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hheremtp wrote:

Excaliber wrote:

hheremtp wrote:

Excaliber wrote:The emotional experience aspect is a bit different. LEO's see a great deal of trauma of all types. Most of us learn to reflexively suppress our emotional responses during an incident because allowing them to spill out would seriously interfere with doing what we need to do right then. If we're lucky (like when we can talk about these things with trusted people like our spouse, close coworkers, etc) and have other non work related interests we engage in often, we're able to deal with the feelings soon afterward when we can afford to sort them out and decompress. When this sequence takes place, in most cases we'll bounce back pretty well. There's nothing wrong with remaining mentally and spiritually healthy while doing things that would tear up many folks for good with one exposure, and doing them over and over during the couple of decades of a police career. It's a special gift to be able to do that, and one that's unique to warriors.

Excaliber, While I agree that the ability to compartmentalize ones emotions while under great stress is a special gift, It is not one that is unique only to warriors. Those of us that work in the medial profession must be able to to do the same thing. In fact, anyone that works in a high stress environment where you see the worst that society and life has to offer must be able to control and suppress their emotions during the event. I have seen what happens when someone does not have the ability to suppress their emotions, and it aint pretty.

Voice of Reason,

To answer your question directly, yes that is normal. The suppression of your emotions is what allowed you to do your job without hesitation. I wouldn't worry about not being emotional during an event, I would worry if you cant decompress those emotions afterwards. You have to have a medium to release those bottled up emotions and feelings, otherwise they will start to consume you and tear you apart.

Hherempt, you and I are on the same page here, and I should have elaborated that the term "warrior" isn't exclusive to those who work with weapons.

In my view it includes all those who knowingly and repeatedly go into harm's way for others and those who handle the immediate aftermath of tragedies such as paramedics, firefighters, trauma surgeons and nurses, SAR teams, medevac pilots, and others in similar professions.

Excaliber,
I see what you mean now. Sorry about the misunderstanding.

No problem. I should have been clearer in my post about a term that has differing meanings to different folks.

For those who would like to explore the concept of warriorhood further, Loren Christenson has an excellent book called "Warriors (Expanded Edition) - More on Living with Courage, Discipline, and Honor." It's a collection of writings on what it means to be a warrior by some of the truly elite warriors of our time. It's a really good read - available from Paladin Press.

hheremtp wrote:

Excaliber wrote:The emotional experience aspect is a bit different. LEO's see a great deal of trauma of all types. Most of us learn to reflexively suppress our emotional responses during an incident because allowing them to spill out would seriously interfere with doing what we need to do right then. If we're lucky (like when we can talk about these things with trusted people like our spouse, close coworkers, etc) and have other non work related interests we engage in often, we're able to deal with the feelings soon afterward when we can afford to sort them out and decompress. When this sequence takes place, in most cases we'll bounce back pretty well. There's nothing wrong with remaining mentally and spiritually healthy while doing things that would tear up many folks for good with one exposure, and doing them over and over during the couple of decades of a police career. It's a special gift to be able to do that, and one that's unique to warriors.

Excaliber, While I agree that the ability to compartmentalize ones emotions while under great stress is a special gift, It is not one that is unique only to warriors. Those of us that work in the medial profession must be able to to do the same thing. In fact, anyone that works in a high stress environment where you see the worst that society and life has to offer must be able to control and suppress their emotions during the event. I have seen what happens when someone does not have the ability to suppress their emotions, and it aint pretty.

Voice of Reason,

To answer your question directly, yes that is normal. The suppression of your emotions is what allowed you to do your job without hesitation. I wouldn't worry about not being emotional during an event, I would worry if you cant decompress those emotions afterwards. You have to have a medium to release those bottled up emotions and feelings, otherwise they will start to consume you and tear you apart.

Hherempt, you and I are on the same page here, and I should have elaborated that the term "warrior" isn't exclusive to those who work with weapons.

In my view it includes all those who knowingly and repeatedly go into harm's way for others and those who handle the immediate aftermath of tragedies such as paramedics, firefighters, trauma surgeons and nurses, SAR teams, medevac pilots, and others in similar professions.

Keith B wrote:

VoiceofReason wrote: Footnote: My partner and I got the gun away from the perp with no one getting hurt. I never did have an adrenaline dump. Is this unusual? Is something wrong there?

I misread your post and thought you had shot the person, or they had gotten shot.

I don't think there is anyting unusual or wrong in your scenario. My guess with your situation the adrenaline may have never escalated to the 'rush' stage. I have had those events too where something happened so quickly and was over so fast, that unless there was an extremely traumatic ending (like a dead person) then your psyche interprets all OK, the rush never hits and you go on. My guess is your mind interpreted the threat, your training kicked in and your mind and body responded to handle it without the epinephrine rush. I think this is very normal for veteran officers or soldiers, and those who are well trained. They handle the situation and move on with their business, as it is just part of the job. Once you got home, your mind slows down after you are off duty and have time to start post-analyzing the situation and what 'could' have happened, then you have the post traumatic stress of the event which includes it bothering you that you might have had to take a life.

