Taking Our Own Self-Care Advice Is Hard
The Poster Child
By: Fuzzy Lake, MDiv, CPC, CGW, CCISN, CRTS
I began my volunteer career in the early 1990’s as a volunteer chaplain at our local hospital in the hometown where I lived in South-Central Indiana. Shortly thereafter, I added a volunteer chaplain position to our local Indiana State Police Post to that resume, and then off and on, some of the other emergency services in our county. I ran a small business with 12 employees and pastored a church while I did that.
I went into ministry later in life, after a tumultuous childhood and 10-year stint trying to be a functioning alcoholic, I met a Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, and got sober in 1984. I struggled for several years until I met my sponsor, and he helped me learn all the things about being a husband, man, and father that I was never taught. With that coming together, I felt the call to deepen that relationship with my Higher Power and go into Ministry.
As is the case with most recovering and non-recovering alcoholics, we are all in. This ministry for me was no different. I was all in. After a while, I became the community “go to guy” to call when you had a crisis. Even before I knew what crisis intervention was.
I flew to Maryland in 1991 to take my first course in CISM. It was a group class. After the class, I landed in Indianapolis, Indiana, where I checked my messages on my phone. I found I had a message from the Indiana State Police Post Command, asking if I knew anything about CISM. There was a volunteer fire dept. asking for a CISD and wanted it done right away. I found someone to help and did a CISD the next day.
Later that year I took the Assisting Individuals in Crisis class. This is the one that would change my life as a pastor and chaplain forever. Before I would spend hours with couples and individuals doing pastoral counseling with them. Once I found out that most of them just needed crisis intervention, I began to do things differently. By doing crisis intervention rather than either chaplain or pastoral care, I could see more people in less time.
Yes, that is what I said. More people in less time. And that is what I did. Remember I said ‘all-in”.
With the help of a friend, we started our county CISM team, which now covers 5 counties in Indiana and has 53 members, including a specially trained CISM Dog.
Fast forward 23 years. I was called to the local hospital for a fetal demise. We still called them stillborn’ s at the time. I spent a couple hours with family. Mom was in ICU because of complications in the delivery. She could not see the baby. Just the rest of the family. I walked with the nurse to the basement morgue and delivered the baby to the cooler. The next morning the same nurse called me and asked me if I would come back to the hospital and help her take the baby out of the cooler and let his mom see him in ICU. She was awake and alert. I had reservations; however, the baby was still there, and he looked the same as he did the night before. After wrapping him in a warm Afghan, we took him upstairs for his mom to see him. She held him for about an hour and then we took him back to the morgue.
When I walked out of the hospital that day, I was done with ministry. I had reached the bottom of the candle, and I was so gone that I could not even find my truck that was parked in the usual chaplain’s parking place. I had to have someone help me find it.
I got back to my office and called my wife. I knew I needed help. I also knew that I had PTSD from childhood. I looked up some people who did EMDR and found a therapist that did that in our area.
I met with him twice so that he could get information. And then he said something that I want to share with all my friends who are just like me. Those people who are “All-In”. He said, “Fuzzy, I believe you have some PTSD from childhood. But it is nothing compared to the trauma you have suffered in your ministry.”
Nothing compared to the trauma I had suffered in my ministry!! Wow. Those were hard words to hear. I keep great records. He asked me if I could list all the celebrations of life’s that I had done for children and people who had completed suicide. There were 18 suicides and 49 children under the age of 18. That did not count for he 100’s of others that I did in the then 23 years of ministry.
That’s when I changed the way I did things. To keep my sobriety and my sanity, I had to not only learn how to say “No”, but I also had to learn how to say “Hell No”. For those people who would not take no for an answer.
Then I also learned how to do “me” time. Even though I knew what to do, I rarely practiced it. I taught it and did not do it. While I still sometimes am tempted to be all things to all people, I know that I cannot, and I will not.
All of this to say I know there are lots of people reading this that have been there or are there now. I hope you take this as a wake-up call. Don’t get to the place I was at. It was a very dark place. If ever there was a time when I was close to drinking again, it was there.
Remember, rarely, if ever, can you un-see, un-hear, or un-smell a trauma. And when you hear someone else’s trauma, you take that on also.