Tactical Longevity

My guest today is Dr. Jenny Prohaska, a clinical psychologist who has spent her career on the front lines of trauma and high stakes performance. Jenny trained in Neuro Rehabilitation Psychology at the University of Kansas Medical Center working with patients and staff in trauma, ICU and burn units where she built her expertise in how the brain and body adapt to extreme stress. For more than a decade, Jenny has brought that expertise into policing and tactical operations. She's force science certified and consults on more than 30 officers-involved shootings a year as well as hundreds of other critical incidents. Jenny conducted thousands of prehire psychological evaluations, giving her deep expertise in what makes officers and teams thrive or deteriorate under pressure. She's also built and trained more than two dozen peer support teams across the country and today consults for more than 50 public safety agencies. Jenny is also a sought-after speaker for national organizations. She's a founder of Tactical Longevity, a first-of-its-kind pre-incident anti-fragility training framework designed to prepare officers and tactical teams to withstand the cumulative stress of their job.

I'm excited to talk to Jenny because I've been a fan of her work for a number of years and I believe that anti-fragility and prehabilitation programs like hers can dramatically improve officer wellness and longevity. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Jenny Prohaska.

My name is Jon Becker. For the past four decades, I've dedicated my life to protecting tactical operators. During this time, I've worked with many of the world's top law enforcement and military units. As a result, I've had the privilege of working with the amazing leaders who take teams into the world's most dangerous situations.

The goal of this podcast is to share their stories in hopes of making us all better leaders, better thinkers, and better people.

Welcome to The Debrief!

Jon Becker: Jenny, thanks for being here with me.

Jenny Prohaska: Thanks. I'm glad to be here.

Jon Becker: So, you know, I've been waiting a while to have this conversation. Like, I've wanted to talk to you about this topic and you've started promoting this concept of tactical longevity and talking about it and teaching it. Tell me what tactical longevity is as you see it.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. So, tactical longevity is basically teaching people how to think about stress, not what to think about stress, so that when bad things happen, which they always do, you're ready for it. Yeah.

Jon Becker: What do you mean? What is the difference between talking about stress?

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. So, a lot of times we do a lot of interventions that are post incident and we're like, "Oh, here's the symptoms of that you might experience and we do a lot of education." And I'll be honest with you, not a lot of that sticks. I do think we have to focus on the front end for sure.

Jon Becker: So, preventative rather than after the event. I recently interviewed Rich Dashini, who was the one of the originators of post-traumatic growth, and one of the things Rich said to me was that “Part of the problem with post-traumatic stress as a concept and calling it post-traumatic stress disorder is that we are telling you are disordered and we are telling you that you have a problem you can't fix”. I thought that was an interesting concept. What are your thoughts on that?

Jenny Prohaska: For sure. And I also think that we can call it whatever we want to. At the end of the day, the vast majority of people will recover from the things they experience. And if they don't, then we can call it a disorder and that's fine. But we need to give them the mentality that they will be able to meet the stressors in front of them. If we teach them from the beginning that they won't be able to handle this, which has kind of been the message, I think in the last few years, “This job's going to mess you up. You'll never be able to recover from things.” I think that if we send that message enough, people will stop recovering from things. It's kind of like we always get upset about skinned knees. We stop getting over skinned knees as silly as that is but same concept. So we have to be able to give people a framework to understand absolutely that you can get through this and actually bad incidents make great strong people.

Jon Becker: Yeah it's interesting because we've noticed just in the 40 years that I've been working with teams I think we've gone it's almost like the pendulum has swung. We've gone from just “suck it up buttercup. Whatever you saw, whatever you felt, doesn't matter. Just go and do your job” to it almost feels to me like the pendulum is swung too far in the other direction where it's like you're going to be disordered. Your life's going to be wrecked. Like what do you think?

Jenny Prohaska: Oh, big time. So that actually is my pet peeve. I would say for sure if I understood why “suck it up, buttercup, rub some dirt on it, get back” there was not necessarily the healthiest and it wasn't. It had some negative effects. Obviously, we saw long term. But then this other swing that's happened in the last probably 5 to seven years where all your feelings are valid. All of them matter all the time. Feel everything. That is also super unhealthy. And we've got to find the middle. So, a lot of what I try to do is make sure people realize that the middle is possible. And the middle is actually where a lot of healthy growth comes from. Not blocking it out entirely and not ignoring it all the way, but then also not being so far into your fields that you just basically get consumed by them. So fine metal. Yeah.

Jon Becker: It's interesting because, think as A type male personalities, we're very prone to compartmentalize. Sure. Stick things in a box. Yeah. And then maybe just don't open the box again.

Jenny Prohaska: Right. And I get it. I mean, honestly, especially if you got to keep going and you've got like high tempo stuff you've got to do. I understand that there's a need for compartmentalization. And then also, we just can't be like unloading constantly. It's not healthy either way.

Jon Becker: So, from your perspective, what does healthy coping with? I mean, obviously, the guys I'm interviewing have all been through traumatic events. This world that we populate is full of traumatic events.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: What does healthy coping with look like?

Jenny Prohaska: So, I've got a rule of ours. So, it's recognized first R then respect and then return. So, recognize, respect, return. Recognize is just simply saying, "Hey, yeah, that happened. It's registering somehow with me. I don't really know how. Then you respect whatever expression, feeling, emotion, whatever it is that you're having. And by respecting that, that can be as simple as just saying, “Hey, I'm attuning. I'm paying attention to the fact that I'm upset or I'm sad or this reminds me of my brother or this reminds me of a bad experience”. But then as soon as we respect that and we do whatever behavior we need to in line with that, maybe it's spending a few minutes just processing it, then we have to get returned. So we have to come back to what we need to do. We can't be languishing out in the land of emotions forever. It's just not healthy.

Jon Becker: But I'm a victim, Jenny. Like this is our societal position now.

Jenny Prohaska: That is my trigger word.

Jon Becker: We're not happy unless I have seven things that I've been victimized. How do we get so far past the healthy view of this?

Jenny Prohaska: I don't really know exactly. There's lots of theories on this. I think that there's part of “Hey, I have validity in my experiences ‘cause I'm important if I can kind of show that I hurt too”. And I think in a world where we're all so lonely and maybe not well attached, like we're all doing social media attachment when it isn't real attachment. I think one of the problems is we think that we can get recognition or at least acknowledgement or be seen by playing the role of the victim. I'm a victim of circumstance. I'm a victim of this or that. My suffering, my suffering. And I think that that's a natural byproduct of being so disconnected, but at the same time it's causing lots of problems.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's an interesting thought. I hadn't correlated that to kind of the disconnection of people. So I mean obviously we need to have a more healthy approach than bourbon and ibuprofen.

