Holding It Together: Why a Classroom Can Feel Like Bomb Disposal (And Why That Comparison Matters)

I said something in a meeting this week that made me wince afterwards. I thought perhaps it was an extreme example, but after some thought, it really isn’t.

We were talking about a teacher who’d held it together with a very challenging class for five straight hours until, inevitably, she snapped. And without thinking, I compared that moment to my dad’s job as a bomb disposal officer.

On the surface, it sounds extreme.

A classroom is not a bomb.

A child melting down is not an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

But here’s the truth that matters more than whether the comparison is socially tidy:

Your nervous system doesn’t speak English. It speaks activation.

Different contexts.

Different stakes.

Same physiology.

The Body Doesn’t Care What the Threat Is Called

When the system senses

— danger,

— overwhelm,

— loss of control,

— scrutiny,

— high stakes (academic or actual life-or-death), or

— long periods of emotional suppression…

…it activates the same neural circuits.

Whether you’re:

• a bomb disposal technician holding steady over a device,

• a teacher containing chaos in a classroom,

• an A&E nurse in a Friday-night rush,

• a social worker in a volatile home,

• or a parent trying to stay calm through yet another meltdown…

…the body’s threat-detection system does not pause to ask:

“Is this socially acceptable to call ‘stress’?”

It simply reacts.

And when we repeatedly ask humans to override their biology, to “hold it together” for too long without release, something happens inside.

Unreleased Activation Becomes Stored Activation

This is where the science comes in.

When the fight/flight system revs up and the body doesn’t get a chance to complete that activation through:

• movement,

• shaking,

• breath,

• voice,

• relational support,

• or rest…

…the energy has nowhere to go.

The body holds it.

Muscles hold it.

Breath holds it.

Behaviour holds it.

The emotional tone of a household holds it.

The next generation often holds it, too.

This isn’t trauma language.

It’s accumulated load.

And accumulated load leaks into classrooms, surgeries, families, marriages, and into the quiet inner corners of ourselves.

High-Stress Professions Know This, So They Build in Decompression

Back to bomb disposal.

In my dad’s day, there was no such thing as decompression.

No breathwork, no nervous-system education, no structured support. What they had was something called “gardening leave” essentially time away from duty between deployments. It wasn’t decompression as we now understand it; it was more like a pause, an empty space where you were expected to “be fine” by the time you came back.

Things are different now. Not perfect, but different.

A bomb-disposal charity, the Felix Fund, now offers wellbeing support to the bomb-disposal community: stress-awareness training, mindfulness courses, peer-support groups, and funded opportunities for three-day residential retreats.

These programmes exist not because people have “gone soft,” but because they’ve become smart. They understand the cost of containment and the importance of giving the body somewhere to put all that held energy.

And it raises a bigger question, one that goes far beyond the military:

If we’ve recognised high-stress environments need decompression, are we offering enough to the people in classrooms, hospitals, social-care settings and emergency services?

Because the physiology is the same.

The accumulation is the same.

And the need for structured, supported coming-down is the same.

Here’s the part that feels important to say:

We shouldn’t reserve structured decompression for people facing literal bombs.

Soldiers need it.

Teachers need it.

Nurses need it.

A&E staff need it.

Parents need it.

Social workers need it.

Senior leaders need it.

Anyone who holds the emotional climate for others needs it.

What We Hold in Our Bodies Matters

The teacher who snapped after five hours didn’t fail.

Her body simply reached capacity.

And if we keep designing systems where people must “hold it together” for impossible stretches, without relief, without relational buffering, without spaces to discharge the residue

…breakdown isn’t a weakness.

It’s an inevitability.

Structured Decompression Requires One More Thing

Vulnerability.

We have to be able to say:

• “I’m full.”

• “That was too much.”

• “I need a break.”

• “I need support.”

• “I need somewhere to put all this energy.”

Not as an admission of failure,

but as an act of responsible nervous-system care.

If we want healthier soldiers, classrooms, hospitals, families, and communities, we need to normalise this kind of honesty.

A Personal Note

And I can’t help wondering:

If my dad had known any of this when he was serving, if he’d been given the language of activation, or taught how to come down from the intensity he lived inside, maybe our family life would have looked different. Maybe he wouldn’t have had to hold so much alone.

And it’s why I care so deeply about this work now.

It’s the heart of The Aftershock Project: turning what was missing into something that might heal.