Combat PTSD

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Realities of Coming Home From Combat - Every soldier whose been in combat cannot help but to be changed for life. It may be surprising to know, the veteran believes everything will be OK, that they will comforted if he can just get home. When they finally arrive, there's an element of euphoria, followed by disorientation. Veterans slip into what can only be described as an 'illusion of normalcy.' They pretend that nothing has changed.

Personal Attachments Before and After Combat - In normal environments such as a community, surroundings and especially in our family lives, we as humans develop attachments to people, places and things. Such connections bring a sense of comfort, peace and normalcy along with feelings of protection and safety. We can let down our guard and protective mechanisms around people most familiar to us as we have become bonded to one another.

I Was The Driver, On Point For The Division, So I Saw It All - I was writing about the "troop organism" and the squad mentality in my last paper. This line of inquiry took me back to a time when I felt totality, never since have I been more alive and whole. A complete sense of unity, an omnipresence with my squad so whole within my surroundings, including the enemy we snuffed, especially those souls. I carry them today; the weight of such suffering that I now hold within. I have a sense of responsibility to those lives we took, I hold such guilt that at times it overwhelms me to the point of incapacitation.

Would you want to forget the biggest most influential part of your life? - Imagine knowing something about yourself more than you know anything, and at the same time knowing how unreal it is. This part of you has such a hold on you, that you cannot for the life of yourself feel its grasp until it is too late, then it has you and you are no longer yourself. Imagine a watery consciousness slipping away and thinking who was that? And, you already know the answer, as it dissipates like smoke on the wind. In that moment of realization comes the instantaneous realization of your being, slipping away.

Combat Values Theory and the Veteran: A Marriage of Defensive Mechanisms and Role Switching - Want to understand how a combat vet can switch rapidly from one role to another? It looks scary to the family, but can be understood and dealt with appropriately by family members and the vet.

Combat PTSD and Crying: How to Sterilize PTSD - My writing about PTSD has been extremely difficult for me as I have dealing with shit that I have only now begun to process. I have had to incorporate a whole lifetime of shit just to get to the point of being able to face my wartime activities. I use the word "activities" to somehow sterilize what I saw. Language showing that I have yet to integrate a significant part of my life.

In the last four months since I started writing my blog I have been experiencing extreme dissociative episodes. After having realized this I started limiting my writing and reading about trauma and combat.

How a Soldier Prepares to Kill: To Do The Deed The Dance of Death - Forget the theoretical self analyzing the process, but concentrate on the dominating, primeval alpha self that goes beyond rationalizing why or why not, realize that part of you that goes without thinking. This part operates from the law of the wild, the component that keeps you alive when your life becomes threatened to be snatched away. Your will to survive is an entity of its own and will separate from your rationale to preserve itself, self preservation.

Combat Rage and What We May Do With It - To put a finger on what combat rage feels like and the disconnection between the veteran is problematic in that the separation from such disables the feeling of this affect. Try and imagine a time when you felt an extreme distance to your own feelings and envision, then expand it to a gulf. Now, the anger or rage we all have in us takes a matter of triggering by an extreme stress situation to disengage and embark on evolutionary defensive mechanisms; a survival fight or flight defense. Suppress the flight part and you are coming closer to the realization of fight or die, this switch goes off and now the training kicks in and you become guided by your warrior self, a world of black and white, a dichotomy of kill or be killed. Fueling this fire is the consumption of rage, anger multiplied, like an electromagnetic coil holding the boiling and broiling plasma of fear, rage and humanity in such a precise way as to be utilized to do what needs to be done. Kill or be killed without consideration of another life other than yourself and your squad.

Experiencing PTSD: An in the Moment Explanation of Combat PTSD - PTSD may be a life-long endeavor; there is no cure for it. The triggering traumatic event changes the landscape of the mind, it no longer works in the same fashion that it did before. The mind has been rewired; the neuropathways have been altered into a continuous loop. The PTSD triggering incident converts the fight or flight response in the primitive portion of our brain. Imagine having that scared feeling you get without the fear while keeping the bodily reactions; the tenseness, the adrenalin rush, the mind racing, heightened senses, and the hyper response reflex to react without thinking.

