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. Stuff that works on station, on the job, and at home.
TL;DR (What this email is about)
Being assaulted, threatened, or abused by someone you were trying to help is one of the most disorienting experiences in our world. The physical part heals. What it leaves behind doesn't always get the same attention.
This week’s idea
Most of us didn't sign up expecting it to be easy.
We knew the hours would be long. We knew we'd see things that most people never will. We accepted that early. It was part of the deal.
What nobody really prepares you for is being hurt by the person you're trying to help.
It happens across every service. The patient who swings at the paramedic putting in the IV. The nurse who gets grabbed in a ward corridor. The corrections officer dealing with an inmate who escalates without warning. The lifeguard who pulls someone from the water and gets punched for it. The police officer spat on during a welfare check.
You don't get a moment to process it. You finish the shift. You write the report if you're asked to. And then you move on because that's what this work requires.
But something quietly shifts.
Maybe it's a split second hesitation that wasn't there before. A wariness in situations that used to feel routine. A low level tension you carry into work that you didn't used to carry. A piece of you that's harder to access than it was before it happened.
Most people don't talk about it. Not because it didn't affect them. Because the message they got afterwards, spoken or unspoken, was that it comes with the territory.
It does come with the territory. That doesn't mean it doesn't leave a mark.
One tool to try this week
Name it as what it was
If you've been assaulted, threatened, or abused on the job and filed it under part of the role and moved on, take sixty seconds this week to name it accurately.
Not in a report. Not to management. Just to yourself.
Write one sentence.
"What happened was ______, and it affected me more than I let on."
You don't have to do anything with it right now. You don't have to talk about it or make it a thing.
But if you're sitting on something that happened and haven't said anything, it's worth considering reporting it. Not because the system always gets it right. It often doesn't. But because every incident that stays unreported makes it easier for it to keep being treated as nothing. And because carrying it completely alone is one of the heaviest ways to carry it.
Even talking to one person you trust, a colleague, a union rep, someone in your corner, is a start.
You just don't have to carry it by yourself.
Why this matters
Workplace violence across frontline and emergency services is chronically underreported. Not because it doesn't happen but because the systems around it consistently send the message that it doesn't count enough to name.
The long term cost of absorbing that message is real. Hypervigilance. Erosion of trust in the work. Burnout. A slow withdrawal from a career you used to believe in and love.
Naming what happened to you accurately doesn't fix the system. But it stops you from internalising the system's dismissal of your experience as your own truth.
What happened to you was not nothing.
That’s it for this week.
Quick question — when something like this happens in your service, what's the culture around it? Talk about it or bury it?
Hit reply and let me know. I read every response.
Take care out there,
Rick
www.codeonesupport.com
Code One Support