Excalibur has a lot more background in the psychological and physiological affects than I do and will probably have better insight and what really happens. I was just a grunt officer and never had any formal training in the psychological side.

Voice of Reason, there are two possibilities here: Either there's nothing wrong with you, or we both need a checkup from the neckup because I've had experiences very similar to what you described many times. I'm pretty sure the former interpretation is correct.

Here's my understanding of what's going on:

If you are well trained and experienced in managing critical incidents, when you see that things are going south and your heart rate begins to escalate, your brain reaches for the "default program" to handle the situation. If it finds one, there is no panic because you still feel in control. Your heart rate doesn't go nearly as high as it would if you had no idea what to do and felt death reaching out for you. You execute what you've trained to do and in most cases that is sufficient to resolve the situation. In this case you may well not experience the altered consciousness or post incident crash in these circumstances because you didn't reach a high enough state of arousal to dump all the stress chemicals into your bloodstream.

On the other hand, if you're suddenly confronted with a deadly situation you didn't expect or the supposedly controlled situation suddenly explodes on you, the chemical dump and neurophysiological changes hit instantaneously as the heart rate goes through the roof. When this happens, there will be significant aftereffects similar to what Keith has described as the chemical changes wear off a short time after the incident.

The emotional experience aspect is a bit different. LEO's see a great deal of trauma of all types. Most of us learn to reflexively suppress our emotional responses during an incident because allowing them to spill out would seriously interfere with doing what we need to do right then. If we're lucky (like when we can talk about these things with trusted people like our spouse, close coworkers, etc) and have other non work related interests we engage in often, we're able to deal with the feelings soon afterward when we can afford to sort them out and decompress. When this sequence takes place, in most cases we'll bounce back pretty well. There's nothing wrong with remaining mentally and spiritually healthy while doing things that would tear up many folks for good with one exposure, and doing them over and over during the couple of decades of a police career. It's a special gift to be able to do that, and one that's unique to warriors.

If we're not lucky, we keep those feelings bottled up inside because we think cops are supposed to be tough and unaffected by what we experience or because we have no one trusted enough to confide in. In that case, the effect is like squeezing a water balloon - you can compress one area, but for sure another part will pop out in some other unpredictable area out of control. That's not good and, over time, leads to broken marriages, mistakes on the job, and self destructive behaviors that are engaged in to try to deal with the internal pain.

Keith B wrote:

Excaliber wrote: The "fog" you describe is a neurophysiological effect that stems from a rapidly escalating heart rate and the stress hormones that are being dumped into your system. The higher your heart rate goes, the greater the impairment to your ability to think your way out of the situation. In these circumstances, your brain will "default" to what you have trained yourself to do - if you have trained yourself to do anything specific. If you haven't it will come up with the equivalent of a "404 - page not found" error when it looks for the "program". In that case chances are excellent that rapidly occurring events will overwhelm you before you can recover and react.

The importance of having pre thought out reactive sequences for various situations is obvious. They probably won't exactly fit the circumstances you confront due to the number of possible variables, but if you have the major elements under control, you can successfully fill in the blanks, even under stress. There are also breathing techniques that can reduce this effect and are well worth learning.

Excaliber once again posts some really great info. Any one who has been trained for combat-type situations will tell you that you almost go into auto-pilot if everything works right.

In the two shooting events I was involved in as a LEO (not the shooter, but one of the group engaged), as well as a couple of other high-stress emergency type situations with guns going, I literally had to go back during debriefing and step by step rebuild the event in my mind to recall exactly how I reacted and what transpired. I had the steps there in my head and could recall them all one by one, but until I sat down and really thought about how they played out, it was almost nothing but a blur. It is kinda like the Chesly Sullenberger landing on the Hudson; you have been trained well, and your experience puts you through the right steps to quickly do what you need and react properly, all the time almost subconsciously doing them like a robot or on autopilot. At least that is the way it hopefully happens!!

The "auto pilot effect" is what happens when the brain tries to retrieve the relevant "program" and successfully finds one. Some folks describe the experience as "it was just like we did it in training, it all came back to me". Others describe it as watching themselves do things almost as if they were an observer. Others, especially in extremely quick situations, sometimes aren't aware of what they did until afterwards.

A friend of mine (retired NYC police sergeant) was an example of this phenomenon when he described a situation where he encountered a subject who fired a handgun at him at close range, then heard a couple of shots of return fire and saw the subject fall. He remembered thinking, "Thank goodness someone shot him - he coulda killed me!" When he looked around to thank his rescuer, he found he was alone. That's when he looked down to see the smoking revolver in his hand. When he opened the cylinder, he found all 6 rounds had been fired.

Recent research has shown that memories of traumatic events are more accurate and complete if the debrief is held 24 - 48 hours after the incident and after the involved people have had an opportunity to get adequate sleep. The memories which seem disjointed and hard to put together immediately after the incident are much smoother and more accessible after this period.

