Why a Combat Veteran Holds onto Anger

Anger was a successful way to get us and our guys through war, a tool that was honed and perfected for effective use. But, today this way of thinking – faulty thinking or defensive state of mind – keeps us from building the kind of relationships we need. It pushes people away, a defensive mechanism we developed in combat that was very effective at saving our lives and the lives of our squad members. Today it keeps us from building a ‘squad’ at home.

To let it go is counter intuitive and goes against our training and experiences, which have imprinted this false belief that if we let it go it will consume us. The opposite is true; to let it go is to begin healing. I do this by imaging the negative energy upward in intense moments to imaging a body of water matching my emotional state then imaging the waters calming thus lowering my emotional state to the point where I can reason without being clouded by my Combat Values which are not needed in the realm of home and personal relationships. Praying and meditation are a way of life, incorporate it into your life.

False Beliefs supports our hopelessness and seemingly endless self-torture that we feel we deserve for whatever reasons we harnessed to our souls. We did what we had to do and we make ourselves pay for it. You do not deserve this torture son or daughter – God, I know you delivered this young warrior for a reason. God, I ask that you help guide her successfully through his inner daemons so that he can see the value in surviving the impossible situations in combat. He needs Your divine grace and acceptance of his new self so that he can find inner peace again – You do not deserve this self imposed imprisonment.

You can find a way out, it will take time, your mind has been fractured and the pieces will continue to surface and sometimes without your permission as it were. Today I surrender to the flashbacks, in doing so I am able to lessen the effect. The more I fight them, the more they have a hold on me and can take me fully. When I submit to my mind, not my inner daemons, but where my mind NEEDS to go they usually just look imprinted onto everything around me. In this way I am still able to ground myself in my surroundings while not getting lost in the flashback. Whether massive explosions or vaporizing images no human should see the images are superimposed onto my reality; rather than my reality being stolen and overlaid with the vast past.

We have been changed by our experiences in war, we will forever think like a warrior. We have seen and done what people think they can imagine, but we know they cannot. This does not have to separate us from everyone, what you have discovered is the illusion of normalcy. Social norms, family norms and professional norms whether the military or the corporate world we all follow a list of rules that govern our behavior in many settings. Normal is a label, not a state of mind or being. Your journey is to accept this, healing begins by accepting yourself. My acceptance of self has taken decades, it doesn't have to be that long for you. Today the resources are available if you know how to access the services. You can find support in your journey, you are not alone, you never were.

Thinking Patterns of War Can Impede a Veterans Life

People come here because they want to understand Combat PTSD. I appreciate your desire to learn, I am here to educate. War will change the way we think, feel and behave. Our minds can trick us into believing everything within ourselves is fine, the same. It's the world that has changed.

Photo by Scott Lee

Coming home is a seductive force to the deployed soldier fighting for their life; a fantasy island of peace and tranquility. This hairline crack in reality has shattered many a battle hardened warrior at home; the thought of 'coming home will be the easy part' can devastate the unprepared veteran. What I found was a battlefield of the mind and everywhere I turned forced my sanity to escaped me. The Pitfalls of Home engulfed me and a fire consumed my existence, forging and tempering my PTSD, folding my identity, losing who I used to be and believing I was still him. Thus cementing by unreality for decades.

The landscape of the mind has been altered by the experience of war, we now operate from a Warrior Perspective. We have the ability to morph into a sophisticated and skilled range of abilities that can devastate opposing forces. If we are unaware of this change within ourselves and we do not receive the training on how to decompress or disengage from the thinking patterns of war and adopt the Warrior Ethos to a peacetime setting. Then we will direct this energy at our loved ones and if they are unprepared for that consequence of war, then they too can succumb to the oppressive tidal forces of Combat PTSD.

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Book Review -The Haunted Self; van der Hart, Nijenhuis and Steele

Structural Dissociation of the Personality
The leading theorists on the subject recognize that reactions to extreme stress can lead to one or more differing diagnosis, and that inherent in said traumatic reactions is structural dissociation of the personality. Where three types of structural dissociation have been postulated: primary structural dissociation, secondary structural dissociation and tertiary structural dissociation.

Primary structural dissociation involves simple PTSD, and dissociative amnesia, where the Emotional Personality (EP) and the Apparently Normal Personality (ANP) have become disenfranchised or fragmented. The EP "...is fixated in the trauma and associated experiences....[and the ANP]...is fixated in avoidance of the trauma, manifesting detachment, numbing, and partial or complete amnesia" (Steele, van der Hart, and Nijenhuis, n.d., para. 8).

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.

The EP has evolutionary roots in defensive mechanisms that propelled us through the traumatic experience(s), an inborn reactionary system that can become entrenched within the mind. The EP's success in our survival leads us to firmly identify with this part of ourselves and engages in obsessive and compulsive rumination of the defensive mechanisms and exhibits as symptomatology.

The ANP has become the mode of operation whereby the individual can engage everyday operational tasks. Such as "...attachment, energy management, reproduction and rearing of children, socialization, play, and exploration" (para. 12). To do so, the ANP’s main function is to avoid the intrusive thoughts and fear potentials.

In a constant threat environment, the evolutionary response system and the benefits of survival further encapsulates the differentiated states of mind. Secondary structural dissociation is a result of this prolonged and saturated state of being. A fluid environment demands that we engage in concerted efforts to survive, to do otherwise means death. Animalistic reflexive defense mechanisms such as the fight or flight response or submissive freezing, delve into the realm of “…complex PTSD or disorders of extreme stress (DES), trauma-induced borderline personality disorder, and dissociative disorders not otherwise specified” (para. 12).

Tertiary structural dissociation results from the complete fragmentation of the EP and the ANP. Whereby numerous ANP’s can develop to engage different aspects of a persons life, such as putting on your “work hat” to enable the separation of a traumatic existence to a work self, the social self, etc. Here we find the diagnosis of DID, where traumatic associations or triggers have inundated the individual and submerges them into a function of constantly changing identities governed by situational exchanges.

Can a Combat Veteran Heal Enough to Have a Longterm Healthy Relationship

I received this email last night and wanted to share about my response,

My name is Sally. I came across your blog while researching PTSD. As a child, I was diagnosed with PTSD, which has lead me to pursue study in the field of Psychology. I am currently and undergraduate student in Some State with hopes of attaining my PhD and working with Veterans. I first and foremost, want to Thank You, for the incredible sacrifices you have made for our country.

Secondly, I was wondering if I could get your opinion on something. I am currently in a relationship with an Infantry soldier stationed at Fort Somewhere named Bob. He will be returning to Iraq for the third time in October. He has not been diagnosed with PTSD, and I do not believe he suffers from it. However, it seems like there are parts of him missing. Although he has never opened up and talked about combat experiences, and I have never asked him too, he has on occasion briefly mentioned some. Any attempt on my part to inquire further is always shut down.

Bob feels he has a duty to keep those things within himself because it would be wrong to share them with anyone who hasn't experienced combat. I understand his feelings, and respect his wishes. Bob does not seem bothered by memories of violence and death as he does from being cheated on while he was on his second tour. Because of this Bob's ability to trust people has been shattered. He cannot open himself to people who love him. He has a really hard time expressing emotions and affection. He is by far the hardest person to communicate with I have ever know. Ironically, as a child I was in the same position. My life will forever consist of a struggle to balance my tendency to disassociate myself with others, and intense desire for protection in love. His condition brings back memories of my former self. He clearly needs love and affection but can not allow himself to receive it. The fact that he is still enlisted, and conditioned to shutdown emotions in order to simply do his job does not help matters.

My question to you is this in your opinion? Can any of us, diagnosed with PTSD, veterans, or both heal enough to have longterm healthy relationships?

Sincerely Sally

My response:

Precipice of Death, A Soldier's Vista

If you are just now joining us, I am posting overlooked articles that I think can build on an understanding of your combat veteran. In this post I attempt to portray the minds landscape of the veteran or soldier have gone to the brink of death and found the place where others lose theirs and how do we come back from this precipice.

