Vets Prevail: for Vets by Vets

Our veterans face a severe 30% shortfall of therapists and mental health practitioners in both the government and private sectors. It's estimated that 70% of soldiers and veterans needing help do not seek it. Our Veteran's Administration budget is strained and cannot handle the patients they have let alone address the on coming tsunami of help seeking veterans.

The Vets Prevail program is much different than the rest of the veteran's sites that only offer information in base form, such as this one. The interactive skills teaching aspect and the asking and answering questions section are paramount in helping to address the veterans and soldiers mental health problem. This program can get a soldier or veteran the skills needed to navigate life successfully. It can get the warrior fast tracked and ready for therapy and treatment by teaching them skills needed to process traumatic memories.

It's centered on proven coping and behavioral skills building concepts, values and emotive identification. All needed as a strong foundation for therapy and recovery from the Unseen Wounds of War. The interactive program is thoughtful, creative and a much needed tool for the veteran suffering in silence. Veterans can learn the skills they need to safely navigate their Combat PTSD in and outside the home.

Do We Ask a Combat Vet About His or Her Experiences?

PTSD, Boundaries and a Welcome Home
If someone asks you to do something that you do not feel comfortable with, do not, you have no higher obligation than the one you have to yourself. You will not be able to meet the needs of others if you do not take care of yourself first, even if it seems that others needs may outweigh yours. In combat we had to learn how to take care of everyone at the cost of ourselves if need be, today here in civilization this can no longer be, as this world does not work in the way of a brotherhood born of blood.

Most do not understand that a person with PTSD, through no choice of their own has to deal with phantoms of their past encroaching upon every consideration and choice we make. Some more so than others to the point of crippling indecision that can trigger dissociative states, emotional numbing, anger and even possible blind rage. If someone thinks that asking us about our war experiences to get to know us has no consequences other than polite conversation, then they do not see us at all.

We can think about nothing more, than what we experinced, saw and lost, we think greatly on the person who we used to be and want nothing more than to have that person back. We want to speak freely again of the things we used to dream about, but we have lost that part of us to. We consider ourselves to be the lucky ones who have somehow learned to suppress that part of the night, where the unlucky of us find the terrors of the dark as they can no longer fight these enemies who have no feel or flight.

The next time you consider addressing a soldier or veteran about their combat experiences, or asking them if they killed anyone, or what it was like over there, consider what you just read. We all need to maintain and respect proper boundaries. No need to feel intimidated either, if you feel the need to say something tell them this:

Welcome Home

Female Combat Veteran Reaches Out For Help

I received this comment on the 20th of February from a female combat veteran.

PFC.Army2007 said...

I am a sister, a daughter, a mother, a wife, a combat veteran. It's sad to say that after all this time the horror I have experienced in the war still haunts me. It is affecting my relationship with my children and my marriage to my husband of 10 years. I felt so alone sometimes...empty...mad...I can see myself changed after my service and I don't know how to fill the emptiness inside me. Things around me in the civilian world still triggers my memory. I want to forget everything and move on. I couldn't.... I found my self sometimes staring at a distance...screaming silently inside of me...tears would fall down my cheeks..my husband would ask.."Whats wrong? Do you want to talk?" I always say nothing...I felt that I need to enlist in the service again just to feel whole again...I don't know what to do....

My suggestions,

Welcome home. Some suggestions...do not reenlist...that will make your situation worse and you could possibly loose everything. Right now you feel like everything is wrong. Today you have been experiencing delayed reactions to the insanity of combat but did not have time to process during the threats to your life. If you would have felt what you feel today on the scale you experience today, while in combat, then you would of had a greater chance of getting killed.

What you are experiencing is a normal reaction that happens when we leave the adrenaline driven world of combat and then transition to home in the "real world" (which to us seems to be a false reality). Our world view have been completely and permanently altered by what we witnessed. To describe "what I did" in combat usually leads to use of the word "witnessed." I can only reconcile my spiritual side by seeking the perspective of a witness; to never forget, to be vigilant in advocating for the mentally wounded and to find a personal purpose from the insanity of war. This was paramount for me to move past the position you reside in now.

