Resilience Development in Action

E.206 First Responder Marriages: Bridging the Gap

• Steve Bisson, Cyndi Doyle • Season 12 • Episode 206

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Steve Bisson welcomes Cyndi Doyle, licensed professional counselor, retired police spouse, and founder of Code for Couples, to discuss the unique challenges faced by first responder relationships and strategies for building resilience.

• Meeting Cyndi Doyle - licensed professional counselor specializing in first responder relationships for over 20 years
• Understanding the "married but single" phenomenon that many first responder spouses experience
• Recognizing grief in relationships when expectations don't match reality
• How hypervigilance affects communication and connection at home
• The importance of perspective-taking to reduce resentment
• Standing in your partner's shoes to understand their experience
• Changing the narrative we tell ourselves about our relationships
• Finding gratitude amid the challenges of first responder life
• How unspoken traumas create both protection and distance
• Learning to listen rather than just hear your partner

Find Cyndi Doyle at code4couples.com

On social media @code4couples

Get her book "Hold the Line: The Essential Guide to Protecting Your Law Enforcement Relationship" at any online retailer.


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YouTube Channel For The Podcast




Speaker 1:

Welcome to Resilience Development in Action, where strength meets strategy and courage to help you move forward. Each week, your host, steve Bisson, a therapist with over two decades of experience in the first responder community, brings you powerful conversations about resilience, growth and healing through trauma and grief. Whether you're navigating the complex journey of grief, processing trauma or seeking to build resilience in high-stress environments, this podcast is your trusted companion. From first responders facing daily challenges to emergency personnel managing critical situations, to leaders carrying the weight of difficult decisions, we're here to support your journey. Through authentic interviews, expert discussions and real-world experiences, we dive deep into the heart of human resilience. We explore crucial topics like trauma recovery, grief processing, stress management and emotional well-being. Our conversations bridge the gap between professional insight and practical application, offering you tools and strategies that work in the real world. Join us as we create a space where healing is possible, where grief finds understanding and where resilience becomes your foundation for growth. This is Resilience Development in Action with Steve Bisson.

Speaker 2:

Alors, bonjour tout le monde. Hi everyone, welcome to episode 206. If you haven't listened to episode 205, go back and listen to Charlie Powell talk about Healing Heroes, where it's going to be released theatrically soon. And, yes, I am planning on going to Cancun. But for episode 206, we're going to talk to Cindy Doyle, so someone I met through Facebook and we had a great conversation there and I wanted her to join us. She is the founder of Code for Couples. She has a great podcast. Go listen to it. She's a licensed professional counselor and a retired police spouse. She's author of Hold the Line, the Essential Guide to Protecting your Law Enforcement Relationship, as well, as she has a unique voice that talks about the challenges faced by law enforcement families. She actually has that personal experience, which is even better, and we're going to talk about all that. So here is the interview.

Speaker 2:

Getfreeai yes, you've heard me talk about it previously in other episodes, but I'm going to talk about it again because GetFreeai is just a great service. Imagine being able to pay attention to your clients all the time, instead of writing notes and making sure that the note's going to sound good and how are you going to write that note, and things like that GetFreeai liberates you from making sure that you're writing what the client is saying, because it is keeping track of what you're saying and will create, after the end of every session, a progress note. But it goes above and beyond that. Not only does it create a progress note, it also gives you suggestions for goals, gives you even a mental status if you've asked questions around that, as well as being able to write a letter for your client to know what you talked about. So that's the great, great thing. It saves me time, it saves me a lot of aggravation and it just speeds up the progress note process so well, and for $99 a month. I know that that's nothing. That's worth my time, that's worth my money, you know. The best part of it of it too is that if you want to go and put in the code steve50 when you get the service at the checkout code is steve50 you get $50 off your first month and if you get a whole year, you save a whole 10% for the whole year. So again, steve50 at checkout for getfreeai'll give you $50 off for the first month and, like I said, get a full year, get 10% off, get free from writing notes, get free from always scribbling while you're talking to a client and just paying attention to your client. So they went out, you went out, everybody wins and I think that this is the greatest thing. And if you're up to a point where you got to change a treatment plan, well, the goals are generated for you. So getfreeai code Steve50 to save $50 on your first month.

