How our bodies experience and process stress and anxiety are important considerations when examining situations like police shootings. It is also important for therapists to understand when working with clients who have experienced trauma.    https://www.verywellmind.com/general-adaptation-syndrome-gad-definition-signs-causes-management-5213817   Transcript: you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psych with mike 0:20 welcome into the psych with mike library this is dr michael mahon and i am here with intern michael and mr brett newcomb 0:27 what's this how you doing everybody i i you know we i did this again i did it 0:32 again i'm so used to there only being two people in the studio that when we have more i don't know what to say so 0:41 i apologize how are you gentlemen doing good somebody has to be in charge yeah as 0:47 well be one of us might as well yeah yeah so who's got gas 0:53 um i don't know i can't go [Laughter] 1:00 yeah so uh i wanted to talk about something i don't 1:06 know um how familiar that the two of you were with the 1:12 general adaptive syndrome before i sent the article did were you 1:17 guys you know to me again and especially after having read the article which i thought was fine 1:23 it's just a rehash and restatement of old thoughts under a new name 1:28 well i mean sally who who started this work i mean this was back in the 1940s so so i mean this was 1:37 a work that i don't that i think gets less 1:42 talked about and you're right people repackage it but the reason 1:48 why i wanted to talk about this today is actually twofold number one is that the 1:54 general adaptive syndrome is a very good biological explanation of how we 2:00 experience stress and or anxiety certain types of that but number two is 2:06 that we've seen so many examples of police shootings and 2:12 all of these things that are going on and one of the things that i don't hear being talked about and i want to say up 2:18 front that i am not condoning shooting an unarmed man i'm not condoning police 2:24 brutality none of these things are right and appropriate they should be investigated they should be stopped 2:31 but what i am saying is that if we look at the general adaptive syndrome there are 2:37 things biologically that are going on in the body of a human being that we can't expect to be turned off 2:44 just because something changes in three seconds and so that needs to be a 2:52 part of what we look at we need to look at the biology of the human being and 2:57 talk about how do we incorporate that into the training that we are giving 3:04 these individuals and so then the second part of it for me is 3:09 because when i worked at the eap we had the st louis police department 3:16 contract and so whenever there was a police shooting we would have to 3:22 do therapy with these gentlemen to get them back on to their job and for 3:29 therapists who are working with individuals in whatever capacity whether they're first 3:35 responders they're they're riding the ambulance whether they're going on to the you know responding to fires or 3:42 responding in police matters this is something that therapists need 3:48 to be aware of this is the biological process that's happening in the human 3:53 person and so then when you are debriefing them that needs to be something that you are cognizant of 4:02 i think there are two parts to this right one one is that in in situations 4:07 of shooting people can go through all five stages of general