It won’t go away but I know how to manage it

This article discusses death and trauma of frontline policing. If you recognise any of the comments or symptoms in yourself, please know there is independent help that understands with Police Care UK.

I suppose I should begin at where I think, looking back, I first saw signs of stress related trauma injuries. It sits firmly in my mind now but at the time I didn’t put too much stock into it, I just accepted it as normal.

I joined the Police at 27. I had completed ten years in the military where my life was pretty cushy. Not much excitement during the cold war, unless you’re speaking of the Friday night NAAFI bop and the weekend bender that regularly followed, especially in Germany!

I remember full well the faces of my intended shift mates when I guested on a late turn in a busy city. I noticed the faces of a lot of my new colleagues were tired; their stare had a distance to it that I couldn’t fathom at the time. I remember telling all my family or old friends who enquired that a lot of my colleagues had a manic disposition and a strange stare.

It was only when I had been there a few months that I found out that most of them had been first responders a few years before at a fire where dozens died. They had all dealt with death and the associated challenges regularly. It came with the job. In those days you could get called to a horrific fatal and as soon as you’d done the horrid “Death message” to the poor family and/or booked the cadaver into the morgue, you could and most have, go straight to another horrible death and do the same over again.

I also remember conversations with others whilst at these events, usually around how it would affect us. We were all fine once you got used to it at the time but little did we know it was slowly eating away at us. I often heard comments about these events being pigeon-holed in our brains and coming back in later life but none of us knew then. With hindsight, it should have been part of the training, how to spot the signs of these things and what to do if we experienced them but it didn’t happen.

In those days I remember quite a few suicides of officers. The narrative was usually around a difficult divorce or similar but I suspect now there were other unresolved mental health issues and a lack of support that contributed to these unfortunate events. I also remembered that some officers left the job, some on ill health and others just left.

People spoke of how they went a bit mad and kept “seeing dead people” as if from the film Sixth Sense. Some officers were sometimes very unlucky and dealt with many deaths in one period; I think the most I heard of was eleven in one month giving the nickname “Dr Death” to the unfortunate officer.

Of course, our organisation tried with debriefing after an event by managers (proven to be worse for recovery now, so I am told) and even at one large-scale fatality we had therapists on scene. None of us wanted to speak to them for fear of being labelled weak.

Help developed much more later on, when we were all at the scene of another very large-scale fatality when they enlisted the help of psychologists who gave us a weekly mental health questionnaire for six months. Of course, we didn’t tell the truth or even fill them in sometimes and they were purely voluntary.

So how did it develop in me?

You’d be surprised with all these events (and believe me when I say that my colleagues and I were present at some of the most horrific multiple fatalities that have occurred in the last 20 years) that I never really, or didn’t want to believe, more likely that my behaviour changed as a result.

It happened slowly, over time; in fact years. I began to lose tolerance easily. It was easy to become defensive rather than trying to calm down a very aggressive customer. I rationalised this with sayings like “tolerance is an expendable resource” but have heard it since from others; I am sure I did not invent the phrase.

My first rest day always became a day where I locked myself away. I did not want to see the world. I wanted to be rid of it. Just for the day.

Any trip into town, where there were a lot of people, became mental agony. My fight or flight response (as I know it now) became fight. But if you think that manifested itself by me being aggressive, you would be wrong; I just became shitty. I could have easily pushed someone out of the way if they got within six feet of me. I had a couple of friends arrested for shoplifting and realise I could have easily done the same myself. When in a queue that was taking its time, I would get extremely anxious and want to just walk out. To fight the urge was all I could do. In fact my first arrest for shoplifting was a guy, looking back who probably had the same issues. He got a caution. He should have walked.

Let’s talk about memories. I just kept getting the unsolicited image of a girl who I picked up who died and the smell (which was distinctive) I could detect at the time. Why this one? I had dealt with at least twenty single fatalities and been at eight major incidents where multiple deaths occurred, in three of them, first at scene. So why her? 

I also had a memory of mobile phones at the scene of one incident where over thirty died. They were scattered around the scene and rang for days, I suspect desperate relatives hoping upon hope that daddy or mummy were not among the dead and would pick up. That one was really haunting and still is.

My attitude changed from bubbly, funny to serious and manic. I developed a hatred to those who in my opinion were lazy, dysfunctional or bullies. I was either completely loyal or an absolute bastard. I wouldn’t care if they met a grisly end. All because I thought they were corrupt in some way (they were not the nicest of colleagues but my reaction was way over the top). I heard of a couple of stories where cops had gone a bit “Postal”. One where a cop drove a car into the barriers at his own station. He was convicted. No support there! 

At one time I stopped speaking to everyone for over a year. I changed the room to cold by walking in. I was angry all the time.

I developed a hyper arousal (as I now understand). I wanted to sit in the right place, facing most people (the “Threat”) and as many exits as I could see. This is very common among emergency service workers and is a symptom (albeit a positive one sometimes) of dealing with incidents where people have died.

All of this happened over years. Thinking back I was in denial. I would not want to even consider I was a victim of this. I just rationalised it in other ways.

It came to a head almost exactly ten years (this figure is the average time it takes to get diagnosed with stress related trauma injury) after the day me and that poor woman mentioned earlier met. I had had an argument at work with management and walked out sick with stress (more in my mind, as a protest at the time). I went to my GP who refused to give me a sick certificate unless I went to counselling; I reluctantly did.

Looking back the trauma counsellor didn’t know what hit him. I am sure he was used to dealing with a member of the public who had had a car crash (bad though that is) but when, upon questioning, I told him of the trauma I had seen he went quiet. It was obvious this was way too much for him. In short I was escalated to the local mental health team and NHS (who are my heroes) and in quick succession I was diagnosed with complex PTSD (complex as it turns out two events within my career contributed to my injury).

The job was awful. HR were uncaring, treated me as a fraud. The new manager they appointed was one I had made it clear before was dysfunctional and he knew it. It was his time for revenge! Luckily, I had enough friends on the inside in this process to forewarn me of what their attitude was. My representative advised it was best I push to get out as I was on a loser and my psychologist said the same. I left after over two decades.

I was bitter for ages and still in some ways I am but I left five years ago. I completed group therapy and nearly one year of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. My Psychologist is still my hero and we often chat to this day. My partner put up with me and still does and needs to be given a medal for the times she has (and still does) puts up with my behaviour; in fact I am sure some anxiety has rubbed off on her.

So how am I now? After nearly five years away, I have the same anxieties when faced with multiple perceived threats. Those threats being lots of people! It is irrational I know. I could be in a small market town where it is busy with crowds and suffer but in terminal one in Heathrow when it is quiet I’ll be fine! To describe the feeling is difficult but imagine you are a soldier in a patrol in a dangerous town where your friends have been killed before and your patrol mate stops to tie his laces. Imagine wanting to run away, get a move on get out of this. Get the mission done and get home. This happens in town when my partner wants to stop to look at shoes. I don’t go shopping much anymore!

So what have I learnt. It is normal to suffer after what we go through. It probably won’t go away for me but at least I know the triggers. You can avoid them but I don’t recommend you completely do so. 

Above all, I see it in some ways as a positive thing as it proves that you have given your all. So, my advice is if you have anxiety or stress related injury then you deserve a break. Don’t hang around in a role if you can, get away, move on. Don’t do trauma or confrontation again. 

Don’t be negative and think it is you being weak because it’s the opposite. You faced your demons and they haven’t won.

You’re here.

A survivor.

Former Serving Officer

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