Speaker 2:

Well, hi everyone and welcome to episode 206. You know, with the rebranding, I really was looking for people who have a lot of experience with first responders, grief, trauma and all that, and Cindy Doyle, who has a great podcast called Code for Couples, and if you don't know what Code for means, you probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast. But the bottom line is I really liked her podcast. She reached out to me through Facebook after I asked and I find her fascinating and we had a great conversation right before we started. But, cindy Doyle, welcome to Resilience, development and Action.

Speaker 3:

Thank you so much. I appreciate it. I love that you said if you don't know what code four means, you probably shouldn't be listening to the podcast there's a quick little tidbit there.

Speaker 3:

When I was thinking about naming the podcast, I was going through different possible names with my husband and I had said, what about code three? And he said I don't think you want couples to end up with things on fire, right? I'm like, yeah, but our relationships are a struggle. He's like, yeah, but I think you want to focus on what you want them to be, not where they possibly are. So I love that you said that.

Speaker 2:

You want to get to code four. I think that's a good one, yes, but anyway, I love the name and code three would have been a good name, but I don't know if I and, truthfully, your husband's absolutely right. Whoever he is, give him a lot of credit Because I would be like code three, no, no, there's no way I'm listening to that crap. I already deal with that as a therapist. I don't want to deal with that on my podcast.

Speaker 3:

Right right Very much so.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, look, I do my research and I have no team, so it's me Did my research and I have no team, so it's me Then my research. Listen to your podcast, really subscribe for the record. You, if you've ever listened to my podcast, I never say something. I don't mean. She is now in the like and subscribe button on my podcast list, so that's. And then there's not like if I don't say something. Like. Hopefully you don't know me well, cindy, but I always say the truth. I don't like to lie to my audience because I think that's the shittiest thing you could ever do, but anyway, I feel like I've known you, but I don't think my audience knows you yet. So how about you introduce yourself?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I am Cindy Doyle. I am a licensed professional counselor in the DFW area. I have a group practice. I have been practicing for over 20 years and I specialize in working with law enforcement. Actually, all first responders in my office, as well as first responder couples focusing on I always say I focus on mental and emotional health. I'm sorry I said that wrong Mental and relational health. I forget the relational part and that's the most important part. So emotional and relational health to keep couples connected and resilient. But also it's really about our first responders remaining connected and resilient because there's so much research there that shows that relationships are a safety issue. So I kind of focus on that angle.

Speaker 3:

I'm also, as you know, now a law enforcement spouse. He is retired after 21 plus years. I didn't make it to 22. I pushed him to try to do that and he's like I don't get any more money for doing that. So I was like all right, peace out, let's go. So he retired and has been retired for almost four years now. He's the reason why I jumped into doing what I do.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 3:

Because I married him and we could talk about that if you want but married him and did not.

Speaker 3:

Neither one of us realized what we were going to be going through or how we would be impacted by what he did or what he saw on a regular basis, and our relationship struggled.

Speaker 3:

And it was only in me kind of digging in and finding out what was underneath this that I started changing my relationship, that I started changing my relationship and as I did that, I thought maybe I need to do more than just keep this with me or the people coming into my office, and so I started a podcast, because you know, that's what everybody does is just starts a podcast for some random reason, right? So in 2017, I started the podcast and I have been really intermittent. I've tried to be much more consistent yes, consistent with it over the past three years, for sure. And then in 2020, because there was nothing else to do ha ha, ha ha I decided to write a book and so I wrote the book Hold the Line how to Protect your the Essential Guide to Protecting your Law Enforcement Relationship. So that's a little about me and I do a lot of speaking, and just came back from Orlando yesterday from speaking to NOLI, which is the National Association of Women in Law Enforcement and Leadership Executives.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, I thought you were going to say I to mickey and minnie, but um didn't even have time. Flew in, spoke, flew out and the other part too is when you said hold the line, I just realized there's a toto song, uh, called hold the line yes, I get that a lot yeah, but now, now, if I like, I have a special effect board now, but I don't know how to put in a song.

