By Rick Anderson, MScOL
Recently, I had the distinct honor to speak with a former Special Forces member whom I have known for only a short period of time after being introduced by a buddy of mine. Our conversation was raw, it was real, and it was authentic. As a result, it had a profound impact on me, inspiring me to write this article, which I had contemplated many times but somehow avoided.
For most of my 35-year law enforcement career, I believed resilience meant compartmentalizing everything into little boxes and keeping them sealed. In law enforcement, you learn quickly that the world is messy, violent, and unforgiving. You stand over bodies you know you cannot help, but are someone else’s loved ones. You hear the sounds of grief that never leave your ears but will be repeated many times over. You make decisions in seconds that many times replay for years. This is the reality for too many who have served in law enforcement, the military, and other first responder roles. Like so many of us, I thought the only way I could survive was to lock it all away, to put the pain, fear, guilt, and anger in little boxes and keep moving forward.
Law enforcement and other first responders are not unique; our brothers and sisters in the military were taught much of the same thing. Deploy, endure, compartmentalize, return, repeat. You don’t question, you don’t feel, you don’t admit, you put it all in boxes, and lock it all away. Whether it’s the streets of your city or a battlefield half a world away, the cultural message was the same: shut up, be tough, carry on.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to and bounce back from adversity, trauma, significant stress, and major life changes, rather than letting these experiences overcome you. With that in mind, I thought compartmentalizing to adapt and bounce back was being resilient, but I was wrong. Here’s the no-bullshit truth we all need to learn: locking it away isn’t resilience. It’s slow-motion destruction. As my trauma therapist daughter bluntly pointed out, those boxes don’t vanish; they leak. They leak into your marriage, your sleep, your patience, your health. Those leaks show up in an angry outburst, a cruel statement, a slammed door, an empty bottle, a distant, empty stare, or the silence you can’t explain to your family. And those leaks don’t just stop at scarring you; they ripple out to everyone who depends on you.
I’ve seen cops and soldiers alike lose the war inside themselves because they believed the lie that resilience equals silence. I’ve been close enough to the edge myself to know that stuffing issues down into boxes doesn’t make you stronger. The leaks from those boxes ultimately make you brittle over time.
Real resilience is not about hiding your pain in a box to pretend the job didn’t cut deep. It’s about acknowledging the cut and finding ways to heal without losing yourself. It’s about embracing that you are human and feel pain when you have been taught to numb out. It means saying, “That one hurt,” to someone you trust, whether that’s a partner in the squad room or a brother-in-arms who stood beside you overseas. It means admitting that carrying it alone isn’t a badge of honor, it’s a slow agonizing descent into our own personal hell, and for too many, a death sentence.
Resilience is the ability to keep serving and living after service without destroying yourself in the process. It’s learning that you can face horror, grief, and chaos, and still maintain who you are, and even reclaim pieces of yourself on the other side that you thought you lost. It’s not about weakness, it’s about survival. It’s about healing, surviving for ourselves, and for those who desperately need us to survive. It’s about finding ways to unpack our boxes and reduce leakage so we can keep moving forward and avoid passing our scars onto the people who never signed up for them: our kids, our spouses, our families, and our friends.
Whether you wear a badge or dog tags, the truth is the same: the armor we forge as guardians, warriors, brothers, and sisters in arms will ultimately weaken, revealing that we are above all else human beings. We can be broken by the weight of the boxes we have packed and refuse to put down and unpack. Remember, resilience is the ability to adapt to and bounce back from adversity, trauma, significant stress, and major life changes, rather than letting these experiences overcome you. Thus, resiliency is not about hiding our issues in sealed boxes and continuing to struggle under their weight; it is about unpacking the boxes to reduce the weight so we do not continue to struggle. With this in mind, I encourage each of you to find ways to unpack your boxes, reduce the weight you bear from your struggles, and be truly resilient for yourself and for those you love and who love you.
Be Safe!