Schadenfreude and Encouragement
Schadenfreude and Encouragement
(part one of a two part series)
I walk around my department like an undercover social scientist, taking mental notes about what works to improve wellness and what...well, doesn’t. Having grown up in an alcoholic family, I’m pretty good at reading people. For example, when my dad came home I knew there were three options: 1) sober and morose, 2) drunk and violent or 3) drunk and maudlin. Back then, I had to read him real quick and take immediate action, otherwise bad things could happen. So, I’ve learned to trust my observations.
I’ve noticed cops (including myself) have an almost insatiable appetite for hearing and talking about our co-workers’ fuck ups. We love it.
Cop 1: You heard about Joe Blow, right?
Cop 2: No! What?
Cop 1: He got three days at the beach for a negligent discharge in the locker room.
Cop 2: That Joe is such an idiot, ha ha ha!
I love the word for this phenomenon: schadenfreude. It means taking pleasure from the misfortune of others. And don’t we do that? I always feel a twinge of guilt after I get done thrashing one of my colleagues. Somehow my personal wellness quotient dips just a touch.
When I worked narcotics we had a ‘team approach’. Our unit of about ten meat eaters conducted dope operations, each one offering multiple chances to fuck it up. The first thing that went through my mind after blowing something would be, “Oh shit, here it comes.” My Nextel would start blowing up. “Shannon, did you get the dope?” No, he got it down. “You’re a fuckin’ IDIOT...have you ever got dope off anyone? Ha ha ha ha!”
When an NFL QB throws a particularly poorly timed interception, have you noticed what happens? The guy trots off the field with his tail between his legs, finds an private spot on the pine and sits....alone. People leave him alone ‘cause they know he just pooched one.
Not so in law enforcement. When we screw up we get creative cartoons on the white board, new nicknames and a full round of “good job!” dripping with sarcasm. It’s a rough crowd.
An old family therapist and hero of mine, Murray Bowen, described schadenfreude as a way to reduce anxiety in groups. He calls it ‘triangulation’. For Bowen, any time two or more people are in the same place a certain amount of intimacy is floating in the space. This creates anxiety. Even if you don’t feel it, it’s there.
A very common method, albeit unconscious, people use to decrease the anxiety is to focus attention on someone not in the room. That should sound familiar. Inexplicably, when the group begins talking about the poor bastard that’s not there to defend himself, the tone is almost always critical. It seems to put everyone more at ease to join together in beating the shit out of Joe Blow.
To get a sense of how pervasive triangulation is, try an experiment. For one day, see if you can avoid disparaging a co-worker who isn’t in the room. Yeah, that includes administrators. If you’re Buddha Jr. and are able to do this without a problem, then notice it in others. Oh yeah, and share with me how you’re able to do it. I could use some help.
Next week we’ll discuss schadenfreudes’ opposite: encouragement.
Officer Fatigue
The following is an excerpt from the book on police mental health I've been working on for what feels like a frickin' decade.
Fatigue
Early on in my police career I figured there was something going on with this fatigue thing. I'd worked my whole life, knew what it was like to put in a full day and come home tired. I'd also been married seven years by the time I went into the police academy and fatigue in and of itself was never a marital issue. But the fatigue I experienced as a cop felt like a whole different beast. As an officer, being tired wasn't so much a mood as a complete mental, and physical breakdown. In fact, I call it "fatigue" but this word doesn't do it justice. That vegetable-like, completely psychically checked-out state cops fall into after getting home warrants it's own word. Another label for this dulled state of consciousness comes to us by Dr. Kevin Gilmartin in his excellent book, Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. He calls it the "hypervigilance biological roller coaster.” Gilmartin offers a detailed, biologically-based explanation for officer fatigue.
How, you may ask, can officer fatigue become so serious that it creates marital problems? It wasn't until I came across Gilmartin's work that I began to really understand officer fatigue. Gilmartin describes the physiology of officer fatigue as an inevitable product of hypervigilance. Anderson (1998) refers to the constant state of readiness necessary for an officer’s survival as “cop-face,” another descriptive and accurate term. Let's try and understand how officer fatigue is produced, what makes it different and how to minimize it's deleterious impact on marriage.
Officers are trained to use some version of the Cooper Color Code, in which different states of mental awareness are assigned colors. White, for example, is the condition we're in while daydreaming, or taking a relaxing walk in the woods. Officers are trained never to step inside a police station while in code white. In fact, some trainers believe cops should never be totally relaxed. But let's not get into the details of the Cooper Color Code. Suffice it to say, cops are always supposed to be vigilant while at work. To be in any way relaxed while on patrol increases the chance that you will be injured or killed. Of course, one problem officers face, frequently without being consciously aware of it, is guilt about the fact that they aren't in this vigilant state at all times at work. That's because our bodies register the "vigilant all day" thing as an absurd request and rejects it. Our bodies can't maintain this elevated state of awareness without a rebound affect. The rebound for prolonged vigilance (a.k.a. hypervigilance) is extreme lethargy.
And isn't it a kind of lethargy officers fall into at home? After working and especially on weekends, we simply want to sit and engage in meaningless activities, such as video games (preferably the "first person shooter" type), internet, and sleeping. Gilmartin calls it sitting in the "magic chair." We all have that familiar place in our homes where we gravitate after work. We occupy this place (sometimes a chair) and decompress. What's happening is that our brains are on overload. These so-called meaningless activities actually serve the very important function of releasing steam from our heads. We can, if left to our own devices, do these post-work activities for many, many hours. We feel the tension in our heads begin to dissipate. Then we go to sleep.
On our weekends our bodies are bouncing back from the hypervigilant state they were in all week. The net result is that we are exhausted, both mentally and physically. We don't want to make any decisions, don't want to engage in idle chat or plan activities. We just want to recover. Importantly, this recovering isn't laziness, nor is it meant to convey the message, "I don't care" to our spouses and children. Consider a natural disaster or family emergency which required you not only to be awake for many hours, but necessitated your being extra alert. After the emergency ended your body and mind would need to recover. It's not your attitude, it's your body.
Yet, for the non-police partner this checking out business doesn't really work. Our partners have been without us all day or week. Perhaps, they've been single-parenting all day or week as well. After work and on the weekends they need our attention (not to mention our help), as do our children. That's the problem. This is the classic clash of needs. One partner really craves, and physiologically needs X and the other equally craves Y. There are things you can do to minimize the impact of this phenomenon on your marriage.
By our own awareness that fatigue can be a real issue in police families we reduce the harm associated with it. Law enforcement couples need to talk about officer fatigue. Partners of officers should understand that, while it can be extremely inconvenient, it's not a personal rejection. Moreover, there are specific activities which help our bodies rebound more quickly from fatigue.
"Poor diets, high stress, pollution, and toxic work environments all take their toll, as does our consumption of stimulants such as coffee, tea, and colas. The use of these largely caffeine-based products disrupts eating cycles, creating rebound fatigue effects and contributing to low-blood sugar and adrenal exhaustion. Sometimes a solution to fatigue is as simple as taking a good multivitamin, more protein in the diet, or regular exercise." (Butler)
You already knew that though, didn’t you? The difference between surviving your law enforcement career and thriving in it requires putting our awareness into action.
Anderson, B.A. (1998). Trauma response profile. http://www.aaets.org/article59.htm
Butler, Graham. The New Energy Crisis. http://www.alive.com/1561a4a2.php?subject_bread_cramb=83.