Speaker 2:

I would love to have to be able to put that Too late now. I think there's a lot of stuff that you said there that was really really good, because what you talked about is all the adaption. You adapt See, I'm having trouble you adapt to your law enforcement spouse because of what his life is or she depending on the individual, but there's also kind of like give or take, and so it's really hard to experience that kind of like change in the relationship, particularly when someone like retires. So I don't know where you want to go start talking about a little more about the relationship stuff. I think that because of you know weird, weird scheduling, how it works and how there's compromise and sacrifices on both sides and all that stuff that goes on, there's a lot of grief and change in the relationship that occurs.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you want to talk a little more about that, but that's where I would go.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I can just dive into kind of a little bit about my story and how I recognized that it was grief, because it took me a while to figure that out and for us to kind of figure it out. I think, you know, I'm just going to do the traditional girl thing, in the sense that I think girls think, oh, we're getting married. People get married because they're like oh, I'm going to have this partner and this partner is going to be there and I'm going to be able to sit and have dinner with somebody and I'm not going to be alone and I'm going to have this partner that I'm going to be doing things with. And what we quickly realize is that it's almost like being married but single, but you're not really single either, right, and so we wind up doing all this stuff alone.

Speaker 3:

And in my relationship, when my husband started his career, he was doing eight-hour shifts. So that changed over the years. But eight-hour shifts, that changed over the years. But eight-hour shifts we looked at there was a time period of about five years when we were ships passing in the night, and this was way back when. And so I would find things to fill my time, and for a while that was scrapbooking and I took a picture of him laying in bed and blew it up into an eight by 10.

Speaker 3:

Because that was in, scrapbooked it because that was our relationship was me during the day on a Saturday, doing nothing, trying to keep my dogs quiet. I'd go run errands and things like that, all by myself. He would get up around I don't know two or three. I'd want to try to have a conversation with him but he was tired, just waking up, blurry eyed, kind of focusing on what he needed to do for the day, going in and I'd have him for like an hour and a half, two hours, but not really, and then he would go to work. And so there was like this five-year period where we just really didn't see or talk to each other, and when we did, it was sound bites, and so that's where I started getting irritated.

Speaker 3:

He didn't really understand that I was getting mad about it because I wasn't showing it a whole lot. I didn't want him to know. I wanted to be the supportive spouse, right? I wanted to be strong like him. So I didn't let him know a whole lot, I just sucked it up. I'm a Southern girl, so we put on our big girl panties and keep going and just didn't share. But I started shutting down. I was getting mad, I was really resentful, and that's how our distance kind of started. And then along the way, that's when I kind of figured out. I took some time clinician, look in the mirror, right Kind of a thing and I took some time to kind of figure out that it was grief and there was a lot of layers of it there. And it wasn't until I started looking at that that I was able to kind of change the narrative and change the story about our life and what it was going to be like.

Speaker 2:

I find it fascinating that you talked about grief, because I see your point, but one of the things that I would say to you is I'm 100% sure someone in my audience is going to go how is that grief? Grief is only when people die, and obviously I do have people who will get a little more, and I'm not trying to put them down. But can you explain more as to why you consider it grief versus?

Speaker 3:

Absolutely yeah. So when I, when I thought about being married to this guy that I love so much, I thought about the life that I would have with him. I thought about sitting down with at the table and having dinner. I thought about going to events together and what that would be like. I thought about having vacations. I thought about all this way that my life would be right.

Speaker 3:

Because as we go along, we start developing a narrative, we start developing a story of what marriage is supposed to be like or your relationship is supposed to be like.

