PTSD:Now here this, you're normal!

by
Chaplain Kathie

PTSD is a normal reaction to abnormal events no matter where they happen, when they happen or why they happen and the reason you have PTSD is that you care. How many times have you confused caring about others with lack of courage? Did it take courage to enlist in the military? Did it take courage to risk your life for the sake of someone else? Then why in the hell are you having a problem understanding that you were not wounded by the events you lived through because you're weak, or because you just weren't brave enough or tough enough?

It takes courage to rush into a burning building to save the life of someone else. Do you think firefighters are cowards? Did you think they were on September 11th when they rush into the Twin Towers while everyone else was running away from them? Do you think they would have done what they did if they didn't care about other people? Then how in the hell can you have it in your brain that you're any different? Yes, I'm talking to you!

It takes courage to rush out into the street because there is a kid about to be hit by a car. First you have to care and then you have to have the courage to be able to do it. Yes, courage!

It takes courage to be a police officer facing off with someone with a gun pointed at someone else or at your partner but first you have to care about other people. Why can't you get this?

After you decided to enlist in the military, or were drafted into it in case you're an older veteran, did you also decide that you were only going to watch out for yourself or did you end up watching out for the men you were with too? Do you have a clue how much that requires inside of you to be able to do that?

You can listen to all the "experts" you want but this is what you need to know about being wounded by PTSD and what makes you different. It takes that special quality that allows you to be sensitive to others, care more deeply and have more courage in you along with the rest of it. Courage is doing for others what you would not expect to be done for you. When someone else's life is on the line, your the one rushing in without much regard for yourself. As kids you were probably the one beating up the bully because they picked on someone else. The men and women you served with, all have courage but they don't have what you do. You can feel things more deeply than they can. This is not always a bad thing because it also allowed you to love more deeply and feel joy more deeply. It is that same part of you also making you feel the pain more deeply than the others do. Don't fool yourself into thinking they don't feel anything. No one leaves combat unchanged or untouched.

It takes all kinds of people to make this world balance. There are selfish people thinking more of themselves than others, there are the types with a good balance of self and others and then there is you. You are the one that put others before "you" since the day you were born. No, I don't mean you never cared about yourself. Even people with the most generous hearts have needs like anyone else, but most of the time, they are more caring about others.

I'm really tired of trying to get this into your brains! Yesterday I had a chance to speak to a few police officers that are also veterans. They got it. They understood it and they knew it before the words even left my mouth because some else had already told them the same message. Isn't it time that got it as well? How many more years am I going to read articles like the following before you finally understand that when it comes to PTSD, you're normal but the world is screwed up and things that shouldn't happen do? Wars shouldn't happen. Crime shouldn't happen. Natural disasters shouldn't happen. Accidents shouldn't happen and that's why they're called an accident. Now, you can walk away from all of the things people survive and expect yourself to freeze out your character, but you only end up miserable by changing into a person filled with anger and focusing on the injustice of it all, or you can be true to the person you are inside and use the same courage you always had to heal, then you can put your experience and your courage back to work taking care of other people. We're in for a tsunami of more PTSD wounded needing help and they will need all the help they can get but you have to heal first before you can help anyone.

Stress, suicide: tough wounds for the US Army
1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and record-high suicide rates are haunting American veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, amid a taboo over mental distress.

At the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, psychological help is part and parcel of the care provided to soldiers wounded in combat, according to Colonel John Bradley, chief of the hospital's psychiatric department.

"We don't wait for a declaration of emotional distress or dysfunction but we rather see the patient right from the beginning. We are looking for early signs of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), depression or difficulty coping with their battle injuries," he told AFP.

Insomnia, violent nightmares, high agitation and a constant state of high alert are some of the more common PTSD symptoms, he explained.

"When I came back, initially I would have dreams that I wouldn't remember, things like that. You go through some pretty nasty things," Staff Sergeant Michael Downing, a double amputee and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, said in an interview.

But at Walter Reed, "they help you with PTSD, brain traumatic injuries.... Here, I am talking to a lot of soldiers, people who have been through what you've been through and it kind of helps," he added.
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Stress, suicide: tough wounds for the US Army