Paramedic Burnout, Mental Resilience and Asking for Help | Zeb Miller

Zeb Miller is a seasoned paramedic with nearly 14 years of experience in emergency services. Throughout his career, he has demonstrated an exceptional ability to learn and adapt, gaining significant insights into both the clinical and human aspects of medical care. Zeb’s extensive experience and growth trajectory within the paramedic field have equipped him with a deep understanding of holistic patient care, which considers not only the clinical symptoms but also the social and psychological aspects of those he serves.

Key Takeaways:

• Zeb Miller's journey into the paramedic profession started unexpectedly but has become a significant part of his life, offering continuous learning and life lessons.
• Becoming a parent profoundly impacted Zeb, enhancing his compassion and holistic approach to patient care, emphasizing the importance of seeing patients as people first.
• Cultural awareness plays a crucial role in delivering comprehensive and respectful medical care, improving rapport with patients from diverse backgrounds.
• Mental resilience and emotional well-being are paramount in emergency services, with Zeb advocating for openness in discussing mental health issues and seeking professional help.
• Normalizing conversations about mental health and understanding one's emotional responses can significantly improve personal well-being and professional performance.

Notable Quotes:

• "I realized that these people aren't just patients. Once you have kids, you feel more, I guess, maybe vulnerable. Compassion, it's probably the best word."
• "Once you see that negative impact, you really realize how powerful the uniform is and how much weight it carries."
• "The loss of control is the worst feeling. It took me having a moment when I couldn't do anything, talk, or move to understand I needed help."
• "Once you verbalize it, you sort of see it, and they just kind of help you navigate, you know, how to sort of fix it."
• "Don't be afraid to be wrong. Don't be afraid to not know something. You're doing a disservice to yourself if you lie."

You and your mental health is important to us. If this episode brought up any heavy emotions, please know you do not need to carry them alone. Reach out to Lifeline, Beyond Blue, or the counselling service at Hills Sanctuary house at hshl.org.au 

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Transcript

0:00:00 - (Debbie Draybi): Welcome back everyone, to another episode of Finding Sanctuary. And I've got Eddie here with me today. Welcome back.

0:00:05 - (Eddie Reaiche): Hey Deb, how you going?

0:00:06 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, good, how are you?

0:00:07 - (Eddie Reaiche): Yeah, good, thank you.

0:00:08 - (Debbie Draybi): And we have a special guest with us today. We always have amazing guests. We've got Zeb Miller, who's a paramedic. He's just about to have his 14 year anniversary. So bit of a milestone there, Zeb.

0:00:20 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, definitely a milestone. It's been a long time. Didn't think I'd be here for that long. But in terms of. In the job.

0:00:25 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, I was going to say, what other plans did you have?

0:00:28 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, because 14 years is a long time to be an emergency services. But yeah, no, it's good. Ups and downs. A lot of life lessons. Good profession. Should have done medicine, but no enjoying it.

0:00:42 - (Debbie Draybi): Sound like your parent. You should have been a doctor.

0:00:44 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:00:46 - (Debbie Draybi): So what, what attracted you to the life of a paramedic?

0:00:50 - (Zeb Miller): You're probably going to laugh. This is a funny story, but you know, I didn't have any aspirations to do it. I literally just saw, I was probably 19 or 20 and I didn't have any real career goal. I was kind doing this and doing that and then I just saw an ambulance go by and they had a sticker slapped on the back that said join the most trusted professional. I was like, why not? And then just not getting worse.

0:01:13 - (Eddie Reaiche): So inspiring.

0:01:18 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, I wish it was, I wish it was something better, but that's pretty much how I got started. And then slowly, slowly started to really like what I was doing. Draw new for sure.

0:01:28 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. So tell us a bit about your journey. So it sounds like when you started it's a bit, a bit of a challenge getting into it.

0:01:34 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah. I think when you first start working, especially in that type of a space, you grow up pretty quickly. You see things that people don't normally see and so it's more just getting used to, like just walking into someone's bedroom, you know, in the middle of the night, they're wearing their nightly, they're half naked, they got chest pain, there's something wrong with them. Just being in that space felt so weird to me because it's very personal for them.

