by
Chaplain Kathie
There are many people calling PTSD an invisible wound. Frankly I'm guilty of this too. It's a lot easier to explain it that way without taking the time to really define it. The largest problem with this seems to be the people doing the explaining, don't really understand it. It is only a wound you cannot see if you are not aware of what you're looking at.
If I said childbirth was extremely painful, you may not have a hard time understanding that. After all, pushing a baby out of your body doesn't seem to be very easy and it isn't. We can see the pain in a woman giving birth. She screams, her face turns red as blood pressure fills her head and her body goes through abnormal movements. All in all, the signs of pain are there for anyone to see. You wouldn't have to give birth to understand pain comes with it because you've been exposed to it by people you know or seeing it on TV.
After 9-11 we saw a lot of pictures of people in pain following the Twin Towers coming down.
We didn't have to be there to see it in order to understand the pain other people felt.The pain caused that day caused two military occupations, over 5,000 fallen troops and over 10,000 wounded treated at Walter Reed Hospital alone. We understood what it was like to see that kind of horror one day, for most of us, just from our TV sets in the safety of our own living rooms. It hit us so hard, for weeks none of us could get our eyes off the news when we were home. Every year on the anniversary, the shock of that day, the pain of that day comes back to everyone across the nation.
So hard should it be for us to understand what we're looking at when it comes to PTSD? How hard should it be to understand what that kind of pain looks like? Perhaps the most important question is; Why aren't we looking for the signs? These men and women are only human so it shouldn't be that hard to understand what it would feel like when it the pain cuts that deeply when we seem to have no problem understanding pain caused by other reasons.
Not sure if you are aware of this Kathie, and very good article might I add. The person in the picture being carried by firefighters at ground zero is Chaplain Mychal Judge, FDNY Chaplain.
ReplyDeleteHe died serving those who he served his fellow firefighters, didn't have to be there, but was.
Wasn't sure if you were aware of this or not.
Hi Jim,
ReplyDeleteThank you for adding his name. I remembered he was a Chaplain and his story but I had forgotten his name.
When I look at that picture, the pain in the men carrying him away reminds me of all the times I've seen pictures of soldiers carrying one of their own away. That one day in our history on the beautiful September morning, seems so much easier for others to understand than it does for them to understand what the troops are going through over and over again.
Maybe we can't understand what it's like to be unselfish, what it's like to put someone else first, what it's like to want to serve? I don't know what the answer is, how to get people to understand enough so they rap their arms around someone in this kind of pain, but I'll keep trying.
I am sure you will too!