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    What My Eyes Have Seen
    What My Eyes Have Seen
    What My Eyes Have Seen
    Ebook172 pages1 hour

    What My Eyes Have Seen

    By John Payne

    ()

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    About this ebook

    John S. Payne is a 28-year veteran, serving the Victorian community within Corrections, Government Investigations and as a Volunteer Firefighter. He was born in Lincoln England in 1960.

    Along with his parents and three sisters he immigrated to Australia in 1967. He lives in the northern suburbs of Melbourne Australia with his wife Kerryn. Together they have two children, Kylie and Glen and are grandparents to Ava, Riley and Sophie.

    During his career, he was involved in many incidents including the Black Saturday bushfire of February 2009 in which he was honoured with the National Emergency Medal.

    As a direct result of his service, he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) a condition he has lived since 2009. John is passionate about addressing the stigma associated with mental illness and advocating Mental Health and Suicide awareness to the greater community, particularly to first responders.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTellwell Talent
    Release dateNov 11, 2018
    ISBN9781925814965
    What My Eyes Have Seen
    Author

    John Payne

    John is a 28-year veteran, serving the Victorian community within Corrections, Government Investigations and as a Volunteer firefighter and lives in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Austraslia. During his career, he was involved in many incidents including the Black Saturday bushfire in which he was honoured with the Emergency Service Medal. As a direct result of his service, he was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) a condition in which he has lived with for the past 9 years. John is passionate about addressing the stigma associated with mental illness and advocating awareness to the greater community, particularly to first responders. One of his key messages is, ‘Reach out early – you will be supported and don’t suffer in silence.’ Encouraging early help-seeking is a crucial priority in any effective mental health strategy.

    Read more from John Payne

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      Book preview

      What My Eyes Have Seen - John Payne

      Always remember,

      if you have been diagnosed with PTSD,

      it is not a sign of weakness;

      instead, it is proof of your strength,

      because you have survived!

      Michelle Templet

      What My Eyes

      Have Seen

      John S. Payne

      CFA Volunteer

      Black Saturday firefighter

      Emergency Service Medal recipient

      This is an IndieMosh book

      brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

      an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

      PO BOX 147

      Hazelbrook NSW 2779

      https://www.indiemosh.com.au/

      Copyright 2018 © John S. Payne

      All rights reserved

      Licence Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

      Disclaimer

      Although the author has made every effort to ensure that the information in this book was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause.

      Dedication

      This book is dedicated to all my brother and sister first responders, in all the emergency services, fire, police, ambulance, and rescue who don’t have a visible injury but a mental injury and especially to our spouse and families who are left to pick up the pieces of a shattered life.

      Foreword

      Our first responders are exposed to many more potentially traumatic incidents than the rest of us will ever experience in our entire lifetimes.

      John Payne, as a CFA volunteer firefighter, was on the frontline on 7 February 2009, in what came to be known as ‘Black Saturday’: the catastrophic fires that raged through King Lake and surrounding areas – in which 173 people died (including two firefighters) and 5000 people were left homeless.

      After Black Saturday, John forged on – as most first responders do. But some two years later, he started to deteriorate: whilst at the same time, still trying to ignore the disruptive strong negative emotions he was experiencing; the nightmares and poor sleep; the reduced concentration and ensuing inability to do things he had always done, such as read novels; and withdrawal from usual social involvements.

      I think that John was showing what a recent PTSD Roundtable[1] (Australia 21, 2018) has referred to as the ‘resilience paradox’: the resilience that enables first responders to keep coming back for more might have the perverse result that they break more catastrophically when they reach their later breaking point.

      This is indeed what John experienced. He progressively descended into full-blown Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and eventually into the dark space of seriously contemplating suicide.

      It took a long time for him to come around to seeking professional help.

      His account of the gradual descent into full-blown PTSD is harrowing. He has a loving family, supportive work colleagues and managers, but his descent continued unabated.

      Included in this volume are commentaries from family members and work colleagues – detailing their perplexities about not knowing how to respond to his changed behaviours – but continuously trying to offer support, and then some of their responses to reading his draft manuscript. These commentaries show the ‘ripple effects’ that can progressively impact on family members, friends and work colleagues.

      John mentions the former Victorian Police Minister Wade Noonan taking leave for experiencing vicarious trauma – no longer able to cope with some of the gruesome reports coming across his desk from Victoria Police (he has since returned to the Ministry – but not the Police portfolio). At that time, I had just started leading a team conducting an independent review of Victoria Police mental health, wellbeing and suicide prevention services. As John notes, Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton has led from the top, and Victoria Police have since been making substantial gains in destigmatising mental health issues and encouraging earlier help-seeking.

