Army tries to train soldiers on how to be mentally, emotionally tough

They will never get it~

Barbara Ehrenreich pointed out that the message the troops are getting is that if they end up with PTSD, it's their fault. This has been my biggest problem with the latest programs the DOD has come out with for this reason alone. It's not that the programs are bad, they just start badly.

The message the soldiers and especially the Marines are getting is they are responsible to "train their brains" like they train their bodies and if they don't then whatever happens is their fault. Whatever the programs have to say after that point, it's too late. The message has already been delivered and they shut off anything else.

When a big tough ex-Marine cries on a Chaplain's shoulder and apologizes because "he's a Marine" we have a huge problem.

The other issue is that they are still misunderstanding what courage and compassion are. They think if they have compassion, they cannot be courageous. Please tell me what good it does to care and have no courage? What good would it do to see a kid in the middle of the street without having the courage to rush out and save her? What good would it do to want to serve in the military, training to do it, being able to accept the fact you could die doing it but have no compassion? You'd be a machine ready to gun down anything that moves and not feel anything. You would also end up being the type of person no one touches in regular life either. There is a type of compassion that requires courage and this type goes into the military, into law enforcement, into fire departments and enter into other jobs where they are emergency responders. Their ability to feel is the basis of why they do what they do but they couldn't do it without courage.

So what the military gets wrong is trying to get them to kill off the best part about them instead of honoring it. They could work with the servicemen and women on that basis and I'm sure they would find they would get a lot more to understand what PTSD is and get them help right off the bat heading off PTSD, but that would be asking too much. After all, it's what the rest of the people in this country get when a traumatic event hits them and crisis teams rush in but that must be just too coddling for the military. Try telling that to some of the police officers and firefighters after the Twin Towers came down they were too soft to not need help. I bet they'd get a good laugh out of that one. Yes, crisis teams went in to help them heal right after the towers fell and as they were digging up the bodies of their buddies from the rubble.

Whenever you read reports about what the military is trying to do, what you see is the suicide and attempted suicide rate go up, not down. You see the divorce rate go up and then you wonder what they really know about PTSD because I have yet to hear a report they have been clued in that PTSD is a wound and strikes the compassionate because they walk away with their own pain and the pain of others. The military should know the root of PTSD if they ever plan on really addressing it instead of trying to kill it. They can heal it if they understand it and they can keep servicemen and women from dropping out when they want to stay in. These men and women can be healed even if they cannot be cured but they can also come out on the other side better than they were before the event itself.

Army trains soldiers on how to be mentally, emotionally tough
By Nancy Montgomery, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, January 3, 2010
A class full of battle-hardened sergeants in combat boots, being taught by a bunch of loafer-clad professors. The subject, more or less: how to be happier.

“It was awkward at first,” said Sgt. 1st Class Michael Bradley, of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany. “The first day, there were people who claimed it was touchy-feely.”

But as the 10 days of master resiliency training continued, those feelings faded, said Bradley, who was among the first group of NCOs to go through the first-of-its kind Army psychological course.

“A lot of people said, ‘I wish they’d had this when I came in the Army,’ ” he said. “‘I’d still be married only one time.’ ’’

The Army’s not in the marriage-counseling business, but it does try to keep soldiers alive — and failed relationships are a significant factor in the record suicide rates in the past several years. Additionally, up to 30 percent of troops are beset with PTSD and depression as soldiers have made repeated trips to war zones.

But social critics, such as Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote The New York Times best-seller “Nickel and Dimed,” say that what Seligman markets in his books and classes is, like positive thinking in general, “snake oil” with numerous downsides.

In her book “Brightsided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America,” Ehrenreich argues that positive thinking and too much optimism lead to disasters like the Iraq war and the financial meltdown. She also says the emphasis on optimism means victims end up being blamed for their own misfortunes: they weren’t positive enough.

“If optimism is the key … and if you can achieve an optimistic outlook through the discipline of positive thinking, then there is no excuse for failure,” she writes. “The flip side of positivity is thus a harsh insistence on personal responsibility: If your business fails or your job is eliminated, it must be because you didn’t try hard enough, didn’t believe firmly enough in the inevitability of your success … to be disappointed, resentful, or downcast is to be a ‘victim’ and a ‘whiner.’ 

read more here

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66991