Suicide Prevention Saturday - Being calm during stressful situations

Ta-da! Once again, it is— what time is it? Oh, it's Suicide Prevention Saturday. That's what time it is. Um, and unfortunately, I'm kind of sad. The description that I put down below for YouTube, up above for, you know, that Facebook side of things, where I was supposed to have a guest tonight My surprise guest surprised me that she had other plans tonight because it was not on our calendar. So next week I will have a surprise guest, um, as far as I know, if things go according to plan, which sometimes they do and sometimes they do not. So hi everyone, for those of you who are new, my name is Brooke Cheney and I am the owner and instructor here at A Great Start Shooting School., and I come on here every Saturday night since 2018 to talk about suicide prevention, because 2 out of every 3 gun deaths that are out there are suicides. And if we want to save lives, we got to talk about suicide, because the other cool part about that is if we actually address the mental health that is needed in order to help prevent suicide by firearm, we can then also help address the car deaths, the overdoses, the cuttings, the hangings, all of the other ways that people go when they die by suicide. So with that, I have to do a quick turnaround, I guess. We can still talk about the bunny, that part we can still talk about, because fight, flight, or freeze. These are some of the things that we do, and it is a— it's how our biology works, right? Most people talk about fight or flight, uh, deer in the headlights. That would be the freeze portion of our physiology and what we actually do. Why is this important for our mental health? Well, if you fight, sometimes you're fighting with yourself. If you freeze, it means you're not doing anything to help yourself. And if you run away, you're also— maybe you're helping yourself, maybe not. It depends. We all have different issues when it comes to our mental health. The bunny rabbit of fight, flight, or freeze is— we have bunnies in our backyard all the time. Matter of fact, today while I was teaching, uh, we had a bunny on the range. And so I'm standing there, my student— I'm looking at my student and she's shooting downrange, and I look over behind her and there's something in the woods, and it's a bunny hopping through the woods. Right now they don't have much cover because it's wintertime, so you can see through there. And it's just one of those things where I'm like, oh, bunny! So I'm like, I'm holding on to my student's gun so she can look, because I don't know if you all know, but our sight goes to where we are looking. So that's why I had to hold on to her gun while I allowed her to look at the bunny. So being aware of the things that we are doing— so why are we talking about the bunny? Because bunnies do all three of these things in my backyard. When I come out, if I am far enough away from the bunny, the bunny will run away. And oh, hold on. So now I see you're just— and no, the bunny's name was Little Bunny Foo Foo, hopping through the forest, scooping up the field mice and bopping them on the head. For those of you who don't know what the heck we're talking about, uh, you're probably too young, or maybe you're too old, I don't know. Um, but yeah, we can tell that at the end, I think, you and I. But anyway, um, so If the bunny is far enough away from me that it can easily get away, generally flight is how bunnies go, because if they have enough space, they can get away. If I'm a little too close and the bunny is not sure, the bunny will freeze, because just like I was talking about how with my student, if you look at something, you're, you're gonna go there. And why do we look at stuff? Why did I see the bunny behind my student? Because something already hopping through the forest will catch our eyes. And if there's movement, we're gonna look to the movement. So the flight thing can be dangerous because it can bring attention to what was not being paid attention to before that. So fight— bunnies fight mean, man. If you've ever had a bunny— I had a bunny And I have scars from my bunny because bunnies are mean. So, but the flight or, uh, flight or freeze stuff is what tends to keep them alive. Like with those of us who do firearms and use our firearms for self-preservation, the fight thing is the last thing we want to do. The fight thing is the we have lost our two other options, or whatever other options we thought we had. So the fight one is the last one that comes out. And for those of you who've not ever heard a bunny scream, it is bone-chilling, quite honestly. For the most part, I think I've only heard it on movies. If you ever want to— a bunny that's caught in a trap will make the most horrendous scream you've ever heard. Definitely bone-chilling. So how do we deal with this? How does this help our mental health game? Being aware. I am totally the bunny who freezes when I do force-on-force training, and it's very interesting because my daughter and I were discussing this. Uh, have you ever been surprised Well, here in my office, when I'm expecting that I'm alone and I'm going to the door and all of a sudden the door opens, my first response is usually this after a nice week, right? That would be the fight thing. And apparently roughly 80/20, 80% of folks will just jump away from something that surprises them. The 20% that do the fight thing. That's me when my husband scares the crap out of me when I'm not expecting him to come down. So understanding how you work helps you control what you're doing. Oh my goodness. All right. So I've just talked for like 7 minutes straight. So DJ, you know what that means? You get to do the whole call out to everybody while I take a drink of water.

