Chaplain Kathie
IFOC Senior Chaplain
I've talked a lot about the importance of faith/spirituality in healing PTSD. While PTSD cannot be cured, the wounded can heal. Much like an infection, it gets worse without treatment but with it, depending on how soon the treatment begins, determines the depth of the scar left behind. When the connection to God is restored healing is deeper and faster.
One of the common factors in the PTSD wounded is that they had always been sensitive people. They cared about others deeply. Some confuse being sensitive with being weak but they miss the point that it requires courage to act as a sensitive person. It allows people to be able to set themselves aside for the sake of someone else, rush into danger when others run away and to be able to risk their lives for the sake of their friends. Who wouldn't want someone like that on their side?
John 15;
9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.
10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
17 This is my command: Love each other.
When people have a misconception of what Jesus said and taught, it's easy to confuse right from wrong. It's easy to feel as if God has abandoned them or judged them but they forget that God knows the hearts and minds of His children. He knows what was in their heart when they were willing to lay down their lives for the sake of their friends and to rise about the sense of self. God will not condemn someone with that sense in their hearts. If they do not understand this, then they feel as if they are being punished by PTSD. It makes it all worse because it removes the hope of prayers being answered.
When we do something for the right reason and end up suffering for it, thinking God is making us suffer removes hope of justice, of healing and better days ahead. It also makes us regret doing the right thing. We end up blaming God for the wrong others do, for rewarding the unjust and believing that God created the evil we had to endure. We forget about freewill as easily as we tend to forget that many decide they would rather serve Satin than Christ, evil over good. It is a cycle that ends up taking control over every aspect of the wounded lives, wounding the family and friends. It begins to change the way people act. Yet knowing God as a loving God restores hope, love, patience, compassion, mercy and joy by His grace.
This is something I hear from wounded warriors the most often. Aside from a history of being compassionate people throughout their lives, they feel as if they have been punished by God because they are suffering. I created the following video in response to that.
PTSD Not God's Judgment - watch more videos
In this news story, you'll hear how Military Chaplains helped this veteran heal. We have not heard it often enough on the news. Restoring faith, whatever faith, whatever denomination a veteran belonged to, is vital in assisting the healing of the scar PTSD leaves behind on the soul.
More soldiers returning from Iraq, Afghanistan with PTSD, experts say
By Andrea Calcagno
March 18, 2009
MEDFORD, Ore. -- Experts say exposure to combat violence in Iraq and Afghanistan is causing more soldiers to experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when they return home.
Military representatives say this may be one factor contributing to a recent increase in the army suicide rate.
When soldiers return home from war, they go through a series of reintegration classes. Psychiatric services are made readily available, but it is left to the soldier to seek help.
After returning from war, it took two years for Alexander Akers to get the help he needed.
"If I had pushed it at the beginning when I got home, instead of trying to put it all behind me, and trying to get away from the military, I probably would have been not going through what I did," says Akers.
Akers served in combat arms in Iraq and suffered from PTSD upon returning home.
"I was jumpy all the time. I was extremely violent, getting in fights, non stop paranoid, you name it. The only thing, I was lucky enough that I didn't get into was drug use. And I think some of the guys have gotten into that, and I just turned to alcohol instead," says Akers.
"A lot of times when they come back, they are using alcohol, they are using drugs, they are using other things, and I wouldn't be surprised that many of them are resorting to taking their own lives rather dealing with what they're dealing with. Whether its undiagnosed PTSD or even if it is diagnosed, they may not feel they can get relief from that," says Steve Fogelman with Kolpia Counseling Services..."They're in an environment where literally anybody can be the enemy. And there's really no barriers for them, no safety or security for them. And they end up getting this very hyper-vigilant kind of attitude, and that's literally how they get through."
go here for the rest and for video
http://kdrv.com/news/local/99452
