PTSD: Put End To Suffering, Not Your Life

Be Aware Today Tomorrow You Can Heal
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
September 13, 2015

There has been so much bullshit going on focusing on "Awareness" when most of it is more tied to asking you send a check. Awareness is something that was given to them and should be shared freely, openly and above all, honestly sharing what you have become aware of. You know you're suffering but while they talk about it, they aren't telling you much about healing.

Aware

: knowing that something (such as a situation, condition, or problem) exists
: feeling, experiencing, or noticing something (such as a sound, sensation, or emotion)
: knowing and understanding a lot about what is happening in the world or around you

When I read "22 a Day" referring to the number of veterans committing suicide, I want to shut down my computer because it seems as if everyone is raising awareness of how gullible folks are.

: easily fooled or cheated; especially : quick to believe something that is not true

Awareness has become more about financial gain and publicity about the person doing the sharing than about the veterans suffering leaving them still suffering instead of healing.

To quote Rhett Butler

“I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words. Perhaps they may be of use to you some day. (Rhett Butler)” ― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

Solve the problems veterans face and lives are saved but awareness pushers will go broke along with researchers repeating studies done 40 years ago.  There has never been a time in this country when so much is being done under the pretense of helping veterans heal from PTSD and save your lives. 

To this day no one has explained why awareness is so expensive in terms of money when the results are so deadly. There has never been a time when more money has been made claiming to be doing just that while more of you are ending your lives instead of just ending your suffering. Bet you haven't heard that one for a while.

While it is true there is no cure for PTSD, there are plenty of veterans healing and living a better quality of life. The trick is, finding what works for you and finding someone more interested in helping you get better than helping themselves build their bank account.

They repeat the number 22 as if they know what they are talking about but most veterans smirk when they hear it and walk away as fast as they can. It is puzzling of exactly what they are attempting to raise awareness of when they take the easy way out of something as complex and important as your life.

We need to start with the basic facts. Veteran suicides are double the civilian population when taken as a whole. Broken down demographically 78% of you are over the age of 50.

The VA study found that the percentage of older veterans with a history of VA healthcare who committed suicide actually was higher than that of veterans not associated with VA care. Veterans over the age of 50 who had entered the VA healthcare system made up about 78 percent of the total number of veterans who committed suicide - 9 percentage points higher than the general pool.

While Vietnam veterans came home and fought for all the research done on PTSD, they were not the first generation suffering. In the same report they took a look at Korean War veterans.

For Korean War veterans it may even be worse. Many of these veterans would have been in their 40s before the VA - under pressure from Vietnam veterans and politicians - acknowledged PTSD was real and began providing services to veterans.

But the suffering went back even further.

WWII Veterans: Their war ended 70 years ago. Their trauma didn’t

They talked of night terrors, heavy drinking, survivor’s guilt, depression, exaggerated startle responses, profound and lingering sadness. The symptoms were familiar to the world by then, but post-traumatic stress disorder, the diagnosis that came into being in 1980, was widely assumed to be unique to veterans of Vietnam. “Bad war, bad outcome, bad aftereffects,” is the way historian Thomas Childers put it.

Those of age in the late 1940s would have known differently. Though it was referred to by other names (shell shock, combat fatigue, neuropsychiatric disorders) the emotional toll of World War II was hard to miss in the immediate postwar years; military psychiatric hospitals across the nation were full of afflicted soldiers, and the press was full of woeful tales. But with the passage of time and the prevailing male ethos — the strong, silent type — World War II was soon overshadowed by the Cold War and eventually Vietnam. By the 1990s, amid the mythology of the Greatest Generation, the psychological costs of the last “good war” had been forgotten.

Then the breakdown of the research went more in depth. Suicide Epidemic Among Veterans by CBS News reported this way back in 2007.

Dr. Steve Rathbun is the acting head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we obtained from state authorities for 2004 and 2005.

It found that veterans were more than twice as likely to commit suicide in 2005 than non-vets. (Veterans committed suicide at the rate of between 18.7 to 20.8 per 100,000, compared to other Americans, who did so at the rate of 8.9 per 100,000.)

One age group stood out. Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror. They had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age.

“The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars.”

― William C. Westmoreland

But nothing has changed in all these years. All the talk, money spent and politicians holding hearings so they can write bills to fund "awareness" raisers have produced nothing meaningful.

