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Can We Reframe Stress?

By: Christina Dizon

January 25, 2025

Recalibrating your relationship with stress may prolong your career and life

By Christina Dizon

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2025 issue. View the full issue here.

I wasn’t even out of training when a senior firefighter took me aside, sat me down, and told me how necessary it would be to take care of myself as a firefighter. I didn’t disagree. It’s a hard job, after all. 

But he shook his head when I was quick to agree, as if my quick response indicated I wasn’t taking his words seriously. “You have to take care of yourself or you’ll end up like me.”

The senior firefighter proceeded to tell me his story. He was the picture of health in his early 40s when his normal training tower runs on shift suddenly didn’t feel like they used to. He felt slower, and experienced labored breathing. 

He thought perhaps he was just “losing his mojo” as he aged, so he pushed harder to stay in shape. Within a few weeks, he was again running towers and barely made it through the first one before he knew something was very wrong.

Heart attack. 

“My doctor said the heart attack was due to stress,” he told me. “But I told the doctor that I didn’t feel stressed.”

The doctor’s response reset his entire outlook. “It doesn’t matter that you don’t feel stressed. Your heart is stressed. Your job is massively stressing your heart.”

The Prevalence of Stress in Firefighting

I’ve thought a good deal about this conversation and its relevance to what I see in my fellow brothers and sisters in the fire service. This senior firefighter’s story is relevant for the majority of us regardless of experience, number of years in, or rank. 

We frequently hear: “Firefighters have a stressful job.” Our friends say it. Our partners say it. Our doctors and wellness providers say it. The industry says it.

And while there’s a part of us that hears it, many of us really don’t. How often do we reply: “I don’t really feel stressed.” We don’t make those statements out of bravado or for show. For many of us, it’s completely true. Mentally and emotionally, we simply don’t feel stressed.

It’s as if, after a few years on the job, after we’ve gone through the academy, made it through probation, and those awkward first adjustments to being on the line, conscious stress fades away with each passing day. Suddenly, the day-to-day stresses of the job don’t feel stressful at all. Our cognitive and emotional tolerance has built up a resistance to the stress, and we think we’ve adapted to it. 

The Body’s Response to Stress

Here’s the problem: We train and condition ourselves to process and deal with stress mentally and emotionally, but the truth is, stress doesn’t only target the mind. Stress also affects the body.

Take a moment to consider that. Stress doesn’t simply target the mind – stress also affects the body. And unfortunately, the body does not adapt to long term stress in healthy ways. It adapts in ways necessary to our short-term survival – ways that are not in alignment with our long term healthy performance.

Physical Manifestations of Stress

We see the not-so-subtle results of physical stress adaption clearly in our brothers and sisters on the line. 

  • The stress on our hearts affects our cardiac health.
  • The stress on our immune system affects our ability to fight cancer.
  • The stress on our nervous system affects our ability to regulate our mood and motivation. 
  • The stress on our musculature affects our muscles’ ability to relax. 
  • The stress on our metabolic systems affects our cortisol and blood sugar levels. 
  • The stress on every system in the body affects our ability to fall asleep, stay asleep, and repair from the loads we carry every day.

It’s abundantly clear: The human body doesn’t like the stress of the job. It’s simply not built to handle 20 to 30 years of the accumulated load. 

At some point, every firefighter is faced with the harsh realities of our job: injuries, heart attacks, cancer, sleep apnea, memory struggles. The question is, do we have the ability to mitigate this stress, or do we simply resign ourselves to that inevitable deadly diagnosis?

Perhaps it’s possible to change the way we respond to the stress of the job by first changing the way we define stress and what it actually means for us.

Redefining Stress as Strain

Stress is defined as mental, emotional, or physical strain. But stress is also subjective – a personal experience. We will each see, experience and define it in very personal ways, with highly individual meanings. But, what would happen if we added scaffolding and structure to our approach to stress and instead used a word with objective measures?

What if we replaced the word stress with the more objective term strain?

Anyone who has subjected themselves to physical training of any kind has likely experienced strain. Strain is what we experience when we push our muscles, lungs and bodies so far that they can’t bounce back without sufficient time dedicated to recovery. We understand that if we continue to place great loads on a system, or a specific area, real damage could result. 

And this damage could require a true full stop in normal life, and a complete readjustment of how we’re operating. A strained wrist causes us to flip a pan differently. A strained knee requires adjustments in how we walk. A strained back requires a break from lifting. 

Anyone who has experienced a bad strain remembers the feelings that accompany those three weeks of adjustment to normal life. It’s inconvenient at best, and life altering at worst. 

In short, we understand innately that too much strain actually will inhibit us from doing what we want or what is normal, and in exchange demand a highly inconvenient adjustment. 

Applying Strain to Firefighting

What would happen if we exchanged stress and strain as it relates to our job?

We might recognize that a busy and demanding tour puts a strain on our ability to bounce back to our usual selves, requiring us to incorporate down time to recharge our batteries. We might recognize that six calls after midnight puts strain on our cognitive processing and emotional reactions, requiring us to set aside time for rest or a nap before jumping into the activities of the day. 

We might recognize that those exciting shifts with back-to-back fires, stabbings, shootings and extrications strained our performance hormones with the heavy demand of adrenaline and cortisol.  

That strain now requires us to pass on the workout of the day and instead find time for modes of recovery such as stretching or mobility training. We might recognize that incidents of a traumatic nature put unhealthy strain on our spirit, requiring care and support from outside resources for our mental and emotional health. 

We might just start living differently. We might just start saving ourselves from avoidable consequences. 

If we see the demanding circumstances we experience on the job as strain, we make adjustments that support our ability to perform in the future. The possible benefits may be well worth the effort for our families and our departments. And, above all, for us.

This article originally appeared within the Winter 2025 issue. View the full issue here, or browse all back issues in the CRACKYL Library.

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