OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #19

Decision paralysis after structure

When decisions have a framework

Without a doubt, I found my feet in the firearms arena. Until you arrive in firearms, the National Decision Model can feel like something that exists more as a poster than a practice. It appears on walls, in training material and in annual refreshers, but for many officers it can remain little more than words in a circle. Present, familiar, but not necessarily lived.

Firearms changed that.

In that world, the NDM became the beating heart of everything. Every tactical decision, every application of command, every movement and every justification returned to that model. We would talk about “re-spinning the wheel”, going back through the model again and again as information changed. It was not a decorative tool. It was the structure that held decision-making together under pressure.

When I trained as an Operational Firearms Commander in 2016, and later as a Tactical Advisor, that structure became even more embedded. There was a formal process, a way of working through complexity without allowing emotion or noise to overwhelm the decision. It was logical, memorable and repeatable. For my neurodivergent brain, it made sense.

It gave me a way to move through uncertainty.

The comfort of justified decisions

People often assume law and policing are black and white, but that was never my experience. There is right, there is wrong, and there is an awful lot of grey between the two. The legal system itself exists in much of that grey, where a person may appear obviously guilty yet the process still has to be tested, challenged and scrutinised. That is not a flaw. It is part of the system.

Inside policing, decisions are rarely left alone. They are reviewed, critiqued, second-guessed, fed back on and examined through the lens of hindsight. That is understandable when the stakes are high, especially in firearms, but it also creates a culture where justification becomes second nature.

You learn to explain everything.

Why this action?

Why now?

Why this tactic?

Why this lesson?

Why this wording?

Why this timing?

Eventually, even ordinary decisions start to feel like they need a rationale attached.

When autonomy feels unfamiliar

One of the strangest things about leaving policing was not losing authority. It was gaining autonomy.

I went from an environment where almost every decision could be scrutinised to one where I was trusted to manage myself. That sounds liberating, and it was, but it was also quietly terrifying.

In policing, I had lived inside a culture where people could worry about claiming mileage in case the wrong code was used, or avoid recording overtime because, after the first half hour to the King, what was another fifteen minutes? I was used to exactness, justification and scrutiny.

Then, in the new world, I encountered flexibility.

I could adjust my start and finish time. I could be trusted to manage my workload. If I stayed a little later, nobody treated a minute of lateness on another day as a moral failure. When I panicked about small timing issues, the raised eyebrows were not critical but confused.

I was being given trust.

And at first, trust felt unfamiliar.

Freedom is not always simple

Freedom sounds easy from the outside. The reality is more complicated, especially when you have spent years inside defined structures. When the rules, ranks and processes fall away, you do not automatically become free. Sometimes you become uncertain.

I had to learn that not every decision needed to be defended in advance. Not every choice needed permission. Not every action required a justification that could withstand a theoretical debrief.

That took time.

The absence of structure created space, but it also created pressure. Space meant choice. Choice meant responsibility. Responsibility meant the possibility of getting it wrong without a framework to lean on.

For a brain used to analysis, that can easily become paralysis.

Creativity returning

Away from the constant justification, something unexpected happened. My writing returned.

Looking back, I should have recognised the warning signs when creativity began to dry up. Writing had always been my escape and my processing tool. It helped me deal with pressure, stress, trauma and the more corrosive effects of institutionalisation. When writing became difficult, something in me was already signalling that I was depleted.

In the final year or so, I spent many evenings in the cellar on the rowing machine, trying to burn off anger and powerlessness because I felt unable to make myself heard. I was exhausted, frustrated and blocked.

Then I left.

During the transition period, I wrote more than 50,000 words, completed a full screenplay and wrote a short screenplay. It felt like a dam had opened. The pressure had not simply eased; it had released.

That told me something important.

My creativity had not disappeared.

It had been buried.

Justice sensitivity and unfinished business

There was still part of me that struggled to let go.

I have always been described, sometimes accurately, as a dog with a bone. When something feels unjust, unresolved or deliberately ignored, I find it difficult to simply walk away. That justice sensitivity did not vanish when I left. If anything, stepping outside gave it a different shape.

There were challenges I had raised that had been ignored, buried or dismissed. There were concerns I had tried to address from the inside that never seemed to move. That still frustrated me.

My wife summed it up perfectly as I folded away my shirt and tunic to be stored in the loft. She reminded me that I had tried to change things from the inside and was never going to win that way. If I wanted to, I could now try to help from the outside.

That stayed with me.

Perhaps that is part of where my passion for neurodivergence, mentoring and supporting officers comes from with The Problem Child. I know the machine is large. I know change can feel thankless. But I also know that outside perspective can sometimes see what the inside has normalised.

Finding a different kind of structure

When it came to my private creativity, I was suddenly free to set my own boundaries, deadlines and expectations. That freedom could easily have become overwhelming, but it also allowed something to thrive that had been constrained for too long.

I now sit here with a film in production, meetings with established filmmakers behind me, and the memory of attending a Royal Garden Party because of the work I have done around neurodivergence awareness.

None of that happened because I abandoned structure altogether.

It happened because I began building a different kind.

One that fitted who I was becoming rather than the role I had outgrown.

Mirror moment

Freedom can feel frightening when you have spent years being told where to stand.

It can feel less like release and more like exposure.

But sometimes decision paralysis is not a lack of courage. It is the mind learning that it no longer needs permission to move.

And that takes time.