Nia Thomas [00:00:04]:
Hello and welcome to the knowing self knowing others podcast where we discuss self aware leadership with thinkers from around the globe. I'm your host Nia Thomas. Join me as we talk to today's guest. Today

John Christy [00:00:17]:
I'm thrilled to be joined by John Christie who is a retired firefighter paramedic with over thirty years of experience in the San Francisco Fire Department. John was also the leader of the department's peer support team And throughout his really remarkable career, John has faced some of the most intense and high pressure situations imaginable. As a member of the peer support team, he played a key role in transforming how emotional trauma was understood and treated within his profession, advocating for a mindset that recognizes emotional injuries as equally important as physical ones. Now he shares his insights as a keynote speaker and professional coach, and I'm really pleased that he was able to join us today. John, it's great to have you here.

John Christy [00:01:03]:
Thank you. It's good to be here, Nia. Thank you very much.

Nia Thomas [00:01:07]:
The physical and emotional toll of emergency work is is really quite immense. So tell us a little bit about your journey to here.

John Christy [00:01:15]:
Well, I started as a paramedic with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, and the, city merged us into the fire department in the late nineties. So much of my career is focused on being a paramedic and then firefighter paramedic. I also worked as a EMS rescue captain, which is the the person on the scene that sort of manages the big events, multi casualty injuries, like multi shootings or buyers with a lot of injuries, that kind of thing. So I got into emergency services at a very young age. I was 18 in 1980 when I started, and I I was comfortable on emergencies, not really understanding, which I would years later when the emotional trauma kind of bubbled to the surface, that a lot of first responders come from that have trauma in our childhood. It doesn't have to be big, you know, horrible abuse kind of thing. My family moved every two to three years. There was a lot of chaos.

John Christy [00:02:23]:
I had to reinvent myself. So I I became a person that was thrown into situations I didn't know what to do with, and it rose to the occasion. So it's kinda how I saw the world. So emergency services was a natural for me, and, I did quite well. I I developed a mindset pretty quickly to be able to think very fast with limited information and make decisions that had high consequence. And in the early two thousands, when I was working as a firefighter, I was severely injured, and, my my career was threatened. And PTSD rose to the surface for me, Not as much from the injury as just the accumulated stuff. And in my healing from that, and I did make it back to work against the odds, if you will.

John Christy [00:03:18]:
So I'm I'm, you know, another story of rising to the occasion, the hero's journey. You know, I get this big, horrible situation, and I rise through it. And I kinda have that theme throughout my life, But I started to think, wow. If I knew what I know now in my thirties, what a difference that would make. So in my journey of healing, I called the peer support team. San Francisco Fire has a dedicated peer support team with active duty firefighters working with the fire department members to deal with emotional trauma, addiction, these kinds of things, extraordinary events. It's something that did start in the eighties, but it's it's growing in The United States that big departments have dedicated peer support. So I called them for help.

John Christy [00:04:09]:
And a few years into my recovery, they asked me to join the team, and there was a a situation where two firefighters were killed in one incident. And, it overwhelmed this the whole the whole system. And it was during that time period right after that, the aftermath of that that they asked me to join, and I ended up becoming the lead person on the team. And so I had the opportunity to really start voicing that concern that had bubbled up for me. At first, I targeted the young generation saying, you know, teaching in the recruit classes and and having conversations about resilience, prepare. This is going to happen as opposed to I'm a victim that this happened. I would say to them, once you put on your uniform shirt, you're not a victim anymore. You're choosing to step into the field.

John Christy [00:05:07]:
It's a choice. And that that brings about a a responsibility. Because I remember thinking to myself, and it was one of my mentors said, it's not your fault what happened, but it is your responsibility because nobody will take responsibility for your life like you will. And that and that became my driving force that I have to this moment. So I I speak of resilience. I talk about being proactive instead of reactive, which requires forethought and, thinking of life as an opportunity, something to look forward to as opposed to something I'm fearing or dreading, things of that nature.

Nia Thomas [00:05:51]:
The the way that John and I got to know each other was through Substack, and John writes a lot on Substack, and he has his newsletter. And you were talking a lot about this resilience and the way that you really found your own resilience. And when when I was reading your work, it became apparent that self awareness was a big part of that. Where does self awareness fit for you, and what does it mean for you? Because I think from what I'm reading in in your work that it really is a foundation.

