This is a little-known facet of the men and women of fire. That of discomfort, anxieties, and flaws. While the 130th congress of firefighters takes place until this Saturday in Mâcon (Saône-et-Loire), a book has been talked about for several weeks in the profession.
That of Matthieu Josse, a 40-year-old Nazairian, who published at the beginning of September Saving without dying: the hidden side of firefighters (ed. of the Green and White Boat). He diverts the famous motto to speak without taboo about his traumas after twenty years of practice as a professional firefighter.
After a particularly grueling rescue operation involving two electrocuted teenagers, this son of a firefighter and father of two children broke down morally. After several months of sick leave and a year of part-time therapeutic work, he has just fully resumed his activity. Interview.
Firefighters face tragedies every day and yet, “emotional work” has little place, according to you. How did you realize this paradox?
As a firefighter, you absorb things thinking it won’t come out. At worst, we think about an event for a night or two but then it passes, we lock it deep inside us… Except that there, after this famous intervention, I felt that it was not normal, that it was There would be no bandage big enough to stop this bleeding. I started therapy, and a whole bunch of questions and memories came to me, nightmares, thoughts…
I then understood that for twenty years, I had accumulated too many emotions without having taken care to empty this backpack from time to time. I was psychologically devastated, with all the symptoms of post-traumatic stress, a phenomenon that can also occur after chronic exposure to stress. I was never told about it when I joined as a firefighter.
Your awareness comes after this terrible accident on a railway site in 2022. You find yourself face to face with a teenager, seriously burned, who ultimately did not survive…
In addition to the young age of the victim, it was the feeling of helplessness that increased my suffering. The psychologist told me afterwards that being present and holding a hand helps. But as a firefighter, we are used to action and making gestures. At that moment, I couldn’t do anything. It’s a horrible emotion to experience which clearly amplified my discomfort. It also reminded me of the intervention of the fire of rue d’Orléans in Rennesseventeen years later [un dramatique incendie dans lequel trois jeunes gens étaient décédés]where the feeling of helplessness was ultimately very powerful.
With colleagues, we sometimes talk about the toughest interventions, but we never go into depth. I’m not going to tell them that I have intrusive thoughts, that I no longer listen to my wife at home because I’m elsewhere. And at home it’s the same, you want to throw everything to your other half, but you also want to save them.
With your book, do you hope for better consideration of mental health among firefighters?
I believe I wrote it at the right time because it is a subject that is emerging, but which still lacks a lot of data or studies. The big gap is that at no time are we taught to coordinate our private life and our life as first aiders. At 6 p.m., we will be called for a child who has choked and at 7:15 p.m., we will find our family, without transition.
The “stress management” aspect is still too little developed. There are certainly medico-psychological help cells but there is a personal journey for the firefighter to take which is not yet present, a bit like among caregivers. You have to admit that you’re not doing well, but in this somewhat macho environment, where you’re not allowed to show any flaws and where other people’s views are important, it’s sometimes difficult…
Recently, the tools have evolved, for example with this little tab that you can check after each intervention report, in order to indicate if you have not had a good experience.
Beyond your personal testimony, your book is also a critique of this “hypermasculine” environment. How was it perceived by your peers?
I was quite apprehensive when I was writing, knowing if I was going to live up to it. And in fact, there is a really unexpected impact, whether among colleagues or in the hierarchy. I receive “thanks” every day from firefighters who need to shed the weight of this superhero costume, to also feel like men, with their humanity.
Others ask themselves, like me, the famous question of the distance to put. Like this somewhat lost woman who wrote to me: “We are asked to be empathetic but not to fall into sympathy, to understand emotions and at the same time not to put ourselves in the place of the victims, to keep our vitality while receiving their discomfort…” It’s very complicated.
In short, I’m not a psychologist but everyone talks to me. Some tell me that they were hesitant to go for a consultation and that after reading the book, they will do so.