OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #29

What I would tell my former self

The ridiculous question

As I sit down to write Fit to Carry: The Problem Child, my attempt at a policing memoir, I have been asked by a few people what I would say to the younger version of myself if I could go back.

From a neurodivergent perspective, part of me finds that a ridiculous question.

It would never happen.

Unless an old Doctor appears in a DeLorean, which admittedly would make for an interesting afternoon.

But beneath the impossibility of it sits a deeper question.

Would I tell myself not to do it?

Would I warn myself away from policing, away from the pressure, away from the trauma, away from the identity crisis, away from the final chapter that eventually pushed me out?

Or would I still allow myself that evolution of experiences, knowing they would lead me to where I am now?

That question is not as simple as it first appears.

Because I do not think I would tell myself not to join.

But I would tell him not to carry so much alone.

What he carried

As I start recalling the incidents and events I want to write about in the memoir, I can see how much I carried that I should not have carried.

I also know I am not alone in that.

Across twenty-one years, I saw officers break. I saw people go off sick. I saw people walk away from the job. I saw relationships fracture under the pressure. I knew of people who chose to end their lives.

The weight of the role across policing, and across any blue light service, cannot be underestimated or understated.

There is trauma in the job itself, but there is also the slow accumulation of pressure that becomes so normal people stop naming it. You respond. You cope. You joke. You carry on. You file things away because that is what the next incident, the next shift, the next responsibility seems to demand.

To my younger self, I would say this:

Let others help.

Do not be afraid to talk.

That sounds simple now, but it was not simple then.

Support that arrives too late

When I joined policing in 2005, the support mechanisms looked very different from what they do now.

There are more routes today. More networks. More conversations. More language around wellbeing than there used to be. That progress matters and should not be dismissed.

But even now, there remains a gap between support existing and support being truly accessible, trusted, funded and timely.

Too often, it still feels like too little arrives too late.

There are good initiatives, and there are committed people trying hard to help, but they can be a minority within systems that are stretched, underfunded or unwilling to look too closely at the reasons people need help in the first place.

I experienced that gap myself.

I had spent time supporting colleagues and peers from a neurodivergent perspective on behalf of my organisation. I had given my time, my story, my emotional labour and my visibility. But when I was bruised, battered and broken, when I asked for help from those in positions to provide it, the doors shut.

In some cases, literally.

I was told people did not want to get involved.

That was one of the moments I knew something fundamental had changed. Not just in the organisation, but in how I understood my own value within it.

The support I had offered others did not seem to translate into support when I needed it.

That is a hard lesson to absorb.

Do not fear the outside

I would tell my younger self not to fear the outside world so much.

I knew things were broken long before I left. I stayed swimming in a world of bullying, toxicity, lies and collusion for longer than I should have because leaving felt impossible.

Not practically impossible.

Psychologically impossible.

That is institutionalisation. When a world has become your structure, your language, your identity and your measure of worth, stepping outside it feels less like a career change and more like stepping into nothing.

But it was not nothing.

It was simply unknown.

And unknown is not the same as unsafe.

The world I was in no longer fitted me. Whether that was because I had embraced my neurodivergence, I cannot say with complete certainty. But it was absolutely a factor.

Once I understood myself more honestly, it became much harder to remain inside environments that required so much performance, silence and self-editing.

Disclosure has to be yours

Part of me would love to tell my younger self to be himself sooner.

To embrace his true nature years earlier.

To stop hiding.

To stop performing.

To stop waiting for permission to exist honestly.

But I do not think I would say it like that.

The policing world was not ready any earlier. In many ways, I am not convinced it is fully prepared now for the increasing awareness of neurodivergence inside its ranks. Too much still relies on the goodwill and extra work of individuals rather than proper investment, infrastructure and understanding.

Since leaving, I have seen too many officers and staff working in the neurodivergent space alongside their day duties end up off sick, filing complaints or leaving their organisations altogether.

So no, I would not tell my younger self, or anyone else, to disclose before they are ready.

Disclosure must be yours. On your terms. At your pace.

In the hope of acceptance and support, but with the awareness that this may not always be the outcome.

That is not pessimism.

That is honesty.

There are people who care. I have met some outstanding people who genuinely sought to grow their knowledge and understanding through care and curiosity. Not for performance. Not for career points. Not because they had to. Because they wanted to understand.

Those people matter.

But they are not yet enough on their own.

Forgive the poor choices

The biggest challenge I would put back to my younger self would be forgiveness.

Not of others first.

Of himself.

There were poor choices. There were mistakes. There were moments I handled badly. There were moments where pressure, confusion, masking, trauma or immaturity shaped behaviour I would not choose now.

It is easy to dwell on those moments.

Too easy.

They become anchors of negativity, dragging behind you for years, catching every time you try to move forward. You replay them. Punish yourself. Rehearse the shame. Convince yourself that a mistake is not something you did, but evidence of who you are.

I do not think I allowed myself to learn from those moments as often as I should have.

I punished myself instead.

I would tell him that mistakes can be lessons without becoming life sentences.

That growth does not require permanent self-condemnation.

That owning something does not mean carrying it forever.

Be yourself

The one sentence I think I could have heard much sooner is this:

Be yourself. The world will either accept it or not. At least you will know either way.

I know that sounds easy.

It is not.

It took me twenty-one years in policing to truly understand it, and even then, it came with cost. But when I finally knew it was time to find a new world, that sentence sat beneath the decision.

I needed a world that did not require me to split myself in two.

A world where Gavin Skevington and Tobey Alexander were not competing identities.

A world where one version was not real while the other performed safety.

Now, that world includes a new team, a new working environment, leadership on a film set, characters moving through books and screenplays, networking events, coaching, mentoring, speaking and the ability to design the rooms I choose to enter.

I am no longer forced into a box.

I have designed my own.

Not easy, but honest

Was it easy?

Hell no.

Do I get it right all the time?

Definitely not.

But the world now knows I am both Tobey Alexander and Gavin Skevington.

I do not live dual lives in the way I once did, with one identity feeling more true and the other existing as a performance for safety. There are still contexts. Still boundaries. Still choices about what to share and when. But the split is no longer the same.

That matters.

Because so much of my younger life was spent trying to work out which version of me would be most acceptable in the room.

Now, the question is different.

What room actually deserves the full version?

What I would tell him

I would tell him that he was not broken.

I would tell him that he was exhausted, over-adapted and carrying more than he knew how to name.

I would tell him that the creativity mattered.

That the books were not a distraction.

That the stories were not indulgent.

That the parts of him he kept in the margins would one day become central to the life he was building.

I would tell him that leaving would not be failure.

I would tell him that staying silent would cost more than he realised.

I would tell him that asking for help was not weakness.

I would tell him that not everyone who smiles at you is safe, but not everyone is dangerous either.

I would tell him that some people will understand, some will not, and that he must stop making his existence dependent on convincing the second group.

Most of all, I would tell him to stop waiting for permission from people who benefited from him staying useful but contained.

Mirror moment

You cannot go back and save the former version of yourself.

But you can stop punishing them for surviving with the tools they had at the time.

Maybe the work is not rewriting the past.

Maybe it is learning to speak to that version of yourself with a little more honesty, a little more forgiveness and a little less blame.

If this reflects where you are, NeuroEdge and my mentoring work explore these themes more deeply: self-acceptance, masking, identity, neurodivergence and learning how to stop abandoning the parts of yourself that were always real.