• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • The Magazine
  • Events
  • Partners
  • Products
  • Advertise
  • Contact
  • Jobs and Careers
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Subscribe to the Magazine
American Police Beat

American Police Beat Magazine

Law Enforcement Publication

  • Home
  • Editor’s Picks
    • The power of teamwork
      Stay awake and alert on the job
      The worst rank in law enforcement
      Firearms maintenance
      Why fries need salt
  • Topics
    • On the Job
      • “Take care of your veterans”: Massachusetts police save suicidal...
        The problems with loyalty
        My experience being a Black woman in policing
        Tucson tries new tact to fight crime
        2022 Top Cops
    • Labor
      • Philadelphia may rehire officers and civilian employees to fill...
        Chicago police recruit Marines to help address officer shortage
        Illinois State Police announce lateral training program with added...
        The “great resignation” brings staffing troubles to Missouri law...
        NYPD overtime expected to surpass budget by over $142 million to...
    • Tech
      • NYPD deploys K-9s with innovative electronic harness to prevent...
        Understanding end-to-end encryption apps
        Local law enforcement agencies learn to recover stolen cryptocurrency
        New York mayor proposes gun detection scanners after rise in subway...
        Hacker group steals data from multiple law enforcement data systems...
    • Training
      • An equation for performing lawful Terry stops
        A Connecticut police chief says his department needs more drug...
        “The hidden danger is the water”
        Weapon retention
        Developing trauma-informed training and drills for K–12 schools
    • Policy
      • Philadelphia spends almost a billion dollars on policing in new...
        Supreme Court decision protects police officers against civil...
        Chicago police limit foot pursuits under new policy intended to...
        Putting the brakes on wandering cops
        Detroit police team up with federal law enforcement agencies to fight...
    • Health/Wellness
      • True detectives: Psychological realities of investigative work
        Effective use of chaplain services
        Things I learned as a retiree
        Normalization of deviance
        The nobility of policing
    • Community
      • Miami Heat and nonprofit build bridges between law enforcement and...
        Right place, right time: Off-duty Florida police officer braves house...
        Community steps up to support Rhode Island police officer brothers...
        Safety exchange zones
        Crime problems are community problems
    • Offbeat
      • Iowa police and fire agencies, community team up to rescue bulldog...
        Buzz fuzz: NYPD “bee unit” officers remove swarms from various...
        Only in Florida: Police snipers provide backup during...
        Longtime Maryland con man arrested for impersonating U.S. marshal
        Seattle cancels and refunds seven months of parking tickets due to...
    • We Remember
      • Memorializing our fallen sisters
        Paying Tribute to Fallen Heroes
        National Law Enforcement Memorial expands to accommodate more names
        National Police Week
        “It’s not enough to never forget anymore”
  • On the Job
    • “Take care of your veterans”: Massachusetts police save suicidal...
      The problems with loyalty
      My experience being a Black woman in policing
      Tucson tries new tact to fight crime
      2022 Top Cops
  • Labor
    • Philadelphia may rehire officers and civilian employees to fill...
      Chicago police recruit Marines to help address officer shortage
      Illinois State Police announce lateral training program with added...
      The “great resignation” brings staffing troubles to Missouri law...
      NYPD overtime expected to surpass budget by over $142 million to...
  • Tech
    • NYPD deploys K-9s with innovative electronic harness to prevent...
      Understanding end-to-end encryption apps
      Local law enforcement agencies learn to recover stolen cryptocurrency
      New York mayor proposes gun detection scanners after rise in subway...
      Hacker group steals data from multiple law enforcement data systems...
  • Training
    • An equation for performing lawful Terry stops
      A Connecticut police chief says his department needs more drug...
      “The hidden danger is the water”
      Weapon retention
      Developing trauma-informed training and drills for K–12 schools
  • Policy
    • Philadelphia spends almost a billion dollars on policing in new...
      Supreme Court decision protects police officers against civil...
      Chicago police limit foot pursuits under new policy intended to...
      Putting the brakes on wandering cops
      Detroit police team up with federal law enforcement agencies to fight...
  • Health/Wellness
    • True detectives: Psychological realities of investigative work
      Effective use of chaplain services
      Things I learned as a retiree
      Normalization of deviance
      The nobility of policing
  • Community
    • Miami Heat and nonprofit build bridges between law enforcement and...
      Right place, right time: Off-duty Florida police officer braves house...
      Community steps up to support Rhode Island police officer brothers...
      Safety exchange zones
      Crime problems are community problems
  • Offbeat
    • Iowa police and fire agencies, community team up to rescue bulldog...
      Buzz fuzz: NYPD “bee unit” officers remove swarms from various...
      Only in Florida: Police snipers provide backup during...
      Longtime Maryland con man arrested for impersonating U.S. marshal
      Seattle cancels and refunds seven months of parking tickets due to...
  • We Remember
    • Memorializing our fallen sisters
      Paying Tribute to Fallen Heroes
      National Law Enforcement Memorial expands to accommodate more names
      National Police Week
      “It’s not enough to never forget anymore”
  • Between the Lines
    • Persecution of the LEO is Classic Schadenfreude
      The Rule of Law is Worthless Without Order
      School policing: a paradox of the defund movement
      Defending the honor of the LE profession – finally!
      The dichotomy of the defund movement: reality setting in
  • About
  • The Magazine
  • Events
  • Partners
  • Products
  • Advertise
  • Contact
Search

