Cop Dreams...

By Safe Call Now Board Member Betsy Smith

I wrote an article a few years ago for PoliceOne.com titled “Cop Dreams.”  The feedback was immediate and unexpected.  So many people were surprised to find out that they weren’t alone in experiencing these vivid, sometimes terrorizing dreams, and it wasn’t just the cops who were having them. 

When I was a high school senior I worked evenings as a police dispatcher for my local sheriff’s department.  One night I had a terrible nightmare. It was so real!  One of my deputies was yelling for backup but no matter how many times I pushed the “transmit” button, I couldn’t call for another unit. I was unable to speak.  The phones didn’t work.  I was completely helpless.  I woke up sweating and terrified.  I wasn’t even a cop yet, and I’d just had my first “cop dream.”  

There is no exact science when it comes to the study of dreams. We dream between 90 and 120 minutes per night, depending on how long we sleep.  We tend to only remember the last dream we had, unless you have reoccurring dreams, which are pretty common in both humans and in animals.  Sometimes I watch my dog Marley twitch, whine, and pant while he naps.  I often wonder if he’s reliving some of the terrible abuse he suffered before we rescued him.  Humans obviously suffer similar emotionally difficult dreams.  The top five most common dreams for humans are:

• I’m Being Chased
• I’m Falling
• I’m Lost or Unprepared
• I’m Naked in Public
• My Teeth Are Falling Out (how weird is that?!)

Law enforcement personnel also tend to have similar, reoccurring dreams.  We once took a totally unscientific and unofficial Facebook poll on the “JD Buck Savage” fan page and we found that the top five “cop dreams” are some variation of:

• No Matter How Hard I Try, I Can’t Pull the Trigger
• I Fire My Gun, and the Round “Dribbles” Out of the Barrel
• I Need to Run Somewhere but I Can’t Move
• I Can’t Get to My Gun, My Ammo, or My Holster is Empty
• I Fire and Fire and Fire and the Rounds do Nothing

A Cop, PTSD, Suicide & Treatment...

By Kevin Hagen

You could say my story with my mental illness began several years ago (maybe 15?), but I chose to ignore the signs and figured it was just me. I was bullied in high school and that had an impact on my self-esteem as I was growing up and even in my adult years. I was married for 20 years and for most of those years I was told what a bad person I was and that I was not a very good man. After hearing such things for that long, I started to believe them! I have had tragedies in my life like most people, and some that affected me for many years, like the death of my mother. I believed that I was not worthy of being happy and that I was meant to just be that way so I should live with it. I managed to struggle through life like that for most of my adult life.

My job as a police officer added to the issues I already had. I have seen some very terrible things in my career, and some of them stick with me no matter how hard I tried to forget them. Because I chose to ignore my problems, they just got bigger and bigger: the 800 pound gorilla in the room, if you will. I managed to stuff my feelings and tell myself, “Hey, this is what I deserve, so I just gotta suck it up.” I ended up getting divorced, and I figured that was the answer to all of my problems. Obviously it was not. I went from bad relationship to bad relationship, always finding women that needed help; that way I could be the hero and fix things for them. It never worked that way. I just ended up taking on more and more problems, more and more debt, and finally I could not find happiness in anything, but I figured that is what I deserved.

I felt I had successfully stuffed my problems, but then all of the sudden, I was not ever happy. I lost interest in most things I enjoy; I ignored my children who I only see every other weekend; I pushed my friends away and just isolated myself in my home. 
One night everything came to a head. The hopelessness overwhelmed me. The nightmares came every night, so I was scared to go to sleep some nights. All I could see in front of me was a black wall, and in my mind it was all hopeless and I was lost.