Jenny Prohaska: Right.

Jon Becker: But we also can't fall into perpetual victimhood. How do I walk that line? Talk to me about that three Rs approach and how do I apply that in the real world?

Jenny Prohaska: So one of the things that I show in class is a video. So, I teach a class about this kind of stuff and what I say is, “Hey, like recognizing means good self-awareness”. It means when I'm on this call with this elderly gentleman and I'm seeing that he's in suffering, he's in pain. If I see that and it's pulling up some kind of emotion within me, then maybe out of me recognizing that, my respect for that emotion is simply stopping and talking to him a little bit. Connecting with that individual, acting in line with what's important to me in that moment to make sure that that guy feels seen, heard, appreciated. So, that's that respect part. And then returning is okay, it's time to move on. Now what's the next thing? I'm glad I worked through that and now I'm on to the next thing.

I think what we see a lot of happens is that we stuff it down. And the consequence of that is kind of like you're weight training your emotions. They're going to get stronger over time. So if you weight train your emotions like that, one of the downsides is that it's just like any other other training program. Those emotions are going to come out super loud when you don't expect them to.

Jon Becker: Do you think part of the problem is that as a society it feels like we're becoming more fragile?

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah, big time. Like extra fragile and that's a problem.

Jon Becker: What is the opposite of that? How do we counter that? The anti-fragile side.

Jenny Prohaska: So that anti-fragile I the word resiliency has been really played out in my opinion and I think that a lot of times when I go to conferences and talk to law enforcement agencies and go talk nationwide even what I see is that the the term “resiliency” has caused some major issues. It's been associated with kind of a softness and I think the mental health space that's not necessarily yes resilient is bouncing back from things. But it's been so overplayed in society and on TikTok and Instagram and all those things that it doesn't hold much value at all. So I actually use the term “anti-fragility” as much as possible. So not just because of that kind of misunderstanding of what resiliency really is, but because I think that we're also in a world where we're not really prepared for the stressors ahead of us. I'll start with a definition of like what's the difference between resiliency and anti-fragility. And then I'm going to tell you what I see and why I think we have to aim for anti-fragility, too.

Resiliency is just by definition your ability to bounce back to your original form. And that's great, but I'm starting to see a trend where people's original form is not probably good enough to get them through their careers. Anti-fragility is your ability to use your negative experiences to help basically perpetuate further understanding, further growth, and make you a better human. So, we can use our bad experiences to make us better people. And that's what anti-fragility is about in my mind.

Jon Becker: So it's almost the difference between being able to like fix yourself when you're broken versus resisting being broken.

Jenny Prohaska: I would say I think the main difference though is that if you look at your negative experiences through the lens of I can get something out of this for myself for my own growth. I think that you look at your negative experiences differently. I really want people to look at their negative experiences as an opportunity. Like one of the things that we teach is simply from the work of the Stoics which is “problem is the opportunity”. So whatever problem is in front of me, how do I use this to make me a better human? Now when you're going through it, it's hard to see that I think in the moment, but over time I think if you look at that experience and say how is this horrible thing in front of me going to make me a better person long term, you just see it through a different lens.

Jon Becker: So it's interesting. You know, obviously I spend a lot of time with people that have been traumatized, especially in this context. You know, it's nice to do an interview where the people aren't traumatized. One of the things that I tell teams after they've had an incident is the course of the river has changed, right? This incident, like you look at the Tree of Life documentary that we just launched and every single person connected to Tree of Life, family members, the people that were there, the responders, every single person, the course of their life has been altered by that event.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: And the question, it almost sounds like the way you're describing it is instead of trying to get the river back to where it was, go with the new course of the river.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. And oftentimes that new course of the river, if you're intentional about it and you really worked on it, it can actually make you a better person. Your final destination can be even better. People don't look at their experiences that are so negative like that at the moment. But once they get some distance a lot of times when you talk to people who have survived horrible incidents, they say, "Looking back on it, it saved my life. Looking back on it, it did this. It did that." And all of that's better.

Jon Becker: I completely agree with you because the guys that I see that have had traumatic events and move on with their life, it is a redefining event for them. It's not just like, "Oh, now I'm better from that." It's this, you know, it's, "Oh my god, I had no idea how much I appreciated life. I had no idea how much I appreciated my family." They're different.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: After the event than they were before in a very positive way.

Jenny Prohaska: 2.0 can be better than 1.0 especially if you intend it to be.

Jon Becker: That’s funny, it's literally the expression I use.

Jenny Prohaska: Really?

Jon Becker: Yeah. It's Jenny 2.0 versus Jenny 1.0.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So, so anti-fragility as a concept is starting to rise. I do feel like resilience is almost used too vaguely. Another term that I'm frustrated by is wellness.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh, don't… Oh, you're again hitting all the things that bother me.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah. So, talk to me about the things I think we have. We share some of the frustrations on wellness, but talk to me about your frustration.

Jenny Prohaska: Okay. So, it's a big one. I'd say kind of along the lines of the same thing with the resiliency stuff, the wellness stuff. It's been diluted a lot. So I think people will come into the wellness space or market space and they give you very like short-term ways to intervene. So by the way like breathing exercises, yoga, all that stuff is great, but that doesn't solve big picture problems. It doesn't carry over well. Those are coping skills. That's stuff you would do to get through a problem that has a clear start and finish. A lot of the times when we look at law enforcement stressors, those actually don't have really well- defined start and finishes. A lot of those stressors are just simply things that last a long time. Like if you have a horrible boss or if you feel betrayed by your administration, there's no yoga and breathing that's going to make it through that. So I think we get a lot of delusions in space. Even the term “resiliency” I think is thrown around to say, "Oh, this person's so resilient." And I'm like, "Actually, no." Like they look okay right now, but that's not what it looks like in the big picture.

I think if you think about stress differently, and this is from doing hundreds and hundreds of postcritical incident stuff, there are certain people that look at stress differently. Look at their negative experiences through a different light that they've always had pre-inccident, those are the ones that recover. So the wellness stuff, it just annoys me because they're just throwing little tips and tricks at it. And a lot of times the chronic stress you guys experience and the level that people experience it, those tips don't matter.

Jon Becker: What is the difference in that mindset of how healthy versus unhealthy or the person that goes post-traumatic growth? What is the difference in that initial mindset?

