Ashlie is a long-time spouse to a law enforcement officer and witnesses first hand how that line of work and PTSD can affect the household. Instead of sitting back and doing nothing, she created LEO Warriors to help others deal with their mental health struggles.
Law enforcement officers face a myriad of challenges every day, they are tasked with enforcing the law, protecting the public, and ensuring that justice is served. However, these duties can take a significant toll on an officer’s mental health. From fatal car accidents, crimes against children, murders, and more… there is a lot to take in. Dealing with these extremes aren’t left at the job and often lead to Post-Traumatic Stress, and that can manifest into problems at home.
Ashlie is no stranger to this.
Her husband, a veteran law enforcement officer, works in very unique, and extremely challenging and specialized federal unit – Internet Crimes Against Children. In such a sensitive unit, Ashlie knew in her heart her husband had to find a coping mechanism.
“It quickly became evident that we naturally developed coping strategies to routinely help him with the pressure release valve that often gets stuck on closed for many first responders,” Ashley said.
The Move to Coaching
Ashley and her husband work as a team to stay active and in a healthy state-of-mind. But that wasn’t enough for her, she wanted to do more. She reevaluated her life completely and made a bold move.
Ashley said, “I sat with my thoughts for several weeks and realized that I needed something different and I wasn’t happy and didn’t feel like I was contributing to something of value, despite managing a pediatric practice for over a decade. I invested a large chunk of cash on myself for the very first time by hiring a life coach. When I tell you that I learned and got more shit done in three months with a coach than I did my entire time in grad school, that’s an understatement.”
She continued, “With a new understanding on how strategies and accountability play a major role in living BIG in life, I knew I wanted to give the same thing to others. I did my training and became an ICF Certified life coach.”
Ashley’s decision to become a coach came with a specialty. She not only wanted to genuinely help others be better versions of themselves, she wanted to hone in on a topic that is near and dear to her, post-traumatic stress, which comes in different forms.
“PTSD is typically a single event that causes symptoms, such as a female being raped or a tragic car accident. C-PTSD is Complex PTSD, which means that you’ve had incident on top of incident happen and one may experience symptoms of this as a byproduct,” Ashley said.
No Judgment Zone
Part of her job as a coach is to ask the hard questions and get the hard answers. It is only when people open up completely that true healing can begin. Her strategy to help people open up about personal difficulties, even tragedies, is to not judge them.
Ashley said, “It turns out that we all need a safe space to unload that is free of judgment, completely undocumented/off the record and less sterile than a typical psychotherapy environment.”
Leaving a successful career behind to become a coach has been an enormous positive decision. She uses every medium possible to reach out to people to let them know she’s there if they need her help. Ashley runs a highly successful Facebook group aimed at the mental health topic for the military and first responder community, is the host of a popular podcast, the Tactical Living Podcast and is the founder of LEO Warriors, LLC.
“Through the clients that I’ve worked with in my coaching practice LEO Warriors, LLC as well as guests who have appeared on my Tactical Living podcast…there has been a common theme of not waiting until it’s too late to understand that you are not what you do for work. This is a hard pill for officers to swallow,” Ashley said.
You can follow her page on Facebook, listen to the Tactical Living Podcast and visit her website, LEO Warriors to learn more about Ashley Walton and her mission to help the military and first responder community.
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