      We have 36 Police and Emergency Services agencies nationally – and most understand that workplace mental health and wellbeing issues need to sit above industrial matters and political considerations.

      It took John some nine years – and with significant mental health professional engagement – before he started to re-emerge and begin to find and recalibrate his ‘post-trauma sense of self’.

      This is where we touch on the issue of ‘Post-Traumatic growth’. There can be positives that come out of the dark experience of traumatic incident exposures. Many individuals do experience a subsequent profound re-evaluation of their life priorities, including how they re-value and interact more richly with family and friends; and some sort of community contribution they make, beyond their immediate personal sphere.

      One of John’s key messages is: ‘Reach out early – you will be supported; don’t suffer in silence.’ Encouraging early help-seeking is a crucial priority in any effective workplace mental health strategy.

      Dr Peter Cotton

      [2]

      July 2018

      A Note from the Author

      To be a firefighter takes courage, to be a volunteer firefighter takes commitment. To run towards a bushfire when everyone else is fleeing takes the firefighter spirit.

      Watching, hearing or comforting a family who has lost everything except the clothes on their back, a parent crying out in despair because their child is trapped inside a burning house, the body of a motorcyclist lying on the road or the cries of pain of people trapped in a motor vehicle after a collision. These are regular things we as firefighters contend with when we attend a call out.

      The memories aren’t forgotten when we return to the station, they stay with us. After all, we are only human and have a breaking point.

      We can’t unsee What My Eyes Have Seen.

      This book at times will not be easy to read. For some, it may be confronting or overwhelming, particularly my family, friends and those suffering from PTSD or supporting a person with PTSD. My intention in writing this book is to give these people and those interested in PTSD a greater understanding of what goes on inside our heads.

      I am not educated in this illness; it is my ‘lived experience’ with Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and my continuing journey to Post-Traumatic Growth.

      PTSD is not a visible injury like a broken leg, but an unseen mental injury, which, if left untreated, can become life-threatening or at the very least debilitating in every aspect of your life.

      I commenced writing this book after a challenge from my dad, who, after writing his own self-published book about his life, titled From Truck Driver to Roads Scholar[3] told me I had a story to tell and it needed to be written.

      What I found was, I helped myself. Putting my experience in writing became therapeutic.

      Through this book I can now share with my family and friends and others the effect PTSD has had on my life.

      I no longer need to pretend I’m okay, when in fact a lot of the time I’m not. I couldn’t talk as openly in person with anyone other than Bruce my psychologist, as I have by putting it into words in this written form.

      I have tried to be as open as I can be, to whoever chooses to read this book, as though you are a dear and trusted friend. In most instances, I have laid myself bare for all to see. There will be times whilst reading you may feel I have not fully opened up. It’s just that I’m not ready yet to talk about the situation/s. I know you will understand.

      To you the reader, I thank you for your interest and hope that, in some way, by reading my story you will understand what it’s like to suffer from PTSD and can support a loved one, friend or work colleague as they travel their own journey from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, to Post-Traumatic Growth.

      John Payne

      You don’t know what you don’t know until you know it.

      Socrates

      John and his daughter Kylie, during the Black Saturday Campaign February 2009

      If you or someone close to you needs to talk, it is available by calling Lifeline on 13 11 14 anytime for confidential telephone crisis support or visit www.beyondblue.org.au (Australia Only)

      If you are not in Australia and need support, visit www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/

      for the country by country resource information.

      Those that have not supped from the cup know not the taste.

      Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (1837)

      Prologue

      "It was horrendous. I’ve seen nothing like it," were the first words I said to 1st Lieutenant Chris Gray, as he and his crew relieved the crew of Craigieburn Tanker 1 of which I was a crew member, at approximately 11:30 pm on Saturday 7 February 2009. As many as 400 individual fires raged on this day and it would forever be known as Black Saturday.

      The Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria were the most devastating in Australia’s history, where 173 people tragically lost their lives, including two firefighters. A further 414 injured, more than a million wild and domestic animals lost and 450,000 hectares of land burned. Some areas, including the small hamlet town of Marysville, were almost entirely destroyed. More than 5000 people were left homeless and some 750 homes destroyed as a result.

      Victoria experienced extreme fire weather conditions on Saturday 7 February that led to the tragic losses. A region of extremely hot air had persisted over inland South-eastern Australia since the last week of January and had resulted in several temperature records being exceeded.

      The presence of a slow-moving high-pressure system in the Tasman Sea, combined with an active monsoon trough,

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