First responders dedicate their lives to protecting their communities. Their work is intense, unpredictable and regularly exposes them to high-stress environments.

With You is built on the shoulders of these first responders, providing a community where they are free from the stigma of seeking help for mental health issues while providing support for counseling, physical and mental therapies and other holistic treatments.

Founder Allen Cormier knows the psychological toll these workers are experiencing because he’s battling it himself.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, Cormier enlisted in the Marine Corps, seeking to make a positive impact on the world. After serving, he returned to Lake Charles and built a distinguished career in law enforcement, accumulating over a decade of valuable experience.

Cormier said as part of combat training, Marines are taught to “suck it up and suffer in silence.”

“You’re taught from day one to put up with the situation and go,” he said. “That carried over into my first responder career where I just showed up, did my job, shut my mouth, didn’t complain and if there was a problem I was the problem-solver.”

That’s not sustainable — something he discovered five years ago when the eye of Hurricane Laura was hovering over Southwest Louisiana. When the storm hit, Cormier — who was then in his eighth year working with the Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office — was stationed with about 600 inmates at Phelps Correctional Center in DeQuincy.

“There was me and about seven other guys with about 300 of the inmates in an old building we called the garment room,” he said. “It was built in the 1950s, made of cinder blocks and had plexiglass windows.”

Surrounded by 300 emotional men, things started to get “kinda rowdy,” he said. “Fear is kicking in for all of us.”

Cormier said as he stood there, considering how the situation could unfold, he couldn’t help but think about “the last bullet” concept he was taught in the Marines.

“You keep the last bullet for yourself if you’re in combat because you know the last thing you want to do is become a prisoner of war,” he said. “The idea is you fight until you have one bullet left. The last one’s for you. I wasn’t suicidal, but the thought process of what could go wrong was in my head.”

In the weeks following the storm’s passing, Cormier said his body reacted to the stress with a myriad of health issues — including a panic attack.

“It happened at work. I’m sitting in my office, lights off, our medical staff is right across the hallway and I refused to get up and go ask for help,” he said. “Just for some reason, I was so tired, so exhausted and I figured I was worth more dead and if I have a heart attack they’ll come find me in a couple of hours. Life insurance will pay out and my wife and kids will be taken care of.

“That day changed the rest of my life,” he said. “I told my wife about what had happened at Phelps, what I was feeling and she was like, ‘Look, I can’t do this anymore. Either you get some help or we’re going to have to have some serious conversations. I know you’re not the same.’ ”

He agreed to go to physical therapy and mental health counseling; however, in his search for a counselor who specialized in helping first responders he came up empty.

“If I was a rape victim, there were plenty of counselors; if I had family issues, there were plenty of counselors; if I was a vet, there’s plenty of combat experience counselors. But looking for a first responder counselor in the area was just not existent.”

He ultimately met with a local counselor who told him she had never dealt with first responders before but if he “showed her grace, she would show him grace.”

“Our first conversation was, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to tell you because I’m not comfortable in this environment. Here’s my gun, here’s my badge, if I feel you’re going to try to take this from me, I’m out the door. I’d rather go suffer in silence, pay my bills, take care of my family than talk about issues that aren’t going to go anywhere.’ She looked at me and said, ‘I’m not going to take your job from you. I have an idea of what you’re going through — long-term pain and identity. The injury might be gone but the connections between your nerves and your brain are still there.’ ”

Cormier said his connection to his badge and his gun, who he was as a Marine and as a deputy are part of his identity. As he continues his own recovery journey, Cormier said he’s noticing many of his peers feel the same and are struggling, too.

“We don’t talk about it, though we all share the same experiences,” he said. “Shifts go to the same calls together, we see all kinds of crazy stuff together but we don’t talk about what it does to us.”

That was when With You was formed.

“One of my buddies shared with me what had happened to him just back to back to back,” he said. “This is a guy I’ve known through his whole career in law enforcement, who I talk to on a regular basis, and I never noticed that he was struggling. That night, we came up with the realization that if I need help, he needs help, who else in our group needs help?”

Cormier said his goal is to break the stigma of “just shut up and take it.”

“We’re having real conversations about what’s going on behind the scenes and if we’re not mentally prepared and focused we can’t provide the best service for the public,” he said. “If we’re not the best versions of ourselves, we don’t get to go home and be the best versions of ourselves to our families.”

Cormier said With You focuses on mental, physical and spiritual well-being. “We cover the whole person,” he said.

He said the nonprofit has built a network of counselors willing to help first responders and a peer support group that is certified in cognitive behavior therapy.

“Actors put on costumes and they become a character. Well, first responders put on their costume, their uniform, and they tend to become who they need to be in order to survive the shift,” Cormier said. “The problem is when they go home each day, it gets harder and harder to put down that emotional role when you take that uniform off.”

Cormier said With You is providing the help first responders need to become “a better person, which brings better success to their departments, which provides better support for civilians and stone by stone it’s a better environment for us to work in and for the community to grow up in.”

First responders are the backbone of safety for our community, and failing that mission is not an option, Cormier said.

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For more information on With You, visit their Facebook page at WithYouSWLA.