To understand what a person with PTSD goes through "in the moment" we have to think beyond our belief of how we would handle ourselves in a high stress life or death situation. Put self away, go to that place that enables you to kill or be killed.

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.

We have a filtering mechanism inside of the mind that strains experience looking for the pertinent information needed to navigate stimuli in the environment. The subconscious screens the information through our emotive center which guides us on appropriate actions. When this controller becomes overloaded, the trigger is pulled and the irrational takes over. The flood gate becomes inundated and can no longer hold the storm wind and rain, the dam breaks releasing the rainwater's natural propensity to flow and overwhelm everything in its path.

Once this part of us has been released due to a death threat, it places itself on point and plows the way to safety. That part of us summoned by the heat of anger and the fire of rage and shuts down all thinking and rationalizing to do the deed, the dance of death.

Combat Values Theory and the Veteran: A Marriage of Defensive Mechanisms and Role Switching

My readership has grown pretty steady in the last two years and I want to tell you that I am truly blessed to have people look to me for understanding when not so long ago I seriously lacked such perceptions. Soon I will have my 200th post here at PASP, Thank you for your continued patronage. I would like to bring some attention to some overlooked posts that I think will shed some light on a combat veterans thinking process, feelings, behaviors, reactions and interactions with others. I hope to bring forth an illumination into why we do what we do.

Photo by Scott Lee

Dichotomous Subdivisions Within the Subconscious, an 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 'role switch' from a killer instinct with no remorse to a loving and caring father with great capacity for empathy. For the combat vet this can become troublesome to dangerous when these roles begin to blur and wreck havoc.

Everyone sets up belief systems, a schema that enable us to react to situations as they arrive. By using this system of rules as a guide in life we can interact in society without having to analyze every aspect of our experience. We can convince ourselves that our ideology is who we are, when in reality living within our dogma cuts us off from a greater understanding and reaching our potentiality. The combat veteran's brain has invoked a divided self to ensure the integrity of the differing internal representations. His or her mind has been subdivided into incompatible subsections to deal with life in the clashing realms of their subconscious.

Unconscious Scripts & Self Defeating Behaviors

This posting expounds more on my last article from July 10, 2009. There might be more on this subject coming soon.

We all have unconscious scripts that we operate from originating in our childhood; from friends, family, community, culture and nation. When we fail to identify these scripts, standard operating procedures or behavior patterns, the consequences from such can become overwhelming. Baffling choices can leave us questioning our decision making skills and can have deleterious effects on our lives leaving us with a lifetime of regret and sorrow.

When we fail to look at why we make our decisions and how we made them, then we can become caught in a cycle of self defeating behaviors. Sometimes we may begin to accept our "bad luck" or "fate" and resign ourselves to a life of broken dreams. If we believe in our perceived life restrictions then we fail to live to our potential.

Combat Rage and What We May Do With It

I want the reader of this post to know that I am writing about the combat veteran with a severe form of PTSD. Not every combat veteran will fit this category, as a matter of fact most combat veterans do not fit this category. Even though most combat veterans will not experience this degree of symptomology, many will feel several of these symptoms and feelings.

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's life other than yourself and your squad.

Now remove this person from the battlefield and look through his/her eyes and tell me of the total ambiguity and discord in society you see and now feel the fight within self to let loose the rage and exterminate all that does not fit the afore mentioned narrow field of forgotten battlefield schemata. Now the real battle begins, fighting for your life when you know the simple rules of kill or be killed verses and weighed against societies norms, now you can do nothing but feel the rage, fear and your humanity. But what do you do with it? Where do you put it?

In combat you project it into the enemy and forgot instantly as you spray lead through the use of controlled anger, rage and fear into a 'combat othering.' Othering is simply the development of placing oneself above another, the mechanism of wielding the tools of oppression in society, or death and destruction in the killing fields. In combat we place the supposed deserving of hot lead into the enemy, we place upon them the responsibility of our actions, we wholly demonize them to save our battle buddies and ourselves. Back in society we no longer have that repository to dump into, we now turn this shell we call a body into the demon, we become the demon, we are the demon. Now we perceive many threats everywhere, including the demon hosted by the facade of me. This conglomeration of selves is inadequate and maladjusted in regular society and can lead to chronically dissociating from self, community and society.

With chronic cycling through anger, rage, hyperarousal, and fear by a misattuned self regulator within the person, we can find ourselves succumbing to the demon without knowing why or how. Our world has been turned upside down and in combat we surrendered to this perspective, but back in society we still have this perception of the world that looks and feels "wrong" and having already adopted this vision in the battle zone, we still operate from this intense sense of right and wrong which triggers in us the demon. On the surface where we now reside we see only the ripples of a foreboding tsunami of emotions. The momentum of such a wave sends us roiling along until we hit the shallow end of coping and then seemingly out of nowhere the hundred foot wave rises above and rolls out over everything and everyone.

The veteran battling this probably does not understand it themselves. With regards to the rage and anger, this disconnect happens on several levels. One level we can feel it welling up and the fear entangles with it, which we can suppress most of the time, except that our loved ones will notice a difference in our demeanor and behavior. A deeper level we feel it slipping, sliding off uncontrollably, succumbing to an even deeper level, where all emotions and affect leaves and we switch over to our combat selves. We have checked out, no longer in command of our facilities and we have returned back to the killing field in all sensory levels except in body. Our mind smells, sees, hears, tastes and feels the acrid pending doom of combat, we have left our body and given over to the demon.

Hope this helped, it seems that the best way to describe it was through metaphors.

Fear of Remembering

A traumatized brain will construct defenses against remembering horrific memories, subdividing the mind into compartments, locking them away. When this has been done, emotions the most salient reminder of the traumatizing event, out of necessity will separate from the other five sensory memories. The bodily sensations, smells, images, taste, all of the senses recorded from environmental stimuli will also have been logged, but separated, wholly unrealized and dissociated from each other. Thus setting the stage for a never ending cycle of fear, avoidance, defenses and generating a transmutable spectrum of negative energy.

The recurring thought intrusions come to bear when the compartmentalized piece or pieces pierces through into our highly guarded and constructed reality. This incursion can be experienced as an all out assault on the person or a mildly disturbing and recurring thought.

Each of the compartmentalized parts represent unfinished or incomplete mental memory and energy, further complicating the survivors life. The split apart parts can have an energetic charge ranging from extremely low to explosively high. Fear of remembering, the "core phobia of traumatic memory" maintains a structurally dissociated memory imbued with a certain energetic level, which can manifest as a nervousness we naturally attach to defenses possibly giving rise to intrusive thoughts ranging from minor intrusions to acute dissociative flashbacks. In a flashback, for a moment all of the separated parts come together for an oppressive and harrowing reunion.

As the memories have not been fully realized and personalized can extrude into active recollection generating a unresolved alternate reality where the survivor relives the traumatizing event as it where happening again, in the here and now. Anger and rage can manifest from such an intrusion, but for the survivor this would be an inaccurate description of the palpable emotive infiltration. Much liked a flame attempting to escape from the grasp of its foundation, the survivor in a moment of dissociation extinguishes anger and rage as a fuel to fire a maladaptive defensive reflexive reaction.

Does the fire think about the source of the fuel firing the forge? The flames reach upward in a fervent and hopeless endeavor, a momentary expansion of bursting heated vapors channeling radiant energy in a quest of expending and consumption. The flame, having a preconditioned propensity for dissipation engages its primary purpose, a natural unrelenting predilection to push past all boundaries to maintain its periphery. There is only a surface connection felt by the survivor between the smoldering embers of the traumatizing event and the flame of raging emotions. Extreme defensive mechanisms upon engagement will now consume all rational thought and display its own surface charge blazing away until having been splayed and spent.

How Can They Understand That Unreality is My Reality?

In class on last Thursday, I met some resistance to the idea that chronic, complex or combat PTSD cannot be cured. The most recent and relative research concludes this finding and offers a series of treatments designed to give the person a more complete identity and sense of self. I understood their argument and based on the understanding of primary structural dissociation and simple PTSD, their rhetoric and argument would have merit. But, an expanded understanding on the nature of secondary and tertiary dissociation of the personality would reveal the underlying nature of multiple traumatizations and the shattering of an identity.