Speaker 3:

So as you develop this narrative and your brain has these, even when we're doing like just imagining what that story is, our brain is developing these neural pathways as far as what they are, and then, when things don't happen, it causes a conflict happen, it causes a conflict.

Speaker 3:

And I had to stop and look at what I thought it was going to be and feel sad about not having that life that I thought I was going to have before I could move to the life that I did have. I hope that makes sense. So, as a spouse, it can be really weird, because you show up at events and people are like oh, are you really married? Why can't he get off work and family life looks different. We weren't able to have children, but so many other first responder families have kids and I don't think people have kids and think, gosh, I can't wait to be a solo parent while you're at work, right? So there's these aspects where we imagine what life is going to be like and when it's not that way, we develop resentment and we have to grieve what we thought we were going to have before we can move into that acceptance.

Speaker 2:

And I think that to me, that makes perfect sense, because you know there's too many things. You said that I really resonated. It's the narrative we create, right, I mean? And if people don't believe in what narratives are you put on this podcast, expecting a certain thing? Did it occur or not, I don't know, but the narrative is oh you know, cindy and Steve are going to be the most interesting people I've ever met To. Oh my God, this is going to be so fucking boring about couples and is going to blame the first responder, cop, whatever Reality was going to be somewhere in between anyway.

Speaker 2:

But the narrative that we create in our lives about other people is absolutely where we get the anger, the sadness, the surprise, the disgust and all those core. And then we take it out on our spouses or people we trust and I put this in quotation marks for those in YouTube here because, yeah, we trust them, but we don't trust them enough to say, look, I'm feeling sad that we didn't get the life that I thought we would have.

Speaker 2:

So I don't know if I got because you were saying I'm not sure it makes sense, that's it. But I want to make sure I kind of like translate it and if I got it wrong, correct me if you're my mom.

Speaker 3:

No, that's, that's exactly it, and I can even give specific examples that probably everybody in your audience can resonate with. Here's one, the one where you think you're going to go on vacation and then, oh, by the way, the schedule gets switched, people quit and now you have to pick up the shifts, and now vacation is canceled. Or we thought we were going to go on a date and now we can't because this other third party in our relationship tends to have some influence.

Speaker 2:

You know, there's this first responder life, just for the record.

Speaker 3:

Yes, the third party being the first responder life. It can even be the idea of hypervigilance coming home, right? So hypervigilance coming home is this downside. And so first responders at work many times they're up and alive. At home they are down and disconnected because their brain has to recover.

Speaker 3:

My husband and I I would want to have conversation with him because I hadn't seen him right. So I'm the girl that he hits the door because I hadn't seen him Right. So I'm, I'm the girl that he hits the door and I'm like, oh my gosh, so how was your day, what are you doing? And I wanted to have this conversation about what his day was like and what I would get. Initially he was fine with it. Initially he would talk to me about what happened and then, as the career went along as you know, many times that career becomes same shit, different day he used to say I'm the trash man is what he would say. I'm cleaning up everybody's garbage and shit. And so I missed that. I'm like, well, no couples talk about these things and we should have these conversations. No couples talk about these things and we should have these conversations.

Speaker 3:

And that downside of hypervigilance means that he's tired, and so if we don't know that that's the brain and that there needs to be recovery, then I can't understand and I can't grieve the fact of like, hey, this job has an impact. But as his spouse, if I understand and I can grieve what I think is supposed to happen, then I can make something else happen. I mean, he has grief too. And the fact of like we would try to plan we had this one pizza party planned one time and bought all the ingredients. We had something like 12 people coming over six couples, I think. Bought all the ingredients. We had something like 12 people coming over six couples. I think I had prepped all the pizza dough. He had wine pairings set up for all the courses we were going to do and I think everybody was coming over at 5.30 and at four o'clock he got called in and I'm like, well, there goes that right.

