firefighter's memoir will help other men fighting depression
like most first responders, steve serbic sees tragedy nearly every working day.
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like most first responders, steve serbic sees tragedy nearly every working day.
for a long time, he wasn’t able to acknowledge that it affected him.
the assistant fire chief in surrey b.c. spent years trying to tamp down feelings of despair and depression, but eventually, it all began to overwhelm him.
“i battled sadness every day. i was in a bad place. i was drinking. “at the same time, i thought those who were struggling were weak,” serbic said during a recent interview.
“i couldn’t drink enough to make that sadness go away.”
hard to reconcile that guy with the steve serbic of today, an in-demand public speaker who runs workshops and helps others — students, colleagues, businesses — with mental health resiliency.
serbic is also an author, having just published a book called nthe unbroken: a firefighter’s memoir.
the book is about his childhood and the road to becoming a firefighter, and his own struggle with anxiety and depression.
it’s a great read.
serbic started writing about his childhood as a healing exercise on the advice of a therapist he trusted.
he bares his soul in the unbroken.
serbic had a tough childhood in east vancouver; he was a fighter and a troublemaker and his parents both drank heavily. he writes about having suicidal thoughts before he was even a teenager.
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“i was a 12-year-old boy with no hope. i literally told myself every day, in the mirror, that i was a loser,” he wrote.
but one day, serbic looked up at a passing firetruck and one of the firefighters in the back smiled at him. in
the unbroken, serbic calls the moment an epiphany.
he determined then and there to become a firefighter as an adult.
now, when he talks to classrooms full of adolescents, serbic tells kids, “if you have a vision, put it in your head, whether it’s being a pilot or working for nasa or whatever it is. that idea of being a firefighter never left my head. and i was a kid who was in assisted learning all through grade school. it took me 13 departments and seven years to get hired. i tell kids that.”
suicide shadows serbic’s personal and professional life. firefighters get called to suicides and attempted suicides all the time; closer to home, he’s lost fellow firefighters, his own brother, and the mentor who first helped serbic turn his life around.
“i came close to taking my own life,” said serbic. “you can’t even explain it when you get to that point and men give up on themselves rather than reach out for help. i had help.
“and now i do what those people did for me. i intervene. i am determined to make a difference even to just one person.”
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serbic explained that he rarely uses the words “depression” or “therapy” when he’s counselling first responders “because they often don’t want to hear the word ‘depression.’ men don’t like that word. i don’t talk about therapy either. as soon as you want to talk about therapy, guys want to be stoic.”
instead, he’ll talk about eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (emdr) and other methods that work.
“everybody has the ability to be happy. you have to start the day with a little positivity. there are little things you can do.”
serbic is associated with a group in b.c. called heads up guys, an online resource for men struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. the nonprofit was founded by university of british columbia psychiatry professor john ogrodniczuk — an expert on the hidden epidemic of male suicide in canada.
serbic is donating sales from the unbroken during april and may to heads up guys; he set a goal of $10,000 and thinks he’ll surpass it.
“dr. ogrodniczuk told me, ‘you’re probably raising a million dollars worth of awareness.’”
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