Right on. Joined this evening by Tara Smith's Kitchen. Good to see her out there in the crowd. Also have Crabby Turtle out there. He's joining us from the East Coast, not too far from you. G-Webs, also a regular fixture, is out there in the text chat, and there are a couple others listening. That is your roll call.

Oh wait, you didn't— you missed Mike White, man. Oh, because he got in just as you started going.

And there's Mike White.

There is, just like that. So DJ, since you're here with me, and I don't have my surprise guests, I'm going to just pick on you instead. In the fight, flight, or freeze category, if you are surprised, which way do you think you tend to go?

Starts with the freeze. And then it is the decision between the next two. I don't take— you instantly showed, you know, a posture of preparedness to defend, and mine is more just to honestly, well, like almost stick my neck out to see what it is that's going on. That isn't what I would like to say that I do, but I know that's what I do. I also try to exude as much calm. I spent a lot of years being a person who had to make sure that calm and peace was kept, in busy clubs and bars. So for me to overreact too quickly would have been unwise. So not the best strategy, not ready to go right away, but I have the feeling that I'm ready to respond appropriately after just a few seconds consideration.

Yeah, and this is one of those things where people, a lot of people don't understand, is like, just because I do this, it depends on the situation. Like I said, when I do force-on-force training, I think part of me knows that nothing bad's going to happen, so I think that's why I possibly— why I'm so much deer in the headlights. I'm just like, okay, bad guys just came in shooting. All right, my friends who have guns are trying to shoot back. Oh wait, I should probably leave the coffee shop right now because I have none of these things and I don't want to be out of there. And Woods, fear not, you're not always late. You're perfectly where you're meant to be when you are meant to be there. And since Fiona missed roll call— hi Fiona, happy birthday, a little bit late, but you know, happy belated birthday. So anybody wants to wish Fiona a happy belated birthday, y'all know what she got from me for a birthday present, right? She got a shiny pen. Actually, it was just because she was here. So, um, yeah, that we don't know what we're actually going to do when we're under stress, and it is definitely you really don't know what you're going to do. One of the— what do I want to call it— one of the stories that I tell people in my classes is that, you know, they think they're just going to pick up a firearm and be able to shoot. And I'm like, kind of. You can pick up a gun and you can pull the trigger. If I'd be calling that shooting, I am not sure. Currently, not so much. Because I know more than I used to. Previously, I would say you were shooting if you pulled the trigger of a firearm. So I'm on the phone at the beach, my kids are playing happily, safely somewhere, and I hear a woman screaming. She's pointing, and she's pointing at a baby who is in the water face down. The lady is screaming, "Get the baby! Get the baby!" I'm on the phone. I see where she's pointing. I see the baby. I look back at the lady screaming because that's how I saw where she was pointing to, and I know that my brain went into, "If I drop the phone, the police might come because I might freak out the person on the phone, and I don't want to do that. While my brain is playing that scenario, there's about 50 to 75 people on this same beach with me. Now, the lady who is screaming is 25 or so feet away from the baby who is face down in the water, you know, with their little poor little diaper holding their butt up. Now, this baby is standing there— or sorry, the baby's face down, the moms are standing next to the baby just chit-chatting with each other, not realizing what's happening. 