I hit a wall in trying to impart my experience from one who is mentally ill, with an educated perspective on that which I was speaking on. To say the least the futility I felt in that room that day was almost overwhelming. I started to get defensive and flustered with their repeated attempts to bolster their arguments and counter the information I was miserably failing to impart. They were trying to tell me that some people use their mental illness as a crutch, or an excuse.

They did not realize I was not trying to argue a point, but to give a perspective on what it was like for me to finally realize that others thought as I did, that shared my perceptions and I could identify with. I was attempting to verbalize my insights as it relates to the inner world of someone with a mental illness. I felt as if I was being attacked, that they were insinuating that I was the one trying to make excuses or make use of a crutch. I acquiesced on this point, yes I did make excuses and use this as a crutch when I was without a plan of recovery. I told them that recovery is a process, one cannot get from A to D, without first going through B and C.

That day was the day I fully realized that magnitude of the depth and permeation of the stigma attached to mental illness, gaining its teeth from this same attitude and limited "understanding."

How can I make others understand if a group of future Social Workers cannot get past their own biases and prejudgments? How can one who does not experience a world completely different from their own, accept my worldview? How can they understand that unreality is my reality?

The Modern Combat Veteran: Dissociative Posttraumatic Stress Disorder & Influences on Criminality

The following is a paper that I have completed for my Social Work Law class, parts of the paper I have been writing about in my blog. The paper ties together the evolution in my train of thought concerning the veteran or soldier consumed by the ravages of full blown PTSD.

The paper is long, but relevant to the plight of our returning combat soldiers and veterans. If you want to understand more about why a veteran or soldier runs afoul with law and society then you should read this.


Running Head: VETERANS, DISSOCIATIVE PTSD AND CRIMINALITY

Scott A. Lee
Kent School of Social Work, University of Louisville
November 3, 2008

The Modern Combat Veteran:
Dissociative Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Influences on Criminality

Statistics
As of August 27, 2008, according to the Congressional Research Service (2008) 4,726 soldiers have lost their lives in combat and 32,977 troops were wounded in action, with 8,089 suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The USA Today (2008) reported that 68% of all soldiers have been deployed to a combat zone, 31% have been deployed more than once and 2,358 have had more than five tours of duty.

The United States Department of Justice (2004) reports that, “[t]he majority of veterans in State (54%) and Federal (64%) prison served during a wartime period….[that] Vietnam War-era veterans were the most common wartime veterans in both State (36%) and Federal (39%) prison.” The 57% majority of State prisoners were serving time for a violent crime compared to less than half of non-veterans who were serving less time for similar crimes. The report indicates the Iraq-Afghanistan era veterans comprise 4% of both prison populations (U. S. Department of Justice [USDJ], 2004).

Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Dissociation and Other Considerations    PTSD is 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.

The incident that solidifies the mental wound of PTSD results in a mind numbing, or psychic shift. In response to the trauma of combat, the person needs to make a mental detachment to do what needs to be done. The survival mode of operation forgoes the higher levels of functioning and depends on the primitive reactionary portion of the brain. When this unconscious detachment has been activated to frequently or for extended amounts of time it becomes part of conscious processing and interferes with everyday interactions (Lee, 2006; and Cerone, 2006). According to Howell (2005), dissociation refers to,

the separation of mental and experiential contents that would normally be connected. The word dissociation is laden with multiple meanings and refers to many kinds of phenomena, processes, and conditions. Dissociation is both adaptive and maladaptive, both verb and noun, both cause and effect….Dissociation is often psychologically defensive, protecting against painful affects and memories, but can also be an organismic an automatic response to immediate danger….Dissociation can be understood as taxonic or, varying in degrees….It is both occurent and dispositional….It refers to such psychical events as spacing out, psychic numbing, and even experiencing oneself as floating above one’s body. Dissociation has been thought of in spatial metaphor, as acts of ‘keeping things apart’ as well as ‘vertical splitting’ (p. 18).

The mind can develop into split affective regions where multiple self-states dissociate incompatible values systems and set up residence along with establishing a unified substructure within matching internal guidance systems. The dissociated subsystems run parallel to other self-states and emerge when a particular skill set needs asserting pertaining to situational interactions. Here trauma based disorders may lead the symptomology to further entrenchment and compartmentalization that may lead to personality disorders. “A war veteran with PTSD might have more significant structural dissociation, involving the sequestration of more and larger portions of experience” (p. 22).

A defined preconditioned set of beliefs and values, the combat schema enables the warrior to navigate efficiently through the adversity of combat without a detailed consideration of consequences. I propose a unique set of beliefs, Combat Values Theory (CVT), based on the survival of self in relation to the context of war and the “combat-othering”, for we must wholly demonize our adversary and in the process dehumanize ourselves. The combat veterans primitive fight or flight defensive mechanism has been repressed through the training in the military, conditioning the troop to take up the fight portion leaving a proclivity for violence without a concern for personal safety. Too engage in a mortal fight with the enemy this schema spells out the actions in a given situation without becoming preoccupied with survivability in the moment which could get a soldier killed.

The warrior with PTSD has grown accustomed to the value and belief systems of war and feels threatened when they become faced with having to let go of this security in an attempt to reintegrate back into society. Howell describes animal defensive and posttraumatic biological states,

The human animal may have a repertoire of discrete behavioral states that are adaptive to conditions of predation….[t]hese animal defense states may underlie different dissociative parts of the personality….[t]his begins a neurophysiological alarm reaction…[and]…a tendency to over read cues as threatening, which can increase the probability for violence (p. 29).

The ambiguity inherent in social dynamics can lead to mixed feelings or even a lack of feelings depending on the degree of interpersonal relatedness to the returning combat veteran (RCV). We rely on our parental figures to shape healthy personality and values structures through attachments with significant others, the attachments become avenues of exchange, a distillation of proper interactions and expectations according to society norms. When this exchange becomes distorted to the point of the child becoming a repository of negative energy, instead a healthy exchange solidifying proper boundaries, then the nature of our attachments may become warped and disorganized further compounding the RCV’s reintegration.

The combat attachments born of blood do not leave us because we depart the battlefield; they become an empty feeling inside of us. The soldier develops a highly narrow functioning self-organization in conjunction with his or her other squad members. This organization, "troop-organism," becomes an extension of the combat-self, no different than an arm or leg. We do not will our arms or legs to move, we react from the expectations of intentional imagery based upon the combat values structure. It happens, such as the members of the "squad-herd" where each part of the troop-organism and acts in a homogeneous way, each troop becoming part of the others self-states.

These attachments to the other require a splitting within the interpersonal self-states where many such dissociated selves birth into existence, as each of the value system constructs do not match and out of necessity, develops into a complete compartmentalized persona while maintaining the "whole" sub-self organizations. Each of the self-states run parallel to one another and have the capacity of switching back and forth when the proper situation requires appropriate specialized skill sets. The interpersonal self of the civilian self becomes supplanted and filed away by the combat self due to the incompatibility of the value structures for survivability that requires a conforming from a civilian society to the norms of the combat environment.

Attachments can be considered the path to rigidity or vehicles of spontaneity; to become spontaneous the person must develop a mechanism for the free exchange of intimacy through beneficial interpersonal skill sets. Without a healthy development of attachments then disorganized attachments (d-attachments) form. The d-attachments become the mechanism to gauge interactions in the environment and in doing so they become rigid, an if this then that experiential existence. The d-attachment arraignment only allows for what can be controlled under a series of contingencies plans, or procedural knowledge, usually modeled after our parental attachments, an identification with the aggressor or other such negative role model. Becoming an identity of an exclusionary “personal culture” where the individual becomes estranged from regular society and defending their boundaries as they were national borders between two hostile countries (Howell, 2005; & Lee, 2006).