On the Job

Effective strategies to strengthen resiliency

Dan Willis Published December 1, 2021 @ 7:00 am PST

iStock.com/SvetaZi

Officer safety, ethical and professional quality service, officer wellness and survivability, exercising sound judgment and decision making, recovery and healing from work traumas — all these are dependent upon a high level of resiliency.

One is not born with resiliency; it is learned, developed and strengthened over time by how an officer chooses to respond to challenges and traumas. Without it, officers are prone to overreact to stress, use excessive or unreasonable force, become burned out and unmotivated, and grow disengaged, ineffective, angry and frustrated or depressed.

What is resiliency?

Resiliency is the capacity to recover from and respond to traumas and challenges in constructive ways that are productive of wellness. It enables an officer to respond in stressful or traumatic situations with conscious intention and reason in a calm and centered manner, rather than instinctively reacting out of raw emotion.

Officers need to be trained and supported in developing not only mental, but also physical, emotional and spiritual resiliency through practicing resiliency strategies daily, with every call, as described below. Resiliency is a way of reframing our challenges, of refusing to see ourselves as a victim or as helpless. It is becoming more mindful and present in using all our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual capacities to respond, recover
and grow.

Traumatic, heart-wrenching, terrible and sometimes horrific things are going to happen to you throughout your career; that doesn’t necessarily matter. What is critical is how you choose to respond to those traumas and challenges. How you choose to handle every call for service, every interaction you have throughout your entire career, every trauma you experience — all that matters in the long run. Every call matters and is an opportunity to practice wellness and to strengthen resiliency. 

Peace officers who are resilient all have several things in common: They have good social support, see hits to their careers as challenges and not as crisis, are able to feel and express appreciation for the good in their lives, exercise good character and integrity, and consciously look at the glass as being half-full instead of half-empty. They are positive in their outlook, hopeful and purposeful in trying to turn a negative experience into something positive and useful for the greater good.

Resiliency is similar to physical fitness. You can become more resilient and fit daily if you focus on your need to manage the stress load in effective ways. If you are not proactive in developing your overall resiliency, then it will deteriorate over time. It’s a constant effort, because every day officers experience work traumas that naturally tend to erode resiliency.

Strategies to develop resiliency

A key to resiliency lies in the fostering of hope, which is intentionally believing that there is good. It is purposely trying to be the good amid all the bad, affirm and reinforce the good within you, and do as much good as you can in any given moment. 

Another essential element of resiliency is intentionally training your mind by finding new ways to reframe your challenges. This means seeing yourself not as a victim, but as someone inwardly empowered to respond in ways that are helpful and constructive that will lead to positive outcomes.

