Healing Combat PTSD

Healing Combat PTSD
by Kathie Costos
Wounded Times Blog
March 15, 2013
There has been a lot of talk lately reaching the general public's ears, however, it is not new to those of us working on healing Combat PTSD. One by one psychologists are finally arriving at the conclusion there are different types of PTSD and they need to be treated differently. Treating a combat veteran the same way they treat civilians does not work. The simplistic approach has been more "one size fits all" for everything mental health professionals are told they need to do. Being a survivor of the attacks on 911 thousands of New Yorkers suffered with PTSD. The mass murder of children and teachers at Sandy Hook will haunt the children differently than their parents, but it will stay with them for their lifetimes. The first responders were not there when the shooter walked the halls pulling the trigger but they ended up with PTSD for what they witnessed afterwards. These are one time horrific events and we can understand how they would need help to heal afterwards. We seem to find it very difficult to understand how a war fighter would need help when what they went through "was what they were trained to do." We find it impossible to believe that while they were trained to use their weapons and push their bodies, nothing trained them for what they would not only see with their own eyes, but be a part of creating it.

The only group with a close relationship to them are members of law enforcement because they see the worst repeatedly while every day on the job could turn out to be their last.

This morning I received an email link from Dana Morgan President of Point Man International Ministries he was sure would make my day. Dana was a Marine in Vietnam.

Inside the Mind of a War Vet
There is new hope for treating combat-related trauma.
Published on October 30, 2011
by Helen Davey, Ph.D. in Wounded but Resilient

There is exciting new hope on the horizon for the treatment of combat-related trauma, and I feel that I have had a front-row seat in watching this ground-breaking and hopeful solution to one of our country's most heart-breaking problems -- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the military. Let me elaborate.

As a psychoanalyst, I had the pleasure of attending a conference in Los Angeles that highlighted the work of Dr. Russell Carr, a naval psychiatrist who heads up inpatient psychiatry at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. Dr. Carr has spent a decade in military campaigns since 9/11 in both Iraq and Afghanistan. With this experience of his, if anyone can empathize with and develop ways to effectively treat PTSD in military personnel, I believe that Dr. Carr can. But before he was able to do this, first he had to look for ways to help himself.

For Major B, it is not the violence he witnessed in Afghanistan that haunts him; it is his feelings about the violence he inflicted. He often maintained that, given the circumstances again, he would kill the same people, but that doesn't make it any more bearable. He has nightmares in which he can't stop killing people, and, seeing himself as an emotionless "killing machine," he's afraid that he won't recognize the difference between what is normal and what is a threat. According to Stolorow, when these unendurable emotions cannot be processed with others, these feelings become dissociated and the individual feels a sense of deadness, dullness and a loss of vitality, and it becomes difficult to feel any connection with other human beings.

As if these feelings of guilt were not difficult enough, the feelings of shame are even more painful. The worst part for Major B was his feeling that he couldn't handle combat and that he needed help with the unbearable emotions from it. Before he met Dr. Carr, he believed he could not seek out other people to help him bear and process his feelings about killing large numbers of people. In his mind, he was supposed to maintain the persona of the stoic tough guy whom nothing bothered. Before he began to wrestle with the emasculating experience of admitting to his problems, and then seeking help, he turned to "Dr. Alcohol" and the comforting thought of committing suicide as antidotes to the feeling that he had lost his mind in Afghanistan.

Dr. Carr states, "By providing a relational home to the traumatic experiences of many combat veterans, I understand the guilt and shame that many of them feel. I understand why some severely traumatized veterans feel as if they deserve to die, why they feel more at ease sleeping under a bridge than rejoining the communities they fought to defend. And through my work, I understand better my own feelings of alienation from the rest of America after participating in a decade of military campaigns since 9/11."

The problem is that came from 2011 and apparently the optimistic view of Dr. Davey didn't lead to much change.

It isn't as if this was not already known. Point Man started in 1984 addressing the "moral injury" in war fighters. No one walks away from traumatic events the same way they arrived. Afterwards they are either grateful, feeling as if God saved them or feeling condemned because God did it to them. When a serviceman or woman survives something they were a part of creating, they have the same thoughts. When they see so much evil man is capable of, especially when their intent was so unselfish, it can weigh heavily on their souls. Questions flood their minds. Where was God? Why did He allow all of that to happen? How could a loving God stand by and just watch? Then they wonder if they have become evil as well when they played a role in the events. This gets even more complicated when they survive but their buddies didn't. Even more complicated when they killed people. Ever more complicated when they killed innocent people. It happens in war but while collateral damage is understandable, try telling that to a young man after he has killed a family.

In the new type of war these men and women are fighting and have been fighting since Vietnam when people dressed up like civilians have been killing soldiers and blowing them up, everyone is a suspect. We read about attacks today in Afghanistan where members of the Afghan police and Army kill the American forces training them. It happens because this type of war offers little ability to trust. If they guess wrong and do nothing, their buddies get killed. If they guess wrong and pull the trigger, innocent people get killed just for being foolish enough to not heed warnings.

That happened one night to an Iraqi family when a car would not slow down approaching a convoy of US Service-members. The Iraqis had been warned to not approach them but the driver, for whatever reason, decided to do it anyway. The National Guardsman had a decision to make. He did everything possible to get that car to stop. Fired warning shots in the air, screamed, threw rocks, prayed, fired more warning shots before the car got too close. He guessed that the occupants of the car were suicide bombers. He guessed wrong. The car had been driven by a Dad with his wife and kids inside. The car stopped moving. They went to see who was inside and saw the family.

Those faces, especially the children, haunted him and he thought he had become evil because of that last image in his mind knowing he pulled the trigger that ended their lives. Once he was able to remember what he did to try to prevent it and made peace with what happened, he began to heal. Before that, he tried to commit suicide twice and his family split apart. Last I heard, he was getting remarried and gave his testimony at church.

You can pass off this as much as you want because of all the talk about Christians having a bad reputation in the press with fanatics making the news but the average Christian is more about doing good than slamming the "bad sinners" or trying to convert anyone.

Christian healing of the soul works best because it allows them to forgive themselves as well as others. Next is spiritual healing when they are helped to make peace with what they went through. Point Man understands this. It is non-denominational Christian based healing but is adapted to help every veteran based on their own beliefs or lack of them. No one tries to convert anyone. They just want to help them heal and see how unselfish they were being willing to do what they did.
None of this is new but is not used enough.

The power of Point Man Ministries

There is an awful lot of talking lately about the role of Chaplains in the military and most of it is negative. For all the Chaplains I know, they are deeply troubled by some that think it's ok to just go out and try to convert servicemen and women into their own denomination, wasting time instead of trying to help a troubled soul reconnect to God or at the very least, be able to release some of their emotional pain. In the process of trying to convert instead of help, they end up not only pushing them away from Christ, but build a barrier against them asking for help at all.

Well here are some people living up to what it is supposed to be like, helping people in whatever way they can without trying to put them into the pew of their church group. If the military Chaplains understood that if they do their job right, that won't be a problem later on because people will follow their example and remember the kindness they received. On the other hand, if they receive judgment and condemnation, that is what they will remember as they walk away.

Speaker after speaker talked about what they were doing and they talked about their own lives. All in all there was hope.

Listen to Paul talk about what he went through coming home from Iraq and you'll know what Point Man is all about.




PTSD: Not a judgement from God