Business
In this episode of the Managing Uncertainty Podcast, Bryghtpath Principal & Chief Executive Bryan Strawser discusses mental health as a Business Continuity, Crisis Management, and Corporate Security Professional. Topics discussed in this episode include stress and anxiety, the impact of the pandemic on business continuity and crisis management professionals, how to find help in an emergency, and where to go to talk about the last several months. Related Episodes & Blog Posts Blog Post: Four steps you can take today to improve your personal preparedness Blog Post: Making Decisions in the Midst of a Crisis Episode #94: Personal and family preparedness for Coronavirus Episode #105: Taking care of yourself during a crisis Episode Transcript Hello, and welcome to the Managing Uncertainty podcast. This is Bryan Strawser Principal and Chief Executive here at Bryghtpath. And, in this week’s episode, I want to talk a little bit about mental health. Mental health for you as a business continuity and crisis management, corporate security, professional, and everything that we’ve been through over the last 18 to 20 months as we’ve guided our organizations, our clients, our families through this global pandemic that has driven almost everything that we’ve had to deal with over the last almost two years now. And, I approach this from the standpoint that I don’t have all the answers. I’m not asking for help here or crying out for help. I’m not trying to be brave or anything like that as I talk about mental health and these challenges we’re faced with, with our own resiliency, with our own challenges. As we think about what we’ve all been through in the last 20 months or so with this pandemic and the role that we’ve had to play as business continuity and crisis management and security professionals. But, I do think that we need to do a better job as an industry, as individuals, as people normalizing talking about struggles like this. Struggles that we have as we work through challenging situations. Struggles that we have, we may have, with depression or anxiety, both of which are issues I’ve been faced with in my teenage years and adult life. But, also just the stress that we face in these situations that we have to deal with. In my own career, I have dealt with all of the issues related to managing crisis situations where lives were at stake. I have lost fellow employees in shootings and violent crime. My team, when I worked in a Fortune 30 company, regularly dealt with homicides and suicides of their fellow workers. We managed and helped to manage situations where an employee had killed another employee. Sometimes people that we knew and had interactions with. And, all of the stress that is created in that and all of the trauma that impacts us. And, I think that all of those are things we should acknowledge, but then we look at what we’ve all dealt with in the last two years dealing with the pandemic. Where whether we’ve had support within our organizations or not, whether we’ve had resources, maybe not even the resources that we need within our companies to have dealt with the myriad of issues that we’ve been faced with over the last year and a half, as we’ve dealt with the pandemic. Our companies