Jenny Prohaska: Okay. So there's a lot. So I would say a pre-inccident mindset that makes people get through it. A lot of times it's just really high self-efficacy. “I believe in myself.” “I believe that I can change my situation.” So there's a little bit of the confidence, high self-efficacy stuff that matters there. I would say that if you have good social ties and you have really strong bonds with your group or team or community or wherever you're at, if you have those pre-inccident, you can really rely on them and lean on them later. We know that that helps people bounce back better. So there's some personality stuff or some stuff that you can actually train. I would say that for the longest time we thought personality was very much set and never changed. And now we realize that through people's life experiences and through people's stress even actually personality is not as set as we thought it was.

Jon Becker: It's almost like the discussion of fixed mindset versus growth mindset.

Jenny Prohaska: Very similar. Yes.

Jon Becker: That's one of the things Rich Dachini and I talked about was like do you view yourself as permanently injured or do you see yourself as someone who had a negative experience?

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly.

Jon Becker: You do a lot of intake, initial psyches for police departments who are new hires right?

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: And you've been doing this a while.

Jenny Prohaska: I've been doing it for at least a decade.

Jon Becker: Okay. Yeah. So are we becoming the fragile snowflakes that we think would you know like when we go “We're becoming fragile snowflakes” like are we?

Jenny Prohaska: Oh we're screwed.

Jon Becker: Yeah.

Jenny Prohaska: We're in trouble.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. So here's the deal. So I do about 450 new hire psychological evaluations a year for many agencies of all different types, sizes, you name it. And I would say that when I first started the average candidate, I can literally see in their psychological data numbers wise how things look different. And so when I started out doing this stuff 10 years ago, it looked very different. People had largely high self-efficacy, high self-control, high good self-awareness. All these things were in play. And then about the last five years, maybe four. I started to notice even my psychological data from new hires was shifting a bit. And then what I see is just not the type of characteristics we are going to want long term, mostly because they don't withstand stress very well.

So, if you don't view yourself confidently and you don't have really good strong self-identity, for example, you're going to really struggle when somebody challenges you, calls you names, anything related to like I hate saying a little bit of hazing, but you know what I mean, a little bit of like social norming. You don't stand up for that very well when you integrate into a new culture. I would also say their self-awareness is kind of bad. So, they don't have a good read on who they truly are and then they're not reading the social cues off of other people. So, if I'm really aggressive and harsh when I'm talking to you, hopefully you're picking that up, right? I'm not noticing that with the newer generation. I mean, even their eye contact's bad. I'll do interviews and I'll make eye contact very briefly with somebody and then they're kind of having a hard time holding it. So, there's that part. That's one of many.

So, poor self-awareness. They also have really low drive and motivation and we're noticing that play out in some of the testing, but then definitely by the time that they get to being independently on patrol. Definitely seeing that as well. That's kind of the feedback we're getting. I've got my own theories on that. I mean, we're in a society where everything can be instantaneous and delivered right to you. I think that we have exhausted our systems that allow us to have high drive, high motivation, propelling ourselves forward, working towards hard goals. If we don't have to work towards hard goals, humans default to rest. So we're defaulting to kind of the lowest level of rest, and I'm seeing that out there on patrol and I'm hearing about it.

I would also say critical thinking skills are struggling. I think that that's probably a change in the American educational system and some other factors. A lot of times what I'm hearing from field trainers in particular is just simply “I will have told them how to do this one thing and you would hope that they could extrapolate that exact concept onto the next whatever task we have to do or whatever call we go to and it's not moving from one area of instruction to actually practical application in another area”. And so they're really having a hard time with that too.

Jon Becker: So, I mean that's kind of like being able to draw inference, right?

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly.

Jon Becker: Do you think that is a generational thing or is it a societal thing? Like it is the you know, “Oh it's these damn, you know, Gen Z's” or or are you seeing that in older people where it is an external, it's too much time on social media or too many video games or whatever. Which of those two do you think it is?

Jenny Prohaska: So, I don't really know. I've never been asked that. I will say that I'm pretty sure some of it's generational, but I do think that I'm also seeing it a little bit more like kind of the laziness will come out because critical thinking takes a lot of energy and effort. You have to be inquisitive. You have to want to drive yourself further to find answers and apply things. I am seeing it kind of across all facets. But I would say that I think that the newer generation is struggling with this a lot. I think personally, and I don't know for sure, personally it's probably coming from how we're educating kids, too.

Jon Becker: Push on that a little bit for me. Like what is wrong with the way that we're educating kids?

Jenny Prohaska: Well, there's a lot and this is definitely not my expertise area, but I will say that I think a lot of it is just make sure that we make the test score cut off or make sure that we get this standardization test done and make sure it's accurate and our and our kids look good as opposed to do our kids really know how to think. That's a huge problem if you think about any adult life stuff. But when you come into policing in particular or any public safety career, you have to be able to think on your feet and there's not always one right answer.

Jon Becker: Yeah. I don't think that the invention of ChatGPT is going to solve that.

Jenny Prohaska: No, but it is a great fun tool, isn't it?

Jon Becker: It's a lot of fun, but I think it's actually going to make it worse.

Jenny Prohaska: It probably will. Yes.

Jon Becker: The thing that I notice is people seem to be losing their ability to struggle.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh yeah.

Jon Becker: Right. To overcome difficult obstacles and part of that is that they don't have the patience to try long enough. But it just seems like we're kind of helpless.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Going back to the fixed mindset, growth mindset kind of conversation, what I've noticed in the guys that I've interviewed that are really damaged versus the ones that are better after an event is a little bit of that like, “Yeah, no, I've got PTSD. I'm fucked I just have to fix it with bourbon for the rest of my life”. Versus like, “Yeah, that really sucked. I'm gonna get back to my team” Right?

Jenny Prohaska: The surrender to whatever hardship is a problem. And the thing is, hardship's never going to stop. We're going to just have more of it, honestly. And that your whole life will be full of different hardships. It's all about how you manage them. I will 100% reinforce when I've worked hundreds of critical incidents, that's a pattern I see as well. The people that jump back are the and come back to duty, come back to the team, they believe in themselves. They believe in their ability to do it.

Jon Becker: Do you think it's because we're failing to stress inoculate them?

Jenny Prohaska: I'm not sure. I think honestly, stress inoculation to some extent would help, but I think it's more than that. I think we have to teach that there's value in the struggle. We're not teaching that as a culture.

Jon Becker: No, that's truly a stoic philosophy, right?

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: In the words of Princess Bride, “Life is pain highness”.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: The struggle is the value, right?

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. We're paying too much attention to end results and we're not realizing that like the journey, the process has a huge value and that struggle has value.