Combat PTSD: Relationship Between Dissociation and Identity: Prisoner of My Beliefs - Lately I have been thinking about how identity issues have an integral part of becoming whole in PTSD survivors. During my research I found an article on dissociative identity possibly being a major part of combat trauma. I have experienced this phenomenon many times and once in particular I was at a party and found myself convinced that my life was a sitcom where I was the star of the show (yes, a bit narcissistic) and having just realized this I began to seriously question the interactions I was having and wondering what my lines were supposed to be.

Dissociation, An in the Moment Explanation: Feeling Dissociative? - A suspension of emotions and feelings that lays just beyond my boundaries of perception. Dissociation is like conception watered down, just spread it out all over everything and then try and use it. I have to concentrate hard to get back what was last thought although I do sense the thoughts and emotions, soggy trails of reality.

Duality Dissociates Discernment - A dichotomous existence without realizing our true nature results in a separation from reality and our connection to one another. An either-or duality dissociates discernment from reason leaving a fractured self. We cut up and separate rationalities in an attempt to preserve our sanity as the mind forms dissections to preserve and protect itself. The defensive mechanism overwhelms our thinking process and compartmentalizes our personality. The split in our mental reflections enables a combat veteran to switch from a killer instinct with no remorse to a loving and caring father.

Structural Dissociation of The Personality - PTSD is not only about personal protection or self preservation but in its essence a mechanism of such endeavors, thus becoming a self-perpetual entity in of itself (the EP can develop into a sub-personality, a component of Dissociative Identity Disorder [DID]). Almost as if it has become self-aware and not only will it steer one away from danger, but also away from its own demise; a seemingly serendipitous supra-intelligent guidance of the subconscious.

Dissociative Spectrum Disorders and the Combat Veteran - I had several more types of fugues, I would be walking down the isle of the grocery store and experience a fugue. I do not know why, but a grocery store would send me into a crying fit of guilt and grief with only one thought in my mind and nothing else. I would cry for hours and could not be moved, lying in the isle of the store just crying with my wife holding me thinking only of the one singular thought. The Iraqi soldiers we killed that were trying to surrender.

PTSD Can Evoke a Sense of Safety - Identity issues prevail throughout the mind of a PTSD host, so to speak. When I think of a cure my mind almost reels in horror, because of my survival instincts having defeated death as a result of having PTSD, and its shaping of my life. I would not be who I am today without it, this device of PTSD that engages in the survival defensive mechanisms that has sustained my life on a persistent basis.

Combat Vet on Zoning Out - It has been a couple of days since my last posting, I have just now realized that I am in one of those stuck positions. For a person with PTSD their brain has become highly compartmentalized, sectioned off and coordinated along narrowly entrenched connections. The mind will shut down reasoning, conscious processing and engage the unconscious reflexive mechanisms. This controller switch enables the person to react to traumatic situations without filtering sensory information through our conscious mind. Through this defensive mechanism we can survive situations that would otherwise overwhelm us if we had to process the traumatic event in the moment. By the severity of the situation this connection gets heavily imprinted, thus enabling the PTSD sufferer to shift into a stuck position or zoning out. This cognitive binding can be triggered by situations that require emotional response, trusting issues, and really just about anything that requires thinking.

Alcohol, Drugs and Killing Can Become Addictive - Combat can leave a veteran or soldier addicted to the rush of adrenaline that a survival environment and killing can bring. Upon returning home it could manifest in many ways, constructively such as in positive thrill seeking activities like skydiving, rock climbing, or scuba diving. Others may fall to the wayside and react negatively through drugs, alcohol, and compulsive and impulsive self destructive behavior. I initially turned to drinking to calm my nerves which intensified the feelings of rage, anger and self-loathing.

Evolutionary Defensive Mechanisms and Combat PTSD - To survive traumatic events our mind must switch to evolutionary instinctive and reactionary defensive mechanisms. Sometimes these defensive systems become stuck and manifests in varying degrees