News

Guest Blogger Inspector Ben Dimmock

Everywhere you look in policing, you hear the word resilience.

We talk about building resilient officers.

Resilient staff.

Resilient teams.

Resilient leaders.

 

And on the surface, that sounds positive.

Because policing does require resilience. It always will.

This job asks people to run towards danger, absorb trauma, manage conflict, carry responsibility and then somehow go home and function normally afterwards.

But the more time I spend working as a Force Wellbeing Lead, the more I find myself questioning whether we’ve unintentionally turned resilience into something unhealthy.

Because too often, when policing says “be resilient”, what people actually hear is:

 

Keep going.

Don’t let it affect you.

Push through.

Find a way to cope.

And if we’re honest, that isn’t resilience.

That’s survival.

 

The problem isn’t weakness

I meet officers and staff every single week who have coped with things most people will never see in their lifetime.

Fatal collisions.

Child abuse investigations.

Sudden deaths.

Violence.

Suicides.

Domestic abuse.

Traumatic incidents involving children.

The constant pressure of demand, scrutiny and responsibility.

 

These are not weak people.

 

In fact, one of the biggest problems in policing is often the opposite.

People are too strong for too long.

They suppress things.

Minimise things.

Normalise things.

They carry incident after incident without ever really processing any of it because the culture has taught them that “good cops cope”.

 

Until eventually something gives.

Not because they lacked resilience.

But because no human being can absorb endless stress and trauma indefinitely without consequence.

 

We’ve confused endurance with resilience

There’s a real difference between resilience and endurance.

Endurance is surviving the shift.

Resilience is recovering afterwards.

Endurance is functioning while exhausted.

Resilience is having the space, support and safety to actually process what the job is doing to you.

Endurance says:

“Just get on with it.”

Real resilience says:

“You matter too.”

That distinction matters because policing has historically rewarded endurance far more than recovery.

We praise the officer who never goes sick.

The supervisor who never stops.

The investigator who keeps carrying impossible workloads.

The response cop who finishes late every day without complaint.

But we rarely stop and ask:

What is this costing them personally?

 

The system matters

One thing I’ve learned through wellbeing work is this:

You cannot train individuals to endlessly withstand unhealthy environments.

At some point, organisational responsibility has to enter the conversation.

Because resilience is not built purely through mindset, breathing exercises or wellbeing apps.

 

It is shaped by culture.

 

By leadership.

By psychological safety.

By supervision.

By workload.

By whether people feel trusted.

By whether they feel able to speak honestly without fear of judgement.

If someone works in an environment where they are constantly overwhelmed, unsupported and emotionally exhausted, eventually no amount of “personal resilience” training will compensate for that.

And I think policing is slowly starting to realise this.

 

Recovery is not weakness

One of the biggest cultural shifts we still need in policing is understanding that recovery is not the opposite of strength.

It is part of strength.

Sleep matters.

Rest matters.

Debriefing matters.

Connection matters.

Good supervision matters.

Time away mentally matters.

Even small things matter more than we realise:

 

A sergeant checking in properly after a difficult job.

A colleague noticing someone is quieter than usual.

Creating spaces where people can speak honestly without immediately feeling judged or fixed.

These moments sound small, but culture is built in small moments.

Not slogans.

Not posters.

Not one-off campaigns.

 

We need to stop romanticising struggle

There’s still a dangerous badge of honour in policing around burnout.

People wear exhaustion like proof of commitment.

But being permanently drained is not evidence of dedication.

And surviving unhealthy pressure should not be mistaken for success.

The truth is, many officers and staff are incredibly resilient already.

In fact, they’ve been resilient for years.

The better question is:

Why are we asking them to absorb so much for so long without enough recovery in place around them?

Because eventually resilience without recovery becomes harm.

 

The future of wellbeing in policing

I genuinely believe policing is improving.

Conversations around trauma, burnout, psychological safety and wellbeing are far more open than they were even a few years ago. More leaders are engaging. More officers are speaking honestly. More forces are trying new approaches.

That matters.

But if we want wellbeing to truly evolve, we have to move beyond simply teaching people to cope better.

We have to look at the conditions we are asking people to operate within in the first place.

For me, that’s the real shift.

Stop asking:

“How do we make people tougher?”

Start asking:

“How do we stop the job taking so much from people in the first place?”

Because if we get that right, maybe policing won’t need to rely so heavily on resilience just to survive.

Inspector Ben Dimmock

Bedfordshire Police Wellbeing Lead