Jon Becker: How can we change this? How can we better prepare our police officers and tactical operators on the front end to prevent this?

Jenny Prohaska: I think you have to adopt an entire shift in your framework of how you view things mentally and emotionally and almost like a doctrine if you will. We have to be able to socialize our newest members into our departments with like hey here's the expectation. The expectation is when you go through a stressful event you'll stop, pause and you'll do the following things that we've taught you from the academy onward. And that's not just stop and pause and like make sure your weapons are clean and make sure all this is happening. That's the tactical stuff, the operational stuff. It's also stopping and pausing and going, how do I need to register and program that event that just happened into my big picture story? And then if I can make meaning of that in my whole entire story, then it doesn't catch me up later. It doesn't hold me up later. It becomes part of me, not necessarily something that happened to me and I'm now affected for life because of it. I know it's a lot there.

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's a really interesting way to put it though. So the way you describe that is almost the difference between I got injured by something externally and so now, it's broken me versus this thing that happened to me and it's now as you said, part of my story. Push on that a little bit for me.

Jenny Prohaska: Okay. So this is not my own thinking per se. I mean, I've heard it before, but a lot of times people go through bad events and they write the crappy first draft of it. The crappy first draft is, you know, life is horrible, life is awful, this happened to me, I'll never be able to get back from it. I can understand the pity party that we can throw initially after a bad event. But I think it's important to go back and rewrite that draft so that it's both realistic and helpful.

Just earlier today, I was talking with somebody about an event where they took all the responsibility for this bad thing happening. By the way, it wasn't all that one person that contributed to this bad event happening. They took over responsibility for the whole thing. And sometimes you have to stop and go, “Hold on, if I hold on to that belief, how am I going to look 5 years from now? If I hold on to the belief that I'm a horrible operator, I'm a horrible cop or I didn't do my job as a team member and that's because people got hurt and that and because of my lack of inattentiveness or whatever, that's why I got hurt.” If you hold on to that five years from now, you don't look very healthy. But if you take that experience and you go ahead and you say, "Okay, I feel that now. I'm throwing my little pity party about that now. I feel that now, but I don't necessarily know if that's helpful for me long term. I need to rewrite how I think about this." After a little bit of time has passed, I think you can write the story so that it's still accurate. It's still realistic, but it's more helpful for you in your growth process. And I actually call that the five-year test. Five years from now, how do you want this to wear on you? How do you want it to look? Do you want it to bring you down so you're like a Gran Torino guy? Like no. No,  just getting pissed all the time and “Get off my lawn!” Do you want that? Because you can do that. You can absolutely choose that or this bad event happened. How do I structure it in my mind in a way that makes me actually more motivated? And you do have the choice.

I think we've unfortunately taught a newer generation coming in that, things just happened to us. We don't have any control over them. History has also not been super kind to this newer generation. But I think that when you rewrite the story so that you do feel more in control of how you fold that into your life, you can decide five years from now, do I want this to eat me up and take me away or do I want this to make me somebody that I'm going to be proud of?

Jon Becker: Yeah, that's interesting. I know a lot of people who view the event as an external damaging force. I know a lot less people that view the event and go, "Yeah, the guy attacked me. He shot me. I defended myself and killed him and now I'm moving on with my life." And it sounds like that's almost the narrative of “I was shot because a guy attacked me and I was able, I had to protect myself versus, yeah, this this guy attacked me and I overcame it and moved on”.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Is it literally just a mental positioning? I mean, is that really what it is? I don't want to say is it as simple as telling us ourselves a different story, but please help me understand that.

Jenny Prohaska: I mean, part of me believes, yes. I think you have to have some baseline things in place though before the incident. The worst time to try to put in a new way of thinking is after something has happened. It's kind of like the worst time to put in a tornado shelter is while the tornado is coming or already here. You need to be able to have some kind of fortified mindset in place before the bad incident happens. That way you can recall it up because you've practiced it on things that are not as major in your life. People go through lots of smaller things in their life before they become officers that are bad events, even small ones like a breakup, or some kind of health issue. I think if you learn on those smaller events how to think about things that are in your control and how to focus on those, then when the big event hits, you're ready.

Jon Becker: So, I hear you talking about this and it reminds me of the interview I did with Patrick about “Left of Bang”.

Patrick: Yes.

Jon Becker: Right. This is a kind of psychological Left of Bang.

Jenny Prohaska: That's exactly what it is. And actually that's exactly what my process is for getting there. So the moral injury I incur on a regular basis being someone who works with people in critical incidents is that an incident will happen. I will take a guy or gal into my office. We'll kind of patch them back up together and then I'll send them back out and the next thing can happen again. One of the hardest things for me is watching people not learn in a positive direction from their bad incidents and they're just going to go out and get in another one. It's no one's fault. It just happens. Bad things happen. I want to be in a position to help people think about their stressors before they ever happen. So Left of Bang is all that.

The other thing is that I hate telling people this. It sounds bad, but the vast majority of our treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder are scientifically, not the best outcomes. We try really hard, but you know, 41-53% effective on average, sometimes you can get some better rates depending on how you do things. 41-53% effective treatment is not where we would want it to be. So, if we can help prevent things from happening so you never get down that pathway, that's a much better way to handle it. It's like cancer, we want to do the preventative so that we don't develop cancer to begin with.

I'm big on Left of Bang focusing on what we can do and what the research says about how we keep people well after the event happened. The research is supporting that if you are high on all six of these like elements of how you think about the world then you are able to get through the incident when it happens because it's not like you won't have bad incidents. You will have bad incidents. It's just how we prepare you for them.

Jon Becker: These six elements, walk me through these six elements.

Jenny Prohaska: So, the six elements I'll go through one at a time. That might be better. So, self-awareness, that's your ability to tap in and pay attention to your thoughts, your feelings, your behaviors, your own physiology, and then use that information to make decisions. That's a pretty important one. I would say that when you're able to tap into what you're thinking and feeling, you're more likely to be able to make a better choice about what you're about to do next. People who have bad self-awareness also tend to not have good social connections because they're not reading the room. They're not reading the people they're around. So, they're not adjusting their behavior very well.

Jon Becker: Okay, that makes sense.

Jenny Prohaska: Okay, self-regulation is an easy one, too. It's your ability to feel a certain kind of way. How do I get myself to dial it back or to control where I want to be? So, if I am coming into a situation at a level of intensity that's an eight, which is like really high on like 1 to 10 and eight's like really, I'm hot. I'm coming in hot, but I don't necessarily need an eight for whatever situation's in front of me. How do I use thoughts, behaviors, feelings to pull that back down? And so, how do I dial basically my number of intensity into the situation?