The cycle of procedural enactments play out in significant others that we allow in our lives, the reason why we keep having the same dramatizations and arguments while never finding a resolution. We enact our past roles and project them into our relationships cast from our childhood in an attempt to resolve the attachments constructively. Since we have not been shown healthy attachment enactments we reside in the cycle of d-attachments and further compound our disorders through retraumatization and or neglect, predisposing the person to develop trauma based disorders and or personality disorders (Howell, 2005).

Without a reintegration of the self and of attachments and d-attachments, a combat veteran can and will run afoul of friends, family and society. The returning combat veteran faces hurdles that they have not been trained to handle, the training and experiences they have navigated and survived will lead them to think a civilian life will be easy compared to the battle life. What they fail to realize is that they have replaced their civilian self with an operational combat value system and attachments, where in American society the individual has the utmost consideration further combining and compounding issues of integration. Little concentration on developing healthy attachment systems the untenable situation can lead the RCV with severely dysfunctional interpersonal skills and a mechanism of perpetual isolation.

Indoctrination 
Combat alters and modifies the value system, a preconditioned set of beliefs, entailing a value-orientated constitute of definitions of situation in terms of direction of solutions and action dilemmas, formulating a culture of killing, stripping the combat vet of the niceties that lubricate society’s interactions, which in combat would result in death. In combat the fluidity of boundaries becomes awash in the relational adaptation to an integral cohesion with their battle buddies, a devolution of survival mindset develops and provides a sense of safety; the germination of base natural selection process by successful integration of the combat value system. With a disproportionate 56% of Army veterans incarcerated, the Army culture seems to generate people more prone to violence (USDJ, 2004).

The war zone recons the birthing of the “trooper organism,” where the firing squad becomes integrated with one other with a culture of survival. The individual boundary of the soldier submerges within the organismal boundaries of the trooper organism while shedding the individual identity. The troop organism allows for the diffusion of immense responsibility over all involved making the transition to an evolution of survival more manageable wherein the herd mentality brings forth the primitive instinctual remnants and the decentralization of obligation. Military culture portrays the combat arms military occupational specialty (MOS) as having more cultural capital and esteem. The infantry MOS with combat decorations increases the rate of promotion, rank and respectability while non-combat soldiers tend to be over looked (Lee, 2006; and Howell, 2005).

Situational Imprisonment    Military enculturalization subsumes CVT into an identification born of survival and dependent on the assimilation of the “firing squad mind set”, where one troops thoughts relates to an extension of his battle buddies. The fluidity of boundaries births the “troop organism” and forever impairs the RCV to return home without his “other selves.” Now the RCV has to try and interrelate without his relational attachments and attempts to reintegrate back into the civilian world where nothing makes sense anymore, where boundaries cross without attachments as a normative experience triggering perceived threat-states. This leads RCV to become his own “isolated island organism,” or an identity incomplete without the other part of the firing squad, that thinks, feels and acts as they do. The RCV becomes unable to interrelate with family and community in a meaningful way, impeded by the fluidity of boundaries.

As their safety has been compromised, a feeling of abject detachment has arisen from the conditioned reality of the combat organism that depended upon the battle buddy “having his back.” Therein leading to a sense of safety, the combat vet needed only to worry about their own personal “line of sight” in a battle field environment requiring a 360 degree threat radius. On his own in society this burden becomes an impossibly overwhelming sense of danger engulfing the RCV, leading to a susceptibility to triggers. A culture of 360 degree radius in the battlefield and shackled intimately with the culture of combat values, hereinto relying on the troop attachments and the evolution of survival, the RCV becomes stuck on the troop-organism functionality.

The troop-organism capacity becomes problematic to the integration of the “civilian-self” as it now has become supplanted by the “combat-self.” An attachment of the self to the self that is the identity of one whom sufficiently succeeds in suffering, completing the veteran and familial rift. The fluidity of boundaries in an intimate relationship with a loved one becomes a threat to the RCV due to the misidentification of signals between the two, one having adapted an independent perspective and the other a dysfunctional dependent state. The crossed-signals of the significant others has complicated the adaptation from independent relational skills verses over dependence and the perceived threatening self states with both parties expectations of returning to “the way it was.”

Compounding the issue, the RCV has now been conditioned to the “culture of killing” and the relational fluidity of boundaries between the two have become incompatible, further given rise to the RCV’s sense of threat as he where in combat. In combat a registering between non-compatible boundaries would be reconciled by a reflexive reactionary exercise of survival, triggering the culture of killing (Kirmayer, Rousseau, and Lashly, 2007). “Those supporting the use of culture as a defense argue that is it intrinsically unfair to judge someone exclusively by the rules and values of a society that he or she does not know” (p. 98). The above goes to the creation of a Veterans Court, where culture competency would require a special understanding of combat vets cultural “shaping.”

Criminal Behavior, Context and Responsibility    “[T]rauma exposure and symptoms of PTSD are prevalent among incarcerated veterans….[e]xposure to combat was the trauma most likely to lead to PTSD among males in a general population survey of 5, 877 individuals, [totaling] 19 percent” (Saxon, A. J., Davis, T. M., Sloan, K. L., McKnight, K. M., McFall, M. E. and Kivlahan, D. R., p. 962, 2001). Saxon et al. indicated a higher prevalence for PTSD in incarcerated veterans than the general population. Additionally veterans who screened positive for PTSD had significantly higher numbers of childhood trauma, indicating a possible correlation between peritraumas, military culture and past traumatization.

Taking culture into account means that the purposes of the criminal justice system—which include prevention and rehabilitation—can be achieved more effectively. Cultural awareness must be coupled with an equally astute political awareness that traces the consequences of clinical or forensic consultations out into the larger society (Kirmayer et al., 2001, p. 101).

Before the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, questions of the “ultimate issue” when a defendant plead insanity in federal court was whether he lacked “the substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law” (As cited in Buchanan, 2006, p. 14). After the bill was enacted, the question now goes to whether he “appreciated the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts” (p. 14). “Case law and the Rules’ legislative history suggest also that in less clear cases an issue’s ‘ultimate’ status hinges on who has the authority to decide it…because it amounted to an ‘ultimate opinion’” (pp. 14-15). Psychiatric expertise falls under the Civil Procedure Rules (CPR), Part 35, whereby the duty of the assessor, in an expert capacity, is to help the court. A mental defense with the question of competency will rely on the weight of cognitive capacities.

With our modern soldiers averaging two to three tours of combat, we will begin to see an increasing epidemic of incarcerated veterans. In the next 10 to 15 years the American public will see a sharp rise in veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, to the point of epidemic proportions. You see, never before in war have our troops been subjected to such prolonged exposure to combat and life threatening situations. In World War II our troops were fighting a defined enemy while engaging real objectives with sufficient downtime in between engagements. Most of the troops to see combat were infantry soldiers fighting on a distinct front, not the ones "in the rear with the gear". With a real threat to our sovereignty and way of life soldiers of this era were less affected by the trauma of war.

The significant political interference of the Vietnam War generated little to no tangible objectives for our soldiers solidifying and branding their levels of anxiety and forever troubling their minds. Guerrilla warfare, an inherently cognitively damaging military action compounded the neuropathic damage experienced by our troops in Vietnam. Even with the troops having regular downtime in between engagements the cognitive fractures of these veterans were enhanced by more intense combat and the rejection of our returning soldiers.

The soldiers in the Iraqi war have been sent on multiple deployments with an average of two or three tours of duty with little time in between. While in Iraq, there are no friendly countries or areas to spend leave time to relieve stress while residing on constant alert and most, even non-combat soldiers, see combat or threats on a daily basis. Now combine this with the most intensive warfare possible, guerrilla warfare in an urban environment. We get troops that are overextended and overexposed to life threatening situations within unprecedented levels of combat. Our troops in Iraq have no respite from danger, further entrenching the effects of PTSD through the hyper levels of neurotransmitters (Lee, 2008).

