The Weight We Carry: Why Unresolved Stress Wears Us Down

Have you ever had a meeting scheduled with you, but nobody tells you exactly what it's about? You get that calendar invitation, might just say, "See me tomorrow. Meet in my office." No agenda, no explanation, nothing. Suddenly, your brain goes to work, and you start wondering about what you did. Did I miss something?

Maybe it's that project or somebody's upset. Did I forget to follow up on something? Before you know it, you've had that meeting about 17 times in your head, and you've prepared your answer, you've defended yourself. You've even explained things nobody has even asked you about. In fact, you've probably even had an entire argument with somebody in your head, won the argument, delivered a brilliant closing statement, then gotten mad at them all over again, and the person doesn't [00:01:00] even know that they're involved But guess what?

You're exhausted. Here's the interesting part. Nothing has actually happened. The meeting hasn't taken place. Nobody said anything, and you don't even know what the conversation's gonna be about, but you've already spent hours dealing with it mentally. I think a lot of us do this more than we realize, and I wanna talk about that today because sometimes it's not what we're doing that wears us down.

It's everything we're carrying that we haven't dealt with. Welcome to the All Clear Podcast. I'm Travis. Um, I'm in the fire service. I'm a husband, a dad, and someone who's spent a good part of his life doing this. I've spent more than 16 years around this profession. I've seen the demands that it puts on people, and I've experienced some of that myself.

And as I get closer to the next chapter of my career, I find myself thinking more about what it [00:02:00] means to take care of ourselves, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and in the way we live our lives outside of our career. And that's exactly what All Clear is about. Real conversations about leadership, wellness, longevity, and life in the fire service.

There's no magic formulas, no manufactured inspiration, just honest conversations, practical ideas, and lessons learned along the way. And today, we're talking about something that doesn't always show up on a checklist or a physical exam. It's the weight of the unfinished. Now, when we talk about stress in the fire service, we tend to think about the obvious things.

That difficult call, traumatic incident, the long shift, staffing shortages, conflict with a coworker, the family situation waiting for us when we walk in the door at the house. Those things [00:03:00] matter, and they deserve complete attention. But there's another kind of stress that can quietly wear us down It's the mental weight of things that are unresolved.

It's the conversation we have not had yet. It's the decision we're waiting on. It's the expectation that wasn't met. It could be the information that we don't have, the problem we keep trying to solve even though we don't have control of it. These things don't always feel like stress in the traditional sense.

Sometimes they just feel like being distracted or irritated or tired or having trouble shutting your brain off at night. You might be sitting on the couch with your family, but your mind is absolutely somewhere else. You might be trying to fall asleep, but you're replaying a conversation from three days ago.

You might be doing something completely unrelated to work, but part of your brain is still trying to figure out what somebody [00:04:00] meant when they said something to you. Here's the problem. Even when we're not actively working on these things, we're still carrying them. It's like having a bunch of applications running in the background on a phone.

You aren't using them, but they're still draining the battery, and eventually you start wondering why you're running out of energy. You know, I think it's happening to a lot of people. We're not necessarily overwhelmed by any one big thing in front of us, but we're being worn down by the accumulation of all the little things that we haven't resolved yet.

Now, there are five things that keep us carrying the weight, and I want to break this down into the five common sources of mental weight. The first one is anticipation without information This is the meeting with no agenda. This is that phone call you know is coming. The conversation somebody says they want to have, [00:05:00] but they won't tell you what it's about.

It's the decision you're waiting on. Our brains don't particularly like uncertainty. So when we don't have information, guess what? We tend to fill in the blanks ourselves, and unfortunately, we don't always fill it in with the most positive possibilities. We imagine what could go wrong. We prepare for conversations that may never happen.

We even start reacting to situations that haven't even occurred. And sometimes we create an entire problem in our heads before we even have the opportunity to find out what the actual problem is. So here's something I had to remind myself. Don't spend today's energy solving tomorrow's uncertainty. If you don't have the information, acknowledge it.

You can prepare for what you pro-- what you reasonably can or you possibly can, but you don't have to spend the entire day [00:06:00] mentally living through something that hasn't happened yet. Sometimes the most productive thing you can actually do is wait until you actually know what you're dealing with or what the problem really is.