Speaker 2:

And I think that there's so many things you brought up that made perfect sense to me. And when you mentioned that, it's like I've worked with detectives and sometimes, when you're in smaller departments maybe not Dallas-Forth Worth style, but smaller departments there's usually one detective and if the call comes in on your day off, well, we only detective.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, pizza or not, you, you gotta go to, you gotta go to your call, and that affects a whole lot of people and there's a lot of grief and loss with that. Yeah, I think that that's one of the other things too, and people don't understand that. Um and this maybe I wish your husband was here, but you can maybe speak of this too. One of the things that I hear so often from my first responder world people is that I don't want to get home and tell you about the brain Sorry, trigger warning the brain splatter from someone who shot themselves in the head. I want to tell you about that because that's like triggering for me.

Speaker 2:

I don't want to trigger you and there's spouses that take that personally. You think I can't handle it. Trigger you and and there's spouses that take that personally you think I can't handle it or you think you're stronger and that it creates this big resentment that we talked about earlier. But I don't know. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I found a lot when my guys yeah I, I agree, and at the beginning he would share that with me.

Speaker 3:

I do, you know, I do trauma in my therapy room so I'm like I hear all kinds of stuff. It doesn't really impact me a whole lot, but there's things that he doesn't want to recount and so there's I didn't know different stories. He would tell me some stories and then there were. I found out after he retired.

Speaker 3:

Actually we were doing a podcast together about grief and he started talking about how he, when he went to therapy to work through some of the incidences and he starts talking about this incident and I looked at him and I said you never told me about this. He said I didn't want you to know everything. I didn't want you to have to think about and see everything that I saw. I wanted to protect you and I didn't want to have to think about it myself.

Speaker 3:

So there are stories that he shares and then there's just gaps where I may not know, and that's also grief, that he has a part of his world that I'll just never know, and he does that to protect me. But at the same time, as a relationship, it's kind of sad like we can't share everything or we don't choose to share everything you know. As a clinician, I definitely don't share everything that I hear as well, and working with first responders, I've heard some pretty gruesome stuff, but I'm not going to come home and tell him that, so it kind of goes both ways. But yeah, just because of our professions, how do you deal with the resentment?

Speaker 3:

Well, goal so because that's what it leads to, right, I mean right, right I'm wrong, but that's what it leads to no, that's and that's where I got, and that's, uh, the catalyst for me deciding in my relationship that I needed to figure out what was going on and what was what was happening here.

Speaker 3:

Because, uh, year 12 which seems to be a challenge for a lot of first responder relationships, by the way, interesting Year 12, year 13, I was having temper tantrums by myself. I was doing a lot of like flipping them off behind his back kind of a thing. I was really mad, I was resentful it seemed like the department always came first, that kind of thing and I was irritated, I think, because I didn't have a quote, unquote, normal life like my friends did, and so I blamed him a little bit as opposed to taking ownership and looking at my expectations. So it was only when I decided that I didn't want to leave the relationship but I couldn't keep living the way I was living in the relationship and holding on to that anger. So it took me looking at myself and actually, I think, sitting in the therapy room one day and telling another couple sometimes you have to stand in the other person's shoes because maybe there's something you don't get or understand and I said that and I thought hello, cindy, dumbass, why aren't you doing that, you idiot?

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

So that's when I thought maybe there's something I don't get or understand. And I remember writing out my anger and looking at why am I so stuck on wanting a life this way when I can have so much gratitude for the life that I do have? And so moving that to grieving all these experiences that I thought we would have. Grieving holidays together that's a big one for our field of all the holidays like Christmases and oh, I'm getting emotional Christmas and unwrapping gifts and what that would be like and our families getting together and this idea and this image. And when I could let that go, I let the resentment go and then I could have gratitude for all the other aspects of our life and really shift that around. Because I think in grief you have to let go and you can't say why me or I wish right, and so in bargaining with that or it's kind of learning to let that go and then moving to something else, integrating it we can go into resilience conversation if you want, but it's that kind of a thing and moving it around.