0:02:02 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah. You being there, it's like, what am I doing here? I'm here to help. And you're just getting used to that space. So that took a little while. I think the fun part about the job would probably be more just meeting people from different walks of life. Super interesting just to talk to them about where do they come From. And how do they get here? Always find that the most fun, obviously, doing all the clinical stuff, too. But meeting new people is the greatest part about the job, as well as all the other things that you look for when you first start saving a life, delivering a baby, all those kinds of things, they come with it as an added bonus.

0:02:38 - (Eddie Reaiche): So, yeah, I'd imagine most of the people you see really appreciate the fact that you've arrived, and it's kind of like they're so relieved that you're there. Have you had experience with the opposite?

0:02:50 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, of course.

0:02:51 - (Eddie Reaiche): What was some of those things?

0:02:54 - (Zeb Miller): A lot of the times it could be potentially like a social issue. Like, not really social, but like a family member has called on behalf of someone who didn't want an ambulance. And that happens all the time with the elderly, the ones who are fiercely independent. They're at home, they want to live their life there. But a family member will see that they're unwell, they're not doing as good as they should be, they might need medical attention, they haven't been seeing their doctor. So we walk in the door and it's not like a, thank God you're here. It's like, why are you here?

0:03:24 - (Zeb Miller): So getting through that part, it definitely happens all the time. And then, yeah, look, mental health jobs as well, you know, those are always tricky. You get a range of everything. So the good and the bad, you

0:03:37 - (Eddie Reaiche): always think about that. And I always think about when you hear on the news about the resources that are stretched, and particularly when you go out to jobs that aren't necessary, like, you've got to have the dumbest jobs you've ever done. So I'd really love to know what is the dumbest thing you've ever seen.

0:03:56 - (Zeb Miller): It's funny, in a sense that, like, to us clinically and to other people, like, why did they call? I always try and come from it as, like, this person. For them, it's probably the worst day of their life, potentially. And they may have called the ambulance because they had too many bananas and they believe they were having a potassium overdose. And so it's a bit of education. Like, we always do this on the way.

0:04:24 - (Zeb Miller): We kind of vent our frustrations with the job and we just get it out there before we walk in that door. Because when you walk in that door, you don't want someone to have a negative experience with the emergency services, because when they actually do get sick, they're too scared to call. And then this is someone who's. They could potentially be really unwell then. So always trying to leave like a positive impact. If it's education about these small types of things goes a long way to making sure that they're safe and that they trust the health services.

0:04:55 - (Zeb Miller): So, yeah, just doing that kind of stuff is more important than you think.

0:05:00 - (Debbie Draybi): I think that's a beautiful reflection, Zeb, given that you're often the first point of contact, you're a first responder. You really carry that responsibility of building trust and creating that positive first impression, even though it might be frustrating.

0:05:14 - (Zeb Miller): Oh, look, it took 14 years. I grew a lot. I grew a lot with the job. And unfortunately, like, I'm the type of person that learns from mistakes. And I just, you know, over my career, I've seen these mistakes happen. I've seen what negative impact can have and how it ripples through a community, like. And so once you see that, you really realize how powerful the uniform is and how much weight it actually carries.

0:05:39 - (Debbie Draybi): And thinking about. You mentioned that growth now a couple of times. And I know we talked before about things have changed for you. When you started, you didn't have kids, and now you do. What has that meant for you? You said, you know, becoming a parent, the job, you experience the job different,

0:05:55 - (Zeb Miller): differently, 100% turning point, big time. Prior to kids, I was more clinically focused, more same as a patient, not a person type thing. But I think it's just like every part of life, like, you turn a corner and, you know, you've probably been walking down the same hallway. It looks all the same. You turn a corner and all of a sudden you're like, oh, these pictures are way more interesting. It was like that I realized that these people aren't just patients, you know, and once you have kids, you do that kind of thing where you, like, this was potentially someone else's kid who. You know what I mean? And you of feel like not a parent to them, but you feel more, I guess, maybe vulnerable.

0:06:32 - (Zeb Miller): Compassion, it's probably the best word. Kids were definitely the big turning point in how I treated my patients, for sure.

0:06:39 - (Debbie Draybi): It sounds like it allowed you to identify with them more and see them as people first, not just whatever was going on clinically.