John Christy [00:06:22]:
Yes. Thank you. When it it stems from taking responsibility for the situation. So using the metaphor, I put the uniform shirt on. I'm not a victim. Sometimes what can happen in that and this was my personal experience initially was feeling a victim to all the things that I had experienced. And I experienced, multi casualty in incidents from the perspective of the lead paramedic that's responsible to get 25 people office scene and into hospitals. And some of those were catastrophic injuries, dealt with the children that had been murdered, dealt with multiple shootings, things of that nature that we see on the news and think, oh my god, and I was there.

John Christy [00:07:14]:
So feeling a victim to that was hindering my ability to take responsibility and move forward from a place of healing. I worked with a wonderful trauma therapist, somatic psychotherapist, which somatic in the body. So I was able to heal from the perspective of the trauma is in my body. And when I take responsibility for that, I don't feel a victim to it, then I'm more proactive. I can I can accept that, yes, these things happened? Yes. I I I was walking around with post traumatic stress, anger. I was hypervigilant. I I was I was constantly on alert, and I had to get to a I got to a place where I thought to myself, my body is revving constantly, and it's exceeding the design capacity of my cardiovascular system and my nervous system.

John Christy [00:08:18]:
So I'm either gonna die from that or all this stuff I'm worried about is gonna happen, but I got a choice. And so I chose to bring my body's systems down and take the risk that all that stuff might happen. So as I was healing, I started to feel that I was in a safer environment, and I started to see the world from that place as opposed to the paramedic on the scene of a horrible incident.

Nia Thomas [00:08:48]:
When you're in those kind of traumatic situations, how do you even begin to tap into your emotions, to recognize your feelings, to be at a point where you can manage them, you can control them, and you can make decisions?

John Christy [00:09:07]:
Well, there's a long answer to that, but the quick the quick version is we train the emotions to come down. And then we can think quickly. We have limited information. The decision is has high consequences, and the the scene, if you will, the situation that we're standing in has high emotional content. People are upset or it's still dangerous. So we train that out of us, which can become problematic, which did for me. So in my healing, I started to learn to feel again, or maybe I learned to feel because who knows when that started. Remember I alluded to earlier that a lot of first responders come from chaotic backgrounds.

John Christy [00:10:00]:
I'm one of them. And, the folks that help us heal in the mental health community see that. They see that we come from chaos. My experience is that when as a peer support person for a first responder or working as an executive coach, when I understand the difficulty of feeling feelings and the and the CEO doesn't wanna do this at a board meeting saying, oh, this is sad. I'm really sad. But there can be a place for that. So I learned to feel the feelings, and I learned to understand that I didn't have to completely let shut them down, but that I could have an outlet. So I take walks.

John Christy [00:10:44]:
I I live by a pretty big park that's been redwoods are preserved. I walk there constantly. I have an outlet with intention, but the the feelings on the scene are not present. We've trained we we get them trained out of us.

Nia Thomas [00:11:03]:
When you spoke earlier, you used the word resilient. What are the benefits of taking that step back to reflect before acting, and how does that really help you build that resilience?

John Christy [00:11:17]:
To answer your question, I'll start with my experience. As I was healing, I developed a strength inside of myself that was much stronger than I ever was before. And so I my version of resilience, the way I see resilience is I don't just come back. I come back stronger. There's a term post traumatic growth from post traumatic stress. So the event happens, and it brings me it really brings me down. But instead of just getting back to where I was, I I take the situation and I build a stronger way of moving forward. And from that, I say, I'm not glad any of that stuff happened, but I wouldn't trade the strength they gave me or anything.

John Christy [00:12:15]:
And I've been able to support others to to do that, which is why I started writing the newsletter. I just have this energy. I had to get out. You know? It was like plus my mom was an English teacher, and and I I jokingly say we had to write a good composition to to get to dinner. So it was an outlet for me also to be able to just let the energy come out of me.

Nia Thomas [00:12:42]:
When you started working in the peer support team, how did you start using your experiences to model that behavior and and take that leadership so that the people who are coming through the organizations are really putting in place these these mechanisms to support them to deal with this kind of trauma?

