Healing Feelings

Harrowing is the word that is most appropriate for the scene at Paddington station, just a few miles away from me.
For some reason, I haven t felt inclined to watch television footage of the crash; nevertheless, I spent one sleepless night with a melancholy radio report haunting me. When the fire had died down, the sounds of mobile phones ringing plaintively, unanswered, filled the carriages.
It s hard to see why some disasters impact on consciousness, and some don t. Perhaps it s fire that terrifies me; my grandmother died as a result of a fire in her home. The impact of the bomb in Soho still lingers with me, although I have no real connection to it, except by association.
One man I know, a witness to that bomb, has taken to drink to numb the pain, and has become impossible to be around, such is the level of his distress. He s jeopardising his career, because he s taking so much time off, and spends that time propping up a bar, smiling sweetly to anyone who ll listen to his tales of bitter self-lacerating rage, bearing witness to his shame about wanting to survive.
I notice, for the first time, that there s a different tone to the way the accident is being reported. There is of course the normal, and understandable, search for someone to blame; the kneejerk reaction is that it must be someone s fault, and that someone must pay for his sins.
Whether it s the train companies or the company that maintains the signalling or the government, someone has to be the fall-guy. I ve always felt uncomfortable about this aspect of the media; for it implies that life operates according to strict rules of cause-and-effect.
My experience, when anything goes badly wrong, is that usually, it s a sad accumulation of various disparate strands of incompetence or oversight or confusion, working together.
To focus attention on the search for a scapegoat, on whose shoulders the media seek to lay all responsibility because it makes for a better story, is akin to a witch-hunt, and makes my blood run cold.
But the new aspect to this story is that the media are allowing other pieces of information to be included. An inspector of police talks about how two of his men had to be let go home, because they were too distressed by what they saw. Photos in the newspaper are of men sitting on the rail tracks, obviously wiping away tears, comforting each other.
Now this may be simply feeding into my own agenda (but then, how could it otherwise, it s the only one I ve got) but there is something unusual in seeing a responsible British officer of the law conceding without embarrassment or a hint of disdain, that members of his force have feelings.
It s the 90s curse, I can hear some old-school, stiff-upper-lip voices saying; it s not a very British way of doing things. What s society coming to, if we let feelings get the better of our our boys in blue; what namby-pamby pinko ideas have taken hold? They should stick to their posts, it s what they re paid to do. What s next? Soldiers crying off when they see too much blood? It s the end of civilised society as we know it.
About time too, I say. The more we recognise how powerful feelings affect our lives, the better. More American soldiers committed suicide after the Vietnam war than were killed in it. The mysterious Gulf War Syndrome that has afflicted so many people who were involved in that conflict may be put down to organophosphate poisoning; but it also has all the hallmarks of being a stress-related disorder.
Again, the media emphasis has been on seeking a concrete cause, such as a poison, combined with a juicy bit of conspiracy theory to conceal evidence of that poison; but I suspect that the truth is simpler and less complicated. More human, if you like.
Men are slowly, gradually, and almost imperceptibly, admitting that they have feelings. The rot is setting in, but it s at moments of crisis, such as this awful accident at Paddington station, that we begin to see evidence of this shift.
For a few years now, it has been standard practice to report that teams of counsellors are on hand to support the bereaved, and other victims of disasters, both natural and man-made .
The line is drawn clearly, between clearly identifiable victims, and those in the vanguard in the emergency services, who cope daily with such emergencies, who are somehow expected to be made of stronger stuff, whose role is supposed to be one of grit and endurance and stability.
No matter what the emotional distress they may endure, it s part of the job, and they re expected to cope with it.
No more. Perhaps it s because of the welcome presence of women in these emergency forces that things are changing; although, in the main, they still represent a tiny minority of those in the fire and police services. I suspect the truth is that men themselves are changing.
Those policemen who said to their superior officers I can t take any more are brave, in my book. They are declaring that they are not prepared to sacrifice their emotional well-being for any cause; and, in so doing, they are also being responsible, for no-one can do an effective job when they find themselves running on empty.
They are declaring that their feelings are important, that their mental health is something that concerns them. Let someone new in, to take their place; let it be recognised that the job is not the man, and that the old codes of masculinity are being discarded. Let them not be ashamed.
For too long, expressions of feeling, of distress, have been interpreted as weakness in men. If that old standard is changing, then in the middle of this disaster I am finding comfort.
For centuries, men have been at the forefront in emergency situations like this. Whenever a catastrophe happens, it is men who cut away the mangled ironwork to disentangle corpses, it is men who sift through the ashes looking for bones and teeth.
For too long, men have been silent about the devastation that this must cause inside; and who knows what toll this has taken on them and their families, as their pain erupts later, in alcoholism, drug addiction, violence and self-destruction? This silence kills, just as effectively, but over time, and in insidious, indirect, and corrosive ways.
The more honest men are about their feelings, in the macho environments of the emergency services, the more chance there is that, in future, we can be less hasty in assuming that men can take anything that is thrown at them, just because they are men. n