About The Aftershock Project
Understanding how high-risk occupational cultures shape people across the life course.
The Aftershock Project began with a question rather than an answer.
What happens when the adaptations that help people survive one environment continue into another?
For many people working in high-risk occupations—whether military, emergency services, healthcare or other demanding professions—qualities such as vigilance, discipline, emotional containment and rapid decision-making are essential. They save lives, build strong teams and enable people to perform under extraordinary pressure.
But what happens when those same adaptations continue long after the environment has changed?
How do they shape identity, relationships, behaviour, wellbeing and family life?
And how might individuals, families and communities support the process of recalibration without losing the strengths these cultures create?
These are the questions at the heart of The Aftershock Project.
A way of looking, not a set of answers
The ideas explored here are not presented as universal truths or clinical explanations. They are invitations to think differently.
The Aftershock Project draws on lived experience, social anthropology, contemplative practice, nervous system awareness, behavioural science, family and relational perspectives, and engagement with research to explore questions about adaptation, identity and belonging.
Rather than asking, "What's wrong with people?", I'm often more interested in asking:
What adaptations made sense within the environments people lived or served in?
What happens when those environments change?
How do identity and belonging evolve across the life course?
How do families experience these adaptations?
What helps people develop flexibility without losing the strengths they've built?
Why this project exists
This project grew out of lived experience.
I grew up in a British Army family. My father served for twenty-two years as an Ammunition Technician in Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD), including operational service during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Like many military families, ours carried both the pride of service and the quieter, often unseen, challenges that can follow it.
For many years I tried to understand those experiences through my own story.
Over time my curiosity widened.
Rather than asking only what happened within my own family, I became interested in broader questions about adaptation, identity, belonging, transition and the ways occupational cultures shape not only those who serve, but also the people who love them.
The Aftershock Project is the result of that curiosity.
How the work is organised
The project explores these questions through several connected themes:
Awareness & Practice
Exploring awareness, contemplative practice and psychological flexibility.
Identity & Belonging
How occupational cultures shape identity, purpose and a sense of home.
Families & Relationships
How service ripples through relationships, families and everyday life.
Recalibration
Supporting flexibility without losing the strengths developed through service.
Developing questions, reviewing evidence and exploring new directions for future research.
Building conversations, connection and opportunities to learn together.
An evolving body of work
The Aftershock Project is intentionally evolving.
It brings together reflective writing, storytelling, lived experience, professional practice and engagement with research as I continue to develop these ideas and questions. Alongside this work, I am undertaking postgraduate research in mental health and wellbeing, which is helping me develop as a researcher and informing how I approach evidence, enquiry and evaluation.
I don't claim to have all the answers.
I'm interested in asking better questions.
Questions that help us understand how people adapt, how those adaptations may shape lives across generations, and how individuals, families and communities might better support one another through periods of transition and change.