PTSD is an invasion

PTSD is an invasion
by
Chaplain Kathie

Once we understand PTSD comes from an outside force, only comes after traumatic events and why it invades one person instead of others, then there will be absolutely no excuse to allow what has been preventing too many from seeking help.

If we use the term defective, it means there was something wrong the day they were born, but there is nothing "wrong" with them. As a matter of fact, it is what is right(eous) and good within them that opens the door. There is nothing "defective" within them. There is however a time in their lives when they have been "damaged."

When an object is damaged, it is cut, torn, cracked, broken, burned and if a damaged thing is not repaired, it is tossed out with the trash. It is no longer useful. If it is repaired, it is just as useful, but we tend to take greater care of it and cherish it more. When we are talking about someone we love and care about, it is easier for us to understand a thing being damaged than a person.

When I was in school one of our star athletes was hurt during a football game. He got up on the field, continued to play, but it was easy to see he was in a lot of pain. He was in class for the first few days after the injury. He assumed it was just something he would get over and recover from as he limped throughout the day. Then one day he was not in class. The following week, he returned to school with his leg in a cast. He had two broken bones. His injury was something no one could really see with their eyes aside from the fact he was clearly hurting when he limped. Everyone assumed the cause of the pain was something minor and he would simply recover on his own. An x-ray proved otherwise. Then we could see what was there beneath the skin. He was helped to heal when the damage was known. The days of him walking around with a serious wound left him wondering every time he was tackled after that if he would end up hurt again.

We tend to understand a broken bone more easily than we can understand PTSD, but as my classmate was wounded by the force of another football player, PTSD is a wound caused by the force invading from the outside. Traumatic events are not part of normal daily life. They are events no one is ever really prepared for. When the events are part of combat, they are more horrific, happen more often and no one really has a time when the senses are not on guard. They wonder when the next one will happen knowing every second that passes could bring the next bullet or bomb blast when their normal reality is once again shattered by violence.

We talk a lot about terrorists knowing they could look just like everyone else. Terrorism works not by the number of people killed, but by the numbers of witnesses because it puts the thought into our heads it could have been us and the next time we wouldn't see it coming either. While most will look over their own shoulder for a time, that feeling of impending doom wears off as time goes by. For others, that feeling lingers.

Imagine being in Iraq or Afghanistan, Kuwait, Vietnam, Korea or any of the other wars, never knowing when the next strike would come. Your sleep would never be deep. Every sound would wake you up. You would lay there in stillness on alert for the next sound as your body is preparing to spring into action. With the return of quite, you drift back off to sleep but your senses do not rest. This is a reaction brought back with you as you return to your neighborhood. Hypervigilance becomes "normal" because it was normal in the environment you left just as when you arrived in that hellish place, you had to adjust to the facts on the ground in the "normal" realities of war.

It all comes back with you. What you show others, knowingly or not, is much like the limp. They can see you have something going on inside of you, but it is easy to expect you will simply recover and get over it. You know there is something wounded inside of you, but you also expect that there will come a time when the pain eases and you recover back to "normal" never knowing that normal for you is the current reality. You have to be helped to transfer that new normal into something that lets you make peace inside yourself.

Much like a cast protects a broken bone, your mind protects your broken spirit. It builds all kinds of defenses around your emotions attempting to keep more painful invaders from getting in. Anger is allowed to come out but every other emotion must remain behind the wall. That wall gets thicker and thicker with each new attack against your emotions. Family and friends attack because of the way you are suddenly acting, unable to understand your detachment from them. Your anger and mood swings seen as coldness, masks the pain trapped behind the wall. Their reaction to you is another assault against your emotions and it feeds the negative forces. The limp in your soul becomes a prison to the person you always were. You expect "you" will never be seen again and others you are supposed to feel closets to begin to judge what you have become instead of trying to understand why you appear to be wounded.

When you know after trauma comes injury(wound)then it is no longer your fault. There was nothing you could have done to prevent it other than not being there in the first place. Like the football game and the broken leg bones would not have happened had he not been there, PTSD would not invade had you not been in place when a traumatic event came. While you cannot prevent PTSD, you can heal it with help and prevent what can come when you do not receive the facts to protect further injury like a cast, do not receive the understanding of the people close to you so they can support you, help you carry this load and let you lean on them. They do not have to become like the enemy attacking you all over again, but retain the care they had for you all along. When they know you are hurting, they will help but they cannot see what is broken needing healing unless you show them.

You do not have to get into details with them but you should with trained professionals. You can however help them to understand what is going on inside of you as an x-ray shows the break in bones, your words can help them see beneith the surface. They loved you before and cared about you before but they need help to understand why you changed. They need to know it came for you because you were in that place at that time. You were there with the same kind of compassion and courage. All you were is still there. You just need help to find it all again.