John Christy [00:13:05]:
I came about it from the place of someone who's been there. So unlike the expert who has all the answers or the person that says, if you could do step a, then you when you end up at z, you'll be fine. I would sit with people literally and just let them know they're not alone. That's the first thing. And and admit I'm not here to help. I'm not here to give you the solution, but I'm here to make sure you know you're not by yourself. Because that feeling of loneliness, the feeling of being alone, especially when isolating can be one of the symptoms. I was working with someone who was feeling suicidal, And I did instead of arguing with the reasoning around that, because I I had been in a similar place myself, so I I under I I knew that reasoning isn't gonna do anything.

John Christy [00:14:06]:
But I just said, how about if we just watch a movie? This is late at night. I said, let's watch a movie. Let's just let's just hang out and see what tomorrow brings. And we watched it late into the night, and tomorrow came, and it just the the feeling was gone. So there's a there's a sense of I've been there. There's a sense of empathy, nonjudgment, and allowing for something different to show up than either of us expected. And I'm a pretty good fixer, so I have, you know like, if there's a legal situation, there's attorneys that I know. I know therapists.

John Christy [00:14:50]:
And so I could sort of coax them towards working with a trauma therapist, which I did, things of that nature.

Nia Thomas [00:15:01]:
I've also heard you talk about burnout. What does burnout look like if you overlay that onto PTSD? How do you even start to recognize it? What did it feel like look like for you?

John Christy [00:15:15]:
So we think of the nervous system as a give and take. So we breathe in, we and then we exhale. Another give and take thing. So when too much stimulus comes into the nervous system, it gets overwhelmed. And in the overwhelm, we have strategies, most of them unconscious. And burnout is one of those fatigue of the nervous system situations. It's too much. And and if I care, that's gonna require energy.

John Christy [00:15:49]:
There's a term compassion fatigue, and I certainly extreme.

John Christy [00:15:54]:
Yes.

John Christy [00:15:54]:
I certainly experienced that where I'm dealing with people's horrible events, cardiac arrest of a 45 year old with a family. And, you know, yes, we were able to get his heart started again, and he's in the ICU. And maybe we'll live, maybe won't, but but certainly life is different now. Nothing inside. Nothing. Just, you know, get me through. Get me through. So that's too much coming in without a plan.

John Christy [00:16:28]:
And so that's my experience of burnout. And without going into strategy, if I remove myself from the stimulus and I recalibrate and I and I let that teach me different skills like walking or exercising or, you know, meditating. I meditate every single day. It's it's very powerful. The neuroscience around meditation is it's there.

Nia Thomas [00:16:58]:
You you've talked about how understanding yourself helps you share that experience with others. Is that something that you use as part of your learning and the way that you coach people now?

John Christy [00:17:14]:
Yes. Yes. When I when I work with somebody going through a situation, I may not have gone through the exact, but knowing that I've been through hardship and that reflecting on myself, so I'm reflecting on John, what are my strategies around overwhelm? How do I deal with certain situations? When I look at that from a place of curiosity instead of blame or shame, then I'm more able to support someone else going through that. It's not a theory. It's not just something I read in a book like knowledge. Knowledge is great. Right? But it is the tiny step towards experience. And and so having the experience of walking through something might not be what you're walking through, but you can sense there's there's a there's a safety.

John Christy [00:18:17]:
I can be vulnerable around this guy because he seems to get what it feels like to be alone. And if only to say, hey. You're not alone now. I don't know what to do either, but you're not alone. It's very powerful.

Nia Thomas [00:18:32]:
How do you support leaders of organizations who may not have been through this kind of trauma, may not have suffered burnout, may not have had this experiential learning. How do you support them to support their teams?

John Christy [00:18:49]:
We all have strategies, unconscious strategies. And the more that we're willing to look at ourselves with curiosity, the more we can see that perhaps the way we're being could be improved. And I support them to look at themselves and get their own answers. I'm not the answer guy, but I do have a way of asking questions that can kind of, point to some of the areas they could be looking at. One of the loneliest jobs is CEO or police chief or fire chief because there's no peers. And while I'm not a peer to them, I'm a safe place. They can be vulnerable, and they could say, well, I have this meeting coming up, and I'm I'm scared. And instead of looking at fear from a place of weakness, we look at fear as an action signal.

