Good stress and toxic stress & Trains versus cars

How do you manage stress?

There is good stress and toxic stress. This post will try to get across my point on how a recent incident created a different level of stress, it was good stress.

As I have stated in the past, my job is to keep people off of the train tracks and to keep trains on them. Quite a simplistic view, the official job title is a little grander but I’ll just keep it simple in this case. One day last week I was working nights, when early in the shift I get a radio call stating that there had been a train versus car incident at a road crossing in the region. Stress levels in this incident hit 100% in a micro second as you just don’t know what you are about to witness. I’m a good 20 minutes away and all of a sudden my phones, my radio and emails are now going into meltdown as I am now being supplied with a flood of information as well as the world and his wife trying to make contact with me. I’m not allowed to answer calls whilst driving, it’s against company policy, and if I was to answer a call my Job would be in jeopardy, even more stress has now taken a perch on my already burdened shoulder’s. A quick call, whilst in a lay-by with the engine off, I confirm my ETA to the emergency services and inform them I cannot answer further calls until I am on site, I confirm that an emergency block of all lines has been implemented and that they can access the area, cautiously.

Arriving on site, I’m met with a scene of numerous flashing emergency lights and emergency workers moving all over the place and as soon as I’m out of the door I have a queue of people waiting for a piece of me, I can’t see the car, the fire officer tells me it is a quarter of a mile down the line, I ask the welfare of the driver and am told she has gotten out ok and is sitting just to the side of me. A collective sigh of relief is given that no one has lost their life. This lady I’m sure, is very aware of just how lucky she has been this evening.

My first calls are to the signaller ensuring I have a full official block of all lines to ensure the rescue effort can begin, when this is in place, the work can really begin in earnest.

Now I go back to the subject of this post, how do you handle stress? Stress takes many forms, there is that stress that we just let build up inside of us, sometimes overwhelming you to such an extent that you do not want to even leave the house, this is toxic stress, it’s probably the hardest to understand just because we don’t know how it has built to this extent in the first place. The other stress is the immediate stress that comes when an incident is put upon you that requires your total attention. Now I have been trained throughout my career to deal with this sort of incident and I like to think I can handle it considerably well, just reading the feedback from last weeks incident that I have received confirms that for me.

However the first example of stress, the toxic one, that I have highlighted above, I have had no training with and I suffer with that immensely, as do many other people in this big old world. How do I handle that? To be honest I don’t handle it very well, I struggle to be honest, it gets to me, it incapacitates me at times and it’s where my hobbies can sometimes help, but not always.

I have always believed in the old adage of work to live, not live to work and have always tried to separate my work life from my home life. I have been very successful with that however, I sometimes have to resort to the way I handle inherited stress as above, into the way I handle the overwhelming every day toxic stresses of life. Therefore there is some bleed of my work life coming into my private life, I’m aware of it, and it’s probably just me resorting to a way of handling stress that I’m more familiar with and that I know truly works.

I’m in my 60’s now, I think I handle the poisonous stress better than I did, but it is still there and it is always a bane to me. I’ve tried many ways and techniques of eradicating it, but though some methods show short time gains, they only last a short time and the old black dog creeps back into my life again and the age old need to chase it away starts all over again. I am very fortunate that I have a loving wife and family who know when I am in a bad place, they are sometimes all I need to chase the stress demons away, and for that I am very lucky. I know not everyone has that support and I am so appreciative of it.

Back to the incident.

Allegedly the lady was listening to her Sat Nav that told her to take a sharp right that unfortunately took her straight onto the train lines. No sooner had she realised her mistake and put that car into reverse she had noticed that the barriers had lowered and that a train was approaching her at speed. She was able to exit the car to safety just as an empty stone freight train weighing in at 500 tons hit her car and took it a quarter of a mile down the track in emergency braking mode.

The outcome was good. No one was injured apart from some serious shock I’d guess, and we were able to get the lines back open for services in the early hours of the following morning. It took a big team of personnel, a lot of stress to get completed but it was what I call good stress.

If only toxic stress was as easy to eradicate.

I wish you all well, stay safe. And don’t follow Sat Nav instructions religiously.