ClarkLZeuss wrote:

Excaliber wrote: ...
The tactic the guy who confronted the OP used was a good one for a strong arm robbery.
...
The "Can I talk to you" line was similar to the "What time is it?" - a distractor intended to divert the intended victim's attention for a second or so and cause him to hesitate in place as the final approach is made. The clincher that this was not intended to be a conversational exchange was the raising and extension of the hands as the passenger closed in.

According to the account, the OP was in reasonable fear of an imminent robbery or attack on his person and in a disparity of force situation due to the size of the person who approached him. He used the threat of force to end the threat to himself.

Wow! Excaliber I think you are dead-on, as always. The scary thing about the OP's situation is that it was so hard to truly know what was about to happen, until it was too late, and everything happened so fast. This is like that ATM scenario you threw out a while back. The really menacing BGs are going to put on sheep's clothing to make you doubt, and then without warning they attack, while you're still trying to figure out what's going on. There have been a few situations where I was very nearly conned, and a few others where I think I was about to be robbed, and there is this eerie kind of "fog" that comes over your thinking. One thing I've learned over the years is like how C.S. Lewis said, there is the animalistic side of man, and then there is the diabolical side, which is far worse. There are obviously violent people who you can more or less easily avoid. But the truly evil ones will be hard to discern, because they are not only violent but skilled deceivers.

To the OP, very clear, quick thinking!

The "fog" you describe is a neurophysiological effect that stems from a rapidly escalating heart rate and the stress hormones that are being dumped into your system. The higher your heart rate goes, the greater the impairment to your ability to think your way out of the situation. In these circumstances, your brain will "default" to what you have trained yourself to do - if you have trained yourself to do anything specific. If you haven't it will come up with the equivalent of a "404 - page not found" error when it looks for the "program". In that case chances are excellent that rapidly occurring events will overwhelm you before you can recover and react.

The importance of having pre thought out reactive sequences for various situations is obvious. They probably won't exactly fit the circumstances you confront due to the number of possible variables, but if you have the major elements under control, you can successfully fill in the blanks, even under stress. There are also breathing techniques that can reduce this effect and are well worth learning.

TheReverend wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:I'm not going to criticize. I wasn't there, and I might very well have reacted the same way you did. But, several thoughts do occur to me.

The first is that, if they really intended harm, it seems that their best tactic would have been to pull up behind your car, blocking you in. Pulling into the space next to yours, particularly since the driver never got out, but only the passenger, seems counter-intuitive for a developing assault. It would make it more difficult for them to get out of their vehicle to attack you, and it would make them as much trapped by narrow spaces as it did to you. OTH, if they stop across the back of your car, they have you boxed in; they enjoy the tactical advantage; and they are better situated for a quick getaway.

For those reasons, it seems purely in hindsight that the passenger was more likely going to try to hit you up for some money for gas or some other nonsense. You point out that both men were african-americans, but the intimidating factor seems to to be the sheer size of the passenger, rather than his race (hopefully).

Hindsight being 20/20, is it at all possible that the intimidation was due more to the passenger's size than to any purposefully threatening action on his part?

you make an assumption here that the BGs are smart enough to realize the tactical advantage they would gain by positioning their van behind his car. Not all BGs are sophisticated, many of them are just plain dumb.

Or not so dumb. Here's how I read the situation from the details given here:

The tactic the guy who confronted the OP used was a good one for a strong arm robbery. It positioned the potential victim within a step or two of the approach guy in a location with very little maneuverability (except directly to the victim's rear), with non participant visibility of what was about to happen restricted to only the very narrow sight lines in direct alignment with the space between the two vehicles, effectively precluding witness worries.

The driver stayed in his seat to facilitate a quick getaway, and because the passenger's size gave these folks the confidence that a second set of hands wasn't needed outside the vehicle. The "Can I talk to you" line was similar to the "What time is it?" - a distractor intended to divert the intended victim's attention for a second or so and cause him to hesitate in place as the final approach is made. The clincher that this was not intended to be a conversational exchange was the raising and extension of the hands as the passenger closed in.

According to the account, the OP was in reasonable fear of an imminent robbery or attack on his person and in a disparity of force situation due to the size of the person who approached him. He used the threat of force to end the threat to himself.

Calling 911 with the tag number of the vehicle and the description of the subjects would have been a better move than calling the store manager because it may well have resulted in the arrest of persons wanted for other completed crimes (like eating potato chips, these guys never stop at just one). It also would have protected the OP against a cagey move by the suspects if they had called 911 to report that a crazy guy with a gun confronted them in the parking lot. Consider how you'd explain that you felt endangered to the point where the threat of deadly force was needed to resolve the situation, but it wasn't bad enough to report to the police.

More bad guys are becoming aware of this option, and it can get costly when they call 911 and you don't. Police figure the real victim will call to make a complaint, and will usually arrest the guy who didn't.