The family side of the equation.
Parul is a psychotherapist who has built, over the years, an expertise in helping to see families through difficult times.
Being professionally and personally embedded in the First Responder world, she is a pillar of the First Responders Are Human movement; she acts as a wellspring of information and mental health strategies, in addition to providing years’ worth of valuable experience and perspective in the field.
Starting her career in frontline social work (as a child protective services worker) and continuing for 12½ years, she has developed deep knowledge about family relations/working with families to reduce, neutralize, and heal emotional damage.
After her second child, Parul made a career pivot to work in a new field, network marketing, but decided to switch back to the psychological field to reconnect with what she felt was her calling.
Earning a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Arizona, she started her own business (Embracing Empowerment) so that she could operate more closely to her beliefs.
Having married a Police Officer and having seen first-hand how the effects of first response careers can trickle down to families, she decided that she was in a unique position to leverage her skills to help the type of people she had grown close with.
As with others who work in this field, the desire to help even in the smallest way is her motivating factor. Her aim isn’t to overhaul the entire system in a spectacular coup, but rather to chip away at the problems that plague the first response community, and, in that way, she hopes to kickstart some change.
Her mission over the next 5 years is to build empowerment and resilience in the first response community by providing spaces and building networks for people who need help, all the while training aspiring mental health professionals to work effectively in this area.
A support ecosystem for first responders is an idea commonly expressed by all those who have been featured in this series; and family cohesion, health, and stability seem to be key structures in such a system.
Psychotherapists who grasp this understand that therapy used on the first responder is often not enough. Trickle-down-trauma can infect the environment that they inhabit, so to stop the trauma from trickling back in it is key to address their environment, too.
As someone who has first-hand experience of trickle-down-trauma and thus an ability to sympathize with her patients, Parul (soon to be Dr. Shah) is homed in on addressing the psychological stress on the family side of the equation.
Through her own experience and listening to others, Parul finds that the go-to strategy for families is to try to keep the peace, no matter what, when their first responder member(s) are in crisis. It’s not a very sustainable strategy though because it takes a toll in the long run, as trying to keep the peace is exhausting.
Much like a first responder putting up a fight against their demons, sooner or later exhausted family members lose their stamina, and the PTSD begins to seep in, creating cracks in the family foundation. From there, it is easy to fall into a negative feedback loop which worsens the damage on both sides, leading to fractured families and worse mental health outcomes.
So now we see the importance of arming families with the proper tools. Just as teaching an injured person how to recognize the signs on their own cognitive distortions is critical, it is no less important to teach families how to recognize signs of distress, and how to act. In this way, families can have a roadmap to navigate a crisis.
Inspiring confidence in a first responder that their family will be able to support them without absorbing their suffering can be a powerful healing tool. While never fun to share a burden, the task becomes less arduous when confidence in one’s support is strengthened.
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