brain of any age is not programed to see habitually. It is likely that you are working a shift that sucks. Perhaps you work loads of overtime that keeps you away from your family even more.
Police Love Their Job
You love your job and the community that you serve and protect. Geeze, you love it enough to put your life on the line for it each day. Unfortunately, the community that you love does not always show you love in return. Many days you get cussed out and spit on. You have strangers taking photos and videos of you doing your job all day. Oh, you even wear a camera on your body, sometimes forgetting to shut it off to pee. Your uniform is spotless and so are your manners, even when you are biting your tongue.
What About Lunch
Leaving abruptly to respond to a call without your food in hand at lunch is a part of the job. You may not remember a time when lunch was eaten around noon. Maybe you have had to live with being involved in a shooting. Perhaps you are like many LEOs who wait for that high danger situation to result in you having to be the one to pull the trigger.
There are times when you can’t even bring your uniforms or boots inside your home. You don’t want to expose your family to the gross that your apparel went through that day.
Autopilot
When you get home, you don’t know how to wind down and you go on autopilot. Of course you want to be there for your spouse and kids. Sometimes, you just aren’t. Perhaps you don’t want to share your experiences from the day with your spouse. If you talk about anything, you leave out the most horrendous parts. The dark parts you should shed from your chest but instead they keep stacking up.
You turn on the news. Maybe you pop open Facebook. Constantly you are being thrown off the bus and stereotyped in a way that makes the professional title LEO a bad thing. Don’t they know what you just went through? What you go through?
Police Buy a Lot of Their Own Safety Equipment
You know your spouse is supportive but they aren’t happy to learn that you have to spend more of your own money to buy something that you need for work. There is something that you need to keep you safer at work. Like so many agencies, yours doesn’t provide that something. In this, you either go without or you listen to your spouse’s upset until the understanding sinks in for them.
Sleep Interruption
Perhaps you look down at your spouse and kids, maybe even your dog. You realize that you want to badly to engage with them. Even more so, you are mentally (and probably physically) exhausted. When you try to go to sleep, you can’t. If you are like my LEO, you may take a natural sleep aid like melatonin to try to support your sleep pattern.
Today, we reflect on how difficult a LEO profession is. Of course we will counter that with all of the perks that come with the job as a LEO. We’ll get to those on another Blog.
What are some of the stress factors that you have found in yourself as a LEO or the LEO in your life? What have you done to cope with these tensions?
Always remember that you are fearless, you are strong, and you are a LEO Warrior.