Dissociated attachments reenact combat trauma somatically and between interstates within the RCV resulting in a “civil war” amongst oneself. A seemingly supra-intelligent guidance of the unconscious, this device of PTSD that engages in the survival defensive mechanisms that has sustained the combat veterans life on a persistent basis. Thus becoming the protector and a “conceptualization of hostile self-states in ‘personified narcissistic and sociopathic defenses’ that defend against dependency, vulnerability, and guilt…[and]…applies just as well to pathological narcissism” (Howell, 2005, p. 224). The ‘diminished capacity’ rule would apply when dissociative episodes result in a “psychotic” break, whereby a thought disorder could be ascribed.

Diminished capacity resulting in a thought disorder would be split between two categories; one being “disturbances in the content of thinking and perceiving (hallucinations and delusions), and… [the second would be]…disturbances in the form of thinking (formal thought disorder)” (Young, 2003, para. 7). Procedural memory becomes disengaged from experiential memories where reactionary encoding enables the maladaptive somatic response encoded reactions needed during survival in the moment situations. Multiple self-states dissociate and boundaries within boundaries abound.

I am just now starting to sift through the sea of case law and journal articles on the considerations of PTSD and criminality; unfortunately I think that there will be an ever increasing need for individuals well versed in the pitfalls of combat trauma and difficulties in reintegration. I feel as you do that something needs to be done to address this issue head on, such as a Veterans Court much like the one just established in Minnesota. Additionally, we have only begun to see the tide of returning veterans with psychological troubles facing criminal charges.

Never before in the history of American warfare have we seen such high numbers of soldiers who have been under unimaginable stress. In WWII 18% of our soldiers actually engaged in combat, with Vietnam it was 30-40%, today 68% have actually engaged in combat (Veterans for common Sense & Veterans United For Truth, Inc v. Veterans Administration, item 54, & National Center For PTSD Fact Sheet, Aftermath of Violence section, paragraph 2). Not only have more soldiers engaged in combat, they have been in combat longer with an average of 2 to 3 tours of duty. Many have been on 5 tours and some as much as 6. As high as 80-90% of soldiers (Hoge, C. W., Auchterlonie, J. L., and Charles S. M., 2008, results section, paragraph 5) have seen someone get killed, or been in a combat zone, we have reached "Combat Saturation."

Today 15% (300,000; Rand Corporation, 2008) of our soldiers and veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD and this seems like it may be a smaller number compared to other wars. 30% PTSD rates in Vietnam, 15% estimated in WWII and 15-20% of Gulf War I vets reported to have PTSD. It took Vietnam veterans up to 10-20 years before their symptoms reached the point of becoming debilitating. The implications for our modern veterans will have monumental deleterious effects in the next 10 years, it has been projected that PTSD rates in today's wars will reach 50-60%. We will be inundated with mentally ill veterans who have few options and nowhere to turn and they will run afoul with the law (Lee, 2006).

Today we have become faced with a growing trend of soldiers and veterans becoming enmeshed in the court systems. In direct conflict with the perception in the media I propose the theory that our veterans and soldiers face an insufficient mental health care which has a major impact to their lives, families and communities. The problem is not individualistic but systemic requiring major changes in how we view and treat PTSD. The care of our soldiers and veterans is not being met and we have just begun to see the aftereffects of the mind shattering results of combat trauma. Untreated PTSD can destroy the lives of many, not only the soldier and veteran. We send our soldiers to war for our freedom and then lock them up when they are broken and of no use anymore (Lee, 2008).

Suggested Guide to Help Your Veteran or Soldier Diagnosed with PTSD
and Charged With a Crime
To whom it may concern,

I would suggest that you start researching about PTSD right away. The mind-body connection and interactions, the psychology of PTSD, defensive mechanisms, how the mind responds to trauma, the symptoms of PTSD, how extended combat (such as multiple tours served) effects soldiers and veterans, legal ramifications of criminal behavior and PTSD, the processes of the psychic split from reality and past combat experiences, how anxiety plays an everyday part of our lives, how ordinary stress can lead to higher levels of stress and extreme responses and flashbacks, the nature of flashbacks, the nature of triggers and how they apply to PTSD, and the mental compartmentalization that happens to a PTSD survivor. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but should give you some kind of idea of where you might want to start.

Like it or not, this has consumed your life by no choice of your own, instead of letting that energy overwhelm you and feeling helpless, turn that energy into a useful endeavor and focus it toward finding out as much as possible about PTSD and the effects of combat. You have more passion about this subject than anyone, use this as an opportunity to help your loved one get a fair trial and to force the courts to consider his/her mental illness as a contributing factor in their actions.

Do not take no for an answer from his/her lawyer as to your wanting to get involved in your significant others case, jump into his/her pocket and become the "paralegal" and find them the information that needed for fair consideration of the case. Most lawyers will resist this from you, again do not take no for an answer. I am guessing that the lawyer will probably be a public defender; they are overloaded with cases and cannot really give the appropriate attention that their caseload needs. So, you need to assume that role of "defender" and information detective, this can greatly impact the outcome of the trial.

Consider trying to find a high profile lawyer who will take the case on pro bono; this type of case has become a hot topic in the news and media. A lawyer might take a case for this reason and could benefit the outcome. Go to the clerk’s office and get a copy of the court case file, this will help you by becoming familiar with the states perspective on the case and what exactly is being done. Educate yourself in Miranda rights (If they violated his rights here, this could have a considerable impact on the outcome), federal constitutional law concerning 1st, 4th (emphasis here), 5th, 6th and 8th amendments, along with state constitutional law. Educate yourself on how the court works, the proceedings, when and where evidence can be brought, the questioning of witnesses and how that process is different in every aspect of the trial.

Educate yourself on case law concerning PTSD and other mental illnesses where a consideration or precedent has been set, this can be used in your case and can greatly influence what happens. Look into your state laws first as they will have the most sway, because state law guides state cases first, then look to federal law to find precedents and findings where PTSD was considered in the sentencing phase. Concentrate on first on the main trial part where the evidence and witnesses will be displayed then on the sentencing. Both of these parts of the overall court proceedings will be the most important part, your soldier or veteran’s fate will be decided between these two proceedings.

Educate yourself on and things to do:

• Do not talk with the police or anyone else until you have talked with your lawyer, what you say will be used against you
• learn your rights and assert them, you do not have any rights if you do not know your rights
• get a copy of court case file
• get a copy of VA file and military file
• jump in your lawyers pocket
• try to find a pro bono lawyer
• individual rights, Miranda and if they were violated
• legal proceedings, structure of court formalities and rules of law
• psychology of PTSD
• case law, state and federal, concentrating on the main trial and sentencing process
• constitutional law
• legal responsibilities of the judge, your lawyer and the prosecutor
• find a support group
• contact your senator, congressperson
• contact your local VFW, AMVETS, or veterans associations

I know that this seems like too much, just figure out what is coming next and then concentrate your efforts into that. Take one court proceeding at a time and concentrate on the legalities of that part of the process and use it as a guide to where you need to research and what you should do. The structure of the next proceedings will be your sign post for the direction you need to concentrate on. You can do this, if you accept that you have been put on this earth for this.

You were born to do this; this may be your purpose in life, to be the freedom fighter for all veterans and soldiers who will face similar tribulations. You have more vested in this than anyone else, you have more to lose, do not stand by and be a spectator. Get involved and later you will not have the guilt of "I wish I had done something". A most important issue to face would be finding a support group that you feel safe with and trust. You cannot do this alone, enlist the help of as many people that you can. Contact your congressperson, senator and your local VFW, AMVETS, DAV or American Legion. This is only a suggestion for what to do. I have compiled this list and information as a suggested guide for personal empowerment.

Thank you for listening and God bless,

Scott Lee

References    Appelbaum, P. S., Jick, R. Z., Grisso, T., Givelber, D., Silver, E., and Steadman, H. J. (1993). Use of posttraumatic stress disorder to support an insanity defense [Electronic version]. American Journal of Psychiatry, 150(2), 229-234.

Brook, T. V. (2008, August 12). Report: 57% of troops sent on combat tours. USA Today. Retrieved October 12, 2008, from http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/08/gns_deployments_081108/

Bourget, D., and Whitehurst, L. (2007). Amnesia and crime [Electronic version]. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 35(4), 469-480.

