As a former CIA military analyst, Cindy Otis has faced some incredibly difficult situations.

"For most of my career as a CIA military analyst and manager, I was around negative or disturbing content," Otis writes in an email. "It was my job to look at security issues — such as political instability, war, and terrorism — in foreign countries and help senior U.S. government officials think through what they could do about them. It was important in my career to find ways of coping with the deluge of information so that I could be useful to the federal government while still maintaining my humanity."

Photo courtesy of Cindy Otis.