The second source is unmet expectations. This one could be particularly frustrating. You expected somebody to follow through. You expected a little more support. You expected a conversation to go way differently. You expected that project to move forward, and you expected someone to recognize the effort you put into something.

And guess what? It didn't happen. Now you're disappointed. Maybe you're frustrated, you're angry, and you keep going back over it Here's the thing about expectations, though. Sometimes they're reasonable, sometimes we haven't communicated them very well. Now, sometimes the other person doesn't even know we've placed that [00:07:00] expectation on them.

That doesn't mean your frustration isn't legitimate, but it does mean that you need to ask yourself a question. Have I actually communicated what I need, or am I waiting for somebody to figure it out? Because there's a huge difference. Unspoken expectations can turn into resentment, and resentment is heavy.

If something matters to you, sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is have the conversation. Not an argument, not an accusation, just a honest conversation. Explain what you expected, what happened, and what you need moving forward. Now, you may not get the answer you want, but at least you're dealing with the actual situation instead of carrying around the version of it that exists in your head.

And trust me, being in your head sometimes isn't where you want to be The third one is incomplete information. Now, [00:08:00] this is closely related to anticipation, but there's a difference. Sometimes we know something is happening, but we don't know enough to understand it. Maybe there's a change happening at work.

Maybe a decision's been made, but nobody's explained why. Maybe you've heard part of a conversation. Maybe you know there's a problem, but you don't have the full picture yet. Guess what? Your brain starts connecting dots. The problem is, sometimes those dots don't belong together or even in the same universe.

Now, we make assumptions, we assign meaning to somebody's tone when they talk, we interpret a really short email. We may even decide what someone meant based on a conversation that we only heard half of, and then we start responding emotionally to information that may not even be accurate. Now, I've learned that sometimes the best thing you can do is to simply ask for clarification.

What does that mean? Can you help me understand the [00:09:00] reasoning behind that? What's the expectation moving forward? Those aren't questions, they're reasonable questions, not weak. And when we talk about leadership, clarity matters. Clarity is a form of leadership. If you're responsible for people, don't make them guess.

And if you're the one trying to understand something, don't be afraid to ask. You don't have to fill every information gap with an assumption, because that's never good. Now, the fourth source is replaying conversations. I suspect this one will hit home with a few of y'all. If you've ever had a conversation with someone, maybe it didn't go well, maybe you didn't feel like you could explain yourself clearly, and maybe you wish you'd responded differently, and later, you replay it, you think about what they said, you think about what you said, and you come up with a better response.[00:10:00] 

Then you come up with an even better one after that. Then you start thinking about what you should have said three days ago. I've done it. I think most of us have. But here's the question: Is replaying that conversation helping you resolve anything, or are you just putting yourself through the same emotional experience over and over again?

Now, there is value in reflecting when we have a conversation. We should learn from our interactions. We should be willing to recognize where we could be, have handled something better. Maybe we've learned what we did wrong, but there's a difference between reflection and rumination. Think about that.

Reflection helps you learn. Rumination gets you stuck. If there's something you need to address, address it. If there's something you need to apologize for, just apologize. If there's something you need to clarify, have the [00:11:00] conversation. But if the conversation's over and there's nothing productive left to do, you may need to give yourself permission to put it down.

You cannot go back and edit every conversation you've ever had, and honestly, if you could, you'd probably spend the rest of your life doing so. Now, the fifth source is carrying things we cannot control. This one's particularly important in the fire service. We care about our crews, we care about our department, we care about the decisions being made.

We care about staffing, equipment, budgets, leadership, culture, and the well-being of the people we work alongside. And because we care, we sometimes take ownership of things that aren't ours to control. We worry about decisions someone else is going to make. We stress about how another person's going to respond.

We take responsibility for outcomes that depend on several other people. And eventually, we start carrying the [00:12:00] entire weight of the situation that we may only have a limited influence over. I wanna be careful here, though. I'm not suggesting that we stop caring. I'm not suggesting that we're going to ignore problems or avoid responsibility.

Quite the opposite. We should care, we should lead, we should advocate for our people, but we also have to understand the difference between what we can control and what we can influence and what we simply have to accept. You can care deeply about something without carrying the entire weight of it.