Soldiers, Guilt, Grief, Killing and Survival

In the last few posts I have been reposting some writings with a central theme. What a combat veteran goes through after returning from the battlefield, what we bring home to our families and communities. Below I discuss an identification with the crippling guilt that had blocked access to fully realizing my memories. Years after combat I could not remember most of what I had witnessed, but wished I could forget the guilt and self-condemnation haunting me. I demonized my enemy and in doing so lost my humanity.

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. 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.

My surviving has had such an impact on my life that many times I find myself not being worthy of having survived, and I know that this thought is not rational, but at times I cannot shake it. Many times in my life I thought of killing myself because of the crushing guilt, all due to my survival and inability to put behind me these thoughts of incompleteness.

Thinking back now, I feel that the absence of the completeness I felt back in 1991 coupled with the guilt of surviving have combined to form a disorganized attachment to the soldiers that we killed. In losing my attachment to the troop-organism, I unconsciously reformed that attachment on the one thing that I could take home with me, my guilt. In losing my squad-selves and my subsequent identifying with the enemy soldiers, I unwittingly formed a festoon of guilt and hung it upon my soul.

I know that they were the enemy, it was kill or be killed...But my God, when we were shooting and hitting them I saw their tanks and vehicles blowing up in grand fashion, it seemed so beautiful. I remember the sight was so awe inspiring, the turrets flipping end over end, fire spraying upwards to a hundred feet. I could feel in the back of my mind, my humanity, trying to tell me that there were people in those tanks. My mind tried to tell that I could actually see the bodies felling over and over, within the upwelling of fire...no, no that cannot be...I was too far from them to actually see. So I told myself.< The reality set in when we saw the charred remains of the vehicles and realizing that no one could have lived through that. I remember trying not to think of my vehicle getting hit like that. The guilt began to creep up on me when we saw the pitiful encampments of the regular soldiers; we saw their food stocks...rice and rotting tomatoes...nothing more, and little of that. We joked of how we were glad to be on our side, again I felt the little bit of guilt niggling at me to witness and take in what we saw. Today, I carry the guilt of thousands of soldiers who lost their lives to the meat grinder of the US Army by way of the M1A1 Abrams Main Battle tank sabot rounds, of the Apache helicopter hellfire missiles, the 30mm A10 Warthog Gatling guns, multiple launch rocket systems and the 105 mm howitzer to name a few. To find out how bravely the Iraqi Republican Guard units fought against an over whelming foe, follow this link (then click on "correcting myths").

I still chase that sense of totality...I was the driver, on point for the division, so I saw it all.

The Combat Veteran, Detachment and Dissociation

Absence of Prescence and Intimacy
You may or may not know that I am serving an internship in a legal setting. I have been struggling with the opening up and closing down myself along with keeping this separate from my interviews with clients, psychosocial reports and recommendations. Many of the clients I serve have similar backgrounds as myself, that being of course traumatization and retraumatization. The chronically traumatized person can become caught in a whirlwind of triggers, negative emotions and behavior while remaining detached from the environment and the reality of the situation.

When a survivor exhibits detachment from external stimulus and interactions, they have checked out and can remain in this state of mind for long lengths of time. Stressors within the environment that causes distress to the traumatized brain and can trigger the survivors disenfranchised memories, experiences and especially emotions. When this happens we lose a pivotal inner connection with ourselves and significant others. The loved one of a combat veteran can witness this disconnection in them by his or her facial expressions, body language and the absence of presence and intimacy.

Imagine the loss of this connection within yourself, the folding of the self inside out with this other self falling into an abyss. Continuously witnessing your central core falling and never losing site but knowing that, it, will fall forever. While doing this try and pay attention to someone in front of you when your perspective comes from a million miles away.

So, this what I am talking about. I started to write with the intention of explaining the process of opening up of the self to present during interviews and my work as a social work intern. I have trouble with the process of opening up concerning trauma, mine or others; its importance, where, how, when and the emotionality of the process, how to open up and close down. A disconcerted disconnection.

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.

Deep Down Into The Marrow of my Morrow

I have been having these recurring thoughts about actually having to realize some honest to god awful truth about something that happened to me a long time ago. Before, it was just an intellectual exercise in something that I thought that had no bearing on me, other than some subconscious interaction that I knew nothing of. But now, I feel as if I am on the verge of remembering...and it scares the shit out of me. I cry at the drop of a hat, I do not want to remember...but, I do want to get past this...but I do not want to remember. When I feel intimacy and dip down into the essence of who I am, briefly I feel all that ever was, ever will be and ever has been. So too, especially after the feeling fleeting, floating away...I fell it until I fell no more...flowing away...I feel the sense of pending doom...a fear that resides deep down into my past, down into the mantle of my makeup, the marrow of my morrow.

