The Power of Purposeful Pause: How Functional Disconnection and Reconnection Support Public Safety Personnel and Their Families

Public Safety Personnel (PSP)  stand on the front lines of some of life’s most distressing moments. From managing emergencies and witnessing human suffering to working irregular shifts and enduring high-stress  environments, the toll of public safety work can ripple far beyond the job. It can affect mental health, relationships, and home life. But what if a structured approach could help, PSP manage these transitions more smoothly?

Functional Disconnection (FD) and Functional Reconnection (FR) are emerging as practical, evidence-based strategies for reducing the psychological strain associated with the shift from work to home. These tools empower, PSP and their families to protect mental well-being, improve relational functioning, and navigate the often invisible transition zone between duty and domestic life (McElheran & Stelnicki, 2021; McElheran et al., 2024a; Duffy et al., 2024).

What Is Functional Disconnection and Reconnection?

FD and FR are intentional processes that help PSP mentally and emotionally transition between their work and home environments. Rather than abruptly switching gears, often referred to as “flipping the switch”, FD and FR provide structure, language, and strategy around the movement between roles.

• Functional Disconnection refers to the deliberate act of stepping into the work role with clarity, focus, and emotional containment. It's not about detachment or emotional suppression but creating a "mental uniform" that serves and protects the PSP while they are on duty.

• Functional Reconnection is the conscious return to the personal self, home life, and values outside of the work identity. It involves shedding the “work skin,” decompressing, and re-engaging in meaningful ways with family and self (McElheran & Stelnicki, 2021).

When these transitions go unaddressed, the psychological residue of traumatic events, hypervigilance, and emotional suppression can lead to chronic stress, anxiety, compassion fatigue, or even post-traumatic stress injuries (McElheran et al., 2024a).

Why FD/FR Is Essential for PSP and Families

The nature of public safety work often demands vigilance, decisiveness, and emotional control. These traits are essential for safety on the job, but can become barriers to intimacy, vulnerability, and emotional presence at home.

PSP and their partners often report:

• Difficulty relaxing or engaging with family after a shift

• Irritability, withdrawal, or emotional numbing

• Trouble sleeping and/or hypervigilance

• Guilt around missed milestones or emotional absence

These patterns are not failures of character, they are the result of neurobiological and psychological adaptations to trauma and high-stress environments. FD/FR strategies offer a humane, practical, and proactive response (McElheran et al., 2024a).

By using FD/FR tools, responders and their families can:

• Restore balance between personal and professional identity

• Reduce emotional reactivity and improve communication

• Prevent the build-up of unresolved stress

• Enhance family satisfaction and connection

• Build psychological flexibility and resilience

Practical Tools for Functional Disconnection and Reconnection

The FD/FR model offers a five-factor framework that families can begin applying today:

1. Awareness

Self-monitoring is the foundation of FD/FR. This involves recognizing physical, emotional, and mental states at key transition points especially when coming off shift. PSP and family members can begin by simply asking:

• How am I feeling right now?

• What am I noticing in my body? Is my body tense or relaxed?

• Am I mentally present, or still “at work”?

Creating space for this kind of check-in builds emotional literacy and enhances empathy within the family (McElheran et al., 2024a).

2. Naming

Naming gives structure to internal experiences. Using a simple number scale (e.g., 1–10) or color code (green = calm, red = stressed) allows family members to communicate emotional states quickly and without judgment.

For example:

• “I’m coming home at a 7 today—need about 30 minutes before I can chat.”

• “I’m feeling orange—not overwhelmed, but definitely not green.”

This shared language decreases misunderstandings and helps each person communicate capacity and needs effectively (Duffy et al., 2024).

3. Tracking

Over time, families can begin tracking patterns and learning what strategies help or hinder transition. PSP may notice that listening to calming music on the drive home lowers arousal, or that decompressing with physical activity (e.g., a workout or shower) improves re-engagement at home.

Similarly, family members can reflect on their own energy levels or stress states, adjusting expectations and planning rituals of connection accordingly.

4. Ritual

Rituals serve as bridges between disconnection and reconnection. These might include:

• Changing out of uniform immediately after coming home

• Spending 15–30 minutes alone before taking on home responsibilities

• Walking the dog together as a daily decompression activity

• A symbolic object that signals emotional availability (e.g., placing a “Hulk” action figure on the table to signal emotional bandwidth)

The consistency of ritual provides predictability and helps cue the nervous system to shift states.

5. Assessment

Regular reflection helps families fine-tune their FD/FR strategies. What’s working? What’s not? Do the rituals need adjusting as work schedules or family needs change? This dynamic process builds flexibility, trust, and a sense of shared investment in the family’s emotional ecosystem.

A Family Model of Resilience

Importantly, FD/FR is not only for the PSP it is a family-based model. Programs such as the Reconnect-Before-Fragment (RBF) initiative in Canada are showing how FD/FR concepts can be taught to spouses and children, with early data suggesting improvements in family communication, individual well-being, and relational satisfaction.

These approaches recognize that trauma doesn’t only affect the individual involved, the impacts are systemic, and a family can be significantly impacted by a PSPs work. By equipping families with tools to support regulation, communication, and mutual understanding, we are not only protecting the PSP we are protecting the family unit as a whole (Duffy et al., 2024).

Many workplace resilience programs focus exclusively on the individual. While helpful, these can miss the broader relational dynamics at play. Incorporating FD/FR principles into:

• Therapeutic settings (individual, couples, or family therapy)

• Peer support training

• Psychoeducational workshops

• First responder onboarding and wellness programs

…can foster a more robust and sustainable approach to mental health within the public safety sector.

Functional Disconnection and Reconnection are not just techniques they represent a mindset shift. They acknowledge that we cannot expect PSP to seamlessly toggle between trauma and tenderness, command and connection, without the appropriate skills/tools and support.

By building intentional strategies around transition, we validate the very real human cost of public safety work and offer families the tools to stay connected, grounded, and resilient.

PSP give so much of themselves to protect others, let’s make sure we are providing them, and their families, with the strategies they need to protect themselves and each other.

References

Duffy, H., McElheran, M., Stelnicki, A., & Schwartz, K. D. (2024). Functional disconnection and reconnection in public safety personnel families. Journal of Family Theory & Review. https://doi.org/10.1111/jftr.12555

McElheran, M., & Stelnicki, A. M. (2021). Functional disconnection and reconnection: An alternative strategy to stoicism in public safety personnel. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 12(1), 1869399. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2020.1869399

McElheran, M., Annis, F. C., Duffy, H. A., & Chomistek, T. (2024). Strengthening the military stoic tradition: Enhancing resilience in military service members and public safety personnel through functional disconnection and reconnection. Frontiers in Psychology, 15. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1379244