That's an important distinction to know, and it's one I think a lot of us need to practice Now, so what can we actually do about all of this? Well, I want to give you a practical, non-complicated wellness program to try. Not another dap-- not another app you need to download, just a simple exercise you can do in about five minutes.

I'm calling it the [00:13:00] five-minute mental reset. Here's how it works. First, take five minutes and write down everything that's occupying space in your head. Don't organize it. Don't worry about how it sounds. Just get it out. A lot of people call this a brain dump. Maybe it's the meaning you've-- the meeting you've been worrying about.

Maybe it's a conversation that you haven't had yet. Maybe it's the project that's behind. Maybe it's the decision you're waiting on. It could be the person you're frustrated with, the thing that you keep replaying. Whatever it is, put it on paper. Sometimes just getting something out of your head and putting it in front of you makes it a little easier to digest.

Then take each item on that piece of paper and put it into one of four categories. Category one: I can control this. These are things where you have the ability to take direct action. Make a phone call, send that email, have that conversation, complete a task. [00:14:00] If you could do something about it, identify the next step.

Category two: I can influence this. Now, maybe you can't make the final decision, but you can contribute. You can offer a recommendation. You can have a conversation. You can advocate for your crew. You can provide information. Do you reasonably believe you can recognize where your responsibility ends?

Category three: I need more information. Now, this is where you stop guessing. Instead of spending another three days trying to figure out what somebody meant, identify the question you need answered. What do you need to talk about? What information are you missing? Where can you reasonably follow up?

Sometimes the next step isn't solving the problem, it's just getting clarity. Category four: I cannot control [00:15:00] this. This is probably the hardest category. These are the things that are outside of your authority, your influence, or your ability to change. You may not like them. You may even disagree with them.

You may wish they were different, but contributing, uh, to their carrying on doesn't necessarily change the outcome, and it's not good for you And sometimes when we do this, the healthiest thing we can do is acknowledge that you've been done with it, and you can allow yourself to put it down and move on.

Now, for each of those things, ask yourself three questions. What is specifically bothering me? What's the next action I can take? And when am I going to address it? If there's no action you can take right now, make a conscious decision to stop giving it your attention until there's something productive you can do.

That's it. Five minutes. You may not [00:16:00] solve anything, but you can start separating actual problems from mental noise. And that's a pretty good place to start. Now, I wanna bring this back to the fire service for a minute because I think this has a lot to do with how we lead people. If you're a company officer, a battalion chief, or a fire marshal, chief officer, whatever, you're probably carrying more than people realize.

You're dealing with staffing. You're dealing with personnel issues. You're trying to get projects completed. You're managing expectations from above and below. You're trying to take care of your people while still meeting the demands of the organization. And sometimes you don't have the luxury of putting everything down at the end of the day.

But here's something worth considering. The mental weight you're carrying doesn't always stay at work. It comes home with you. It shows up when you're sitting at the dinner table. It shows up when your spouse asks [00:17:00] you a question and when you're only half listening. It shows up when your kids want your attention, but your mind's dealing with something else somewhere else that happened in the station.

It shows up when you're lying in bed and your brain decides it's time to review every unfinished conversation from the last six months. And eventually, the people closest to you may end up experiencing the same stress even though they had nothing to do with creating it. That's something we have to pay attention to.

Leadership isn't just about how we perform when we're wearing the uniform. It also has a lot to do with how we show up when we take it off. And if we want healthier departments, we have to start living and having healthier conversations. We need to create environments where people can get questions answered, where expectations are clearly communicated, and [00:18:00] where people can disagree respectfully, where problems are addressed instead of being allowed to sit and grow and fester And where taking care of yourself isn't viewed as weakness.

Because the people we lead are watching us. If we tell our crews that wellness matters, but we never take care of ourselves, what message are we actually sending? We can't just tell people what to do. We have to demonstrate it, and sometimes that means admitting that we're caring too much. Sometimes it means asking for help.

Sometimes it means having co- a conversation we've been avoiding, and sometimes it means recognizing that we are not going to solve every problem today. Guess what? That's okay Now, let's talk about the Kitchen Table Playbook. This is one of the reasons I've been working on something called the Kitchen Table Playbook.

