Refocusing with MindfulnessSubscriber Exclusive

In the past, Handley would have tried to push through his nonphysical pain.

“When I first started, it was ‘grin and bear it,’” said Handley, who also serves as a SWAT team medic. “You’d have a hard call, finish the call and move on.”

Now, a decade later, the attitude toward mental-emotional wellness in the law enforcement community is starting to shift, and holistic healing practices, such as mindfulness, are becoming more accepted, Handley said.

“I think the mindset has definitely changed. It’s maybe still not talked about enough, but (police officers) are more willing to try these things,” he said.

For Camas Police Chief Tina Jones, the shift can’t come soon enough.

“From the data, we’ve seen that folks in public safety have (higher rates) of divorce and suicide and shorter lifespans,” Jones said. “As chief, it’s important to me to do what I can to help bring in ideas and opportunities that help mitigate some of these negative impacts.”

Jones encouraged her own staff, as well as those from other regional law enforcement agencies, to attend the two-day “Mindful Agility” class April 29-30 at Lacamas Lake Lodge in Camas. She secured grant money from the state’s criminal justice training center to help cover tuition for four attendees from the Camas Police Department, including two captains.

‘Stress is normal’

Military and law enforcement veteran Richard Goerling and retired FBI agent Suzanna Hasnay led the workshop, which focused on tools to help first responders regulate their emotions instead of trying to suppress them.

“Emotions are normal. You can’t stop them,” Goerling told the class on the second day of training.

The more skilled people become at recognizing their emotions, Goerling said, the better they’ll become at regulating those emotions before they become overwhelming.

“You have chronic stressors in your field,” Goerling told the class. “This culture tells you to avoid it, but you cannot. The benefit of mindfulness is that you can be really angry or sad and still be regulated. Emotions cannot be avoided. You have no choice but to deal with whatever is there.”

Ridgefield Police Chief Cathy Doriot, who also attended the training, knows these lessons all too well.

In the early 2000s, Doriot was facing challenges in her personal and professional life. Her mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she was struggling at work.

“There was no facet of my life that was happy … and it was extremely challenging,” Doriot said. “I wasn’t functioning my best when I was coming to work.”

Hesitant to let anyone at the police department know she was struggling, Doriot paid for personal mental health counseling and began to heal.

“At that time, you didn’t want the organization to know you were going to counseling, so it came out of my own pocket. But, if I had not done that, I don’t know if I would be performing at the level I am now,” Doriot said.

When Jones told her about the mindfulness training, Doriot decided to give it a chance.

“One of the things they highlighted was recognizing that stress is normal. We’re going to have it. And our responses to that stress are also normal,” Doriot said. “It’s about acknowledging the stress, taking time to get centered and coming up with a plan to not let it cumulatively stack on your back without addressing it.”

One week after the course, Doriot had already started to incorporate some of the mindfulness tools into her daily routine.

“I don’t make it into a big thing. You don’t want to have another thing on your list that you have to get done,” Doriot said. “But, today, I sat in my patrol car and, for about 10 minutes, just sat and listened to mindfulness lessons on the CALM (app). It’s already had an impact on me. Now, I want to maintain and build upon that.”

The mindfulness course wasn’t just for those on the front lines of law enforcement.

A study published in the January 2023 Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology, which reviewed mindfulness-based initiatives reaching about 600 police officers found the programs “are effective in helping police officers to reduce … physical stress and psychological strain (and) helps decrease psychological stress-related symptoms.” Likewise, a clinical trial published in the September 2021 issue of Frontiers in Psychology found that mindfulness “may buffer against the long-term consequences of chronic stress.”

Goerling knows all about the years of research into mindfulness as a tool for helping improve the mental-emotional health of first responders. In addition to his work around the country leading mindfulness workshops, Goerling has collaborated with university researchers looking into the benefits of mindfulness for police officers, firefighters and others who experience higher levels of workplace stress than the general public.

“Mindfulness training not only improves the health of first responders, but any person,” Goerling said. “It enhances their humanity and their ability to self-regulate and be aware of their own sensory experience.”

Goerling said he worked for more than 15 years before seeing mindfulness become more accepted in law enforcement circles.

“We’re really good at accepting the tough-guy, hypermasculine approach to trauma,” Goerling said. “And the data is telling us, in this profession, you’re going to be trauma-injured. Instead of trying to stop it — because if you stop managing stress it absolutely does not work — we need to teach competency.”

Goerling dispels the notion that having a completely clear mind should be the goal of mindfulness training.

“Anyone who tells you that you can make distressing thoughts go away is lying to you and doesn’t understand what we know about the mind,” Goerling said. “Over time, we can reshape it, but we’re always going to have some element of an uncomfortable experience and emotional distress. It’s just a part of life.”

Having taught mindfulness workshops to first responders around the nation for more than a decade, Goerling said he has had a full range of feedback.

“We get feedback that this is bull (expletive), that this is for weak people, because not everybody is digging mindfulness,” he said. “But we get a lot of, ‘This training saved my life,’ or, ‘It saved my marriage,’ and also, ‘It saved someone else’s life because I could have used force but didn’t.’”

A more holistic approach to mental-emotional wellness is popping up in police and fire departments around the nation, including in Clark County, where mindfulness training is being incorporated into the regional police training academy and where police chiefs like Jones and Doriot hope to blend it into their local police departments.

“I’m really thrilled with some of the feedback I heard,” Jones said. “I’m exploring if we have one or two people interested in becoming mindfulness coaches. If we could get someone in-house trained, then we could weave it into our training.”

Doriot also is researching how she might be able to introduce mindfulness into her officers’ and staff members’ training.

She also believes addressing mental-emotional health is critical for law enforcement professionals.

“I’m very mindful of the fact that the people I work with are going to be protecting me as a senior citizen someday. As a resident, I want healthy, happy cops working in this community,” Doriot said. “So I want to help them become well-balanced individuals.”

Kelly Moyer: 360-735-4674; kelly.moyer@columbian.com