# Mental toughness for law enforcement



## kwflatbed (Dec 29, 2004)

By Dr. Laurence Miller

*Q:* I took a "stress management" course at a local law enforcement academy and most of what they focused on had to do with deep breathing, relaxation, and other calm-down techniques. But if I'm on the job, I can't be zoning out while I'm searching a building, questioning a suspect, pulling over a suspicious vehicle, making an arrest, or looking down a gun barrel. Aren't there methods for keeping yourself sharp and alert while de-stressing yourself at the same time? Isn't a little stress actually good for you? Can you mentally toughen up so that stress won't have such a impact on your performance? That is, can you learn to use stress to your advantage?
*A:* Yes, you can and I'm going to tell you how to do it in this article and invite you to learn more about it in my new book, METTLE: Mental Toughness Training for Law Enforcement (METTLE at Looseleaf Law). This program incorporates proven strategies for building psychological resilience and peak performance adapted from the fields of military psychology, sports psychology, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, and behavioral medicine that is directly applicable to the special needs of law enforcement personnel.

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*Stress and the stress response*
You're correct that a certain amount of optimum stimulation is necessary for peak performance. The evidence suggests that stressful situations that are challenging but not overwhelming may actually contribute to better physical and psychological health. In fact, University of Nebraska psychologist Richard A. Dienstbier uses the term toughening to describe what happens when challenging situations require active coping and problem solving. Animals and humans who are stressed, but learn to adaptively work their way out of the problem, show a distinct psychobiological pattern.

For inexperienced or untrained subjects, overwhelming stress taxes the nervous system to the breaking point and can lead to a variety of maladaptive effects, including high blood pressure, sleep disorders, gastrointestinal problems, chronic anxiety, or depression. However, individuals who have learned to deal effectively with such emergencies - that is, "toughened up" by developed good coping and mastery skills - show a more efficient and adaptive nervous system response that is appropriate to the specific episode of stress and returns promptly to normal baseline when the crisis is over.

As an individual learns to cope with challenges in an adaptive way, a positive spiral develops: more effective coping leads to a smoother psychobiological stress response; the more this happens, the more the person learns to have faith in his or her own coping abilities, and so the stress response becomes even more adaptive and less disruptive. This is what the toughening response is all about. Mentally tough people - in the sense of resilience, not resistance - are able to cope adaptively with adverse situations and are therefore less likely to succumb to stress-related illnesses.

Think of it as developing your own personal psychological body armor but, unlike a vest that you strap on and off, this kind of mental armoring grows from within, based on your training and experience. You can't lose this psychological body armor because it's become a part of who you are.

Full Article: http://www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/1458229/


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