[00:19:00] It's the idea that is very simple behind all of this. I don't think we need another binder full of wellness information that gets handed out at a department meeting or at a conference and then sits on a shelf. We need honest conversations, real conversations about what people are dealing with and what we can actually do about it.

The Kitchen Table Playbook is built around the five pillars of firefighter wellness. Physical wellness, mental wellness, diet, nutrition, prevention, and life balance. These aren't five separate boxes to check. They're interconnected, and each one deserves an honest conversation. What does physical wellness actually look like for the people in your department?

Are we creating an environment where people can talk about mental health without feeling judged? Are we making better choices around nutrition? Are we taking prevention seriously, including [00:20:00] occupational cancer prevention or maybe getting an extra test at our physical? And are we helping people build a life outside of the fire service?

Now, the goal is to get people around the table, identify one meaningful issue and talk about it, and talk about what can actually be done. Not someday, not after another committee meeting. What can we do tomorrow? What can a company officer do this week? What can the chief put into motion this month? The Kitchen Table Playbook is about turning those conversations into action, and I think that matters because sometimes the first step forward in solving a problem is simply creating a place where people feel comfortable enough to talk about the problem.

That's the kind of culture I want to see more of in the fire service. Well, you know, speaking of the kitchen table, let's talk about coffee for a minute. [00:21:00] If you spend any time in the fire service, you know coffee is more than coffee. It's part of the culture. It's the first cup in the morning. It's the conversation around the kitchen table, and it's the time after a call when everybody takes a breath.

It's the excuse to sit down with somebody and ask how they're really doing. And sometimes that's exactly what we need. Not another meeting, not another presentation, not death by PowerPoint, just a cup of coffee and somebody willing to listen. That's part of thinking And that is part of the mission behind All Clear.

It's another way to bring the All Clear community together and to support the conversation we're having about leadership, wellness, and life in the fire service. If you'd like to check it out, you can find about All Clear coffee and other All Clear merchandise at allclearpodcast.com. Hit the banner at the top.

Grab [00:22:00] yourself a cup, pull up a chair. Let's have a conversation Before we wrap up, I want to leave you with a challenge. At some point today, take five minutes, just five. Write down the things that you've been carrying around in your head, those unfinished conversations, the unanswered questions, expectations that weren't met, the things you've been worried about, the things you're frustrated with.

Do that brain dump, then look at the list. Ask yourself, "What can I do something about? What can I influence? What information do I need? And what am I carrying that isn't mine to control?" Pick one thing, just one, that you can take action on. Make a phone call, ask a question, schedule a conversation. Clarify one expectation, and then identify one thing you need to stop carrying.

Not because it doesn't matter, not because you don't care, but because [00:23:00] carrying it around isn't helping you, your family, or the people you lead. And one more thing, if the stress you're carrying is consistently affecting your sleep, your relationships, or your concentration, your mood, or your ability to function, don't dismiss that.

Talk to somebody you trust. Reach out to a mental health professional. You don't have to wait until things become overwhelming before you ask for support. Taking care of yourself is part of the job, too. I think we need to spend a lot of time talking about how to manage the emergencies in front of us.

That's part of our training. But we don't always spend enough time thinking about the things we're carrying when there isn't an emergency. Those conversations maybe you haven't had yet, the information you're waiting on, the expectation that wasn't met, the problem you can't control, they may [00:24:00] not look like much when you see them individually, but together they can actually become pretty heavy.

So remember this, sometimes it's not what we're doing that wears us down, it's everything we're carrying that we haven't dealt with. You don't have to solve every problem today. You don't have to have every answer every time, and you certainly don't have to carry every problem by yourself. Take care of the things you can, have the conversations you need to have, ask for clarity, and give yourself permission to put things down that were never yours to carry in the first place.

Because you can't always control what's coming tomorrow, but you can control how much of tomorrow you're allowing to occupy today I'm Travis. This is the All Clear Podcast, leadership, wellness, longevity, life in the fire service. We talk about all of it. Remember, you can't pour from an empty tank. Until [00:25:00] next time, stay safe, take care of each other, and make sure you're taking care of yourself.

And as we always say, light your fire within