Have you ever had the feeling that something was wrong before you’ve actually spotted a potential threat? It’s all down to your brain’s “hostile environment surveillance process” – made up of your inbuilt surveillance system that is constantly monitoring your environment in order to maintain your safety and wellbeing.
How disciplined is your mind?
In your role as a protection specialist, you may be under chronic stress and the danger is that your nervous system gets stuck in a chronic state of sympathetic arousal. There is then a need to regularly use strategies that trigger a parasympathetic state. When it comes to high-stress environments, clinical research has consistently shown that mindfulness improves mental performance, focus and the ability to sustain attention when multi-tasking.
Mental Body Armour – Have you got your Kit on?
You wouldn’t dream of going on a job without appropriate physical protection and risk assessment – but how well do you protect yourself mentally?
Being mentally strong is the same as being physically strong – we have to work at it. We build physical strength in the gym and take pride in a healthy body. Some days you are on top form in the gym and others are harder. But would you recognise the equivalent happening in your brain?
Traumatic Stress
As a bodyguard, your background, training and experience mean that generally you are more resilient and for you, what the man in the street would view as traumatic, is all in a day’s work. However, like Dave, this does not mean that you are invulnerable to post-traumatic stress!