John Christy [00:19:48]:
It's it's something signaling to me, and and what is that signal could be something we get curious about. And and I would say that would be the first Volley of the answer. And it it it does sometimes I work twenty, thirty hours with somebody to, to have an ongoing conversation. It's we think of we're we're in a society that has a high value on knowledge. And if we get this degree, we're gonna be wherever there is. We'll be there. In fact, it turns out that's not really enough. So conversations, sharing what's going on, getting in tune with our body and our mind from the place of head, heart, and gut, and listening to all of that and and being able to be more holistic in our approach.

John Christy [00:20:52]:
And maybe what the CEO needs to do is go into the meeting with their staff and say, we have a situation, and I'm not quite sure what to do and and be vulnerable with them. But that won't just come. That's something that could come through the conversations we have in coaching.

Francesca [00:21:12]:
Are you looking to improve your business relationships? Have you found yourself dealing with employee conflicts? Are you ready to elevate your perspective to a position of greater awareness? If so, the self awareness superhighway, charting your leadership journey is the book for you. Here's just a fraction of what you'll learn. What self awareness is and why it's critical for your reputation, how increased self awareness will boost your business relationships, how you can leverage self awareness to excel in your leadership, practical steps to develop your self awareness skills, how you can capitalize on constructive feedback from others, how you can be at the forefront of people centricity in the hyper digital age. Even if you focused on only one development tool to move in one direction on your superhighway, you'll have achieved growth worth more than the price of the book. You can buy your copy from Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes and Noble, Foyles, Blackwell's, and other good online and high street bookstores. Grab a coffee, find a comfy chair, and dive in.

Nia Thomas [00:22:20]:
Something that I've seen you write about is sleep, and you've emphasized the importance of sleep for maintaining that peak performance. How did you come to realize that critical role of rest and recovery in in your work life?

John Christy [00:22:33]:
Yeah.

John Christy [00:22:34]:
And and how do you help others to get to that point where they understand the impact of rest and and recuperation?

John Christy [00:22:42]:
So I did thirty years in the field, which is a long time. Not a lot of people last thirty years. And I say that from a place of, field work is shift work. So I worked tens and twelves into the night, weird sleep patterns, and I also worked twenty four hour shifts. One on, two off, or three on in a row because there's overtime and mandatory You know, sometimes we get forced to stay because we're emergency workers. If there's nobody there to replace you, you stay. So my sleep I I used to say, I'll sleep when I'm dead. I don't say that anymore.

John Christy [00:23:27]:
I don't wanna I don't wanna taunt the opponent. I used to think if I get four hours in a row, that's success. And then I I I saw a podcast with Matthew Walker, who's done some work out of UC Berkeley. He's actually an English guy who lives over in my neck of the woods and studies sleep, and it got me curious. And I read an article about a professional athlete. They will they will pay millions of dollars to improve their performance, and the best performance enhancing drug that we have available is sleep. And I got super curious. So when I retired, I and this is this is no endorsement of this, but I I put a WHOOP, w h o o p.

John Christy [00:24:21]:
I I wear this. There's also Oura. I just happen to like WHOOP. They give me nothing to share this with you, but I hope everybody goes and gets one and pays attention in their sleep. And I started tracking my sleep against how I feel. I regularly exercise, and so I noticed a difference. I noticed that my cardiovascular system was out of whack, and sudden cardiac death is one of the leading causes of first responder death. So is cancer and suicide.

John Christy [00:25:01]:
So I've had cancer. I'm still alive, and I'm mentally happy and healthy. But what can I do about my cardiovascular system that had too much adrenaline, too much cortisol for the design? That's already done. That's happened. No going back. But what can I do today is pay attention to my sleep? So I started doing that, and, woah, I'm telling you, it made a difference. And and this thing says red, yellow, or green. So depending on, you know, if, like, when I'm getting sick sometimes, I see red, and I it's a precursor.

John Christy [00:25:43]:
Or yellow, I'm pushing a little hard. And I'll give you an example. This morning, I woke up. It was around five, five thirty, and I hit awake and but I just laid there quietly to let this calculate. It came up yellow. And I said, I'm gonna stay I'm gonna stay in bed and go back to sleep. I went back to sleep until I saw green. I feel much more refreshed.