Jon Becker: Okay. So, self-awareness, self-regulation.

Jenny Prohaska: Then the next one we'll do, let's do values. This is a hard one. Values, values, values. Values are how do I use what's important to me when I'm making decisions and how do I use values to guide my behavior especially when challenges are in front of me. In fact you and I have talked about this before but there's a difference between process and outcome and so I'll come back to that. I'll say values are things like humor, love, respect, honor, integrity, all these really heavy words that I think that a lot of people don't know what their values are and so they don't have any guiding light for making choices. I come back to the whole process versus outcome thing because I think one of the things I've noticed when working in critical incidents in particular is that when people understand that your process can be solid, but you can't always control the outcome, people start to cope better. What I spend a lot of time teaching people is how do you apply your values in any kind of process of decision-making so that when you get to the outcome you can handle it even if you don't have control over it because the process is mostly driven by you, your decision-making has a lot of elements in that. Outcomes as with any tactical operation there's many other factors at play: what the suspect does, what command does what another team member does and the outcome can all be affected by that.

Jon Becker: So I think it is interesting that my friend Dan Dorcas who I think you follow Dan's work Dan talks about this yes like in hospital teams and in doctor teams like we can control what we bring to the problem. We can control our skills the way we respond to an incident. We can't control the outcome and he uses specific examples that some people come into the hospital every day that shouldn't die and do people come into the hospital every day that should die and don't. Exactly. And he says, “You don't have control over what's going to happen, but you do have control over what you're going to bring to the problem and the way you're going to approach it.”

Jenny Prohaska: That's exactly right.

Jon Becker: What's interesting about that from a tactical standpoint is the process.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. Right.

Jon Becker: What you bring you have direct control over. That's how much you train, that's how good your skills are, that's how fit you are. It's all of those things, right? The outcome is like you said, driven by a variety of things many of which are not in your control. So if my view is focused on process then do I see myself as having more control over the situation and over the effect it has on me? Is that what the difference is?

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. And I'll add to that. So yeah, you feel more in control of the entire process angle. But a lot of times we also really reinforce that the outcome is different. If your process is solid and you've backed it in line with your values. Say one of your values, let's just go with is knowledge. That's a common one I hear when I ask people what their values are in this profession. If you have the tactical knowledge and you're applying your tactical knowledge in the process of all the decisions you're making, then you're acting in line with your values. The outcome, you might not have control over certain components or lack of knowledge because you don't know A or B in the incident till the incident's over. So really being able to say, I'm using my values to guide my process of decision-making then the outcome becomes more more capable of handling.

Jon Becker: That is really interesting. because I tend to look at things from a perspective of cognitive dissonance, right? A lot of what makes us unhappy is that what we did and what we believe are not aligned.

Jenny Prohaska: Yep.

Jon Becker: And if I'm looking at my process, I have control over that and I can align it with my values pretty effectively. But if I'm looking at the outcome and that is the measure of my success where I don't necessarily have control over it, then the outcome can be something that is completely dissonant with what I value. I see myself as a professional tactical operator. It's my job to rescue hostages, so I'm going to show up fit and strong and be ready. Unfortunately, sometimes the hostage dies.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: So I'm going to see well I did everything I could to prepare and so what happened I didn't have complete control over but if I see myself as the person who's responsible for saving them then when they do die.

Jenny Prohaska: Yep.

Jon Becker: It's my fault.

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly. You have to separate them.

Jon Becker: How do we teach that? Like I see that and I know that you're doing kind of prehabilitation work and stuff with teams. How do I learn that before I need it?

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. So, here's the thing. We got to start really early and you got to get high reps in. So, I think that the best way to teach these types of things is actually the field trainer to recruit because if you think about it, they're already not bad habits started yet. They're new to the profession. They are looking at the field trainer as almost like a mentor in some ways, especially the newer generation of officers coming in that doesn't know how to do a lot of different life things. Not only is the field trainer in that teaching role when it comes to the actual job, but they're also kind of operating as a stand-in mentor whether they like it or not. And so it's a naturally occurring relationship. And so if we can teach people how to think about stress through someone they're already kind of sort of forced to be attached to and also they're learning from this person who clearly has more knowledge than me with a field trainer. Then if we can get the field trainer to demonstrate repetitively how to think about stress call to call just like you would teach officer safety, we can get people to really change their mindset extra early in the game before any bad habits start.

Jon Becker: It's fascinating because to some degree it just sounds like semantics, right? Oh, we're just going to teach you how to think about stress.

Jenny Prohaska: Sure.

Jon Becker: But I think back to my own experiences, even working out athletics,  I do Iron Mandis triathlon and you do not race all of the 140 miles. You're constantly like, especially on the marathon, you are lying to yourself probably, I don't know, 150 times an hour of I'm just going to run to that light post and I'm going to stop. There is this you're--

Jenny Prohaska: Bidding, bidding yourself.

Jon Becker: Yeah. But it is that. It is that positioning. It's not, “Oh, I've still got 14 miles to go. I don't know if I can make it”. It's like, yeah, I just need to wear that light post. And as you're describing this, it is like this kind of mindset of, “Yeah, this really sucks. This is a really long hill. I can't wait till I've beaten this hill because I'm going to feel really good about beating this hill.”

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly. And that actually builds self-confidence and self-efficacy up, which we know is directly associated with people getting through bad incidents without the damage.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, let's go back to our six.

Jenny Prohaska: Sure.

Jon Becker: So, we've got self-awareness.

Jenny Prohaska: Self-awareness.

Jon Becker: Self-regulation, then we did values.

Jenny Prohaska: Yep. Okay. The other three. So, then we have mental flexibility, which is one of my favorites. the ability to basically take a situation, incorporate new information, and adapt and change course, which is incredibly important if you think about law enforcement in general, incredibly important in any high-risk industry, high-risk teams, anything where performance is life or death. Obviously, being super mentally flexible is important. I would say that this is the one I get a little nervous about lately with the newer generation of officers coming in. and I will also say that I also see after critical incidents a lot of people this is just the weirdest phenomena. I think only high reps and seeing people after critical incidents has helped me the most to determine that this is really important is that when people think the world should be a certain way and then that thing doesn't happen like they planned, they get way out of shape. And that's where the injury comes from. So sometimes we have these beliefs about how the world should work that we don't really even have good conscious awareness of. One obvious example is child death.

