The Slow Normalisation of the Abnormal — and the Unwinding We Don’t Talk About

One of the strangest parts of this job isn’t the big incidents. It’s what happens after.

Not the call itself. Not the adrenaline. But the quiet shift over time where things that once stopped you in your tracks… don’t anymore.

At first, you notice everything. The smell. The scene. The silence afterwards that feels too loud. You go home and it follows you around like an unpaid apprentice you didn’t ask for.

You sit there thinking about it when you should be asleep. You replay parts of it you didn’t ask to keep. You wonder if that’s normal, or if you’re just not built for this.

Then you go back again. And again. And somewhere along the way, something changes. Not all at once. Not in any way you can really pinpoint. Just slowly. The abnormal becomes normal.

What once felt heavy gets filed away with everything else from the week. You eat, you do change of shift, you debrief, you move on. Maybe you even manage to joke about it later in the station kitchen — not because it’s funny, but because that’s how you know you’re still tracking ok. 

When the abnormal becomes your baseline

You’re surrounded by people who see things most humans were never really meant to see on a regular basis. And without meaning to, that becomes your shared baseline. Your reference point.

And eventually, you start to assume that’s how everyone sees the world. That everyone understands what you’ve normalised.

So you say things outside the job that make perfect sense in your head… and are met with looks that suggest you might need a new hobby. Or at the very least, a new way of explaining your weekend. Then you step outside of it properly.

And it hits you.

People don’t speak that language. They don’t carry those images. They don’t measure “bad days” the same way. Their version of a rough shift might involve traffic, slow Wi-Fi, or a cold coffee.

Switching between those two worlds can be harder than you expect. Not because one world is right or wrong. But because you’ve learned to function inside a version of normal that most people will never have to define.

The part we don’t talk about — the unwinding

We spend a lot of time talking about getting into the job. Training, fitness, competencies, pumps, ladders, breathing apparatus. The technical side of doing it safely and well.

We’re taught how to go in.

We’re not really taught how to come out.

Not in the sense of what happens over a career when you slowly accumulate experiences that change your baseline without you noticing.

There’s a kind of unwinding that eventually needs to happen, whether you plan for it or not.

For some, it starts while they’re still in the job — quietly pulling back from things they used to absorb without thinking. For others, it doesn’t really show up until after they’ve left.

When the structure, the crew, and the rhythm disappear, and suddenly there’s space for everything that was being carried in the background. And that space can be uncomfortable. Because for a long time, the job isn’t just what you do — it’s how you process the world.

It gives structure to things that don’t naturally come with structure. It gives language to things most people don’t have words for. It gives you a crew who understand things without needing them explained.

Then one day, that changes.

Retirement. Injury. Leaving the job. Life circumstances. It doesn’t really matter how it ends — the transition is the same in principle.

You go from being surrounded by people who get it without explanation… to a world where most people don’t. And that can be a difficult adjustment. Not because anything is wrong with either world. But because you’ve spent years adapting to one version of normal, and now you’re expected to shift again.

The need for a second transition

There’s a lot of focus on preparing people for the job, but maybe there should be more attention given to the unwinding of it too. Not in a dramatic sense, but in a practical, human one.

What does it look like when someone steps out of a role where intensity, humour, stress, and camaraderie are all tightly woven together? What happens when the reference points no longer match the room you’re in? And how do you adjust when the things you’ve normalised over years start to feel heavy again in a different way?

There’s no single answer.

But it probably starts with acknowledging that leaving the job deserves as much attention as entering it. Because you don’t just leave a role, you leave a way of interpreting the world. And that doesn’t just switch off when your roster does.