PTSD? Stop Chasing Your Tale, Start Leading Your Future

My dog isn't the smartest dog on the block. He gets really confused. If I tell him to run, he chases his tail, catches it after 20 times going in circles, then he walks sideways with his tail in his mouth as if he just accomplished something amazing, he wants a treat for doing it. Yep, that's my boy!

We all go around in circles in our own lives but instead of chasing a tail, we're really chasing our own tales. The stuff that happened in our lives that goes into making us who are are and where we are in life. Sometimes we've got really good memories that make us smile even though they happened years ago. Other times there are memories that happened years ago that make us feel the same pain as if it just happened all over again.

For veterans, you have all the same stuff the rest of us deal with. The tragedies we think we're never going to get over as well as great times we hope to never forget. Yet for you, your tales come with a lot of events we're never going to have to experience because you went into combat and we didn't.

Don't expect us to understand any of that. We're just not capable of coming close to knowing what it was like. Even when you talk to other military folks, if they didn't go into combat, no matter what war, they won't get it either.

I wouldn't expect a civilian wife to understand what it is like to live with a Vietnam veteran anymore than they should expect me to understand what is like to live with live with a famous actor. Not that they would know what that's like either but you get the idea. I also don't know what it is like for a current military wife worrying about their husbands deployed into combat. I met mine long after he was back.

What I do understand is trauma and what it can do to someone. Aside from coming close to death several times, knowing how hard the next moment it is to relax, I can assure you that it is more than possible. It is probable if you work at it. It ain't easy but it is a hell of lot easier than going through it in the first place.

You just have to decide to stop chasing your tales and start leading your life.

There is nothing you cannot defeat after surviving whatever it was that almost won your life. Think about that for a second. The event tried to kill you. If an IED wasn't blowing up someone you knew, you were worried about it happening. If you weren't worried about the bullet coming for you, you were aiming at someone else. In other words, it was traumatic even when it wasn't happening because you knew at any moment it could have. But you survived all of it.

You defeated combat but you're willing to sacrifice your future for your past?

Everything you needed to be strong enough to survive combat is still in you but you have it trapped behind painful memories. The cause of PTSD happened while you were deployed but you don't seem to get the fact that no matter how much pain it caused you, you still did everything humanly possible so that you could take care of your brothers.

So not only were you in a lot of pain, you refused to stop fighting. Why stop now? Why give up now? Because it is hard? Because it is just too damn painful? How is it more painful now than when it happened?

The word trauma actually means "wound"

Emotional shock following a stressful event or a physical injury, which may be associated with physical shock and sometimes leads to long-term neurosis.

The event tried to claim your physical life but it didn't quit there. It tried to claim your existence. It wanted to end what makes you who you are.

In a way, it does achieve that. How much it changes you for the worst or better, depends on you and what you allow.

I hate talking about this because it brings back pain but it is necessary for you to understand what I'm trying to say here.

I was married before. It lasted about 18 months. My ex-husband came home from work one night and tried to kill me. I fought back and survived with the help of my landlady calling the police and banging on our door until he understood his hands were on my throat.

He tried to kill my body but the next moment, the event tried to kill me. It tried to take away everything I believe in from what love was to where God was. Betrayal is hard by itself but then when you add in someone you loved trying to kill you, that is about as hard as it gets to move on.

It wasn't easy but then again, being chased throughout the apartment and fighting for my life wasn't easy either. I had to come to terms with the facts as they were and then decide what I was going to do with it. I took the same will to fight him and fight the wound from infecting my future.

By the time I met my current husband over 30 years ago, I was healed emotionally. What I didn't fully understand is that I was also spiritually healed enough so that when his mild PTSD sent him into the abyss, I was strong enough to pull him up.

I've written about this a lot but back in 2008, it was on our 24th anniversary and pretty much sums up what you need to know about all this.

Jeremiah 29:11-13 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

In 2006 the Sun Journal piece "Shattering of the Soul" there was this,

Maj. Gen. Bill Libby, Maine's adjutant general, issued orders this year for every National Guard member who returns from Iraq or Afghanistan to talk one on one with a counselor.

"We are all Type A's," Libby said. "Lots of us don't like talking about our feelings. We'd rather do something."

However, Libby knows the emotional healing needs to happen.

"These men and women have been forever changed by their experiences," said Libby, a veteran of the Vietnam War. "Thirty-eight years later, I am still struggling with my experiences."

We can pretend that this is all new and then it makes it easier to accept what has been happening with the rise in suicides but the truth is, it is far from new and hardly improved enough. So here is the news you need to know that you may not have heard before. It has to be fought with all you've got inside your skin. Your mind with whatever therapy works best for you, your body because you need to teach it to relax instead of just going in circles and your spirit so that you can heal the best part of what makes you "you" only better.

We all walk away from trauma either believing God was taking care of us or doing it to us. In 2011 there was actually a study about this.

Positive beliefs included trusting God was watching over them and cared about their lives. Anxiety significantly increased for those who believed just the opposite, that God was indifferent or even out to punish them.

When my ex tried to kill me I could have lost faith and sight of the fact that there was still good in this world. It started with my landlady doing whatever she could to save me. It transferred onto my family and friends and all the support they gave me. (Ok, it also helped that they got me out of the apartment every night to go to our favorite bar.) I kept finding what I was looking for. I wanted to see the goodness and found it.

So can you. Even during combat those moments were there when you were seeing something else instead of someone doing something out of kindness with compassion. For those two qualities to survive in the hell of combat, that says something about God. LORD my God has given me rest on every side

1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

International Positive Psychology Association did a study back in 2011 finding that after trauma you can actually be better. This part they got right!

"We were sort of surprised by the themes that kept coming up that the grief experience had, in some ways, forced them to become different people and ... that the new person was better than the old one,"

The rest, well, not so much but that part is absolutely correct.  You can't heal PTSD but you can heal the rest of your life.  Stop chasing your tale and make peace with what is grieving you.  On the other side of this darkness is all that you can't notice now.  You do matter now and will matter even more when you're healing enough to help someone else heal too.