Touched by an Angel

UPDATE June 23, 2008

Looks like I'm not so dumb after all,,,,but I may be forgetful. I was just doing a search and came across this. Reading it, I'm sure I read it before. I think you will want to read this too.

Symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD symptoms, survivor guilt and trauma caused by bullying, harassment, abuse and abusive life experiences
What is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
How do I recognise the symptoms of PTSD? How do I recover from PTSD?
Updated 4 November 2005
Please link to this page: stress/ptsd.htm

by
Chaplain Kathie

I am not talking about the series that used to be on TV about a well meaning angel coming to earth to help people understand God's love for them. I am talking about being touched by the angel trying to get you to find compassion within yourself enough so that you at least try to understand our veteran with PTSD.

My heart goes out to everyone suffering from this wounded spirit. Police, firefighters and emergency responders end up wounded trying to help others and being willing to risk their lives in order to do it. Regular citizens, just like you and me, end up wounded by PTSD after accidents, crimes and natural disasters yet we cannot understand how others, just like us, can end up with PTSD when they are serving the rest of us.

Soldiers, Marines, Sailors and Airmen, along with National Guardsmen, risk their lives all the time. In times of peace, the men and women in the military prepare to do it as they train to do it. National Guards train to rescue people when natural disasters hit and they train to fight. What no one ever thought about was training them to recover from what was required of them.

When regular citizens are exposed to traumatic events, the mental health community responds immediately. As a Chaplain, I'm trained to respond to all kinds of traumatic events to take care of the responders as well as the victims. Saturday I received further training from Disaster and Extreme Event Preparedness (DEEP) to be even more prepared to help. My training never ends. Why? Why would so much time and funding be invested in responding to what happens here? Because we acknowledge it is necessary to take care of our fellow humans. We need to be asking why it is no one is doing the same when it comes to the men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan or for our veterans.

They are exposed to traumatic events over and over and over again while they are deployed and as the campaigns go on in Iraq as well as Afghanistan, face being redeployed. Some have been on their 5th or more tour of duty. The chain of command seem to be stunned by the increase in PTSD, suicides and attempted suicides. What did they expect out of these humans?

All generations of veterans from every corner of the globe have faced this human wound. This is not some isolated illnesses nor is it simply generational but they have regarded it as unimportant until the last few years. Even now, they are taking the wrong steps to address the traumatic events of combat head on right after they happen, but the rest of us, well, we get help right away.

People like me spend time training on different programs to respond to humans in all walks of life following all kinds of traumatic events. The military however never saw the need to mobilize all the help they can get in helping our troops right after or even helping our veterans heal long after. Looking over their programs now they seem to be more focused on getting them to be tough enough to get thru what they are being sent into. This is all fine and dandy in part but they are not separating the battle training from the healing training. The troops end up getting mixed messages from programs like Battlemind telling them they can prepare to avoid the trauma getting to them.

DEEP training reminded me of the difference. When I hear something like "resilient" it sounds a lot different than the troops will hear the word.

characterized or marked by resilience: as a: capable of withstanding shock without permanent deformation or rupture b: tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

The difference is, I've been trained to respond after the event while they are being trained to participate in the traumatic events. I hear the word and it translates into taking care of the responders and victims as fellow humans. When they hear the word, it translates into shutting down their emotions as humans. I hear the word and know I need to prepare for what I am to face so that I can take care of others. They hear the word and believe they have to be shut off from being human to kill others. Huge difference in how the word translates to these very two different paths.

A Marine in Afghanistan trained as a sniper aims at another sniper, but misses him, striking the child behind him. Can his training shut off the fact of what he just did? A National Guards solider, prepared to save lives, trains as a soldier to kill enemies. As he tosses a grenade into a home where it is believed a terrorist has been targeting the troops, he discovers there were women and children in that home and the terrorist cannot be found among the dead. Can his training shut off what he just did? He just spent most of his life training to save lives as a Guardsman but discovers he just killed a family much like his own back home.

Does the military see why the National Guardsmen and women are presenting with rates as high as 50% for PTSD? Do they really think telling them to become resilient will have them walk away as if things like this didn't just happen? Do they think it will work when they end up seeing someone they were just joking with blown up right in front of them?