John Christy [00:26:07]:
At 05:30, I was like, yeah. I'm gonna skip exercise today. You know, I came up with a reason. When I woke up again at 06:45, it was green. I worked out. I made my first appointment, and, you know, it's it's a big difference, and it helps my outlook into the world. When I when I'm tackling situations that I don't know what to do, my sleep I noticed my sleep performance the night before makes a difference. It's one of the first things I do when I work with somebody with a high stakes job or, you know, either one of the chiefs people at the chief level or the c suite of first responders.

John Christy [00:26:55]:
And, I just go after their sleep first thing.

Nia Thomas [00:27:00]:
And for people who don't have Whoop in your country, John is showing me, it looks like a, a wearable. It's a it's a monitor. So it's a Fitbit or an Apple Watch or whatever it might be in your country.

John Christy [00:27:13]:
Yeah.

Nia Thomas [00:27:13]:
But, use that app. Use the apps that are available to you to track your sleep. Right. I'm

John Christy [00:27:20]:
And look at Matthew Walker's work.

John Christy [00:27:23]:
Yeah. Well, we will I will get a link from John, and we will make sure that that is in the show notes for you so that you can track your sleep. Before we finish, a question about the future of the paramedic firefighter sector. What are your thoughts about the young people who are starting their careers in this industry? How do we support them? How do we protect them? How do we make sure that they are aware of their awareness and they can protect themselves from these traumatic situations?

John Christy [00:28:00]:
I would include all people in that question. Mhmm. And one what I started to do in the early twenty teens, is that what we call it, twenty ten to '20 '20, is to make overwhelm mental health an okay thing to talk about. So I injured my shoulder years ago, and I had surgery. And, because I'm tall, I tend to be one of the ones that has to lift over my head to go down the stairs if we're carrying someone so we can keep them flat. I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't able to lift 200 pounds over my head when when it really counted. My crew took care of me.

John Christy [00:28:53]:
They jumped in. So what I started was let mental health be the same thing. I just had a really bad call, and I'm having a hard time with it. And when someone says, are you okay? It's okay to say no. And and that goes to first responders. That goes to folks entering their you know, coming into adulthood or mid thirties to mid forties. Like, really? This is life? Where's the rainbows and the unicorns? It didn't happen. Well, guess what? Sorry.

John Christy [00:29:30]:
And and to be able to say, this hurts. You know? This is hard. So making it cool. And I and I you know, there's a thing in the first responder community that's particularly like, it's per was, in my generation, particularly hard to say that because we gotta make sure everybody on the team is mentally there. Right? So we're gonna I'm not gonna tell you. I'm I'm having a hard time, or my wife's mad at me, or I'm sad because of this or that. So here's here's something to say around that. And and that is, do you think you're tough? Try saying it hurts.

John Christy [00:30:14]:
So I flipped it. We think we're tough when we don't say something, but, man, was it hard to say that. It was hard. So you think you're tough? Let's let's let's be real. And I understand. That's the that's a message I've been saying, and I say that in my keynote talks. Like, let's get real. I think it's time.

Nia Thomas [00:30:38]:
I think that's really good advice. Thank you, John. It's it's been a really different conversation about self awareness and leadership, but one that is really important, and I think it transcends from your sector in firefighting and and paramedic. And and I think it transcends. As you said, we should be talking to all people who are starting their careers about how they look after themselves, how they really tap into their body to make sure that they are well, and that actually mental health and physical health should be given equal importance. John, I've really enjoyed our conversation. I will make sure that there is a link to your Substack and your newsletter so that, watchers and listeners can link with you because I certainly really enjoy reading what you're writing, and I'm sure they will as well. John, thank you so much for joining me.

Nia Thomas [00:31:26]:
It's been brilliant.

John Christy [00:31:27]:
Thank you, Nia. It's my pleasure.

Nia Thomas [00:31:30]:
Thank you for joining me on today's episode where we aim to develop self aware leaders around the globe to generate kinder, more respectful, full and creative working relationships through reflection, recognition and regulation. Head over to my website at knowingselfknowingothers.co.uk to sign up to my newsletter to keep up to date with my blog, podcast and book. Looking forward to having you on my learning journey.