Buchanan, A. B. (2006). Psychiatric evidence on the ultimate issue [Electronic version]. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 34(1), 14-21.

Cercone, K. (2006). Brain based learning. In E. K. Sorensen (Ed.), Enhancing learning through technology (pp. 293-322). Hershey, PA: Information Science Publishing.

Congressional Research Services (2008). United States military casualty statistics: Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. CRS Report RS22452. Retrieved on October 29, 2008, from http://assets.opencrs.com/rpts/RS22452_20080909.pdf

Hoge, C. W., Auchterlonie, J. L., and Charles S. M. (2006). Mental health problems, Use of mental health services, and attrition from military service after returning from deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan [Electronic version]. Journal of the American Medical Association, 295, 1023-1032.

Howell, E. F. (2005). The dissociative mind. Hillsdale, NJ: The Analytic Press.

Kimayer, L. J., Rousseau, C. and Lasley M. (2007). The place of culture in forensic psychiatry [Electronic version]. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 35(1), 98-101.

Lee, S. A. (2006). Effects of combat on returning veterans. Unpublished manuscript, Jefferson Community and Technical College at Louisville Kentucky.

Lee, S. A. (2008). Combat veterans and institutions: A systems analysis. Unpublished manuscript, Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville.

National Center for PTSD. (n. d.). The unique circumstances and mental health impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ncmain/ncdocs/fact_shts/fs_iraqafghanistan_wars.html

Mezey, G. (2006). Post-traumatic stress disorder and the law [Electronic version]. Psychiatry, 5(7), 243-247.

Poortinga, E., and Guyer, M. (2007). Criminal responsibility and intent [Electronic version]. Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, 35(1), 124-125.

Powers, R. (2005). Deployment rates, United States military. About.com. Retrieved on December 26, 2008, from http://usmilitary.about.com/od/terrorism/a/deploymentrates.htm

Rand Corporation (2008). Invisible Wounds of War: Psychological and Cognitive Injuries, Their Consequences, and Services to Assist Recovery. Retrieved December 23, 2008, from http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2008/RAND_MG720.pdf

Robinson, C. L. (1999). Observations on cognition and insanity [Electronic version]. American Journal of Forensic Psychology, 17(4) 63-75.

Saxon, A. J., Davis, T. M., Sloan, K. L., McKnight, K. M., McFall, M. E. and Kivlahan, D. R. (2001). Trauma, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, and associated problems among incarcerated veterans [Electronic version]. Psychiatric Services, 52(7), 959-964.

Young, D. W. (2003). Varieties of thought disorder in the criminal context. Washington State Bar Association. Retrieved October 29, 2008, from http://www.wsba.org.media/publications/barnews/2003/mar-03-young.htm

United States Department of Justice. (2004). Veterans in state and federal prison system, 2004. Retrieved November 20, 2008, from http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/vsfp04.pdf

Veterans for America (n. d.). Talking points: The consequences of churning and weekend warriors to frontline soldiers. Retrieved October 29, 2008, from http://www.veteransforamerica.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/talking_points.pdf

Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans United For Truth, Inc v. Veterans Administration, C-07-3758-SC, 2007 U.S. Dist.

PTSD Can Evoke a Sense of Safety

My blog is about what I deal with on any given day, the continuing battle wrought by one man attempting to overcome PTSD again, and again, each day. Sometimes I achieve just that and others I succumb to its ravages; the chronic struggle that most combat PTSD sufferers deal with on a continuing basis.

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.

What would I do to replace the safe feeling I receive when I am vigilant in my personal protection? How would I deal with life when I am used to coping from minute to minute and occupying myself with this endless game of self absorption? An attachment of the self to the self that is the identity of one who sufficiently succeeds in suffering.

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. Almost as if it has become self-aware and not only will it steer me away from danger, but also away from its own demise; a seemingly serendipitous supra-intelligent guidance of the subconscious (I do love word play for sure).

Tis no wonder that we who suffer from combat or complex PTSD have existential identity issues intertwined with the usual symptoms, and at times, exhibit this as a personality crisis while occasionally leading to psychosis and neurosis.

How a Soldier Prepares to Kill

To Do the Deed, the Dance of Death
To understand what a person with PTSD goes through "in the moment" we have to think beyond our belief of how we would handle ourselves in a high stress life or death situation. Put self away, go to that place that enables you to kill or be killed.

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.

We have a filtering mechanism inside of the mind that strains experience looking for the pertinent information needed to navigate stimuli in the environment. The subconscious screens the information through our emotive center which guides us on appropriate actions. When this controller becomes overloaded, the trigger is pulled and the irrational takes over. The flood gate becomes inundated and can no longer hold the storm wind and rain, the dam breaks releasing the rainwater's natural propensity to flow and overwhelm everything in its path.

Once this part of us has been released due to a death threat, it places itself on point and plows the way to safety. That part of us summoned by the heat of anger and the fire of rage and shuts down all thinking and rationalizing to do the deed, the dance of death.

Soldiers Who Kill Can Become Imprisoned by Their Experiences

A Prisoner of My Beliefs
Soldiers and veterans with full blown PTSD usually have low personal self-esteem, a self-constructed foundation of self-affirmations grounded in positive thought, word and deeds, reinforced through values and principles. Esteem manifests in an outward appearance of honor and moral mastery, integrity and humility as others would know a consistency of character established through words, deed and actions. Where all of these principles were meet and mastered in the field of battle they no longer apply to a civilian life or civil society.

The combat schema, a defined preconditioned set of beliefs and values enabling the warrior to navigate efficiently through the adversity of combat without a detailed consideration of consequences. To engage in a mortal fight with the enemy this schema spells out our actions in a given situation as being preoccupied with survivability of the moment can get you killed. The warrior with PTSD has grown accustomed to the value and belief systems of war and feels threatened when they become faced with having to let go of this security to reintegrate back into society.

Without a proper identification of values and a conceptualization of a solid schema we can become lost to the reality of a situation and possibly lose out on our interactions necessary for relationship building. Combat critically changes our value systems, mostly to the detriment of constructing and maintaining significant relationships with family and friends. A disconnect happens between the soldier or veteran that leaves everyone feeling as though an insurmountable wall has been erected.

By an identification of values, along with acknowledging and deconstructing the combat schema one could find the ability to critically analyze in the moment, the validity of said beliefs as required by situational reflection enabling readjustments and disallowing an inflexibility of position. An underpinning of empowering schema and a reevaluation of ethical morality allows one to find plasticity in the moment producing a positive self-efficacy; a confident and self-assured person.

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.

My PTSD started up right away, it was like someone had raised the lid of my vexation and released an emotional chameleon, I could hide in plane site or jump right out at ya. In the first two years I had several dissociative amnesia episodes and drank most everyday while nearly losing my sanity over the years. I had several occurrences of psychosis during moments of peak mental instability, and self medicated while I lived a life of madness for almost 14 years before I became convinced of the need for help. It took an attempt on my life to make me realize my condition was beyond going on without help.

In the beginning the anxiety I experienced was masked as bravado and a tough guy image feeding on the power that I felt from being aggressive, dominating and coercive. I would instigate situations where I could express my built up anxiety through aggression and engage violence as a repressing mechanism to once again become detached from self and my emotions. I remember always looking for a fight or some excuse to go off on an unsuspecting person to dispel the emotional pain that I was attempting to deny. As time went by this to became troublesome as a coping skill and contributed to my overall anxiety and self-loathing.

I do see people healing from the mental scars of warfare, from where I have been and what I have seen it takes years to do so. But, my journey has taken me down the self destructive path of addiction and violence. There have been many more people who have not done so and others of varying degrees, the percentage of troops who take a more constructive way of life outnumber the ones who do so negativity. Usually the soldiers and veterans who have strong attachments and identify with a family support system have less troubles reintegrating.

