Is It Just Me?

Sep 15

Written by Jennifer Taylor

For years, I wondered if it was just me.

As dispatchers, we spend our careers hearing people on the worst day of their lives. We hear the panic in a mother's voice when her child is not breathing. We listen to people take their last breaths. We hear officers fighting for their lives over the radio. Then we answer the next call.

And the next one.

After a while, I began to wonder if my coworkers were experiencing the same things I was.

Were they having nightmares?

Were they replaying calls in their heads long after their shift ended?

Were they hearing certain tones, voices, or radio traffic and immediately feeling their heart race?

Were they carrying the weight of years of trauma home with them every night?

Or was something wrong with me?

Maybe I was not strong enough.

Maybe I was not cut out for the job.

Maybe everyone else was handling it better than I was.

What I did not understand at the time was that I was not weak. I was injured.

I experienced my first nightmare a few years into my career after a teenager drowned, and our dive team was unable to save him. At the time, I had no way of knowing that would be the first of many night terrors. I told myself it was just part of the job. Years later, after an officer-involved fatality, I found myself drinking more and more to quiet my thoughts and get some sleep. As the years passed and the calls accumulated, so did the effects. What I thought was stress was cumulative trauma.

Like many dispatchers, I unknowingly signed up for a profession that would eventually affect my mental health. I worked long hours, often twelve-hour shifts for days at a time. I worked in an environment where stress was constant, trauma was normal, and talking about mental health was a sign of weakness. We were expected to be strong, push through, and keep answering calls.

The culture taught us how to take care of everyone else. It did not teach us how to take care of ourselves.

Today, I believe we need to change that culture.

We need to start talking openly about cumulative trauma, burnout, depression, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use. We need leadership that understands the psychological impact of this profession. We need peer support, access to treatment, and workplaces where asking for help is viewed as a strength rather than a weakness.

Most importantly, we need to create safe spaces for dispatchers to say, "I am not okay."

As you read this, dispatchers are sitting behind consoles right now asking themselves the same question I asked for years: