The "risk mitigation" complex

Xcaliber

Xcaliber

El Chupacabra
This is a word of warning to all pilots as well as a plea for advice.

As pilots we are trained, nay, hardwired to seek out, find, evaluate, and mitigate risk. We look for problems with every situation, trying to find all the ways something could go wrong. Nothing ever catches us off guard and most every problem has a solution before they happen. It's an admirable trait, one that makes us very good at what we do. In everyday life it makes us better organizers, managers, coaches, drivers, etc. For many of us, it's part of our personality.

Let me tell you, in relationships, this is a very bad thing. To "normal" people, you're seen as negative and always putting people down. You come off as having a superiority complex. "I like your idea, but here's where you could run into problems." It's just not something other people do. To you, your helping; to them, you're a dick. I feel like most pilot wives are a bit more used to the idea, but it still grates. Over the last three days, I've been digging myself a hole without even knowing it. Last night it finally imploded on me.

I'm not going to lie, it's hard for me to understand. It's even harder for me to realize when I'm doing it in the moment. By far the hardest part is apologizing for it after it causes problems because I can't see why it's a problem. This has always been an issue socially, but I find that it has become even more so of one recently. How does one flip the switch in social interactions?
 
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This is going to be very personal so I apologize in advance, but maybe you would find it ultimately helpful.

I really don't know.

I have the same thing. I think it's part of the "leadership spirit" where we're used to a constant flow of analysis over situations and regularly finding ourselves running through scenarios in our head like "Well, if we stop at Starbucks right now, we're going to be late for our flight because even though the GPS says 18 minutes, we still have to park, ride the shuttle, get through security and walk to the gate".

So even when you know something isn't going to work because you're the pro at getting from point A to point B at a certain time, you're just going to have to bite your tongue and just be late sometimes, let it fail then recover. A quick "Ok, you're the boss" ("You break it, you own it" in otherwords) is my universal coping mechanism with non-flying friends and family.

My challenge is that I'm a heavily timewise person and one of the few people in my extended family that really did anything. All of the parts of my personality that helped me become who I am are fairly unsavory to a lot of people close to me. Confidence reads as "overconfidence". Timeliness reads as "anal". Frugality reads as "You're the Grinch" and "Drive" reads as "you're not my/their/our boss".

Ultimately, what really helped me is my realization that you just have to give up control sometimes even when you absolutely know it's not going to work. Quite literally you have to often bite your tongue go through the "Oh, you think you're something but I changed your diapers when you were a screaming baby", "You're not the captain HERE", "You're my baby brother, what do you know? (meanwhile I'm 44)" and even those closest to you that take your guidance and experience and throw it out the window with "Well, what I read on on the pilots wives group on Facebook that contradicts that".

How do you deal with that? I wish I had the answer, but I don't.

And it actually gets worse.

The more success you find, the circle of people and the drum beat of "Don't let it go to your head" beats louder and louder. It feels like you can literally launch into space, divert an apocalyptic scale asteroid from impacting Earth thus saving the world but if you didn't shower your third cousin with praise, admiration and money because he got his GED at 19 you're a pompous, unfeeling bastard of a cousin that thinks he's better than everyone else. I am under an obscene amount of pressure to be humble and keep my head down at all times.

The more success you find and the more things you accomplish means that certain forces will work harder and harder to keep you grounded. They have no idea that you might already have inner demons you're dealing with of self-doubt that you had to fight over the years in order to reach 'escape velocity' by having to run faster, sleep less, wake earlier, fight harder and smile wider than the next person in order to achieve your success and beat your own demons down.

I don't know, I've typed too much already. Any of that hit home?
 
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Just like all your other personality traits and quirks-and hers too. The two of you acknowledge that they exist and that they can sometimes be an issue and in love and sacrifice for each other you work through it.

Remember that this attitude is not always a bad thing either. That tingly feeling in the back of your mind when something ain't right has the potential to save you and your SO significant heartache when applied correctly (say to financial decisions) but you also need to recognize when you need to dial it back (say when you're deciding what to do for dinner). And as always in a relationship if stuff goes wrong rather than "I told you so" the two of you work together to get through it and recognize how each others strengths can be used to help prevent a recurrence (is this like relationship CRM?)

As an aside, here's a funny thing about pilots-we think we're special but we're not. Cops, lawyers, shoot even garbage men have personality foibles and quirks and it's not because they're cops or lawyers or garbage men, it's because they're flawed human beings.

Ps. You should also consider the possibility that you're just an •. I don't know you from Bubba but I find that keeping that possibility in mind is always helpful when examining ones attitudes and relationships.
 
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The same is basically true in emergency services. We spend fast-paced days trying to manage the problems other folks present with some urgency. Far less of our time and energy is spent listening and understanding. Empathy, however deeply felt, is always subordinate to mitigation of the immediate problem. The impact is costly both on the home front and personally.

Despite some success of peer/professional programs over the years of my involvement, many of us (self included) never learn well to throw that "emotional switch." We stand together, do what we do, and pay the piper one day. Not much of an answer, I know.

"Many of these things I saw, and some of them I was." -Virgil
 
@Xcaliber - I really get this, as I'm sure do many of us here. Here's the thing that, when internalized, finally helped me mitigate the effect of those tendencies:

Holding my tongue on the smaller problems tends to make me a more effective problem-solver overall.

Because my personal focus is on being the best overall problem solver I can be, this little Jedi mind trick has helped me a lot. :)

@Derg - I'm the only one in my fam to have gone to college etc, too. But I've been incredibly fortunate to have a fam that's cheered me on every step of the way. I'm sorry yours hasn't been as supportive as they should. Crab-bucket is an unfortunately powerful tendency; it's so much easier to bring others down than to elevate oneself.
 
Heh. What you call risk mitigation I've referred to as "gaming contingencies." And I've done this since long before I earned a pilot certificate.

Don't have an answer except that it seems like those of us who do this, should run these things through a filter I like to call "Do I need to say this out loud?" before opening our mouths.

The man who said, "pick your battles" was clearly an aviator.
 
Becoming comfortable with NOT ending up with the best possible outcome to every situation can be a huge hurdle to get over but if you can make it happen, I think you'll find life a lot easier in relationships and pretty much everything else.

I grew up with a mother who was always late. She'd set the clock 5 minutes ahead just so she'd be on time but she'd know it was just a trick so she'd still be late. Then it was 10 minutes then 20. I was dropped off late for school more times than I can count. Late to baseball, soccer etc. It was a huge embarrassment to me. So when I could control the time, I strove to ALWAYS be on time, which normally meant always being 10 minutes early. I'd memorize city maps when traveling (especially internationally, and in the days before google maps) to make sure I could get around without getting lost. I'd plan out EVERYTHING ahead of time. And all of that of course meshed just fine with my job once I started flying.

The issue was, it made me not very fun to be around some times. My ex wife didn't really know how to raise it as an issue and I never realized I was doing it, and in the end (coupled with a whole lot of other stuff that 3 years later I still don't understand), it blew up. So, terrified I was going to suffer through that type of disaster again, I tried to change. And of course, it helped that I was in Hawaii, where being on Island Time is pretty normal and expected.

Somehow I've managed to move in that direction a bit. I'm later (or just in time) to things sometimes and it doesn't bother me too much. I'll not spend hours studying a map before I go someplace new and just wing it once I get there. I won't check out a restaurant's menu online before going and instead, just ask the waiter what is good when I order. It's been a bit of a learning curve and often times, even after 3 years of trying to do this, I have to force myself to let go, but it's slowing working. I got stuck in traffic the other day, while going to work and walked into the cockpit 4 minutes prior to push. Sure, I felt bad that the captain had to set everything up, but I wasn't panicking the whole way to the gate.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just let life happen, but if you can, it will be pretty rewarding.
 
With women- being right isn't important.

With everyone else (socially anyway, work is a different story)- better to be quiet and thought a fool than to speak up and remove any doubt.

I'm still working on both but it's a start.
 
Actually happened today while going on a short road trip weekend vacation with my wife in South Dakota. The vehicle we are driving gets 310 miles to the tank max. I'm driving and we've gone 190 miles since the last fill-up.

Me: "Are we within 100 miles of this place?"
Her: "Yes."
Me: "Oh cool, how close?
Her: "112 miles or so."
Me: "How is that less than 100 miles? Or so? It sounds like I should fill up."
Her: "If you think we need to."

I fill up out of an abundance of caution. 156 miles later we arrive at our destination. Do the math. Sometimes you just gotta choose your battles AND be a few steps ahead or you will end up out of gas in rural South Dakota.
 
I've never had someone explain so well how I feel about controlling my life. It's good to know I'm not completely crazy for trying to have contingencies and safety nets built in but I do agree it might be the undoing of our marriage.
 
To women...Talking is fixing. I go through this with my wife of 30 years a lot. She comes in and starts complaining about something or other. I immediately spring into QRH mode and think.Maintain Aircraft Control, Cancel the Warning, Identify the abnormal, Determine if it's immediate Action or ECAM exception etc etc etc. She says "No you idiot, I just want a hug."

To women; Talking about something is fixing something....Their brains work that way. If they talk about it enough, the thing they are talking about may not change but their attitude about the thing will change because they had a chance to talk about their feelings about the thing.

I think I will try that on my next sim ride. I will explain to the Right Engine how crass and ungrateful and immature it is for blowing up at V1. I hope I win Brownie
points the check airman...
 
Oh my ... Do you know many people well in emergency services?

Generally speaking, we are opinionated, "always right," and know what's best about firefighting, EMS or police work. No other agency or jurisdiction does it quite as well as WE do within our own agency or department. Despite the brotherhood, and being genuinely happy when someone else is successful, nobody does a better job on the knob, or initial search, or size-up (or anything else) than "I" do. We learn proper technique, risk management and, these days, are even offered emotional support and counseling to better cope with the things we see and do.

I can't speak intelligently of police work; of felony arrests, hot pursuit, or serving a high risk warrant, because I've only been involved behind the scenes with those things. I have searched above a fire, though, without a hoseline; done interior fire attack while the fire rolled above our heads on the hoseline crew; breathed for strangers with my lips on theirs, and cleaned their blood from my face.

The strong personalities required to do our daily work are reflected within the challenges of our interpersonal relationships. There certainly ARE outstanding successes and long-term marriages. Unfortunately, many of us contribute to an astounding divorce rate and by the choice of suicide after the years we serve for the benefit of strangers.

Cops, firefighters, EMS workers, and the dispatchers who support them, often find it difficult to move between the reality of the job, and the surreal peace of a family and home where the horrific things we see and do simply play no role and cannot intrude. The line between the two realities we live is hard and inviolable ...

The tension that can bring to a marital relationship is unmeasurable.
 
Bob Ridpath said:
Oh my ... Do you know many people well in emergency services?

Generally speaking, we are opinionated, "always right," and know what's best about firefighting, EMS or police work. No other agency or jurisdiction does it quite as well as WE do within our own agency or department. Despite the brotherhood, and being genuinely happy when someone else is successful, nobody does a better job on the knob, or initial search, or size-up (or anything else) than "I" do. We learn proper technique, risk management and, these days, are even offered emotional support and counseling to better cope with the things we see and do.

I can't speak intelligently of police work; of felony arrests, hot pursuit, or serving a high risk warrant, because I've only been involved behind the scenes with those things. I have searched above a fire, though, without a hoseline; done interior fire attack while the fire rolled above our heads on the hoseline crew; breathed for strangers with my lips on theirs, and cleaned their blood from my face.

The strong personalities required to do our daily work are reflected within the challenges of our interpersonal relationships. There certainly ARE outstanding successes and long-term marriages. Unfortunately, many of us contribute to an astounding divorce rate and by the choice of suicide after the years we serve for the benefit of strangers.

Cops, firefighters, EMS workers, and the dispatchers who support them, often find it difficult to move between the reality of the job, and the surreal peace of a family and home where the horrific things we see and do simply play no role and cannot intrude. The line between the two realities we live is hard and inviolable ...

The tension that can bring to a marital relationship is unmeasurable.
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Well said. I only spent a couple of years as an EMT and it's almost impossible to try and impart the differences between aviation and EMS et al in a meaningful way. I suspect MikeD is probably the only person around here who could take a stab at it with any success.
 
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