Adrenalin can get them through it but it also comes back to bite them in the ass if they do not honor the human inside of them.

Adrenalin

Definition: Also known as epinephrine, adrenalin is a naturally occurring hormone. During the fight-or-flight response, the adrenal gland releases adrenalin into the blood stream, along with other hormones like cortisol, signaling the heart to pump harder, increasing blood pressure, opening airways in the lungs, narrowing blood vessels in the skin and intestine to increase blood flow to major muscle groups, and performing other functions to enable the body to fight or run when encountering a perceived threat.

This is why when a flashback comes, the response of their body is the same as when it happened.

If they do not get the same kind of help other humans get after traumatic events, the body and mind take over to fill in the gaps, often years later. The mind will reinvent the event itself until it is faced head on and acknowledged, treated and healed from. While time moves on and the event takes hold, more damage is done as the body and mind continue to get the person to pay attention to it and take action. While this is going on, other events cut the wounded spirit deeper forcing the body and mind to fight off the added traumatic event. Piled on and piled on, events become too much for the body and mind to attempt to take care of and they crash.

This happens all the time when a veteran is able to stuff all of this in the back of their minds and mask the symptoms with anything and everything to avoid it taking over their lives. Many veterans will spend years, as in the case of Vietnam veterans, stuffing it until the last straw is cast and mild PTSD becomes like a monster inside of them taking over every aspect of their lives.

One veteran reached out to me trying to understand because he had experienced an event in Vietnam he thought he coped with until he went to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington and saw the names of the men fallen on that day. His secondary stressor hit him that hard, that fast and he never saw it coming. Looking back months later he discovered that he was masking the wound inside of him by smoking pot to calm his nerves. Had he received help to heal years before, his mild PTSD would not have become so all consuming he could no longer ignore any of it. He was and still is unable to work, unable to have a healthy relationship, avoids people and has developed a total lack of trust in others.

My husband came home with clear PTSD but had avoided it. My father was a Korean veteran and said "that guy has shell shock" the day he met him. What we didn't know back then because research was just beginning, was that it would get worse. That came with his secondary stressor and my best friend turned into a total stranger the day I miscarried the twins I was carrying.

Another Vietnam vet was working as a DEA agent. Again, he thought he managed to deal with what he went through until one of his brothers was killed in Iraq. All the stressors in between Vietnam and the death of his brother had piled on each other until his body and mind were no longer able to protect him from them.

WWII veterans, Korean veterans, Vietnam veterans, Gulf War veterans, veterans of Bosnia and Somalia are seeking help this many years after because their wounds were not addressed when they happened and other events in their lives took hold. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are seeking help after their umpteenth deployment again because the first one was not addressed. While you can see a pattern here, the military and the VA cannot see it.

Some researchers are just as bad. I keep hoping to find the answer in what they "discover" but only find it is more of the same studies they have been doing all along. Finding the same answers known 30 years ago. They will only find what they are looking for. They cannot understand this. The answer is right in front of their face in what other groups have been doing to address traumatic events in citizens. If the military would take the same approach to responding to traumatic events there wouldn't be this complex traumatic wounding in our veterans or the troops.

The problem is the military has not considered the fact the men and women in their ranks are still humans after all is said and done.

What I've found in all these years, is the men and women most wounded by PTSD, is they were always the type wanting to help others. They enter into the military with the thought of protecting their nation first and killing down on the list of reasons. National Guards, police officers, firefighters, all have this in common. The first thought is to save. They have been touched by the angels and this calling is from their soul to act, enabled with the courage to face whatever comes to save the lives of others. While others are not as emotionally pulled, they can walk away feeling differently than those with the more caring souls. This is what makes them different. Just as some of us are more caring, so are they. Some of us are more selfish, just as they are.

There is a difference between what we participate in and what is thrust upon us. Responders, the military and police officers face a different kind of trauma than firefighters and victims. While firefighters save lives, victims are also not challenged with taking lives either willingly. This adds to what comes next after trauma and it's time to look at them differently than we do others we find it so much easier to accept are wounded by what they go through. They have heard the call of greater angels to act for the sake of others. The military needs to acknowledge this and remember that they are still humans in need of us to act for their sake. The military will not understand this, but you can because they see uniforms and you see other humans.