Sheepdog Tip of the Day, After Combat tip 89
Soldiers, police officers and educators are often the first to debrief a person after a traumatic event. Say you are a police officer and you arrive at the scene of an armed robbery where the Seven-Eleven clerk has been beaten; or you are an Army officer getting a combat report from one of your units; or you are an educator and a kid has just been in a fight. In each of these cases you are going to ask what happened, and you have both a professional and a moral obligation to insure that the individual reporting to you remains calm. An agitated and anxious person has trouble recalling facts and might even lose pertinent pieces of information. You do not want to interview the puppy, because once it has taken over your efforts can be in vain. When you are in the business of gathering information, you need to first get the subject calm so you can conduct the most productive interview possible. Not only will you get better information, you will have made a giant step in helping that person avoid lasting psychological trauma and from spinning down the path of PTSD. Remember this: the probability of loss of life after a traumatic event can be greater than loss of life during the event. Here is what you can do to help prevent that. You want to calm the victim as you begin to get information or as you just reach out to offer a helping hand. Place a comforting hand on his shoulder, speak calmly and quietly, and ask him to take in a deep breath to your count of four and then hold it in while you again count to four. Tell him to let it out to your count and hold again to your count. When done correctly, this interview can be an inital debriefing that will begin the process of patching the hole in the person's screen door and helping him down the path of healing. If not done correctly, say you too become excited and agitated, you just might allow the victim's puppy to make the hole in the screen door even larger. Your actions need to be calm, helpful and in control to help close down the neural network linking the memory of the event with the emotions, so that he can begin the process of healing.
Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, On Combat
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Additional Resources
For PTSD, Shepherd Resource Group.