How a Soldier Can Kill: The Making of a Soldier's Heart

Soldier's Heart, the Swiss Army Knife of Death
In combat or other trauma what can begin as a detachment of emotions from actions can lead to a fractured self, an "othering" and dehumanizing the part of us capable of dispensing death, the "Soldier's Heart" takes on its own persona deep into the shadows . In combat this defensive mechanism, or "tool of death", works well and allows a device within the person to eradicate the enemy who has been assigned a wholly less than human label of demon, enabling denial of the "killer" in us and identifying the burden of blame on its adversary as due adjudication. Thus fracturing and subdividing the mind into non-localized discoherent detachments, all necessary to survive the absurdity of war

Through splits in recognition of a personal identification of self in reality and a impersonal other or shadow self, the Soldier's Heart, one can undertake the surreal experience of destruction and death. Neatly compartmentalizing each portion of the self as a tool or blades smartly sheathed in a case knife, a "Swiss army knife of death", if you will. Just about every solder has this tool whether in their pocket, mind or both. Having objectified the apparatus of undoing life annihilates the attachments to rationale, connections to emotions and actions, and the mediation filter weighing consequences of such actions temporarily while possibly manifesting later as crippling guilt.

This paradigm shift for killing without remorse in the moment, allows for survival in combat and the eradication of other humans, a simply kill or be killed end game. A "simplicity of survival" rational in a hot zone will carry the troop home and can sometimes become difficult to turn off. Which then could lead to dissociative states of differing selves that can become activated during times of high stress. The "tools of survival" do not know the difference between an agitation or an actual threat to life. An automatic survival response takes over the body, and the Soldier's Heart springs forward to slay thine enemies.

Dissociation in Military PTSD

The term shadow persona refers to that part of the individual we deny yet that commands great influence over our behavior while projecting responsibility onto stimuli in the environment or other persons. The haziness of this lack of fully identifying with self can be discerned, it takes time and commitment to overcome our natural defensive mechanisms that have been etched into the mind stemming from great pain.

In this way it overshadowed my true nature, as if I was a passenger in the vehicle that was my body being driven by a conductor. Seemingly my senses and body would hijack my mind and I could only be a witness looking out as I reflexively reacted to apparent hostility and a viral environment. For me it was more of a forward frontal facade that forcefully identified me more so than conversely while surrendering my personal power.

I still feel its presence, today that part of me truly has become a shadow as I have integrated it into my being and personality. In that way it has less power over me compared to when it dominated my worldview by denying that it existed. By claiming this shadow persona I reclaim its capitalization of my faculties and effectuate my assertions of choice, instead of hiding within the silhouette of my soul and vanquishing determinative values and principles.

God intended for us to claim our being through the humility of practicing principles and integrity, both moral imperatives toward communion with humanity. By doing so we break the hold of our subconscious mind controlling our thoughts, feelings and actions. Reach out and go forth to claim all that you are and will become, in doing so you will control the consequences of your actions and gain a new freedom never before experienced.

Combat Veterans and Institutions: A Systems Analysis

Returning Combat Veterans (RCV), have a difficult time reintegrating back into society and life within their family. They deal with a myriad of symptoms combining to hinder the RCV from coping in the civilian world, while having constructive relationships with their family and friends. The lack of psychological education and training while in the military poorly prepares the soldier for the horrors of war and the negative effects on mental functioning. Further compounding the problems for the RCV upon their return they encounter limited services and a Veterans Administration (VA) system more in tune with economics and regulations then providing best outcomes. The scope of this paper explains these concerns as they relate to the competition between veterans seeking help and a system geared toward a macro structural functionalist model that concentrates on peripheral wide applications. A deeper apprehension and awareness has to come forward for our veterans to get the help they need.

The problem between bureaucracies, the combat veteran and their family receiving help lies with the systems application of dynamic systems theory to address problems that require a more interactive ideology such as the ecological systems approach. The main criticism of systems theory treats the person as a machine or something that can be “fixed” lies central to the VA’s approach (Robbins, S.P., Pranab, C., Canda, E. R., pps. 28-47). The models and programs stemming from government to redress RCV issues fail to take into account the magnitude of their problems that extend beyond the medical model and psychological paradigm. The attempt by the VA to apply a blanket policy of treatment on all veterans who face problems such as the affects of psychological trauma in combat has failed.

The military way of life provides strong attachments through a communal approach to every aspect of interactions between soldiers and their families, whether through a support network for the spouse of a soldier to help one another, or to the training of our troops. Developing and enveloping the individual perspectives while opening them to a cohesive togetherness usually not felt before enlisting in the armed services. Now add in a military conflagration and this level of interpersonal commitment and associations become welded to each other’s identity (Lee, 2008f). By educating the soldiers on how personal bonds can be broken by combat and the importance of redeveloping connections with significant others could lessen the mental shock upon returning home.

While many physical features of the RCV may have changed, the deleterious effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) leave nothing the same and completely alter the landscape of the mind. “Taking another's life in the name of freedom, patriotism and because of your job description profoundly changes the person.” (Lee, 2008a, para. 2) Their whole existence has been transformed by the experience of killing; the morality of war trumps the niceties of society and lends the RCV to a reflexive reactionary response to the environment. The enormous adaptive impositions caused by combat disposes of coping and social skills, personal values, cognitive development, definitions of boundaries, stress management, and appropriate responses to environmental stimuli. All of these issues combine to challenge the RCV’s reintegration back into society, “…the environment, which is physical and social…can either support or fail to support the adaptive achievements of autonomy, competence, identity formation, and relatedness to others” (Robbins, 35).

Value identifications have importance to the combat veteran with PTSD, as their value system has been compromised by the acts of killing and war. The values and morality of war greatly conflict with society’s norms and principles. When the combat veteran brings this survival perspective home with them it alienates them from everyone who has not experienced combat, war and or trauma. Combat changes and alters the soldier’s sense of importance and trivializes niceties that lubricate society’s interactions and exchanges. Without identifying what values the veteran or soldier deems important they will continue to operate from the old combat values set and wonder why people [fail to] understand them (Lee 2008c, para. 3).

Soldiers in combat develop a powerful attachment to one another; the strength of this symbiotic bonding overshadows all others, even family. First of all the degree of familiarity and closeness that extreme survival situations such as combat, brings people together to a height one has never experienced before. People have an instinctual need to feel a belonging such as in a herd where they feel safe. This “herdness” has supplanted all other attachments while people they once knew intimately have become foreign and strange. The family, friends and soldier feel this estrangement and all involved become unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Family and friends cannot understand what the RCV has been through, so the soldier or veteran seeks other survivors who do (Lee, 2008e).

The militaristic concentration on rituals of drilling and killing so that one becomes a more efficient “terminator” through automatic reflexive responses to survival, leads the veteran prone to using violent behavior in any given situation where boundaries have been crossed. The open system dynamics of “normal” interaction has become highly dysfunctional for the RCV who has lost their “goodness of fit” within their home environment. The breakdown of a unifying suprasystem interferes with the holistic dimensions of the veteran, increasing the separation and antagonizing the loss of identity that humans claim from associations within their communities. Without an understanding of boundary maintenance the RCV often develops a feeling of being attacked at home and in their community due to their inability to adapt to the fluidity of boundaries inherent with socialization.

Ehrenreich (2003) seeks to advance an understanding of “social traumas” where, …[i]n the context of physical devastation, massive social displacement, and ongoing violence, the hierarchy of need reasserts itself: concrete needs for, health care, housing, and jobs, the need for social reconstruction and reintegration, and the necessity of social reconciliation may dwarf individual emotional needs.

The identification and reinforcement of values, emotion identification, and anger management techniques along with stress management training would enable soldiers to realize better coping strategies when coming out of the combat zone. Further, interpersonal communication and social skills education along with boundaries identification would foster closer relationships with significant others (Lee, 2008d). Further on the topic of values and principles, these systems have a connection to feelings and emotions or the lack thereof with one who dissociates as most RCVs and complex-PTSD sufferers do. Emotions and feelings are the arbiters of values, principles, and morality; the ethical dilemmas that keep most people in check can get bypassed with a combat veteran’s lack of affect. A normal reaction with a non-traumatized brain would trigger an emotive response cascading into consideration of appropriate responses. The higher level processes of cognitive interaction delve into a consideration of choices and consequences, whereas the traumatized brain operates from the lower base of primitive survival systems and defensive mechanisms forgoing the thought of repercussions (Lee, 2008c).