0:06:47 - (Zeb Miller): You're taught as a defense mechanism to kind of see them as a patient. And it makes sense. Like, you're looking at textbooks, you're interested in what's happening in their body, the body systems. So when you see these things going wrong with your patient, you're interested in what's wrong with them, and you're not so much interested in who they are. And then once I also did my specialty as well. And once I did that, I realized once you have this whole holistic approach to your patients, you understand them so much more.

0:07:17 - (Zeb Miller): So then when you're coming up with a care plan for them, it's way more in depth than it and most of the time it has a higher success rate. That's always what you're kind of aiming for.

0:07:26 - (Eddie Reaiche): That holistic approach that you're talking about, is it most paramedics adopt that or is it something that's, it's a good

0:07:33 - (Zeb Miller): culture that's coming through now? Yeah, yeah, probably always sort of been there, but they're emphasizing it a lot more now because they're moving towards like potential referral pathways for those low acuity jobs. And so in order to do a referral, you need to be very thorough with what you're doing. It's not just about the clinical problem, it's about the social problem. How likely is this plan to work? What type of things can we put in place for them to make sure it works? So a lot more safety netting.

0:08:04 - (Zeb Miller): And safety netting only happens when you dig deep into your patient and then you can really close the loop and make sure that they're safe.

0:08:13 - (Eddie Reaiche): You mentioned earlier that you like the clinical aspect, particularly what you studied, but you can't really adopt that with mental health though, can you? It's very different.

0:08:23 - (Zeb Miller): Yes, yes. Mental health is, is much trickier. I'd probably say that. Yes. You can look at textbooks. The best way is to sit with someone who's a mental health professional, mental health nurse, cnc, whatever it may be, and then just see how they operate because they get thrown so many curveballs and you can't make something black and white that's all gray. And so watching how they safety net those makes you realize what you can do for your patient rather than just take him out to hospital all the time. Because sometimes some mental health don't need that to happen.

0:09:04 - (Debbie Draybi): I'm curious about thinking about your work and how it's evolved and how you've changed in that time. What's helped you most? Because I mean, you see a lot of crisis. I'm sure it's things that impact you emotionally. How have you coped with that? What are some of the strategies that's helped you manage your own emotional well being work that you do?

0:09:27 - (Zeb Miller): The mental resilience part is hard because when I first started I was fairly young, 22, I believe. Yeah, 22 when I started. So I didn't have much Life experience hadn't come across as much death, because in my line of work, you see death all the time. And so dealing with that, I was kind of just blindly going through. I didn't know, you know, how it was affecting me. But you do build mental resilience because your body will start talking to you if you ignore.

0:10:00 - (Zeb Miller): If you ignore these signs, they get worse. And then you. You wonder, why is this happening? Why can't I do that? That's when you really need to unpack, talk about them. A big thing that you do is like mostly just debriefing. Debriefing. Super important. Find that just talking about your problems really helps you mostly to listen to what's inside. Because a lot of the times when you're thinking about something in your head, it feels a lot different when you actually verbalize it.

0:10:29 - (Zeb Miller): So that kind of stuff definitely helps debriefing in acute situations when you are quite stressed and especially when you're in a leadership position, you know, teaching breathing techniques as well. And breathing techniques is not. It's not just a deep breath. It's also about visualization. We do have a technique called box breathing that we use.

0:10:49 - (Eddie Reaiche): Very popular.

0:10:50 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, very popular. But it's not easy. It looks like it's just a 16 second deep breath. So four seconds in. Hold, 2, 3, 4. Release, 2, 3, 4. And rest. It's not that. Okay. It is also about visualizing what am I doing. Like, how is this going to affect me? So the way I used to do it was I just used to do deep breath. I was like, why isn't this working for me? It's because I realized something about myself. When I get stressed, I kind of do this.

0:11:24 - (Zeb Miller): My shoulders get kind of knotted up. And so doing that deep breathing exercise, all I visualize is that I'm releasing tension in my shoulders on my deep breath out, just kind of relax my shoulders. And that turned it on for me. Way better. Doesn't look so good on scene when you get there and you go and you shrug your shoulders. But it definitely helps in acute stressful situations. So, yeah, like over time, you build mental resilience.