So we have a framework in our mind of how life should look. You're born, someone takes care of you, you grow up, you become more independent, then you do adult life, then you start to age, then you get sent to the retirement home and then you die, right? And when that pathway is interrupted and then all of a sudden we have well child death because a parent wasn't looking out for their kid, that interrupts that flow and that's where we get bent out of shape. So if we have good awareness of how we think the world should look and operate and then we have awareness of it first and then we can say, “Yeah but that's not always the case”, and we can be mentally flexible with how we view the world. You can tolerate it when things interrupt your graph of how you know the curve of life should look. When you're not mentally flexible and you think it's only going to be this way, it should look this way. When it doesn't look that way, it's really hard to overcome.

Jon Becker: So, you have your pet peeves, I have mine. One of my pet peeves is the notion of fairness.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh, okay.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Right. And as you're describing that, I think about the way we look at a child dying. Like, it's not fair.

Jenny Prohaska: Of course not.

Jon Becker: And it is like I always jokingly say if you want a fair, there's one in Pomona, California every year in September. But like it is this notion of like what makes it not fair is it doesn't fit the paradigm that I expect and think the world should be.

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly. And so that doesn't seem right.

Jon Becker: Exactly. And it feels to me like when you say mental flexibility, it's not only the ability to incorporate new information, but it's also the ability to reconstruct the model you apply in your universe.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely. So the core of trauma is basically having your worldview rocked somehow. Either how I operate in the world, how the world operates back with me, how people should operate, how people operate back with me. And when that gets rocked and people get stuck on it should be this way. What does that mean that it doesn't? They just get stuck at it but it should be this way. They don't ever work through it well. What does it mean? What it means is you need to adapt your paradigm. Your paradigm was faulty. You needed to add some degree of flexibility into your paradigm of how you viewed the world and yourself in it. If you don't, you're going to get stuck exactly where you're at.

Jon Becker: And you're just going to end up in this eternal doop where “I wasn't supposed to get injured. It's not fair. It shouldn't be this way”. And so instead of adapting to the new reality, right, changing the model of what you are and moving forward in the world, you end up in this almost circular relationship with the past.

Jenny Prohaska: Trying to force something to happen.

Jon Becker: Force it back into the paradigm that you can't, a lot of it you can't change, right?

Jenny Prohaska: It's over. Yeah.

Jon Becker: Like it's in the past. You can't go back and change the event that happened to you.

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly.

Jon Becker: But you're going to end up in this kind of persistent circle where you wish it was a different way and you're angry because it wasn't that way. And it almost sounds like grief.

Jenny Prohaska: It is at that point. Yes. Yes.

Jon Becker: So it's you're not adapting to what the new situation is. You're grieving the past.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. And I will say it's also very hard for people to realize that they have certain paradigms or beliefs or core beliefs about how the world should work until you get a little experience. And that's why I think the coaching model of hey your field trainer is going to start coaching you on how to make yourself more mentally flexible is really important because this is definitely one that you have to learn at the moment. I don't think that everyone comes into the world with that paradigm already instilled in them that they do have flexibility and they do need to adapt their paradigms. I think that we have to teach it and there is definitely no better place to do it than the field trainer.

Jon Becker: Okay. So, self-awareness, self-regulation, values, mental flexibility.

Jenny Prohaska: Next one's accuracy. Actually, I'll be very honest with you. It is actually technically optimistic. But when I say optimism to a room full of cops, I know what kind of response I get. I can get tuned out pretty quickly. So, I actually changed it from optimism to accuracy because we all like to be accurate. We all like to think about the world accurately. So, as it's defined, accuracy is basically your ability to interpret your environment and your world around you through the perspective of focusing on what you can control and what you can't and then focusing on the things that you can control.

Jon Becker: So, I can see why they call it optimism.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: I get it. I totally get it. It makes sense. I see why you changed it to accuracy, too. So, it's not always viewing the glass as half empty or half, it's it's it's half full. It's always half full. It's 75% full. It's being able to accurately assess how much water is actually in the glass.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely. So, remember how I was talking about this? Is it realistic? Is it helpful?

Jon Becker: Yes.

Jenny Prohaska: That's a technique we use when we're teaching accuracy. You've got this belief. Is it realistic that you have it? It could be. Usually, it's a little bit skewed towards the cynical, towards the negative. You've got this belief in place. Is it realistic? Okay, we already did that exercise. Now, how is it helpful? And then you've got to adapt it to what's helpful. The other thing that we focus a lot on is the more you focus on things outside of your control, the more burnout and depressed you're going to get. And so, yeah--

Jon Becker: Because you can't control it.

Jenny Prohaska: You can’t control it.

Jon Becker: You're just a victim of it. You're just sitting around being worked by the world.

Jenny Prohaska: And that's the thing. So, one of the things that drives me nuts is that I will get a group of cops in that obviously they start their career and they're very high on self-efficacy. They have a lot of confidence they can change themselves in their situation and then they have a few experiences and they don't think accurately about them and they're not flexible with them. And then the next thing right behind that is then they start to focus on what's not in their control. You focus on what's not in your control long enough. The next thing right behind it is viewing yourself as helpless, hopeless, all the things, powerless, all those things. If you stay in powerlessness long enough, you will feel like a victim.

Jon Becker: So you stay powerless long enough, you are powerless.

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly. You become what you feed basically. And so one of the phrases we use is don't feed the weeds.

Jon Becker: And don't feed the weeds if you have weeds and you have a plant that's going to produce something for you. You get to choose where you're going to spend your mental energy. You're going to feed the weeds, the things you can't control. Well, what are you going to get? You're just going to get more weeds. If you spend all your energy, your mental energy focusing on feeding the plant, the things you can control, it's going to produce something for you. So just choose wisely.

Jenny Prohaska: Interesting.

Jon Becker: Okay. So accuracy.

Jenny Prohaska: And then the next one we've got, let's do a connection. So connection. This is the one that I teach at the very end and it's actually the most important. Connection is your ability to build and maintain strong trusting relationships and it actually is statistically associated with the best outcomes after a major incident happens. So like psychologists when we come in and we study how people cope with trauma after the fact, it's easier to study like natural disasters because one thing happens, they're all kind of exposed to it. And when we come in and we study natural disasters and who copes and who recovers and who doesn't, what we see is that if people have really strong, trusting, close relationships and like a team or a tribe that they feel nicely connected to, they have about 2.5% chance of developing post-traumatic stress disorder. But pre-incident, if they had a weak tribe, they don't feel connected, they don't feel a sense of belonging, close relationships, they have a 12% chance of developing post-traumatic stress. That's actually huge.

Jon Becker: Jesus, that's 5x.