Speaker 2:

You know, cindy, I know we. I want to continue our conversation. We need to get back together at some point. You got to come back on because there's this is a great conversation, because you talk about getting emotional. First of all, that's what I want from anyone who's on here, because I want real talk. I don't have, I'm a, I'm a Howard Stern guy. Let's not fake. Let's not fake this conversation. Let's be real. Right, I'm going to also start nicknaming you DA, because you said you were a dumbass, so I can nickname you DA.

Speaker 2:

All joking aside, I'm going to let you in on a secret about therapists. This is for the audience, not for you. What she just said happens to me at least every week. Every other week I'm saying advice to someone. I'm going, fuck, I should really follow that. Huh. So if you, if if you're a therapist and you don't admit to that, I'm sorry. I admit to it freely. I give my advice 95% of it. Either I've followed it or I want to follow it. So, yeah, just, we broke a wall here. So if you didn't want, just speed up 30 seconds and you won't have to. But I mean, I love that because I have those moments and any therapist worth their while, will admit to that.

Speaker 2:

And finally, you talked about gratitude. One of the things that I I've learned in life is that again my audience knows I like to repeat this my best friend died when I was 12 in a fire, so for me, I'm not always grateful, but I've learned that when I get upset or get into those quote negative emotions, I go into gratitude because gratitude will get me to where I need to be, and so I think that, when you talked about gratitude, it's great advice to give to couples, in my opinion, because you finding someone in this crazy world is already a fucking difficult thing, and now you found them. So, yeah, there's going to be some fights. It's not going to be all butterflies and unicorns. It's going to be some difficult moments, and so that would be great advice to talk about gratitude, difficult moments, and so that would be great advice to talk about gratitude. But do you have other recommendations for couples other than gratitude when they're talking about their couples and stuff like?

Speaker 3:

that I go back to the first one of like standing in Taylor's shoes. What is it that we don't understand? And I have a little bit of a story about that actually around the holidays, which is why it makes me emotional. I live in Dallas, fort Worth area, north. I actually live north of Dallas and Fort Worth and outside of Denton, texas, and my parents live in Austin, which is about three and a half hours away from me.

Speaker 3:

That's where I grew up and every holiday, every Christmas, my husband always had to work. His higher up always took off and so it left him in charge so and he had to be on call. He was on call the last seven years, 24, seven. He was on call the last seven years of his career and so it was. It made it really hard to go out of town or do anything because he had to make sure he, his call, was covered. So many times he would say he's like no, go do whatever you want to do, go visit your parents, whatever. So at Christmas time many times I would just go down to Austin because otherwise I'd be here by myself.

Speaker 3:

I would always think about this is bullshit, that every single holiday I don't get him. I was kind of thinking about me like I'm alone, I don't get him right. I was kind of thinking about me like I'm alone, I don't have anybody to spend the holidays with. I would think about me a lot and how I was being impacted. And I came home from Christmas, probably a Christmas afternoon, walked in the house and he was sitting on the couch and he says to me please don't ever go away at Christmas again. And I was like, okay, why? A little annoyed, by the way. And he said because every Christmas Eve I sit in my patrol car and I watch all the lights come on and I think about how people are getting together and getting around a table and eating with their families and laughing and opening presents and I feel so alone in that moment. And then I come home and the house is dark and you aren't here and it just emphasizes again how I'm alone and I thought, wow, I'm a real asshole because I never thought about that and what it might be like for him to come home alone on such a meaningful holiday.

Speaker 3:

He grew up in a big family and his holidays were full of his sisters and noisiness when they get together. They are a noisy Irish, italian family, if that explains any of that, and so to come home, it'd be dark, or even in the morning, right, and just nobody's there. It just emphasizes that and that's when I started to realize that. So I would say perspective taking is one of the biggest things that we can do is understand where, try to understand where the other person may be, even though they might not be verbalizing it may be even though they might not be verbalizing it. A lot of times we are reacting to our story or what we interpret is going on, instead of thinking about what our partner is doing. That can help with resentment as well, that you're doing this together. You're not just doing it by yourself. Hopefully, hopefully, you're both going through this together in a different way. So perspective taking is a big one, I think.

