Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud

The Trauma Olympics

Let me say this plain so nobody twists it later.

PTSD in EMS is real. It always has been.

I didn’t learn that from a slide deck or a wellness module. I learned it the old-fashioned way—by carrying things I didn’t have words for yet. By waking up at 0300 staring at the ceiling, replaying calls I thought I’d already put to bed.

So if you’re struggling, I mean this—talk to somebody. Use the resources. We should’ve been doing that a long time ago, and I’m glad the new generation is pushing that door open.

That part? That’s progress.

But here’s where I’m gonna rub some folks the wrong way.

Somewhere along the line, trauma started getting… performative.

You’ve seen it.

Six months on the truck. Maybe eight. Already talking about “the things I’ve seen” like it’s a résumé bullet point. Carefully worded post. Perfect pacing. Comment section lighting up like a Christmas tree.

And you sit there, coffee going cold, decades of calls stacked behind your eyes, and you feel something you’re not supposed to say out loud.

You feel skeptical. Not about PTSD. About the performance.

Because there’s a difference—and if you’ve been around long enough, you don’t need a study to tell you that.

There’s the medic who’s genuinely struggling. The one who had something hit sideways and doesn’t quite know what to do with it yet. That one’s looking for a lifeline.

And then there’s the one who figured out that trauma gets attention. That it carries weight. That it earns a certain kind of respect before it’s actually been lived.

The Difference That Matters

Now before somebody gets spun up—yeah, I know the old way wasn’t right either. Burying it, stuffing it down, pretending none of it bothered us… that cost people. Some of them we buried.

So no—I’m not advocating for silence.

I’m saying there’s a difference between breaking silence because you need help…

…and breaking silence because it plays well.

And that difference matters more than we’re willing to admit.

Because when trauma becomes a badge this early in the game—when “I’ve seen things” becomes part of your identity before you’ve even figured out how to be a provider—it muddies the water.

It makes the real conversations harder.

It makes the people who are actually drowning wonder if anyone’s gonna take them seriously.

And those folks?

They’re usually not posting.

They’re sitting in their trucks between calls. They’re coaching little league. They’re staring at the ceiling at 0300 wondering why that one call still won’t let go.

They’re not performing it. They’re carrying it.

To the New Folks and the Students Riding Along

Now let me be real clear about something for the new folks and the students riding along.

You absolutely can see something early in this job that sticks with you.

First shift. First ride-along. Doesn’t matter.

This job doesn’t ease you into it just because you’re new.

So if something hits you? Talk about it. That’s not weakness—that’s survival.

But you don’t need to prove anything yet.

You don’t need a war story. You don’t need to build an identity around “what you’ve seen.”

Right now, your job is simple: show up. Learn the craft. Take care of your patient. And take care of your own head along the way.

The rest will come—whether you want it to or not.

And to the ones who’ve been around a while—yeah, I know you’re reading this and nodding.

Don’t feel guilty about that. That’s not cynicism. That’s experience.

That’s the same instinct that tells you something’s off with a patient even when the monitor looks fine.

You’ve seen enough to recognize the difference.

And if we don’t say it out loud, we’re doing a disservice to the ones who actually need help.

Plain and Simple

So here it is, plain and simple.

You don’t earn credibility in this job by how quickly you talk about trauma.

You earn it by how you show up.

By how you treat your patients. By how you carry the calls nobody else sees. By how honest you are when something actually gets to you.

Talk when you need to.

Reach out when it hits.

Lean on your people.

Just don’t confuse healing with performing.

—OGP

Visit the original LinkedIn article →