0:11:50 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. And thanks for that example. Cause one of the things that we find that we talk about a lot in this podcast is around work can take its toll on us emotionally, physically. And what I'm hearing from you is looking and paying attention to both. Because, you know, yes, you had your breathing, but being able to think about also your thoughts, but also what's happening within your body and integrating all those things is so important.

0:12:17 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah. Deeper understanding of what you're doing helps you really unlock what it's all really like, what it's sort of about, and just help you to calm down.

0:12:28 - (Eddie Reaiche): So I'm also thinking about in your line of work, you come across a lot of things that aren't quite nice. And then you've got to come home to your family. How do you navigate what you see outside, particularly if it involves children, and then you come home to your own children.

0:12:49 - (Zeb Miller): I didn't do it very well at the start. Didn't tell anyone, didn't say anything. Probably just kept it between work colleagues because that they understand it more. But slowly, over time, like anyone that's been around emergency services or been Frontline will tell you that things start slipping out the edges. And so when those things start happening and you're not listening to yourself or your body, really, you know, that's when you start to talk to someone.

0:13:19 - (Zeb Miller): And they do have great services. Well, they do offer great services for emergency workers. So going straight to them, because I'm probably the person. I don't get annoyed that I'm affected by something that doesn't annoy me. That's a normal human reaction. What I hate is not being able to control it. And the loss of control is the worst feeling. So, yeah, I've had those moments when I've done a difficult job and had complete loss of my body.

0:13:52 - (Zeb Miller): You know, like, I couldn't. I couldn't talk, you know, been and saw something horrific to me. Yeah. And then just complete lockdown. Couldn't talk, couldn't do anything, Was frozen. Never had that happen before. And it was just more of like an accumulation of things. And then had something happen which hit the nail on the head. And I was just out.

0:14:12 - (Eddie Reaiche): Yeah.

0:14:12 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah. And then that's when I finally started to. I can't deal with this anymore. So talking to someone helped big time, because they helped me unpack everything that was happening. And then for me, the key thing is just the fix for me is understanding why this is happening to me, understanding why my body's doing this, understanding why I'm losing control. And that way in my head, it's like, oh, I understand it now. I'm just gonna let it happen.

0:14:36 - (Zeb Miller): You know what I mean? Do whatever techniques I can do. But a lot of the times, it's just accepting that it is happening to you.

0:14:43 - (Eddie Reaiche): Wow. You know, that's. To me, that's inspiring. You're so aware of yourself.

0:14:49 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah.

0:14:49 - (Eddie Reaiche): In the fact that if I feel this way, you don't shy away from getting help. And that's. That's really cool. That's a great message.

0:14:58 - (Zeb Miller): Because he's a big bloke, people, it's more just.

0:15:02 - (Debbie Draybi): Yes. First thing I said to him is your job.

0:15:05 - (Zeb Miller): It's more just being a frontline worker and seeing what it does to you if you don't fix it. Because I've seen people from all walks of life who may have a small problem and they're not fixing it to then not doing anything about it and they have huge problems, leads to addiction, leads to other things. It basically scared me straight. Scared me into like, okay, I need to fix my mental health.

0:15:28 - (Debbie Draybi): Seeing examples of that every day is a huge reminder of importance. Getting help.

0:15:34 - (Eddie Reaiche): Because I've heard people wear their heart on their sleeve. I reckon you wear it in your cap because if you look at his cap, he's got this big crucifix.

0:15:45 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. So Zeb, thinking about, you know, those dark times where you recognise that it's normal to be impacted by what you see. Cause you see the world's most horrific things, really, you bear witness to them day in, day out. And you recognize that it's normal, that it has an impact, but your frustration is that you can't control it. And that's a really hard one. Like that perception that we even have control of things.

0:16:11 - (Debbie Draybi): So I wondered about that. Cause it's something that definitely we know people experience, not being able to control the impact even though we, you know, it's normal. And it's a normal response to horror, horrific things.

0:16:22 - (Zeb Miller): For me, it's. It's. Once again, I don't understand myself.

0:16:26 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah.

0:16:26 - (Zeb Miller): Because something has happened to me. I haven't acknowledged that it has happened to me and I've just let it go. And I didn't realize that this was something that I needed to identify. And so it will leak out in certain ways through stress responses to anger. And when those things happen to me, I'm like, oh, let's just. Me not understanding who I am and why this has affected me. Honestly, for me, it's just all that is. I need to understand myself better.