“Why be an ostrich?”

Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

That's the bad news. Now for the good news.

While you may have enlisted before the Gulf War, you may have been drafted but the truth remains that you would have died for those you served with as they would have died for you. That sense of unity became an elusive dream back in the civilian world. Heck, most of the time they wouldn't even give you the time to listen to what you had to say or even just sit there in silence if that was what you needed.

You fit in with your own kind.

Stop trying to fit in with civilians. Sure you can spend time with them but don't expect them to understand you since the big experiences you had are the stuff your nightmares are made of and something they will never know. Find other veterans to spend time with. You will find strength in their numbers. They will understand because you speak the same language. You can talk as much as you want to and as often as you need to.

“The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS” Abraham Lincoln

Remember that while you may have seen evil things or even done some, that did not make you evil. Saving someone was the primary motivating factor. If you have begun to think it was about killing, then ask yourself a simple question. "If the enemy surrendered would you have continued shooting?" Most of the time the answer is "hell no" because when the fighting was over, you got to go home. The better angel within you is once again allowed to grieve.

You finally allowed yourself to feel the pain you carried within you all along yet when it is time to begin to heal, you try to do what you can to just stop feeling. That means shutting out good emotions as well as the bad ones. You try anything and everything, usually including alcohol and drugs. They don't heal. They just numb. As time goes on, your mind builds a wall to shut out more pain but traps the bad behind the wall at the same time preventing good emotions from entering.

As with training to enter into military life you need training to enter into life as a veteran. Just like training then focused on your mind as well as your body, veteran life requires spiritual training as well to heal what has caused you so much pain.

Point Man International Ministries Walking Point Since 1984

was founded by a Vietnam veteran Marine, Seattle Police officer who wanted to change the way far too many veterans came home. He noticed how many veterans he was arresting and decided to so something about it way back then. Long before veterans courts provided help instead of incarceration, Bill Landreth was meeting them 1 to 1 and helping them heal. PTSD occurs when a person has experienced, witnessed, or has been confronted with a traumatic event, which involved actual or threatened death or serious physical injury to themselves or others. At which point they responded with intense fear, horror or helplessness. (APA, DSM-IV TR, 2000) The most recent primary diagnostic criteria for PTSD falls into three groups and are summarized below:

Re-experiencing the trauma
(nightmares, flashbacks, and intrusive thoughts).
Numbing and avoidance of reminders of the trauma
(avoidance of situations, thoughts and feelings, etc.).
Persistent increased arousal
(sleep difficulties, irritability, anger outbursts, startle response, etc.).

The passage of time alone usually does not heal the psychological wounds of trauma. The natural desire to withdraw from others and not talk about the experiences or difficulties associated with the traumatic event may actually make matters worse for veterans with PTSD. Painful wounds can remain exposed, open, and raw for decades without the proper help that promotes healing. These wounds go on to fester unless they are properly cared for.

Veterans and society can watch physical wounds heal; however the emotional wounds of trauma may go unrecognized if they are never addressed. To continue to say, “What happened in Iraq or Afghanistan happened…end of story,” is an attempt to cover up issues and most likely indicates a deep inner-craving (cry) for help.

To recognize that you may be experiencing some re-adjustment challenges is the first step to recovery. Finding useful tools to direct you and your family to constructive ways to re-adjust after war is a top priority.

Outpost were taking care of veterans spiritual healing and Homefronts were taking care of family members. They still are simply because what worked was remembered and honored.

“God is going to send you someone that will rescue you. Then one day you will rescue them in return and together your story will rescue others. He has always been a God of rescues and a maker of warrior’s for his grace. You only need to believe that you are part of something greater than you know.” ― Shannon L. Alder

Since then what Point Man has been doing for the sake of doing the work has been saving lives, helping veterans heal and they in turn have helped others.

Raising awareness has been about making veterans aware they do not have to suffer instead of healing. You fought hard in combat to stay alive and save as many of your buddies as possible. It is time to use that same will to live to fight for a better quality of life now.

I am Florida State Coordinator and always looking for veterans and family members to step up so we can raise awareness worthy of those we seek to serve. To find out more, check out the links and see if God is calling you to be among the better angels.