Going to the Bunker

Lily Casura has a rare gift. No, I'm not talking about her amazing talent as a reporter but as one with a tremendous heart. There are a lot of people these days attempting to tell a story about lives they really don't understand. Reading a few lines on the subject of PTSD gives them away. You can tell they don't understand what our veterans are like and you can also tell they are just writing a story they were told to write. It happens all the time. In Lily's case, this is what she wants to do because this is where her heart has taken her. She has an informed passion going far beyond a few minutes of a reporters time as if the subject of the interview should feel bless they spent any time at all with them. She pulls people into this world of hell and hope like few others are able to do and I am very, very proud to call her my friend.

Going to the Bunker: A Combat Veteran with PTSD on the Purpose of Protective Isolation

by Lily Casura
Every combat veteran with PTSD knows what is meant by their "bunker," or what "going to their bunker" means. It's a walled-off, isolated situation that allows them to get some space to themselves, away from other people (including family and friends), when they feel particularly triggered, and they need to stay in there for, well, as long as they're going to. They come out when they're ready, and not a moment before. Obviously this situation can be very frustrating to others in the vet's life, but for the vet it affords him or her some very necessary, protective isolation.

The rest of us who aren't combat vets with PTSD I suppose could think of it as the vet putting himself or herself in a time-out from the world, by taking themselves out of the mix, and away from people and stimulation, both bad and good. And the time-out will be over when it's over, because they decide when it's up.

The recent Fourth of July with its fireworks that remind many vets of combat was a classic bunker situation. Many, many vets were making plans before the Fourth for how to protect and insulate themselves from being triggered by the fireworks (noise, smoke, crowds). One Gulf War vet with PTSD who had already isolated himself, wrote of putting a pillow over his head and just wanting it to be over, so that he didn't have to experience it. The next day, fireworks all exploded, he was better. But during, he had to be in the bunker. Another combat vet with PTSD, from the Iraq war this time, talked about staying in her bunker for days, making brief provision runs, every fourth day or so, to the grocery store and then...back to her bunker. When she needed to be in her bunker...

The bunker concept/construct is so typical to combat vets with PTSD that I thought I'd ask one who I know fairly well how he'd describe it. He has decades of PTSD "experience" under his belt, and I've also seen him retreat to his bunker at various times. A month one time, a week another time, the last time, a day. Sometimes even a few hours. But however long the episode lasts, during that time: totally unreachable. And realistically, you better not even try...because it just makes the situation worse.
red more of this here

Going into the bunker


Busting out of the bunker

by
Lily Casura
Probably spent 20% of my life in a bunker, hiding, wanting to die, not having the nerve to shoot myself; hoping that the diseases and the meds would finally do me in.

I just didn’t know how to be happy. There was no joy in my life. There’s no reason to live. My family used to ask me, 'How can you look at what you’ve done, and tell me that you have no purpose in life? You don’t understand.' Problem was, I didn’t understand. I did not know why I didn’t have the capacity to have joy, to love anyone or to have fun. I just know I’d tried religion, I’d tried everything the VA could throw at me, in-house therapy, group therapy, self-help, medication, I tried working myself to death, I tried getting rich, I tried doing stupid things to harm myself (go back into combat situations), where maybe if I revisited it; I tried going to The Wall; and something would just not allow to want to live, or be happy, or enjoy being in my life. I couldn’t look around and see the flowers, let alone smell them. All the roses in my life were wilted; not because they were, but because of my vision of them was wilted."

read more of this here

Busting out of the bunker at last