What is Combat PTSD?

What is Combat PTSD?
by
Chaplain Kathie

It is intended to avoid detection. It is designed to not be noticed until it is too late.

How Stuff Works
Out of Sight
Northrop Grumman's primary goal for the B-2 was stealth, or low observability. Simply put, stealth is the ability to fly undetected through enemy airspace. Ideally, a stealth aircraft will be able to reach and destroy desired targets without ever engaging the enemy in combat.

To do this, the aircraft needs to be nearly invisible in a number of different ways. Obviously, it needs to blend in with the background visually, and it needs to be very quiet. More importantly, it needs to hide from enemy radar as well as infrared sensors. It also needs to conceal its own electromagnetic energy.

Now you know what PTSD is.

I can sit here and explain all the signs but then I'd have to explain all the different causes and levels. I can explain what treatments they've been using but then have to point out that one treatment won't work as well for everyone else. I can tell you that a marriage does not have to end just because of PTSD but then I'd have to comfort someone after they have already divorced someone they used to love. I can spend hours a day posting news reports on what is going on all around the country, but for every one good story I post there are ten bad ones.

PTSD is a "stealth bomber" and while the pilot may target one object, there is far reaching damage done after the impact. Once the target explodes, everything around it is damaged.

We know what a bullet looks like. We know what it does when it explodes. No matter how much we know, we never see it happen. We don't see the bullet sitting inside the gun. We don't see it leaving it. We don't see it fly through the air. We don't actually see the bullet hit the body. We don't see it explode. We only see what happens when it breaks through the skin and what happens after the damage is already done.

A unit doesn't know if a bomb is waiting to blow them up in a road. They only know they have to go down that road to get to where they are supposed to go.

We know what a bomb looks like. We know what it does. Much like the bullet, we don't see it before it explodes because it is hidden under something. A suicide bomber looks just like everyone else. They don't walk around with a sign "I hate you so much I'm dying to kill you!" any more than a hero walks around with a sign "I care so much I'll die to save you!" No one knows what will happen one moment to the next.

Take your worst day. A sudden death of a family member here one moment and gone the next. The next day you are left without some you cared about but there is also the unknown gnawing at you. "Who's next?" Over the next few days, the sense of "loss" lost power over your thoughts even though it lingered. You breathe again. Then repeat that horrible day every week for a year. It is one moment after another waiting for the next bad thing to happen without a warning coming before it does.

The rest of us go to work or college, doing what we have to do to get to where we have to be only worried about some idiot on a cell phone not paying attention to the road or the "more important" driver too important to abide rules of the road. When we're in traffic, we're running late. When they're in traffic, they're running on borrowed time.

Most of the time, they do a great job of just pushing on and you don't know what is going on inside their heads. Most of the time they are just "sad" while waiting for the day to come when they can be "themselves" again. After all, that is what everyone is waiting for and expecting out of them. That's how we get all of this all wrong.

It is acceptable for us to grieve a loss and have our friends all come to comfort us for a few days. When they think we should be over it, well then, there is no need for us to be given any extra attention. If we dare to grieve beyond their "acceptable timeframe" they tell us we need to get over it, move on, change or offer any other answer that fits their thoughts at that exact moment.

Take a veteran back from combat and all they are carrying around inside of them and with that same impatient attitude, at it does a lot of damage. We tell them they need to do the same exact thing they want to do the most but never manage to tell them how to do it any more than we explain to them that with any huge traumatic event in any human's life will change everything. It changes how they think, how they feel, how they look at life and yes, changes their faith. Sometimes in bad ways where the worse parts of them surface as the good parts of them get pushed out of the way. They are still in their but we can't see them anymore. We see the stranger inside the body we used to know. If we react badly, we fuel that negative change until it totally takes over. How far it takes over depends on them and the people around them.

There is no "one size fits all outcome" in any of this. For now shove the easy answer out of the way because there are hard facts we need to face. Start with the fact that we have a lot of reports on them dying by their own hands more than we have reports of them taking others with them. There have been clusters of reports coming out with veteran killing police officers and officers having to kill veterans. Again, low percentages but these reports show an increase just as there have been increased numbers of veterans coming home and most of them are coming home under the radar with no one paying attention to them. They don't make the news.

They read the same news reports the rest of us do and then they read the comments about how terrible the veteran was. They wonder why on earth they should go for help if people will fear them as well or why they should even try to get better if they "deserve to suffer" like someone else did.

The other easy answer we need to toss out is that "we didn't know" this was coming because people were screaming about all of this as soon as the troops were sent into Afghanistan ten years ago. I was only one of them. We need to start screaming about change and we need to start doing it in every news paper across the country. We need to write letters and make phone calls to the major news stations to get off the political reporting and start reporting on what is happening all over this country because politicians didn't do their jobs and demand accountability as they were dying for attention. We need to start asking the politicians running for office what they plan on doing to fix this. We need to stop being lazy and accepting what is happening as if there is nothing we can do about any of this.