PTSD:Tough Talk

by
Chaplain Kathie

TOUGH adjective, -er, -est, adverb, noun, verb
–adjective
strong and durable; not easily broken or cut.
capable of great endurance; sturdy; hardy: tough troops.
not easily influenced, as a person; unyielding;
Slang. remarkably excellent; first-rate; great.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tough

When it comes to PTSD, the tough talk about it. It takes a lot of courage to talk about something very few understand but it helps when you’re talking to others that do. There comes a time in your life when you say that you don’t care what other people say. You know where you were and you know what you lived thru. You finally understand that not many others can claim the same.

Let’s put it this way. We are a nation of over 300,000,000 people. There are less than 24,000,000 veterans and even less combat veterans.

American Veterans By the Numbers
Source: U.S. Census Bureau

When They Served

23.6 million The number of military veterans in the United States in 2007.

Female Vets
1.8 million The number of female veterans in 2007.
16% Percentage of Persian Gulf War veterans in 2007 who were women.

9.3 million The number of veterans age 65 or older in 2007. At the other end of the age spectrum, 1.9 million were younger than 35.

7.9 million Number of Vietnam-era veterans in 2007. Thirty-three percent of all living veterans served during this time (1964-1975). In addition, 5 million served during the Gulf War (representing service from Aug. 2, 1990, to present); 2.9 million in World War II (1941-1945); 3 million in the Korean War (1950-1953); and 6.1 million in peacetime.

358,000 In 2007, number of living veterans who served during both the Vietnam era and in the Gulf War.

Other living veterans in 2007 who served in two or more wars:

315,000 served during both the Korean and Vietnam wars.

69,000 served during three periods: World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam War.

263,000 served in World War II and the Korean War.

Disabilities
6 million Number of veterans with a disability. More than half this number (3.5 million) were 65 and older.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/veteranscensus1.html

Congratulations, you’ve are officially a minority and you would think that the rest of the people in this country would make sure they not only took care of you when you were wounded, but tried really hard to understand you.

After all that is the least they could do. Some want to settle for a magnet on the back of their cars. Most of them are faded since they bought those magnets when the first troops were sent into Afghanistan in 2001. They just never thought about replacing the magnet because the memory of having troops deployed into Iraq and Afghanistan has faded the same way the magnet did. Too many people with too many of their own problems to take on someone else’s I guess.

Some say we’re a nation at war but in reality we are not. We’re not even paying for it. It’s borrowed money that our kids and grandchildren will have to pay for. We don’t buy war bonds. We don’t write letters to congress to make sure the wounded are taken care of and it takes TV shows like the one Dr. Phil just did and MTV to show any kind of interest in what wounded veterans are still going through, not that it’s that big of a news story to any of you. You already knew.

When you think that you were brave enough to enlist, it was inside of you. You were brave enough to train. Brave enough to get on the plane and head into the unknown of Afghanistan and Iraq. You were certainly brave enough to do your duty, no matter how afraid you were deeply inside, you knew the lives of your buddies depended on you holding it all together. You went without food at times, without showers and clean clothes, without beds at times and without much sleep at all, but you still got up and did what you were expected to do. Don’t you see the courage in that? You did your time and came home, but you noticed something was different about you. It was like this invader sneaking in to take over.

Little by little parts of you were changing and you didn’t know how to take control. You couldn’t shoot it. You knew you had to fight it but you just didn’t know how. Then more and more of you came under its control. This time the enemy was Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

When you think of what that name means instead of thinking there is something wrong with you, you begin to understand that it is exactly what the title implies. “Post”, means after. Trauma actually means “wound” in Greek. Stress, well we all know what that means because you deal with stress everyday of your life. The “disorder” part comes from when everything in your life if out of order. Nothing makes sense anymore especially when you are freaking out after a flashback, shaking and sweating from a nightmare that the best Hollywood minds couldn’t have imagined and feeling angry all the time. Once you see that it’s all a normal reaction to abnormal events, you begin to understand there’s nothing wrong with you, but you were wounded. It’s not a mental illness in the way most people think mental illness is. It begins with an outside force that hits you right in your gut and pounds away at you until the chemicals in your brain change. It’s playing a movie over and over again with the least bit of influence from things that remind you of horror.

I really think that anyone living through the kinds of traumatic events created by combat saying they were not touched by it, are either lying or never really felt anything before. Very few can walk away from combat the same way they were before it. Most of the people you know in your civilian life can’t do it either. Events become a part of the person no matter how much they try to deny it.

So, there you are, sitting in your chair, wondering why no one in your family wants to talk to you and why you don’t want to talk to them. You wonder why everything your wife says bothers you and why your kids try to stay away from you, thinking that in a way, you’re glad they do. You wonder why there are some days when you want to be around them and you can’t understand why they seem so angry at you because you forgot about what happened the day before and the day before that. It all becomes a blur.

