Helper Sectors: Law Enforcement

At Gap Relief, we focus our trauma-informed training and therapeutic services within the career sectors that keep our communities safe, that say yes to hard things, that purposely stand in the fire of trauma so that we don't have to. Those are the helpers we want to serve.

In the coming weeks, we want to spend some time highlighting these different sectors and the difficulties they face in serving their local and global communities.

One of these sectors is Law Enforcement. Law Enforcement is a highly trauma-impacted profession. Those who go into Law Enforcement often do so to protect and serve; they make an oath to do this for their communities every single day. We know that as they go out into the places they serve, they are the ones who are going to see the hardest parts of those very communities. Things like homelessness, drug abuse, homicide, suicide, mental health emergencies, and more. They are often engaging the “gappiest” parts of the community, and in that place, they set aside their trauma reactions and struggles in order to do their job to protect and serve, often to their own harm and stress.

Because our law enforcement officers choose to step into the hard realities for us and are specially trained to do so, we civilians are protected from seeing and having to deal with them in the same way. Knowing just how much of a gift this is, we have a heart to do our part as trauma therapists and coaches to go toward them in those difficult circumstances. We believe that this keeps them safer in their profession. They often have their eyes on everyone else, but in our heart for them we want to make sure we have our eyes on them and hand them what they need in all of the trauma they incur just in doing their jobs.

We desire for our law enforcement officers to stay supported right where their jobs are hardest so that they can not only continue saying “yes” to their mission, but so the impact their jobs have on their personal world is mitigated as well. We want their families to feel safe knowing their people are supported in their mission with practical, trauma-informed resources that will help to foster an environment that reduces the risk of trauma impact taking them out. As they stay healthy, they can hold onto the good things in their life, all while they do really good and powerful things for their communities.