With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them

With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them
by
Chaplain Kathie

The Haitians could have had a better chance of recovering from the earthquake had there been relief ready for them. This was impossible considering how far spread the destruction was. Many of them found themselves being helped by total strangers in their time of need. The aid given offered hope, showed them they matter to someone and they were not alone. For some, they encountered selfish people and they will need more help to recover from this natural disaster because of what people did following it.

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With Katrina, the trauma was compounded by what people did and did not do as they waited for help, for medical care, food, water and shelter. Some had someone there to help them and this offered the restoration of hope, belief that they mattered as the kindness of strangers reached out to them. For other survivors, they had to survive the aftermath compounded by neglect.

When you look at your own life, you will find many times of trouble and grief related to traumatic events. A car accident will leave you more nervous driving as you are not able to trust other drivers. While this may ease in time, there is always that memory in your mind. The next time you see another accident, you remember your own.

Surviving a natural disaster is easier to recover from until the next time a tornado, hurricane, storm or earthquake comes. It is harder to recover from if the help you need is delayed in coming and even harder if the actions of other people further place your life in danger.

With September 11th, that was an event other people did. We all think twice when flying about the other people on the plane. Crimes will end up having us constantly on guard until the sense of security returns again. Fires have us worrying about it happening again as we become obsessive with smoke alarms, fire extinguishers and our own personal safety especially if someone died in the fire we survived.

We are all only human.

Each one of us have experienced different types of trauma. Some of us recovered with the memory of the event sleeping peacefully until the next reminder comes and we have to recover from the trauma all over again. We have a time of "normal" a time of peaceful living and we find ourselves returning to wholeness with memories at rest. For the men and women in the military, their deployments can be filled with traumatic events and complicated by whatever events they faced from previous ones.

Feuds grow over reaching victims in HaitiPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — A flood of food, water and U.S. troops flowed toward Haiti on Saturday as donors squabbled over how to reach hungry, haggard earthquake survivors still trying to claw others from ruined buildings before the dying became the dead.

The U.S. Southern Command said it now has 24 helicopters flying relief missions — many from warships off the coast — with 4,200 military personnel involved and 6,300 more due by Monday.

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If the previous deployment was filled with traumatic events and the emotional needs were not taken care of, they carry those events into the next deployment so that even if the deployment was less traumatic, they may experience an emotional meltdown over something they would have normally been able to recover from more easily had the other past events not happened. They may have trapped out the memories of the other times but those memories feed the one they hang onto. Until all events are addressed, they pay the price with the next one and the next one cutting them deeper.

With humanitarian missions into Haiti, they will carry memories of combat with them as they try to aid the Haitians. We will assume they will have no problem recovering from what they will see because we want to avoid the history of what these men and women have already gone through. If they saw the bodies of children in Iraq or Afghanistan and did not recover from that, see more in Haiti, then even if they know the cause of death was by earthquake, the deaths they saw during combat will be resurrected.

There is an assumption humanitarian mission are healing for all but they are only healing depending on what they have taken with them and what they encounter while doing the aid work. If they are handing out food, water, evacuating the wounded or building shelters, then it can be very healing for them, but if they are filling mass graves, pulling bodies out of the rubble or picking them up off the streets, all of this can feed the pain they are already carrying. This can be the turning point for the better for some but we have to be aware it can also be the turning point for the worst.

Military leaders and Chaplains along with mental health professionals need to be aware of this so they can address it all properly instead of just passing it of and knowing that while these current traumatic events are in their life right now, it is what they have not addressed in their past that will do the most damage. It's called a secondary stressor. It is the event that hit them the hardest because they were already wounded by the other events they tried to put away and get over. If they only address the current event and not the real pain behind it, then it will do no good at all leaving the root of the pain still in place to claim more of their soul and mind.