The subsystem of a combat squad having experienced several fire fights develops a sense of oneness with each other; they have become an independent ecosystem; one organism through the forging process of fight or flight. Due to the nature of killing and survival their emotionality has become severed from their environment and channeled into the solidarity that soldiering brings. If one of them gets wounded or killed they all feel it through their connection of unity and common goal of survival (Lee 2008d). Bonding through blood and battle takes the soldier to a new level of raw humanism forged through survival and fight or flight defensive mechanisms. The psychology of killing alters the terrain of the mind disabling the rational machinery and enabling the ancient reflexive responsive unconscious (Lee, 2008f).

The focus on killing without contemplating consequences severs the RCVs ritual of connection to community, family, and wholeness resulting in deviant adaptations. Their formative connections have remained back in the field of combat and killing, where they left part of themselves with their buddies who have yet to come home while carrying the guilt of leaving them behind. They feel that egoistic “warrior archetype” connection with the military and the battle buddy who had their back in the combat zone. In this mind frame when the veteran comes home; they become lost in a world that no longer makes sense to them due to adaptive process of bypassing the five senses and emotional attachment to considerations of interactions. The hard wiring of the combat veterans mind acts as if their life depends on the ritualism of defensive hyper-vigilance and keeps the RCV stuck in a malposition (Lee, 2008b).

When combat takes away the soldier who has became the centerpiece of an intimate community it breaks down. Whether he has been buried or she has become a prisoner of her own mind; war fractures the body, mind, spirit and the community that once knew cohesion (Lee, 2008f). Some soldiers will long for that interconnectedness left in the field when they came home and reenlist or volunteer for another tour. Many soldiers find that their PTSD symptoms dissipate or vanish while back in the theater of combat, they have reentered the realm of survival, fight or flight and oneness with soldiering (Lee, 2008e).

The troops who do make it out of the theater of combat have been changed in body and mind. They have lost substantial parts of their mind, soul and community. Psychological trauma devastates the battle buddy, spouse, and children while splintering everything that once was the bedrock of the American Soldier (Lee, 2008f). In addition the military needs to teach mental health sensitivity training and PTSD awareness as a standard, in basic training and continuing throughout their careers thus giving mental injuries of war validity. Training in these areas would give our soldiers an extra set of tools and weapons in fighting the psychological effects of combat and war. Educating them before hand of what they may face upon going home would prepare them if they develop PTSD. Otherwise they will have gained the insights and ability to recognize when their fellow soldier suffers from PTSD (Lee, 2008d).

References
Ehrenreich, J. H., (2003). Understanding PTSD: forgetting trauma. Journal of Social Issues, 3 (1) 15-28.

Lee, S. (2008a, July 13). Forgive me. PTSD, a soldier’s perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/07/forgive-me.html

Lee, S (2008b, July 20). My first email response. PTSD, a soldier’s perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/07/my-first-e-mail-response.html

Lee, S. (2008c, August 22). Thoughts feelings and behavior. PTSD, a soldier’s perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/08/thoughts-eelings-and-actions.html

Lee, S. (2008d, September 5). Fully train our soldiers for the rigors of war. PTSD, a soldier’s perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/09/fully-train-our-soldiers-for-rigors-of.html

Lee, S. (2008e, September 6). Soldiers in combat develop powerful attachments to one another. PTSD, a soldier’s perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/09/soldiers-in-combat-develop-powerful.html

Lee, S. (2008f, September 14). Lower recruitment standards contributing to military suicide rates. PTSD, a soldier's perspective. Retrieved from http://ptsdasoldiersperspective.blogspot.com/2008/09/lower-recruitment-standards.html

Robbins, S. P., Pranab, C. and Canda, E. R. (2006). Contemporary human behavior theory: a critical perspective for social work. Boston: Pearson Education.

A PTSD Tool Box: Suggestions in Help for a Combat PTSD Vet

For now concentrate on three things; your thoughts, feelings and behavior. Today the only thing you can change or control is your behavior, by doing so you can change your thinking and feelings over time. With concentration on your own thoughts and feelings you can begin to reconnect with yourself and better control your behavior.

• Get into counseling-to help with choices, services and direction of care
• Find a therapist you can trust-therapy for PTSD and the integration of thoughts, feelings and behavior
• Find a psychiatrist you trust-medications may help to manage anxiety, depression, etc
• Get a "Tool Box" for coping with PTSD
• Find some people who you can identify with who have PTSD to talk with-a link on how I put these things together, What I Did to Battle PTSD
• Educate yourself on PTSD and identify the symptoms of your particular case
• Tool Box,
• Find one or many anxiety reducing techniques-praying, meditation, exercising, yoga, tai chi, etc
• Identify warnings and triggers-for defensive mechanisms management
• Training in interpersonal communication-will reduce stress and alienation
• Emotion identification and thinking pattern recognition-you are not your emotions, it is OK for you to feel the way you do
• Behavioral awareness-with a concentration on responsibility for your behavior; do not let others actions dictate your own
• Values identification (what is important to you)-to help with overcoming debilitating effects of PTSD
• Boundaries identification-important in maintaining proper relationships
• Anger management and conflict resolution skills-a major issue with PTSD
• Set short and long term goals

Most of all, learn to forgive yourself. Take your time, learning new things about our situation generally does not translate into sweeping changes. Our expectations can sometimes overshadow the accomplishments we have achieved. Count your victories in the battle of PTSD recovery in incremental steps. Give yourself credit for the small things in life that we as survivors seldom do, you deserve to be alive and happy.

Honor the Solider, Betray the Veteran

I am going to center a paper on the four marines who are being charged with war crimes, the one being Ryan Weemer who confessed to the FBI interviewer. I want to write this paper and do not think I can do so without the motivation of a deadline and a grade. I feel like it can be therapeutic for me as I have some issues with what Ryan said to get himself and his battle buddies charged with war crimes.

But, I can definitely see how his self-condemnation could have happened. I think that he had not even considered the actions and ramifications of his actions fully until the question was put to him.

How can this be possible you ask?

There is disconnection between everything human and what has to be done in combat. Imagine being in an unimaginable situation and having to do the unthinkable. How can this be done? A detachment between everything human and having to do the inconceivable resounds in combat.

Normal processes of everyday functioning operate at a higher level where not all stimuli remain in the processing centers. This input filters through the cognitive mechanisms placing the components of combined senses input to form decisions. This higher level conscious interactions in the mind can be circumvented in combat through defensive mechanisms triggered by the flight or fight response severing rationale.

An insignificant stimuli in the environment overlooked in combat because it was of no consequence to survival becomes a bit stored away as the filtering mechanism has been turned off. The presence of mind during heightened awareness from the engagement of the survival mechanisms bathes the neuropathways with neurochemical stress hormones causing the brain to register everything in the field of sight permanently etching the mind.

The mind receives all incoming signals and only responds to dangerous situations and dumps everything else into storage. The mounting messages become to much for the mind to handle so it creates divisions and compartmentalizes the information. Everything that does not register as a survival response including emotions, gets filed in the part of the mind that has been closed off. The attachments to emotions become detached this way and for some becomes more permanent than not.

Something about the conversion between Ryan and the interviewer triggered his confession. He broke and a flood of guilt driven remorse poured out of him seeking absolution, he could not stop until he had released the weight and magnitude of his actions.

Reading about all the second guessing of what constituents "lawful" warfare or "unwarranted" actions in a combat situation sickens me. To think that actions taken in THE most intensive combat engagement of the Iraqi War, are judging an incomprehensible situation. Imagine, your best friend has just been killed not to mention 93 of your fellow troops, three days of intense close-quarter combat, no sleep, do...ya think they ate much?

Now how do you think you would have reacted to the reply by way of radio,

"Are they dead yet?"