Hi Mate,
Each week I share a tool for people like us who do this job, and the families living alongside it. Direct, practical, and nothing you'd find in a corporate wellness handbook.
TL;DR (What this email is about)
Being the reliable one, the person everyone leans on at the station and at home, has a cost that rarely gets acknowledged. This week is about that.
This week’s idea
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that nobody talks about in this job.
It's not the exhaustion from a bad shift or a run of hard jobs. It's the exhaustion that comes from being the person everyone else relies on. The one who stays calm when shit hits the fan. The one who holds the crew together after a rough job. The one who gets called when something goes wrong because you're the person who handles it.
At the station you're the steady one. The experienced operator. The person rookies look to when they don't know what to do.
Then you go home and it starts again.
You're the one managing the household. Keeping things running. Being present for your partner, your kids, your family. Absorbing their stress because you're used to absorbing stress. Holding things together there too because that's what you do.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, nobody is asking how you are.
Not because they don't care. Because you don't look like someone who needs to be asked. You're capable. You're reliable. You handle things. The very qualities that make you good at our job make it easy for the people around you to assume you're fine.
So they do.
And you let them. Because admitting the weight of it feels like a weakness. Because you've spent years being the person who doesn't need support. Because somewhere along the way being capable became an identity and stepping outside that identity feels like a risk.
The problem isn't that you're strong. The problem is that strength without an outlet has a ceiling. And when you hit it, you hit it hard.
One tool to try this week
Say it out loud to one person.
Not a full debrief. Not a vulnerability session. Just one honest sentence to one person you trust.
Something like:
"Mate, I'm carrying a fair bit at the moment."
That's it. You don't have to explain it. You don't have to quantify it. You don't have to have a conversation about it if you don't want to.
You're just breaking the habit of performing fine for everyone around you. One sentence. One person. Once this week.
If there's nobody at the station/workplace you'd say it to, say it to your partner. If not your partner, say it to a mate outside the job. If none of those feel possible right now, write it down and put it somewhere only you will see it.
The point is to stop carrying it completely alone. Even a small crack in the silence changes something.
Why this matters
The people who burn out hardest in this job are rarely the ones who struggled visibly. They're the ones who held it together for everyone else until they couldn't anymore.
Strength is not the problem. Isolated strength is.
One honest sentence to one person isn't weakness. It's maintenance. The same way you'd service equipment before it fails rather than after.
You're allowed to need that too.
That’s it for this week.
Quick question — is there someone in your life you could say that sentence to this week? And what's stopping you?
Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.
Take care out there,
Rick
www.codeonesupport.com
Code One Support