Speaker 2:

the other really difficult Can I just stop you for a second? Because, I want another idea. You mentioned Austin, and one of my favorite authors is Brene Brown. I love Brene, she's my-.

Speaker 3:

Did you know I'm certified in her work? Oh, I didn't know that. Brene Brown oh yeah, I love.

Speaker 2:

Brene, did you know I'm certified in her work? Oh, I didn't know that, brene, the dare to lead part or everything else.

Speaker 3:

The daring way and the rising strong part, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Well, I joke around and I'm going to lighten up the mood a little bit and bring it back up again. Yeah, I joke around with my girlfriend. She's my pass and she's like you. I joke around with my girlfriend, she's my pass and she's like you know, most people will choose like a hot, attractive actress. You got Brene Brown as your pass. I'm like, yep, that's my pass because I love Brene so much and her husband's name is Steve, so there's no transition whatsoever. It's the same name.

Speaker 2:

There you go, but I talked about the narrative and I thought that was a great point.

Speaker 2:

The narrative that he had was you abandoned me on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, and your narrative is fuck him, I'm not fucking around my holiday because he's working.

Speaker 2:

And when you think about the stories we tell ourselves and that's my shout out to Brene Brown that's exactly where the issue occurs is that we tell ourselves a story about something and yet we never, like you say, put yourself in someone else's shoes, and the empathy Sorry to put in a little therapy here, but sitting in that empathy and that is just amazingly.

Speaker 2:

That's the best advice I heard, because I think that that's what I tell people when I get really angry. I tell myself, okay, what's the story I'm telling myself about this and it so helps me to bring me back. I'm not a hundred percent good at it and there's no claim that I am. However, learning to get that narrative and thinking about the other person's narrative is so important, so I apologize for interrupting. I know you were going to give some advice, but I thought that was important for me to name not only Renee Brown, who, if she ever listens to this, shout out, but love her, absolutely love her, and the narrative and the stories we tell ourselves is usually our biggest downfall in a couple and in relationships in general.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I agree, and it's so important to look at that because then when you get out of your own story, it can help with that grief that you're feeling, because it's like, oh, this can be a shared situation as opposed, and that really helped us.

Speaker 3:

That helped the two of us to say, like man, there are aspects of this life that we chose together to be in this first responder world and the fact that we're going through this together and we can do this and resent it, or we can do it and feel like, hey, we have some shared, similar experiences and that really helped us to let go, to move through the grief of the things that we have the grief and he'll talk about it in the sense that he didn't get to spend time with me in the way he wanted to spend time with me, and that's one of his griefs. It's only now in retirement, when now he has this medical stuff that happens because of his career and so he's not as healthy as he would have liked to have been. So we still go through those little griefs along the way. Yeah, so changing the story is a big part of it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you let go of a story you told yourself. You will open yourself to opportunities to listen to other people and hear their story and not personalize it. But again that's a little bit of again CBT. So I do apologize for more therapy here. We'll keep on trudging ahead and the advice I give to some couples is don't hear someone. Listen to them, because Sometimes it's a lot more important, especially in first responder world. We tend to hear but we don't listen. And that's the advice I give to some of the spouses as well as the first responders. I'm like he or she is telling you something. Don't just hear, just listen and pay attention to what that does. Don't go with your gut reaction when they say you abandoned me because that's a harsh sentence. Let them finish the thought of what that means and listen to that conversation. So that's the other advice I have.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if you have other advice, but I'm just going to tag onto that one a little bit, because I think many times we hear people's feelings and we take it personal right, and so I think also first responders, that fight or flight aspect, it's automatic defense mechanism to like protect themselves because of the fight or flight. But I had somebody one time say oh, I don't have to try it on for size, I just have to examine it and I'm like, oh yeah, so I don't know if that makes sense, like I just have to look at that. I don't have to like try it on and see if it fits and where it pinches, and I don't like the way this fits. Right, you don't have to try it on, you just have to look at the shirt and just go like, oh, I see that design on that. Hmm, that's interesting. So that's one of my aspects of it.

