“This is your brain on trauma, any questions”?

The only thing I have ever been consistent about (throughout the course of my entire life) is being inconsistent.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am having a true “Carrie Bradshaw” moment. I was putting some folders away in my office and heard myself say the above sentence about being consistently inconsistent. Next thing I knew, I was opening a word document and here we are. In honor of Carrie Bradshaw and all the SATC fans (that’s what the kids do now…they speak “acronym”), “I began to wonder’ how does one learn consistency? And furthermore, how does a person differentiate between inconsistency and ADD/ sensory overload?

Yes, I absolutely allowed the cursor to blink for a few moments at the end of the above sentence. I sat back and took a deep breath, questioning if I should make a cosmopolitan or get my hands on a Marlboro light. (If this sentence makes no sense to you, we can’t be friends, ha-ha)

Here it is. My nervous system was reinforced positively multiple times for my ability to juggle chaos. The better I was at doing more than one thing at a time, literally, the more praise I received. Praise = love. Supervisors, co-workers, visitors and interns would all agree that I was a kick ass multitasker. My therapist used to say, ‘you physically cannot do two things at the same time’, that multitasking is a myth*. I set out to prove every part of that wrong. I could be in a conversation, get interrupted and handle the interruptive conversation, go back to the original conversation as if nothing had interrupted the flow in the first place. And, while all of this is happening, I can recall license plates, numbers, detailed instructions, intense thought. What I thought was a “badge of honor”, is in fact a trauma response.

My brain working well under extreme pressure is a response to trauma. Period.

The average person is not supposed to be able to complete a multitude of tasks at the same time, let alone under life and death circumstances. For example: I listened to a mother animalistically scream when she found her child dead by suicide, try to offer any kind of guidance I could, while at the same time speaking with ease and calm over a police radio while typing into a computer and listening to another person in the same room speak.

And then one of those variables’ changes. The phone call ends. The scene is stable. There is enough of the Tetris puzzle pieces cleared for more to start falling. Before my brain and body had time to register the absolute horror, I was just a witness to, the phone rings and now a family’s home is on fire. The cycle starts again.

I am going to take this opportunity to credit any human being who has ever been a dispatcher that answers 911 calls. The profession is significantly lacking in support for dispatchers, mostly because very few police officers, firefighters, EMTS and administrators respect the work a dispatcher performs. There are a lot of jokes out there about “failing the academy so he became a dispatcher”. When I started in the field, dispatching was not a career; it was a steppingstone. Regardless, listening auditorily to an emergency is still a part of the emergency. And those of you not in emergency services would be the first to say, “oh my gosh, absolutely yes, those poor and dear dispatchers”. However, the issue is an industry problem, not necessarily a public opinion one. You might be surprised how many first responders believe they are separated from dispatchers because they have more sensory involvement in the situation.

I digress.

There is a direct correlation between my inconsistency and my ability to multitask. Which supports which? “Which came first?”. My proficiency in bouncing around between tasks during extreme pressure has created my distracted brain. Check this out…my brain adapted and figured out how to function with recall, while performing multiple tasks all wrapped up into each other. The more this was positively reinforced with the happy, feel-good brain chemicals like dopamine, the more I subconsciously adapted.

Where does the trauma fit in?

The nature of the job.  The backlog of situations I was privy to that confirmed monsters live under the bed, that strangers are dangerous, and the world really is terrifying place. Having to pretend that the world exists but not completely acknowledge it exists is living in an in-between state of hell.

My yoga includes my approach to being consistent. Grounding into my practice and breath keeps my brain in this current moment and reminds me that I do not have to do two things at once, ever again. Yoga teaches me and reinforces for my body that slowing down is a blessing and rest is productive. Breaking down the old story of only being worthy if I was accomplishing is my hurdle.

What does it mean to be consistent? Believe it or not, this post was not intended to be about multitasking. It was supposed to be about consistency. Does consistency mean the same as commitment, or rather, you commit to being consistent? Either way, the only way to start is to keep taking steps in the direction toward my dreams instead of away from.

Stay tuned friends.

*I am big on crediting where credit is due, Denise Bradfield is credited for this breakthrough.