Jenny Prohaska: That's a lot, right? And so that is the most important one and it's also the one that I think that the new generation and current generations honestly that are that the majority of policing are really struggling with. They just don't know how to build and maintain them. There's lots of reasons that's an entire show in itself about why we're having trouble there but it's a problem. So we have to be able to teach people how to build better relationships. And if we start at the beginning, what we're also seeing is that we have a retention problem in law enforcement. But the newer generation of candidates is staying for a sense of belonging and a sense of purpose. So if we can give them a sense of belonging, we can help them with that sense of belonging. And by the way, you do still need to earn it. I don't think we should let everybody in. If you can give them a sense of belonging and then also double down with showing them the purpose of what you do, even if sometimes the purpose on a day when you're really exhausted and don't want to come to work is coming to work for your brothers and sisters at work. Cool. That's the purpose.

Jon Becker: Yeah. When I teach leadership I talk about externally focused purpose.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. Right.

Jon Becker: Like it can't be selfish. It needs to be externally focused. And as leaders part of our job is to provide an environment that gives purpose and and you know by having purpose we feel that what we're doing is of value. It's important and common purpose is what creates a team.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: So again, going back to social connection, if we don't have a common purpose, social connection gets much more difficult.

Jenny Prohaska: So, so difficult. I think that's the thing that I really kind of get antsy about when I see the next generation of first-line supervisors is that I don't think they really understand that. And we really have to work on that. They have to understand that there are days that this job is going to be horribly hard and that it's going to be really hard to find an external purpose. You have to build it internally in your team.

Jon Becker: When you think about the way the military teaches purpose.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: They teach purpose as externally focused, emotionally resonant, right? It is you fighting for the guy next to you. You're not fighting for the 12th amendment. You're not fighting for some amorphous concept of democracy that you're not going to remember when you're under fire, but you are going to fight for the guy next to you, which not only creates, emotionally resonant, externally focused purpose, but it creates a bond with the guy next to you.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: And it does feel a little bit in law enforcement and I think I think as a society we're we are undermining this, you know, the whole “Defund the Police” and like the the the stuff that we saw that was kind of delegitimizing the purpose and value of law enforcement undermined this in a way that we're starting to see the results.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh yeah.

Jon Becker: Because no police departments are at 100% staffing, right? They're having a really hard time. They're dropping standards. The FBI just announced they're getting rid of college degrees and they're going from 18 weeks to 8 weeks.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh my.

Jon Becker: So it's like we are having to drop the standards because we are getting rid of purpose.

Jenny Prohaska: I would agree with you.

Jon Becker: So okay. So let me go back through them. Self-awareness.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Self-regulation.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Mental flexibility.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Values.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Op--

Jenny Prohaska: Accuracy.

Jon Becker: Optimism or accuracy.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. And connection.

Jon Becker: And connection.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: So, those six pillars, you can see how they're all interrelated, right? Like if I lack self-awareness and self-regulation and I act like an asshole I'm not going to have a connection.

Jenny Prohaska: Exactly.

Jon Becker: So, you can see where this is either a virtuous cycle or it's a vicious cycle depending on how you're living. Yes. In the programs that you're running. How are you? How are you starting to teach this concept to law enforcement both early in their career and later in their career?

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah. So, we start early with just simply, “Hey, field trainers, I'm going to put you through a course. Come sit through a course. This is what you're going to learn in this course.” It's eight hours. I know that's a long time, but we throw in lots of videos. I understand people's attention spans are short. Then the expectation is that they will go out and when they get the new recruit, they'll be able to pull that recruit in and really talk about these things. Then the recruit also gets exposure. So, a lot of the things that I've been using, these terms I've been using are also taught through heuristics or basically phrases that help people trigger a mental map or a mental model of something else. So, “don't feed the weeds” is one I just used. That's a heuristic. And so you use these terms repetitively enough and then all of a sudden it becomes a concept that they hold on to for a really long time. And so we use the field trainer to recruit because it's just a powerful natural relationship. Some of my best agencies have also started to invest in first-line supervisor training and saying no, we need to make this like everyone really needs to have this reinforced repetitively. And then leadership and then leadership going through this and we'll we apply basically these same exact tactics, same exact mental models to how do you make yourself, make yourself in check, make sure they're the best version of you you can be so that when you're leading groups and teams, you're operating from a place of positivity.

Jon Becker: So do you use heuristics as a means of like okay, I need to be mentally flexible. I've heard you say, “Be the grass”.

Jenny Prohaska: Oh, my favorite. Be the grass.

Jon Becker: So, are you using that as a way for me to define in my mind what mental flexibility is and make it easier for me to remember and execute. Is that how you're using heuristics?

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah, that's exactly how we use them. We know that these concepts are really complicated-- like very complicated. And so if we can break them down to the smallest unit possible by just a common phrase that you can use quickly under stress then that will help everybody and also makes them stickier. It makes them stay longer. So when I designed the entire program, I actually took some of the work of the Stoics, (basically the philosophy of how do you cope with things you cannot change) followed by how do people socialize the newest members into the Navy Seals or other high performing teams. And so heuristics is one way artifacts is another way. It's been a lot like studying about how we create high performing groups and teams and why not just look back at other industries that's also done a really good job.

Jon Becker: What are Artifacts?

Jenny Prohaska: These are actual physical tangibles. So the one of the examples I always use is, I believe that there's a piece of the World Trade Center medal in front of where the Navy Seals train, and it's a physical reminder of the importance of what they stand for. Artifacts are something very important that people hold on to that are reminders of what our values and our principles are and why we're here. What's the purpose?

So I work with tactical teams. One of the things that I always encourage tactical teams to do is to make sure that in their environment there's something that represents the legacy of the team they are joining. Be it a display case with things that are really important to them. Whatever modality you want to use, you want to have physical things in your environment that tie you back to the purpose.

Jon Becker: That's funny because when I teach culturecentric leadership one of the things that I focus on is the way you indoctrinate people into your culture are things, logos, artifacts.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: Things that are tangible that you connect to that tie you to the legacy of the organization and create a greater responsibility for you to the organization.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. A sense of purpose.

Jon Becker: Yeah. That is really interesting. So is there a heuristic for each of the six?

Jenny Prohaska: There's several heuristics in each of them actually.

Jon Becker: Okay.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes. Yes. Yes. We got a whole bunch of them.

Jon Becker: So, tell me what “Be the grass” means. I love the grass.

