OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #20

Stop calling it weakness. It’s processing load

When calm becomes misleading

One of the running jokes during my policing career was that I apparently turned into a BBC Radio News presenter whenever things became chaotic.

In the middle of a foot chase, vehicle pursuit or some other moment where most people would expect heavy breathing and panic, I would apparently come across as calm, measured and oddly well spoken. I remember one pursuit where I was single-crewed, jumped out of the car, climbed a fence and chased a suspect through the streets. While I was sprinting, sweating and probably questioning several life choices, the radio transmission that came out of me sounded something like:

“The male has decamped from the vehicle and is over the fence, general direction behind the supermarket.”

Apparently, I sounded like I was reading the latest headlines rather than running full speed through the streets.

It became funny, and in some ways it was. But looking back now, it also revealed something important about how I operated. Externally, I could sound calm even when internally I was under intense physical and cognitive pressure. The problem with that is simple. Once people become used to the calm exterior, they often stop asking what is happening underneath it.

That foot chase took longer to get support than it might have done because I sounded in control. In reality, I was gasping for breath, sweating heavily, alone, and trying to manage a fast-moving situation while sounding composed enough to keep everyone else updated.

That became a pattern far beyond foot chases.

The danger of looking fine

Being neurodivergent adds another layer to this, especially in policing, where external presentation carries so much weight. If someone looks calm, sounds calm and continues to perform, the assumption is often that they are coping.

That assumption can be dangerously incomplete.

Over time, looking fine and sounding fine became both a skill and a trap. The mask worked so well that it became difficult for others to believe there was anything happening beneath it. Even when I reached upwards for support, even when I said I was struggling, there was still that external picture people could point to.

I was still doing the job.

I was still turning up.

I still looked fine.

So was that the consequence of successful masking, or was it another example of the institutional “keep calm and carry on” mindset that sits so deeply inside policing? I suspect it was both.

The problem is that when the outside presentation becomes the evidence, the internal experience is easily dismissed.

Asking for help should not become a test

When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, we had already been through a testing time as a family. I had internalised a lot of trauma, failed to process many things properly, made mistakes I had to own, and reached a point where I knew I needed counselling.

One of the screening questions I was asked has stayed with me.

“What makes you think you deserve it over someone else?”

At the time, I remember thinking that a firearms officer saying, “I think I am near breaking point and need some help,” should probably have been enough.

The counselling was eventually arranged, and I am grateful for that. I also know that many people now have much more positive experiences when seeking support, which matters. But I have also heard enough from others to know that this kind of response has not disappeared entirely.

That is the part that stays with me.

When someone finally finds the words to ask for help, the first response should not make them feel as though they need to justify their place in the queue of suffering.

From drinking posters to support networks

When I started in policing in 2005, the signs I remember seeing around wellbeing were mostly about whether you were drinking too much, with perhaps one or two support options mentioned in the background. That probably says a lot about the culture of the time.

Twenty years later, the landscape has changed. There are more support networks, more visible mental health campaigns, more external agencies, more apps, and more open discussion about wellbeing than there ever used to be.

That progress matters.

But I would like to see the same level of awareness and acceptance grow around other forms of invisible diversity too, and yes, I speak particularly about neurodivergence.

Once I owned my labels and stopped denying what I had known my whole life, I could finally see why I had thrived in many of the roles I held. The speed of critical decision-making fitted with the speed of my ADHD brain. The structure of command, tactical advising and firearms decision-making fitted with my autistic need for process, clarity and repeatable models. Somehow, that world had become safe, secure and oddly well matched to how my brain worked.

But the cost came in looking fine, sounding fine and being told I was fine.

Processing load is not weakness

There is a difference between weakness and processing load.

Weakness is often the label people reach for when they do not understand what they are seeing. Someone asks too many questions, challenges too often, reacts strongly to perceived unfairness, struggles to let something go, or keeps returning to an unresolved issue. From the outside, that can look like stubbornness, fragility or difficulty.

From the inside, it can be something entirely different.

It can be a brain trying to resolve inconsistency.

It can be justice sensitivity refusing to accept that something wrong should simply be ignored because it is inconvenient.

It can be the cumulative load of masking, performing, processing trauma, managing social ambiguity and still trying to deliver at a high level.

When people told me that not everything was about neurodiversity, they were right in one sense. Not everything is. But neurodivergence shaped how I experienced the world, how I processed pressure, and how long unresolved things stayed active in my mind.

To ignore that was never neutrality.

It was a refusal to understand the full picture.

The internal does not always match the external

I have seen this repeatedly, both in myself and in others. People can appear calm while internally they are screaming. They can perform well while privately reaching the edge of their capacity. They can still be useful, dependable and articulate while carrying far more than anyone realises.

That is not limited to neurodivergent people. It happens across policing, blue light services and many high-pressure roles.

But for neurodivergent officers and staff, the mismatch between internal and external can be amplified. The mask can be so well practised that it becomes difficult for anyone to imagine what sits underneath it. Worse still, when the person finally explains the cost, that explanation can be treated as inconvenient, exaggerated or misunderstood.

That is why processing load matters.

It gives language to what people often mislabel.

Trying from the outside

Leaving policing did not mean I stopped caring about the impact of these issues. If anything, stepping away gave me more space to see them clearly.

My wife summed it up perfectly when she told me, “You tried to change it from the inside, and you were never going to. Now you can try from the outside.”

That has stayed with me.

This blog is one part of that. The eventual memoir will be another. The talks, the mentoring, the conversations and the continued challenge all come from the same place. I know how difficult it can be for voices on the inside to be heard. I know how easily concerns can be slowed, softened, redirected or buried. I also know there are people still inside those systems trying to do the right thing, often while carrying their own load in silence.

That is why I continue to speak.

Not because I want to attack the job.

Because I still care about the people inside it.

NeuroEdge and The Problem Child

When I wrote NeuroEdge, I was still navigating my life and labels inside policing. At one point I considered rewriting it after leaving, as though the book needed to be adjusted now that I was outside the institution that had shaped so much of my experience.

In the end, I realised it did not need rewriting.

It was never only about the job. It was about self-acceptance, masking, hyperfocus, emotional regulation, creativity, processing and the often messy journey of learning to understand your own mind. It carried the balance it needed because it was written from lived experience across more than one part of my life.

What has evolved is me.

I have become more comfortable with the label that was often thrown at me for not staying grey, for not letting things drop, for being the dog with a bone, for raising concerns, making appropriate challenges and refusing to pretend something was fine when it was not.

I have embraced the next stage of my NeuroEdge.

The Problem Child.

Not because I want to be difficult.

Because sometimes the person labelled difficult is the one still trying to process what everyone else has chosen to ignore.

Mirror moment

If you have spent years calling yourself weak because you feel overwhelmed, perhaps it is worth asking whether weakness was ever the right word.

Maybe your brain has been carrying too much information, too much ambiguity, too much masking and too much unresolved pressure for too long.

Sometimes what looks like weakness from the outside is simply processing load finally becoming visible.