A core pillar of resiliency is seeing every challenging moment as happening for you — an opportunity for you to practice coping, intentionally choose your character, practice and engage resiliency, and intentionally try to learn something from your experience with the intent of wanting to help someone else later who goes through the same chal-lenge. If you look at the traumas and challenges of life and work in this way, then every difficult thing, every unfair thing, every traumatic thing, every horrible or negative thing only shows up to make you better.

Rather than instinctively reacting to challenges, traumas and disappointments by fighting, resisting or letting yourself become inwardly defeated, look upon them as a teacher that is there to enable greater resiliency, growth and character. There’s a silver lining in everything, and we need to learn how to find it and benefit from it. The key to this is your mindset, your outlook, what you believe and what you look for. For whatever you seek from a given situation, you will find.

The following is the essence of strengthening resiliency from Carlsbad, California, Police Sergeant Ryan Opeka: “Regarding the numerous traumatic experiences I’ve had, whether it was as a child, in combat with the Marine Corps, or being a cop for several years with the slow, steady drip of trauma — I’ve learned how to harness those negative experiences and use them as motivation to do good, to come out better and stronger, and to respond to things that I was experiencing in the now with an advantage because I had gone through so many terrible things before.

“For years I’ve been involved in the martial arts, and one of the principles is using your opponent’s momentum against them and taking the energy that they are putting into the fight and flipping it around on them. I’ve recognized that I can do good with the bad things that are happening by constantly trying to use the momentum of a bad experience and flipping it around to make it a positive.”

Conclusion

Resiliency needs to become a daily practice by developing the conscious intention to use every challenging and negative experience as motivation to do good, to learn, to practice wellness and to respond in constructive ways. As managers, we can exemplify that principle, help train it, and develop mechanisms of wellness and resiliency that enable officers to develop and practice it. 

Dan Willis

Dan Willis

Captain Dan Willis (ret.) served for 30 years with the La Mesa Police Department and now travels the country as an international instructor on police trauma and ways to heal. He is the author of the emotional survival and wellness guidebook Bulletproof Spirit: The First Responders Essential Resource for Protecting and Healing Mind and Heart, which is required reading at the FBI National Academy. Visit FirstResponderWellness.com for more information.

View articles by Dan Willis

As seen in the November 2021 issue of American Police Beat magazine.
Don’t miss out on another issue today! Click below:

SUBSCRIBE TODAY!

Categories: On the Job

Primary Sidebar

Recent Articles

  • Philadelphia spends almost a billion dollars on policing in new budget aimed at addressing gun violence
  • Miami Heat and nonprofit build bridges between law enforcement and community
  • Right place, right time: Off-duty Florida police officer braves house fire to rescue trapped children
  • “Take care of your veterans”: Massachusetts police save suicidal veteran
  • Iowa police and fire agencies, community team up to rescue bulldog stuck in sinkhole
  • Community steps up to support Rhode Island police officer brothers who lost everything in a house fire
  • Supreme Court decision protects police officers against civil lawsuits over Miranda rights violations
  • NYPD deploys K-9s with innovative electronic harness to prevent terrorist attacks
  • The problems with loyalty
  • Chicago police limit foot pursuits under new policy intended to enhance officer safety and public trust

Footer

Our Mission
To serve as a trusted voice of the nation’s law enforcement community, providing informative, entertaining and inspiring content on interesting and engaging topics affecting peace officers today.

Contact us: info@apbweb.com

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram

Categories

  • Editor’s Picks
  • On the Job
  • Labor
  • Tech
  • Training
  • Policy
  • Health/Wellness
  • Community
  • Offbeat
  • We Remember
  • Jobs and Careers
  • Events

Editor’s Picks

The power of teamwork

The power of teamwork

July 23, 2021

Stay awake and alert on the job

Stay awake and alert on the job

July 20, 2021

The worst rank in law enforcement

The worst rank in law enforcement

July 19, 2021

Firearms maintenance

Firearms maintenance

July 04, 2021

Privacy Policy | Copyright © 2022 APB Media, LLC | Website design, development and maintenance by 911MEDIA

Open

Subscribe

Close
Receive the latest news and updates from American Police Beat directly to your inbox!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.