Emotional Survival Paper

All people experience stress, and for those in public safety, individual stressors can be compounded by a variety of factors. In addition to the stress employees experience at work, their personal life and support system are likely also contributing factors. Educating yourself to the signs, and symptoms caused by stress can help you manage your body’s physicological response. Police officers often receive harsh criticism from the media and scant graditude from the public they protect and serve. This is why burnout among law enforcement officers is so prevalent. Police have too much to do and not enough time to do their job.

Crime and calls for police service are increasing incessantly, but resources and time to do the job are not increasing accordingly. Police officers must do impossible tasks and meet unrealistic deadlines in the worst of working conditions. Officers suffering burnout often don’t see the temporary nature of their feelings nor the need for support. A concrete way to prevent burnout is to set realistic goals for yourself. Seek people to whom you can talk, take care of yourself physically and mentally, get enough sleep, and leave the job precinct when your shift ends.Constructive and deconstructive behavior both can help you learn and gain experience while on the job. Constructive behavior has a balanced focus on organizational outcomes and the people who are going to deliver those outcomes.

It is also focused on organizational and individual learning. Constructive behavior is based on realistic achievement and the belief that everyone’s effort makes a difference and mistakes are always seen as a learning opportunity. The individual grows and the organization prospers during this learning process, rather than squandering resources in misguided attempts to cover up mistakes.Constructive behavior also sees people acting with integrity, supporting each other and building well-balanced and effective relationships. This behavior relies on personal power for influence rather than pure institutional power. On the other hand destructive behavior is the idea that sometimes people knowingly do things that can cause them to fail or bring trouble. Destructive behavior is any deliberate or intentional behavior that has clear, negative effects on the self or the self’s life.

Destructive behavior is commonly found when people feel that others view them less favorably then the people desire.This behavior is done when a person literally and knowingly makes a trade-off in a situation. It is when a person chooses a certain option that has some benefit but also has the potential to cause harm to the person as well. Both constructive and destructive behaviors have potential to educate and justify different aspects on how to properly help you out with your career. The new officer can take the veterans destructive behavior has a learning ability. Law enforcement personnel, like all other human beings, form their worldviews and predictions about life from the situations and events they see every day.Hypervigilance is a biological state.

Hypervigilance is the necessary manner of viewing the world from a threat-based perspective, having the mindset to see the events unfolding as potentially hazardous. The perceptual set of hypervigilance lets the officer have an increased awareness of all the data available in the environment. The affects of hypervigilance can be improved by becoming more socially involved. The desire for social encounters at home can help find themselves being more communicative.The willingness to engage in conversation or activities that are not police related and interaction with nonpolice friends and acquaintances can help with this process. If officers are going to survive ethical dilemmas they need to be as physically and mentally prepared as they would be for tactical encounters. Some of the potential problems that develop when working in law enforcement include the job consumes all your personal time which negatively impacts your family, your world view changes, increased rate of suicide, depression, isolation, and withdrawal from society.

This makes it easy of officers to deny the negative aspects to justify continuing with their career. The first step to maintaining a healthy relationship with your family and friends is the ability to control activities, priorities, and schedules. It is important to have a strategy that permits to harness the available time in one’s life to accomplish whatever goals we choose to pursue. Life is about balance and Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement will help officers realize the importance of this balance.On duty the officer is alive, alert, energetic, involved and humorous. But off duty they are tired, detached, isolated, and apathetic. The officer crashes upon coming home relegated to sitting on the recliner with a beer as he withdraws into himself to the exclusion of his family, loved ones and friends.

It is important for all officers to know, early on, that overinvestment in their police career will eventually destroy their home life and family relationships. All the things and activities that you used to enjoy you no longer engage in.