You Don’t Have To Do It All By Yourself – There Is Help.

When it comes to career choices, first responders deserve our respect and appreciation. They put their necks out for people that they don’t even know and they make it their goal to save our lives under very extreme circumstances. We thank them and we move on, but the first responders themselves are left to deal with the mental scars and when they go through this situation thousands of times throughout their whole career, it is bound to change them a little. Dealing with difficult situations becomes a daily routine and each day just seems quite normal to them.

However, when it comes time to retire and move on from something that you have been doing for the greater part of your life, it can be difficult for many and so it is comforting to know that they can get police retirement counselling whenever they need it. The benefits of counselling are numerous, but we will explore just a few of them here today.

• Relief from depression & anxiety – It can be very difficult to walk away from a career that you have been doing for around 40 years of your life and then just suddenly, have nothing to do with your time. Many retirees enjoy this new found freedom but for others it is a lot more difficult and so they suffer from depression and anxiety. If this level of depression is allowed to continue, it could result in physical injury, so it is essential that police retirees have someone to turn to in the form of counselling.

• Increased confidence & decision making abilities – As a police officer, you have always been told what it is that is required of you every working day of your life. It gets to be habit-forming, and it’s comforting to know exactly what you’re going to be doing on any specific day. Now, with retirement, you were expected to make all of your decisions by yourself and sometimes this can just throw you for six. You lack the confidence and the decision-making abilities because you’ve never had to use these skills in the past. Counselling helps to instill this confidence in us, and allows us to live a more productive life.

For any first responder retirees out there, you need to know that you don’t have to do all of this by yourself and there are professionals who understand exactly what you’re going through and who can provide you with meaningful solutions. Retirement should be a time of relaxation and enjoyment and not something that causes stress in your life.