First responders have a saying- “Being a first responder leaves you with two kinds of stories- ones you don’t want to tell, and ones others don’t want to hear.” It also leaves you with a LOT of quirks and habits that only other folks who’ve been there will notice.

A friend claimed she thought I had PTSD from my time as an EMT. I personally don’t think I do. I go to a therapist, and it’s never once come up. For a brief time after a particularly bad situation in 2005, I definitely had flashbacks and triggers- but not since. At least, nothing more than what Anxiety gets me to ruminate on.

I simply don’t think I saw enough stuff long enough to give me honest-to-God PTSD. I know it doesn’t necessarily take repetitive or long-term exposure to trauma to cause PTSD, but I can honestly count on one hand the number of calls I’d been on that might be considered “traumatic.” If anything, most of them were of the “ok, you won’t believe this shit” genre of anecdote. There are no Misery Olympics and I wouldn’t want a medal if there were.

What I think being an EMT did leave me with were a couple of trained behaviors and responses that others would find odd- especially in the kitchen.

If there’s one thing you need to be prepared for when joining the culinary industry, it’s working in tight confines where everything is loud, sharp, and/or on fire all the time. Adrenaline can be high, tempers can be frayed, and you need to focus on your work and be aware of your surroundings at all times for those behind you, putting things down near you, or moving behind you with carefully-balanced hotel pans of screaming hot liquid.

Crashes, bangs, sounds of objects falling, and exclamations of anger or dismay are common. As an EMT, my immediate reaction is to yell something akin to “You ok?” I constantly eye changes in temperament, changes of tone, and speed in others to assess if there’s something I need to be concerned about.

In psychology, this is a trauma response called “hypervigilance.” It’s a common response in abuse situations where someone will be constantly vigilant to danger or changes of mood to avoid violence or pain. For first responders, it’s much the same- but we have it trained into us by the unpredictability of situations.

We watch the patient for signs things are about to get bad.
We watch their mood and tone to see if they will get combative.
We mind our surroundings for dangers from conditions- or people.
Most often though, we are accustomed to crashes, bangs, and yelling as indicators something has gone wrong and we need to act.

95% of the time in the kitchen, this is not the case. It’s just something falling. It’s just someone realizing we’re out of a certain sauce. Speaking from experience, when cooks are most frequently injured, we just mutter something and go to the first aid box. That doesn’t stop my reaction, though- and I’ve worked in places where people told me to “Chill out, quit being so panicky.”

That doesn’t work, and it’s frankly a dickish thing to do. When you are used to being the person people look to because you Know What To Do and Make It Not So, you don’t just “chill out” when you think people are in pain. You act first and evaluate later, and you do that because it saved lives in the past.

Maybe instead of telling people to “chill out,” just say “thank you for checking on me?”

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I was going to write about the second habit being an EMT left me with- the tendency to eat quickly (because yo never know when the next call is coming) but after that first part it felt disingenuous. Talking about hypervigilence made me realize that I was opening the door to discussing something that doesn’t always get mentioned- trauma responses and working with people with triggers/damage.

Now that trigger and triggered have become ha-ha-jokey-joke words for one’s political opponents, too many people tend to forget that those are real psychological problems that affect real people in really terrible ways.

In stereotypically “tuff-as-nails” environments like the kitchen where there CAN be a lot of triggering stimuli, being triggered can be laughed off or treated like a joke. The triggered person themselves may feel the need to disguise their fear or play it off as “just a reflex” in order to not look or feel “weak” in front of their employers and coworkers.

No one in a kitchen wants to be “that guy.” No one wants to be “touchy” or “high maintenance.” Everyone wants a reputation for stepping up, working hard, knuckling down and not complaining- especially about something that everyone else treats as commonplace.

We are always responsible for our own behavior and to an extent those who are aware of their triggers need to not place themselves in situations where such triggers will be common, but that doesn’t mean others can’t address them with consideration, patience and grace.

I am fortunate in that my response to my “trigger” are socially acceptable and even helpful. A few times, I’ve been able to help someone in the kitchen who was hurt. That’s not the case for everyone.

Perhaps not everything can be avoided, but we can change the way respond. We can put people at ease before we crack jokes and we can seek to understand before we label people whose pasts we don’t know as “high strung” or “panicky.”

Maybe we are the ones that need to “chill out” about our expectations of others.

Stay Classy,