0:16:57 - (Debbie Draybi): So building that sense of that self awareness around when we absorb things, terrible things that we see that we witness or that we experience, if we don't deal with them, they do leak out in ways that, you know, they're not reflective of who we are.

0:17:12 - (Zeb Miller): And I learned the hard lesson, I learned the hard way. You know, it leaked out of me and, you know, lost control. And then finally when I talked to someone it helped me realize that it's once again normalizing it. Because everyone goes through things 100%. We're not immune to this. It's a normal human response. Emotional distress. But then understanding, you're just not listening. Once you start listening, you start understanding.

0:17:42 - (Zeb Miller): Then when it happens again, you know where the origins are. You know that this is happening for a reason. And then it's easier for you to just accept what's happening to it. And a lot of the times when you accept it, you feel like, I don't need to control this. I can just let it happen. And most of the time, once you accept it, it just goes away. That's how it worked in my mind.

0:18:07 - (Debbie Draybi): So it's like letting go of the need to control it actually helps understanding it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For our listeners who are starting to see those slow leaks in different ways, how would it leak? Like, give me an example.

0:18:23 - (Zeb Miller): Unhappy would be the first one. That's the first thing that happens. You not finding fulfillment, you're not finding happiness, even though you're doing the same things that you've been doing. It's for some reason it feels empty. That's a big one. That's like a very early starting.

0:18:36 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. So not feeling that joy anymore in the things that you used to.

0:18:40 - (Zeb Miller): And then that slowly turns to anger and then it turns into. Potentially things start to crumble around you because you're not the normal person that you should be. I think those are the earlier warning signs before we have full blown planning attacks and anxiety attacks and all that other kind of stuff. There's normally a slow buildup unless you're unfortunate enough to come through something really traumatic and horrific, then that would probably be a different story.

0:19:08 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. Be more rapid, possibly when you've not been exposed to it before.

0:19:12 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah.

0:19:12 - (Eddie Reaiche): I think when you start hearing people when they allow themselves to become vulnerable, it's a way that I think is something that lacks in our society, particularly with men, because men have been brought up a certain way to be stoic and always keep things deep because we've learned from our dads and our dads were the type that never expressed emotion because it's not a man thing. But to hear someone who's a father and a man and someone who is saying that it's okay to be not okay, it's something I think that helps.

0:19:46 - (Zeb Miller): A lot of people probably worked in the reverse for me because my kids were the ones that made me go there because I was like, I need to be the best person I can be for Them like, I need to give up trying to be something that I'm not understanding who I am. But I reckon it was more just having my kids that pushed me to try and fix myself, try and be better, all that kind of stuff. You know, it comes a lot easier once I knew that your life becomes a life of service, not about me anymore.

0:20:16 - (Zeb Miller): And that's when it became easier to become more vulnerable and just. Yeah.

0:20:20 - (Debbie Draybi): So, Zeb, I was just curious around, particularly for our listeners who might be struggling and they're starting to feel those slow leaks. Like, at what point, you know, what could be a good sign for them that it's time to seek help and not feel like they have to deal with this on their own, particularly when they've been suffering in silence and sitting in their head for a long time.

0:20:42 - (Zeb Miller): Sitting in the head for too long is a big signal. If you have something on the back of your mind and it's always been there, you can't get rid of it. You don't know what to do with it 100%. You need to be seeing them sooner rather than later. Because I wouldn't say you're wasting time, but you're spending so much time thinking about something that you can't fix on your own. A lot of the times when I identified a problem that I couldn't fix, it's because I didn't have the skills to do it or I was looking in the wrong places on how to fix it.

0:21:12 - (Zeb Miller): So understanding that when you go into this, a lot of the times what I found is just when you start reflecting on how you're feeling, you start to understand yourself more. All of the answer's already here. Once you verbalize it, you sort of see it and they just kind of help you navigate, you know, how to sort of fix it. So it's not. It's not as daunting as what people think. Last week I talked to a, like, mental health psych for the emergency services.

0:21:36 - (Zeb Miller): Like, it's normalizing. Having these conversations is the key thing that we need to do. Because a lot of the times when you come out of it, you'll just say, why the heck didn't I go and talk to someone a lot sooner on that?