But with all of this, you think that if you tell someone what’s going on with you, they will think you’re crazy. What is happening to you, to the people you love and your relationship with them is passed off with “I’ll make it up to them” or “I’ll snap out of this and everything will be wonderful” but you know that is not true. You can see the damage being done. Some days reality sinks and you wonder why they even bother with you at all. You ask yourself if you would bother with someone like you.

Then the day comes when you’ve had enough of excusing it all away. Common sense takes over. You understand that it all has to do with where you were and what you saw. All the flashbacks are about being deployed. All the nightmares are about being in danger and seeing your friends in danger. None of it has anything to do with the way you were before the trauma. It’s all tied into being there! Eureka! It’s not you! It’s trauma.

Being wounded by a bullet is taken as some kind of badge of honor, but being wounded by PTSD is all about being where you were and what you lived through. You actually have strong emotions and feel for other people, stronger than others that could “come home normal.” You felt things more deeply than they did and there is nothing weak about that at all. While this emotional strength enabled you to feel life more deeply, it also allowed you to feel tragedy more deeply.

When PTSD takes over, the need to trap out those bad feelings ends up having your own mind build a wall around your soul. It builds it brick by brick until the pain is trapped behind it and good feelings are prevented from entering. You self medicate so you don’t have to feel for as long as you can and drink too much or being to use drugs. You drive too fast. Too often you also drive while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Pretending the drug of choice is a shield to protect you from being you, you put other people’s lives in danger along with your own.

It’s all falling apart until a friend gives you the support you need to see the truth. You actually managed somehow to express what is going on with you and they actually listened. What you do not notice is in that exact moment, PTSD stopped getting worse. As soon as you begin to talk about it honestly, the wall PTSD built beings to have bricks removed one by one. As they come down, all the emotions trapped behind the wall begin to come out. You begin to feel again. You cry more often. It’s the awakening of emotions that have been in a coma.

You know that as you seek help, there will be people supporting you but there will also be people judging you. The more people you meet with the same wound you have, the less of a punch the others are able to hit you with. You understand that the doubters are the ones with the problem because the symptoms of PTSD have been documented since the beginning of time and it’s only human to be changed by traumatic events. It only means you are thinking, feeling human and not a weak one.

As you found strength in numbers as part of the unit you were with while deployed, you also find the same strength in numbers understanding that there are a lot of “you” living with PTSD. As a matter of fact, since PTSD is a human wounding caused by trauma, there are over 7 million other Americans with this wound. This is not even beginning to count the numbers worldwide.

So, you can see, you are not so odd at all. When you look at other veterans from other generations, you notice how similar they are to you. Talk to a Vietnam veteran and you’ll hear the same things happened to them. Read reports about wars of the past and you know that even though technology has changed, being human has not.

While generations before Vietnam returned in silent suffering, the Vietnam veterans turned to each other. The war stories were replaced with the war stories of what was being fought inside of them. They said it was because they served the nation. They said they should be treated and compensated for this wounding. They used the courage they had to fight to get it done. They are the reason we know as much as we do about PTSD and why the VA is paying for the lost incomes because you can no longer work and because your lives have been changed.

If you think about all the combat veterans you’ve met in your life, none of them appear to be anything but tuff. Most of them would go back if asked to. Most of them also turn around and fight for other veterans. None of them walked away from their duty. They did their duty for as long as they were able to. Then, out of danger from the enemy, back home, the enemy that hitched a ride inside their skin attacked them. They sought treatment when most of the country was telling them they were crazy because they knew better. They knew what they lived through and what they were living with. They were not about to let idiots try to stop them from healing. They knew there was no way possible a civilian could ever understand what it was like for them.

Then a miracle happened. We began to see bumper stickers and hats with the words “Proud Vietnam Vet” and we were reminded they have no shame in them because their service was honorable. They served when asked to step up or were drafted when their number came up. Once there, nothing else mattered than doing their duty, watching the backs of their brothers and facing the enemy they were sent to fight. They didn’t get to decide what nation they would go to, or who they would try to kill. They were told by their commanders and once there, they knew the chosen enemy was just as determined to kill them. That’s what happens in war and has happened since the beginning of time. Someone in charge says they need to fight someone on the other side and bingo you have a war with humans against humans.

The Vietnam veterans understood this. Because they did, the rest of the country understood a lot more about them than they ever would have discovered on their own. In turn, they understand a lot more about you.

When you realize within the detached population there are thousands of people involved and stepping up to help, you know you do matter. Stop looking at the people without a clue and start to look at the people taking an active interest in you. The others will not support you but they will. The others don’t care but they do. They see the courage you had within you the day you were born and they appreciate the fact you used it for the greater good of the nation. Supporting you means far more than a faded bumper sticker while ignorant of the fact what the really is supposed to mean. Supporting you should always begin with respecting you as a member of the finest minority this nation has ever seen. The courage of your character is still there and you show it when you stand up and say you need help no matter what others may think.