Speaker 2:

Weird, I know. I look at crop tops and I don't really have to put them on to say that ain't for me.

Speaker 3:

Right. I think the other advice I guess I would have for couples too, is it just kind of along the same lines of that gratitude aspect that I would say it's like many times we have resentment for different aspects of what comes home. I can flat out admit that I didn't grow up with guns, but my husband carries one on a regular basis and so I would think like, oh, this is so ridiculous, you have to wear something with a belt because you've got to have a gun. This is so stupid and like that kind of feeling would get in the way. And I don't know that I have necessarily grief around that, but I did have the resentment around it. And so what? I funny story we were in Baltimore visiting and I'm always like, do you have to carry? And we're in Baltimore in the back of a cab and I looked at him and I said I kind of wish you were carrying right now and he started laughing because I always give him a hard time, right.

Speaker 3:

And so there's these aspects where he will, because of who he is, he may say, do things to make me feel safer, or hey, you know what, you need to be paying attention, and I'll hear it as criticism, as opposed to saying, oh well, he's caring about me and doesn't want bad things to happen. Right now, even like with the caring aspect, I look at it and I say he wants me to be safe, he wants me to. You know, he wants to be able to protect me. What would it be like if he wasn't able to protect me and we were out in public? He would live with guilt the rest of his life. So a lot of that is kind of spinning it around and having those conversations in that way.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's why Austin is all the liberals and the rest of the Texas is different. But anyway, that's just my little joke about.

Speaker 3:

Texas. That's why we don't live in Austin, maybe.

Speaker 2:

Well, I want to wrap it up here, but I definitely want to hear more from you. This is not an empty offer. Please come back if you want. I would love to have you back on.

Speaker 3:

Oh, I'd love to.

Speaker 2:

Because this is a great conversation. I feel like I'm cutting our audience short to a great conversation here, but how about you tell me more, maybe about either your podcast, your book or both or whatever, and where people can get that?

Speaker 3:

Sure, everything pretty much is code for couples. So you can find me on social for at code for couples. If you want that, I'll give you my LinkedIn stuff. It's a little bit more complicated. My podcast is literally code for number four couples Um. And my website is the same thing code for couplescom Um. My book is hold the line, the essential guide to protecting your law enforcement relationship, and you can find it on any online retailer.

Speaker 2:

Well, I'm going to be getting that book. Um, I may send it to you and get it signed. Um, the other joke I wanted to make is when you said cold in the number four, I was like, all right, charlie, oscar, delta, echo. And then I'm lost. So I'm like, yeah, screw it, I'm not doing it. Um, I'm not, I'm not. I've never pretended to be a first responder, I'm just a mental health guy. But truthfully, from the bottom of my heart, can't wait to have you back on. Cindy, please go listen to her podcast. I, I am a subscriber. This is absolutely true. I wish I could share that, but I definitely subscribe and I've listened to a few of the episodes and I want to thank you for your time, cindy.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 2:

Well, that concludes episode 206. Again, cindy Doyle, thank you so much, and hopefully you join us for episode 207 with Elizabeth Eklund, and I hope to see you then.

Speaker 1:

Please like, subscribe and follow this podcast on your favorite platform. A glowing review is always helpful and, as a reminder, this podcast is for informational, educational and entertainment purposes only. If you're struggling with a mental health or substance abuse issue, please reach out to a professional counselor for consultation. If you are in a mental health crisis, call 988 for assistance. This number is available in the United States and Canada. You, you, you, you, you, you, thank you.

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Steve Bisson

Host
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Cyndi Doyle

Guest