PTSD? It's normal to be strange

by
Chaplain Kathie

When fires claimed the lives of over 170 in Australia at last count, the media was reporting on the survivors facing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Recently we've been reading about what's been happening in New Orleans and the survivors of Hurricane Katrina facing everyday with the aftermath long after the cameras and reporters had returned home. We still read about the survivors of 9-11 in New York City and what they've been going through. In cities and towns across America and the rest of the world, local stories focus on survivors of tornadoes, hurricanes, fires, floods, mudslides, mass murders, violent crimes and terrorist attacks. The aftermath of all of these traumatic events is all too often PTSD. To have the events change you is normal considering what you survived and where you came from. The only problem is, the only other people your wound is normal to are other survivors of traumatic events. They are the only people capable of understanding what you're dealing with.

PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events. It's as simple as that. When a town is hit by a tornado, the town right next to it is left untouched. They will never know what it was like to see everything wiped out in a matter of seconds. They will remember the tornado coming into the area and the immediate sense of urgency worrying about it hitting them, but they walk away after with everything they had still there. They do not look over their shoulder every time the same kind of cloud appears in the sky or worry about where the rest of their family is at every moment of the day. They do not obsess about weather reports or weep going shopping to replace the things they lost wondering how they will pay for any of it while they try to rebuild their lives. They cannot understand why you "freak out" every time you see lightning bolts.

When you happen to be a combat veteran you are just as strange as a gorilla in a zoo to the rest of the people passing by. With a population of over 300 million in America, you are a rarity among only 24 million veterans and even less of them are combat veterans. If you happen to have been wounded by what you endured and have PTSD, you are even more rare but it's all normal to others with PTSD and the people that were where you came back from. Among other PTSD veterans, you are normal. If you are standing next to someone that never deployed into combat zones, you may look the same as they do, wear the same uniform, but what is inside of you, your memories and the changes that developed are something they will never fully understand. They will never know where you came from.

You could be back home and having a reunion with the members of your unit, talking about people you knew, events that happened and wonder why it seems they walked away untouched by all of it. They seem to enjoy telling stories about funny events almost as if they can't remember that your buddy lost a limb or how many were shipped back to the states with a flag draped coffin. When you remember them, a tear comes as your heart sinks deeper with the weight of the pain remembering them. If you mention their name, you notice the mood of the veteran you're talking to suddenly changes and they change the subject or end the conversation entirely. It's not that they didn't care but they couldn't care at the same depth you did.

There are some people that put themselves first. It's just the way they are. They are self-centered. They are the kind of people that will somehow always manage to turn any conversation into one focused on them. Then there are the middle kind of person that will care about others as well as themselves but never manage to grasp the emotional tug of someone else's pain. Then there is the type that you are. You are the kind of person heroes are usually made of. Most of you were the type of kid that would find a bird with a broken wing and rushed back to the house to take care of it. If the bird died, you'd hold a funeral for it as if the bird had been a part of your life for years instead of a day.

As a teenager, you had enough courage in you to take on the school bully when he was going after a tiny kid. You always seemed to rush to help someone else while your friends wanted to walk away. Helping was all normal to you but strange to them. Something they may have respected in you but never seemed to manage to understand why you were the way you were.

Being sensitive is a part of you and because of it, because you could feel the pain of someone else, you ended up with all of it wounding your spirit. You took on their pain within you. Over and over again as you saw the traumatic events of combat before your own eyes, each time it dug deeper and deeper inside of you. You still found the courage to do your duty, watch out for your brothers risking their lives and risked your own life for their sake. Later you found it very hard to understand that being courageous and sensitive were all part of what made you, you. You began to doubt if you were tough enough, brave enough or had enough courage to overcome it but that's because you misunderstand exactly what courage is and see being sensitive as a sign of weakness.

Courage is what compels us to set ourselves aside and put others first as humans. Firefighters have it within them to rush into burning buildings to save the life of someone else or even to save the life of a pet dog or cat. Police officers have it within them to be able to face off with a criminal who cares nothing for the life of someone else knowing it could be their moment to die in the line of duty. They have the courage to chase another car, pull them over and walk up to the driver knowing they could pull out a gun and kill them without hesitation. Warriors have that same courage. It gives you the ability to be willing to lay down your own life for the sake of someone else. Some of your brothers or sisters in the military are more self-centered than you are. They seem to have the ability to shrug off what happened while you carry it away with you because you have the ability to feel it all more deeply.

Just as you feel pain more deeply you also had the ability to feel good things more deeply. I tell the story often of my husband. I had watched him dying a slow death, trying to kill off feelings he did not want to feel at the same time he also killed off the feelings that were good. He began to heal with therapy and medication after years of suffering. While PTSD is still in him and the dark days still come along with nightmares and flashbacks, he is able to appreciate good things now as well. He will go out to the deck of our pool and scream for me to come and see the sunset lighting up the sky with spectacular dashes of color. Other people, well they would just look at the same sunset and forget about it without being touched by the wonder of it.

When it comes to walking away from traumatic events, especially in combat, you are normal considering where you came from if you are touched by it, wounded by it within you because you have the ability to feel things more deeply, good as well as bad. You are only strange to people that have never been like you.