Jenny Prohaska: Great. So, I'm from Kansas. In Kansas, we got lots of tornadoes. And sometimes when you look at pictures of the aftermath of tornadoes, all people really see is the buildings, for example, that are the rigid buildings that have a lot of structure, the Home Depots, the hospitals, the houses. When the tornado comes through, so like in those tornadoes, you'll see the photos and the buildings are totally destroyed. But if you look closer, one of the things that you will see is that the grass is almost always intact. It's because it has roots. It has purpose. It has where it's supposed to be. But when the tornado comes through, it moves with it. So that's a reminder about being flexible. Because if you're rigid, you're going to get knocked over and you're going to incur a lot of damage. So if you're flexible here, when the tornado of life comes through, you're going to be able to get through it with less damage.

Jon Becker: Which is a really good analogy. I mean that is that it makes so much sense and I think that you know when you look at people in your lives that are destroyed by events that that does go back to this kind of expectation also right the rigidity comes from it has to go this way.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: And so by being more flexible you give yourself the ability to adapt to whatever flows down the road.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: Very interesting. So, in the context of a tactical unit, if you are helping a unit to create their culture, which I know that you've done several times, um, how are we going to work this into the way we are building our unit, the way we're training?

Jenny Prohaska: So, it starts I always love informal leaders in groups and teams like tactical teams. You have the formal leaders, the ones with the stripes, bars, etc. Then you have the informal leaders. And my informal leaders are more powerful sometimes in creating cultural shifts. And so we're talking about culture shifts when we're talking about these types of skills. I usually try to get some buy-in from my informal leaders and then I start with small stuff. One of the things I think tactical teams can be kind of not as great at is getting challenged. We got egos and we think it should be one way. So one of the skills we use that happens a lot in tactical teams is a skill called “Palms Up”. And Palms Up is basically a visual reminder. So in most conversations, difficult conversations. So the Palms Up thing is about how do I have a difficult conversation without this person totally blocking me out. So because egos and everything else it should be my way or the highway. A lot of times there's a lot of conflict in tactical teams because one person wants a dumb way, one person wants another way.

Then the other thing I see sometimes in tactical teams is you guys have internal struggle but you don't address it with each other. You just kind of let it float on. And that actually drives me nuts. You guys will do all sorts of dangerous things with guns and scary people and then you won't confront each other when it's time. One of the things that we teach is Palms Up, which is a visual reminder, Palms Up, that we have a common goal and I'm going to assume positive intent, so that I'm going to talk to you about something kind of difficult so we can get over here to our common goal. A lot of times people come into conversations and it's like Fist Up and it's I'm going to get ready to fight whatever negative thing you're about to tell me or whatever we need to talk about that I think is going to be confrontational. Fist Up is I'm not listening. I'm just going to fight you. And then there's Hands Up, which is, I'm definitely not listening at all. In fact, I'm probably walking away or checking out from this conversation. Neither one of us gets to our final goal. And so Palms Up is basically, let's carry this load together. I'm about to have a difficult conversation with you, but I promise you it's for the best intent for both of us. And so we use Palms Up as with most tactical teams, it starts as a little bit of a joke and then now it's embedded in their culture and they use it much more regularly.

Jon Becker: Yeah. Well, the interesting thing about heuristics is they can be jokes. They are effective as jokes. Absolutely. Be the grass like it is a very effective way of going back and doing that. So you said this is an 8-hour program that you're teaching for law enforcement.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: If agencies are interested in doing this.

Jeny: Yeah.

Jon Becker: How can they do it?

Jenny Prohaska: So first of all we tailor every program. So every program is exactly what the agency needs. We have learned through many years of experience with this that we can't just come in and be like nope. It's only this way. We have to be flexible too. I mean, we're going to practice what we preach. So, basically, I talk to an agency. I've hundreds that I talk to. They tell me what they need. I tell them what I think would work best and how that format might work. And then we basically adapt to them. We adapt to that. Come in, do some educational programming. And then also, we have these like follow-up interventions we do too. We basically train and coach up like ambassadors as well. So people who kind of, carry the responsibility of making sure your culture is going to be making these shifts, make sure your team is really going to be making these shifts. And then we have other things, emails that we send out like videos of a concept or somebody being interviewed about a concept or how it played out in real life. Then also an app that's kind of cool. It's got an AI feature in it.

Jon Becker: Look at you.

Jenny Prohaska: I know. I know.

Jon Becker: An app.

Jenny Prohaska: I know.

Jon Becker: So all right. So takeaways. It sounds to me like what you're saying is the way that I deal with stress, the way that I manage stress after an event is not as much dependent on the stressor as it is on the way I perceive the stressor.

Jenny Prohaska: 100%. Perception is reality when it comes to this.

Jon Becker: So if I see myself as a victim, I am a victim.

Jenny Prohaska: Yep.

Jon Becker: Or at least eventually will become. If I see myself as helpless, I'm going to work my way into helplessness.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: And so, it's funny because you and I talk all the time with teams about post-traumatic growth and stress and and you know, post events because of this.

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah.

Jon Becker: And it is amazing how many times simply repositioning the incident, and frequently in telling the story, you can watch people reposition the incident in their brain. But it's amazing how many times that changes their internal narrative.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely.

Jon Becker: I think what I like about this program, this concept of tactical longevity is to some degree, its training your mind the way you would train your body, the way you would train your heart skills.

Jenny Prohaska: Yes.

Jon Becker: I think that we've for many many years viewed the mind as something that wasn't changeable. We viewed it as something that we didn't really have control over.

Jenny Prohaska: Ah, yes. Yes. That philosophy.

Jon Becker: And what I think is very constructive is we are kind of moving our reality to view the mind as something that's malleable.

Jenny Prohaska: Absolutely. And also I that also coexists with, yes, this is difficult. So, I think sometimes people hear what I talk about and they think that I'm just ignoring or gaslighting how horrible something was. And that's not it at all actually. It's more like absolutely it was a horrible, and now what? Now what? Do you want this to shape you a certain way? Because I can let it. That's the default mode, but how do we make sure that you take control over it again?

Jon Becker: Yeah. I mean, the workout analogy is one that always comes up in here, but it is the difference between picking something up and harming your muscles and having muscle soreness and saying, "Oh my god, that was so heavy. I don't know how I can carry it”. Or going, “Oh man, I got a good workout. I don't know.”

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah, if I got through this, I can get through anything.

Jon Becker: I love it. Where can people find your work?

Jenny Prohaska: Yeah, tacticallongevity.com. That's probably the best place to go. And then obviously it's Dr. Jenny Prohaska on Instagram and I'm on LinkedIn, stuff like that. But yeah.

Jon Becker: Jenny, thanks so much for sitting down with me.

Jenny Prohaska: Thanks so much.