Strength is a major component of policing. Physical strength and mental strength are often acknowledged as valuable attributes for officers to possess. Physical strength seems straightforward, are you physically strong, do you push yourself to get stronger in the gym, on the track or in the pool? Can you go further, faster, or heavier than you could six months ago. Physical strength is fairly easy to define and to measure. What about mental strength? How do we even define mental strength? Mental strength is often defined as the ability to manage your own behaviors and thoughts along with the ability to overcome adversity, to push through – a measure of tenacity. Sometimes mental strength looks like denying parts of reality; I’m tired, I’m hot, I’m hungry – mental strength denies those for a time and continues to press on, it does not give in. Similarly, physical strength is also built by pushing past; pushing past pain, discomfort, and our previous accomplishments. So, to be strong seems to involve large parts of self-control and intentionally disregarding pain and discomfort as we impose our will on our own bodies or our environment.
What happens when you can’t. What happens when you can’t just push a little harder, grind a little deeper? What happens when the challenge you are facing can’t be beat by managing yourself, putting your head down, ignoring reality, imposing your will, or simply “deciding” you won’t quit. What happens when the challenge is your joy, your happiness, your connection with others, your marriage, or your relationship with your kids? What does emotional strength look like?
Emotional strength can be quite the challenge, especially for us as police officers. Emotional strength is first and foremost marked by a feeling of vulnerability, not control or the imposing of our will. Emotional strength is defined as the ability to navigate and tolerate difficult emotions without stuffing them, without avoiding them – or as we often like to call it, compartmentalizing. Emotional strength is built through the path of emotional awareness. We need to slow down long enough to be aware of what we are actually feeling, what our emotions are. Once we identify what we are feeling we need to accept it as it is – an emotion. It isn’t right or wrong, it doesn’t say anything definitive about who we are as a person and it certainly doesn’t deserve our scorn or the scorn of others. Riding the wave of the emotion, after identifying and accepting it can be tough, it takes patience and time and some grit – it takes the belief that the wave will end on its own and we don’t need to impose our will on it. When we develop the ability to feel, accept, and actually sit with our own emotions we develop strength. We develop strength that enables us to be present with ourselves and others even in the hardest of emotions. It enables us to accept ourselves and others when we feel like a mess, when we don’t know what we think or feel, when chaos seems to be running our insides. When we experience chaos at work we impose our will, we control and rightfully so which is why it is so hard to switch gears when we are not at work. We need to feel it and accept it, sit with it and not distract from it or numb it. We need courage to do this; it is a courage that can look like passivity, or weakness or inaction to the untrained eye. It is actually the strength of patience and the courage to endure; it is patience with ourselves first which can then result in patience with others, with our friends, with our spouses, and with our children. Some chaos needs firmness and control, some chaos, like our own emotions or the emotions of our children needs gentleness.
I encourage you to explore how patience and gentleness can be profound strength. I encourage you, my brothers and sisters, to allow yourself to feel your emotions and to share them with someone you trust at the right time and in the right way. Build your emotional strength just as you would mental and physical strength; our profession deserves it, your families deserve it, and most of all you deserve it.
by Jonathan Baker | Lieutenant
Office of Professional Development & Wellness
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department