0:21:54 - (Debbie Draybi): Why do you think we've talked a lot in this podcast about stigma and that people do hold back and they might seek help a lot later than they would a physical health issue. What's your reflections on that? What do you think people hold back and don't seek help sooner, particularly when it comes to Mental health, you're scared

0:22:14 - (Zeb Miller): most of the time. You're scared of what you're going to find, you're scared of what the answer is. My advice to that is you just got to be, learn to be fearless because it's just yourself.

0:22:24 - (Eddie Reaiche): Did you find that, did you find, did you have a sense of fear when you thought you'd sit down and talk to someone?

0:22:29 - (Zeb Miller): Definitely, yeah, of course. Like you were saying, like as a young male, you know, mental health, it was maybe weakness, you know, especially in my kind of job, I didn't want to have that stigma of being like, I can't handle it, can't hack it, you know, that's why I told you it was hard lesson. And then once, once you learn the lesson, you realize it's, it's really good for you. Just like, you know, when you go into the gym, you need to go to the gym, just work on those muscles. The same things. Work on your mental health, work on your health in general. Like it's a, make it a, a regular thing to talk about, you know, your mental health and then also seeing a professional, they'll teach you how to do it right, what to look for.

0:23:12 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, we use that example a lot, that it's our mental muscle in the same way that we have physical. Yeah, yeah. It's a beautiful example because, you know, we don't question going to the gym to build strength in our body, but yet we doubt whether we need to talk to someone and get help when it comes to our emotional well being. It's a muscle too. It's just in a very different way.

0:23:34 - (Zeb Miller): You're going to build up mental fortitude. Yeah, life is tough and it doesn't go the way that you want it to go. So being able to adapt all comes down to how mentally strong you are to grow, to change. Because everyone fears that stuff. Everyone fears something different, everyone fears change, everyone fears it. But if you learn to work on yourself, work on your mental fortitude, those things become water off a duck's back. She's like, it's just rolling with the punches because we can't predict what's going to happen.

0:24:09 - (Zeb Miller): And things are always, there's always a curveball. You're never going to know what's going to happen. You don't know what's around that corner. So.

0:24:18 - (Debbie Draybi): And what I'm hearing is this permission not to cope. Because we often have this message, particularly when we start in a profession that we want to excel at. We want to keep pushing ourselves to cope and to carry more but it's taking a pause and realizing that, no, it's normal to not cope with hard things. And that doesn't make you any less good at your job. It just makes you human.

0:24:41 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah. Don't be afraid to be wrong. Don't be afraid to not know something. You're doing a disservice from yourself if you lie. I'd always try to. I'll probably say maybe I'm lucky, potentially. It's a superpower just to see things with a glass half full and having that kind of attitude. Well, you know, maybe I might not know something, but I know that, that I'm always going to keep trying. I'm always going to keep trying to be better.

0:25:04 - (Zeb Miller): I was going to try and keep learning all that other kind of stuff. It just. Once you have that kind of attitude, everything will just kind of fall into place for you because you'll always keep going.

0:25:14 - (Eddie Reaiche): Zeb, we've spoken a lot about a lot of the people that you see when you attend different homes without specifying which cultures they are. Are there times there are some cultures that are more receptive than others, or do you find some more difficult than others?

0:25:31 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, for sure. I think that's when you have to be culturally sensitive to them. And that all comes down to just understanding. So the more you're aware of the area that you service and get yourself into the culture, understand, just don't understand the rules, understand where they're coming from, because then you understand their behavior and then it all kind of makes a lot more sense. So all that stuff, whether it could be a misunderstanding, it's just not enough cultural awareness.

0:26:06 - (Zeb Miller): It's interesting, too. Really is interesting. Diving into other people's cultures and why they do the things they do and they find beautiful things.

0:26:15 - (Debbie Draybi): Do you want to tell us a bit about your cultural background? Because I know you have a Lebanese wife. I did hear that. But what else? Tell us about you and how you navigate culture in your life and what, what that's been like for you.

0:26:28 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, so my background is on Fijian. So I'm Fijian culture and my wife is Lebanese. So those are two interesting cultures. Same, same, but different. Same, same in that. Yeah, Strong community aspect, strong bonding. And probably the same in terms of the Lebanese word is the only thing I can think of. I don't think we have any a word for it in Fijian, but we'll have. We have wedge back. That makes sense.

