Suppressing the urge to openly express emotions while dealing with critical incidents, especially those that involve death, is all part of the job for nurses, doctors, paramedics, rescue and other emergency service personnel.
In the beginning you learn quickly from experienced staff, and it becomes second nature far quicker than you would think for the majority of new comers.
The case for expressive suppression (keeping a stiff upper lip) is that by controlling reactions to emotional events the job at hand can be done more efficiently and effectively. Although this sounds harsh, it’s does help to cope with the high drama of critical incidents.
It does have it drawbacks however. One of them being, that when expressive suppression is compounded by repeated critical incidents, suppressing memoires may become another coping factor.
Being human, emotions can’t always be controlled, especially when confronted by extremely upset next of kin and relatives. Yes, at times it's a hard task not to shed a tear.
At the end of the day when the call comes to return home, putting aside any further regulating of emotions, comes with a great sigh of relief. Unfortunately for some it continues to their detriment and that of the family unit.
The advent of regular counselling has assisted many deal with the hard situations they have faced, especially the younger breed. But, for those that have gone without counselling for the greater part of their working life, it's a hard task for some, who may have bottled things up for decades and fear being moved on as a result of a negative report, to completely open up.
For these members, suppressing memories and pier support had been their only avenue to deal with the countless critical incidents they had attended.
Given time and patience, an experienced counsellor with a wealth of real life experiences will gain their trust; enabling old hands, be they a deeply private person; a poor conversationalist; an old fart set in their ways or a combination of all of the above, the confidence to relive and share past traumatic events without fear or shame.
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