Combat PTSD and Crying

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.

I wrote an article awhile back and would like to bring attention to it again. Dissociation has been a constant companion for the last four months. I have recently been looking at my emotional states before and after the dissociative episodes. My emotions right now escape me, as soon as I try and isolate them they dissipate and I can only discern a jumbled anxiety. Sleep escapes me and I cannot study with a blank mind.

My comment on the post where I wrote about dissociation,

I keep coming back to this post and wondering. I have given a great amount of information on dissociation and its affects on my psyche.

Why is everyone hung up on this one line?

"The Iraqi soldiers we killed that were trying to surrender."

This entire post is about the psychological breaking of a mind as a direct result of combat

"I would cry for hours and could not be moved, lying in the isle of the store just crying with my wife holding me…"

Does anyone know what it feels like to cry literally for hours? Two to three hours of continuous crying? It drains the body, dehydrates, swollen eyes, mucous running, physically exhausting and emotionally humbling.

What the hell? How about the dissociative fugues? Read that shit again. It is scary as hell. How do you think that would feel to loose yourself but still be aware of things as familiar? I still fear loosing myself today, I remember that shit like it was yesterday.

How about getting lost and forgetting yourself while at the grocery store? Ever been scared to enter a grocery store? Ever had a significant other have to come get you out of the grocery store because you have lost who you were and did not know where you were?

Did anyone catch the out of body experience in the last paragraph? How about the combination of beauty and terror triggering the feeling of awakening and becoming one with the universe? The feeling of becoming one with everything, that experience of being enveloped into absolute existence and consciousness. Never have I felt that kind of completeness since that day.

This post is about the breaking of a spirit and the severe effects that it has on a wounded mind. My mind continuously tries to access the eternal feeling inside of my conscious, leading to dissociative states that still confound me today.

Why is this important? Back in the day when I was so full of rage, anger and emotional turmoil I could not recognize the subtler aspects of emotionality. Which brings me back to where I am today. I have scheduled an appointment with a therapist to help me navigate the new journey of integration.

If you want to read the article on dissociation, click here.