Experts Still Fail to Address What Works to Heal PTSD

So far, there doesn't seem much in terms of "helping" veterans. There is far too much talk of what goes wrong and too little of what goes right. They call it "managing" but they should be talking about healing and finding peace to live with a very huge part of your life. It can be done. It has been done. It happens a lot more than the tragic outcomes do.

At Dickinson, experts discuss helping veterans manage PTSD
The Sentinel
By Samantha Madison
November 18, 2014

CARLISLE — There are explosions everywhere — suicide bombers blowing up restaurants and markets, people being killed left and right.

You recognize the safest areas versus the ones that are dangerous, to sit in the right place when out in the open. You know how to cope, to work on as little sleep as humanly possible for fear of being next. You are never truly relaxed or safe, and that becomes your way of life.

Then, all of a sudden, you’re back in the safety of the United States, and family, friends and society expect that you’ll ease back into the swing of things as if you weren’t just in a country where people were constantly trying to kill you and your comrades.

“When you come home, the part of your brain that kicks off the panic button doesn’t know you’re home,” said David Wood, senior military correspondent for The Huffington Post. “The way I understand it, the way I’ve thought about it and the way guys have explained to me is, when that happens, you’ve got to burn off energy, so people get angry, they punch walls; they’ve got to burn off all of that adrenaline.”

Wood, who spoke on a post-traumatic stress disorder panel at Dickinson College on Veterans Day, has spent a large portion of his career covering a variety of military and national security issues in countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Soviet Russia, Cold War Germany and Somalia.
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They need to start addressing the reason PTSD picked on you. You were just able to feel things more strongly than others. Plus toss in the fact that you were probably the first one to help someone or the one they always turned to. In that case, it is pretty damn hard asking for help. If you are thinking you shouldn't need help, then think of the people you helped. Do you think less of them because they needed you? Then why think less of yourself if you need help from them?

Being stronger also means you have very strong emotions but those same emotions making you grieve come from the same place where you were able to be courageous. It is all still in there. You just need help getting stuff reconnected again.

Remember why you joined the military in the first place. Then remember the reason you were willing to lay down your own life if it came to it. That all came from love for those you served with. That love is stronger than any other type of love because it is never about yourself. It is always about others.

The trick is, finding a way to put yourself first while you heal so you can turn around and then help someone else.