0:26:58 - (Debbie Draybi): I told my son that word today and he's like, what are you talking about?

0:27:01 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, but you Know that kind of respect, you know, that kind of understanding where you always try and make people feel, you know something when they come and see you, make them feel the togetherness. Like it'd be the same thing with Fijian culture and culture, but then, you know, same. Same in that respect, but also different. Yeah.

0:27:22 - (Debbie Draybi): Wedge Beth is like duty, responsibility on steroids, pretty much. Next level at all costs. Don't compromise it.

0:27:32 - (Zeb Miller): I'd probably say from what, from just what I've seen is, is. Is my culture is probably a little less confrontational. Lebanese culture is confrontational, but in a good way because we come from the

0:27:45 - (Eddie Reaiche): Middle east, we're very passionate. Very passionate.

0:27:49 - (Zeb Miller): But it's good because. Because it's just. It's right there. Whenever there's a problem or anything that they have with something, it's all out there. Which I found fascinating when I first met my wife and her family. And their family's lovely. They're the best. But yeah, I really appreciated that honesty.

0:28:07 - (Debbie Draybi): So having those experience those two cultures quite intimately, how do you think that's helped you in your role, like at work? Has it been useful?

0:28:14 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, Lebanese culture, definitely.

0:28:17 - (Debbie Draybi): Good education, please.

0:28:19 - (Zeb Miller): Good education around culture awareness. But then just understanding that made me aware of how beautiful a culture could be. And then how, if I understood it, I can then deeply understand my patients and then provide that kind of holistic approach. And then that's what got me into learning about Asian culture, learning about all different cultures. Because you, you realize why they, why they may present the way they present or do the things that they do. Because sometimes you might, like, why do they do that? That doesn't make any sense.

0:28:50 - (Zeb Miller): And sometimes things culturally make no sense. If you were talking to someone who'd never been in the culture before, like, why would that. Why would you do that? But then once you understand it, you know, it makes you a better clinician, makes you a better person because you understand people a little bit more. Makes everything a lot easier. When you walk into an environment and Lebanese culture, how are you sorry about your loss? All that kind of stuff, just putting your hand on your chest, that kind of thing. They. And they see that and they, they're like, oh, okay.

0:29:20 - (Zeb Miller): Like it's, it's. Something clicks there. They trust you a little more.

0:29:24 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah, it's incredible. Those gestures and, you know, you speak to them like in a way that makes sense and is respectful.

0:29:32 - (Zeb Miller): Yeah, yeah. Once you understand, isn't it. Yeah. 100%, that would probably be the best word, is it helps you connect a lot quicker when you understand that part

0:29:41 - (Debbie Draybi): of them was, it's been a pleasure getting to know you. You've been, you know, incredible in sharing and being so open with us. Before we wrap up, I wondered, do you have any final messages or anything that you'd like to share about your work or your life that you think would be really useful for our listeners who are. Who might be navigating their own journey, particularly in mental health? You know, what would be useful for them? You know, a nice final message around.

0:30:08 - (Zeb Miller): I'd probably say, like, once. Once you do actually get help and you kind of get over that big hump, you realize that it was worth. Was just worth it. Worth it for yourself and do it for yourself.

0:30:24 - (Eddie Reaiche): I think it's been great. Zip. It really has. Like, just hearing a lot of your experiences, you sharing all these stories with us and sharing how you feel and what got you here.

0:30:35 - (Zeb Miller): It's funny that these conversations I'm having with you is just the same thing I have with patients, like, just talking to them like they're humans, you know, having their honest conversation.

0:30:44 - (Debbie Draybi): Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for being so open and being humanizing the profession, which often, you know, it's difficult when it's such a clinical environment and seeing people as people first, not patients, and it's just such a powerful message. So really appreciate you sharing your experiences with us. And to the young listeners, be a paramedic or don't. What do you say?

0:31:08 - (Zeb Miller): Do medicine.

0:31:10 - (Debbie Draybi): Be a doctor.

0:31:14 - (Zeb Miller): Thanks, Seb. No worries.

0:31:15 - (Debbie Draybi): Thanks, guys. Thanks so much.