50 to 75 of us around looking at the screaming lady. The screaming lady is the only person on the beach that pops up, runs to the baby, picks the baby up out of the water. None of us— remember how I said that 80/20 rule? Apparently in some groups it's even lower than that because that lady was that 20% who saw a problem and took care of the problem. The rest of us were like, okay, there's something bad happening and we don't know what to do. So as much as sometimes I might come up like this, sometimes I'm on the phone not paying attention or not knowing how to make that decision that saves a life. So it is crazy because let's go back to our, our abilities to react, right? So the woman who's screaming is the one who pops up, runs to get the baby before any of the rest of us had any time to react. Now the other interesting part of this was that she picks up the baby, the mother's that had this baby at their feet drowning and did not notice were not thankful. Do you hear that? They were not thankful. You know what they were? They were embarrassed. They were annoyed. It's crazy how our psyche works. It's like, here's a woman who saw your baby at your feet drowning and you pick up their baby and they're just like annoyed versus, oh my gosh, thank you so much, because we get embarrassed and we want to save face. So how is all of this? Well, Mike White says being frozen in fear. Yes, possibly. For me, it was analysis paralysis. It was, 'Ah, I have my insurance agent on the phone. She doesn't know what's going on. She's going to hear screaming. I'm going to drop the phone. She's going to call the police.' I was anxious over my decision to do anything because I was forecasting what could possibly happen, right? Instead of dropping the phone and saving the baby. And we all assume if we saw a baby drowning, that we would go save the baby. Unfortunately, we are not always right. So where does this go? I don't have my book with me, but if I had not read Kathy Jackson's Cornered Cat: A Woman's Guide to Concealed Carry, I would not have been aware enough to know what was going on while I was on the phone. Because Kathy Jackson gives a story about a woman at the beginning where you're— she's in a bank, she's getting her ATM card, she's trying to get cash, and there's cops surrounding the building, and they call her towards them. She notices, she starts to walk towards safety, she stops, she goes back and gets her ATM card. Why? Because we do what we're trained to do. Me not dropping the phone was me being trained not to be rude or freak people out. Her going back and getting her ATM card was because she's trained to not leave her ATM behind. So we will do what we train to do. How does this apply to mental health? What do you think? We need to be aware of the things we're thinking. We need to be aware of how we're doing stuff. A lot of my students lately, we've been talking about what's super important to pay attention to, and we all need to pay attention to what we want to occur. I had a student here yesterday and he's like, what am I doing wrong? What am I doing wrong? I'm like, I'm actually not going to diagnose that because we don't want to focus on what we don't want. We want to focus on what do we want to get the result that we actually want. Oh yes, and thank you for that, DJ. Definitely check out thecorneredcat.com. I think Kathy might still write her blog. She's actually retired, living in a beautiful island getaway. If you're friends with Paul Lather and you're on Facebook, you can see some of the pictures from Kathy's new home down in the islands. So, but yeah, Cornered Cat, it's a little bit like the other— what is that other book? The Gift of Fear. So that's what I got for you guys. I'm gonna stop there and hang up. What do you think? That abrupt ending. What do you think, DJ?

I'm really not sure. I think it's a— no, it's, it's, it's that kind of pace and the kind of stop point where you'd like to be. A brief conversation about things, passed on some resources to folks, created the community for us to gather in every Saturday night. Yeah, it's been a good— another good one, Brooke.

Thank you. Okay. All right. Um, yeah, and I mean, sort of like Tara's talking about, indecision is still decision, and it's probably the worst one you can make. Maybe, maybe not. You don't know. Um, a lot of people talk about— when I ask— when they ask me a question, I'm like, it depends, because we don't know the answers, and it's not positive or negative necessarily. So since DJ gave me permission— oh wait, he's over there. I can't— what the— it's so hard. Um, I can't point at you, dude, because it's that way. Oh, there it is. See, the fact that I can figure that out is kind of like scary that it took me that long. But anyway, uh, next week I will have a surprise guest, I hope, and we will be talking about all the things that I put down here for today. And now he's quiet, so I need to make him go away. All right, DJ, got anything else? We good?

Have a good night. Yeah, I want everybody to be safe, have fun, take care of each other, and as always, rock and check stuff out.

All right, good night everybody.