OFF SCRIPT: The Blue Light Blur #7

Humour, bravado, silence: the three acceptable emotions

Humour as the currency of the realm

In policing, humour is the currency of the realm.

It appears in every setting and breeds a dark, often cutting humour that allows people to cope with trauma exposure, stress, and strain. It becomes a shared language. A release valve. A way of signalling that you can handle what you’ve just seen.

Sometimes I look back at moments that were genuinely dangerous and realise how quickly they were turned into jokes.

I remember being clipped by a car while trying to arrest someone recalled to prison. In my head, I thought I looked like a Hollywood hero. In reality, I nearly dislocated my knee and damaged the muscle around my elbow as the vehicle hit me.

The first thing we did wasn’t seek help.

We laughed.

I was mocked for being stupid. I joined in. The humour hid the embarrassment of failing, of not getting the “bad guy”, and it made everything feel manageable again.

But humour also conditions behaviour. It tells everyone that things are fine. That help isn’t needed. That concern would be an overreaction.

When humour disappears

There are moments where humour doesn’t fit.

Delivering a death message.

Finding a body in woodland after days of searching.

In those moments, there is silence.

Those are the jobs that linger.

I’ve shared stories about work with my family for years, but always framed them with humour. Always deflected. Always softened. It wasn’t until just before Christmas, while using up accrued leave ahead of starting a new job, that I told my parents the same stories without the jokes.

I spared them the graphic details. But I told the truth.

The words that followed were simple and unanimous.

“We never knew it was like that. You always made it sound less.”

That was the armour speaking.

Resilience, officially and unofficially

The armour in policing is both physical and mental.

I was once asked, in a wellbeing forum, what resilience meant to me. I asked a follow-up question.

“What kind of resilience?”

As a police officer, you’re expected to have two. One that allows victims and the public to receive a service. And another that, behind closed doors, demands you keep calm and carry on.

I was told I was wrong. That there was only one type of resilience. That there were always avenues to talk.

When I asked how long the speaker had served as a police officer to know so much, the answer was uncomfortable. They hadn’t.

I was later reminded that I should be nicer to guest speakers.

The cost of emotional narrowing

Over time, I can see why my family sometimes described me as cold or detached.

It wasn’t a lack of feeling. It was containment.

You don’t want to infect your life outside the job with what you see inside it. So you become insular. You find comfort in silence or in shared trauma with people who already understand.

But the job doesn’t end when you drive out of the car park.

I was once mowing my lawn when a neighbour demanded I deal with an untaxed car nearby.

“You’re a police officer,” they said. “You’re never off duty.”

That expectation compounds everything.

The immediacy of incidents can be hidden behind rank, role, and duty. But over time, it builds. It lingers. It settles.

What gets rewarded is stoicism. Professionalism. Suppression.

There are support networks. There are avenues to talk. Those things exist, and they matter. But the underlying currency remains the same.

Humour when things are hard.

Bravado when certainty is needed.

Silence when neither will do.

Everything else is quietly edited out.

The question is not whether you can cope.

It’s whether you ever allow yourself to feel what coping has cost.