I never knew that it affected me so, not until I felt that it made sense to go beyond. But, too do that I have to go through. I do not want to remember.

PTSD Catharsis Channel Revisited

I have referred to this blog as my PTSD catharsis channel, a place to find absolution and communion. I have been receiving such thoughtful feedback lately. I wanted to thank everyone who has commented or emailed me. It helps to know that my message has been received and appreciated. I welcome all to comment and get involved with my quest for advocacy.

Today I have a place to let out my pain and I have a great support system of people who care and have an awareness of where I am in life today. I attend therapy every three weeks and have a caring and loving partner, she has a unique empathy and understanding.

As to my catharsis, sometimes when I write here I have major revelations about myself that I never recognized in the past. Such as the

…unconsciously reformed that attachment on the one thing that I could take home with me, my guilt. In losing my squad-selves and my subsequent identifying with the enemy soldiers, I unwittingly formed a festoon of guilt and hung it upon my soul (I Was the Driver..., para. 3).

Man, that was never something that I had connected with, my guilt of 18 years that had attachments to the lost souls of the enemy fallen. Heavy, heavy shit man. I will be talking to my therapist about that one for sure.

There was a time when I wish that this had not happened to me, but today I know that God has a plan for me and my experiences where not in vain. My purpose has revealed itself to me from my past and illuminates my path. Today I know my life's mission and would not want it any other way. To help others who have been where I have been and assist them in achieving self awareness and a higher quality of life.

To Ignore Our Humanity is Deal in Death and Destruction

We live in a world society that dissects everything into an dichotomous orgy of categorical righteous indignation. We deny that everywhere we look and see a negative, that sitting there staring back at us is a positive. The higher order of existence has no separation of right-wrong, black-white, justice-injustice, and evil or purity. What we have in all its glory, the human experience. To ignore this facet of our humanity is to deal in death and destruction while ignoring the whole truth and reality of our shared existence.

I know of this experience, I lived it for years. I had to separate my humanity from my higher self, to do what needed to be done in the moment and I remained there for over 15 years. I was taught the negative half of these lessons and had to learn the rest through the fiery forge of exposure from a warriors perspective.

What I was not taught was how to reintegrate that which had been torn asunder. It felt as if I had burned away all that was me and had in its place a hollow shell of guilt and remorse. A facade of contempt and bitterness that saw no more reason or rhyme, only absurdity and no other reason to live.

For so long I concentrated on all the shit my war had caused me while I assumed a negatively slanted unipolar view of the world. For so long I failed to see that I could use my experiences to help others. I was so caught up in anger, resentments and hate that I could not see or even try and hear that some good had come from my combat experiences.

I would not be the man I am today without having witnessed and participated in situations of extreme stress. As I see it today, I could never have found my purpose in life had God not chose to have me where I may suffer. I feel as though my trauma filled life has been in preparation for the battle to come. Waking America up to the realities of modern warfare and the mental health epidemic that our veterans will come to face in the next 20 years.

Not One, But Two Stars Died to Make You

I posted my last article over at A Soldier's Perspective and received this comment that I would like to share with you. It was a beautiful gesture from a special person. Thank you Zoe for your truly kind words:

For my sins, in between architecting submarine combat systems and suchlike, I've worked on the Australian Dept of Veterans Affairs computer systems. Specifically the medical databases. So I know a bit about this stuff.

I hope you're getting sufficient support from the VA. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder causes visible changes in the brain, you can see them in MRI scans.

So these feelings are not you: they're caused by some neurology that's gone awry. Neurology that is plastic to some degree, and can be corrected with the right therapeutic intervention. Often just time.. and that may be decades. Often just knowing someone gives a damn about you, someone who shows some understanding, can help you heal yourself. Medication to re-balance the neurotransmitters can also help, like a splint on a broken leg.

You hurt because you were in a position where people just like you were trying to kill you, and you had to kill them. And because people like me do our darnedest to make sure that it's *not* a fair fight, that the guys and gals depending on us have the best systems we can think of, you massacred them. As we intended you should.

Please put the blame where it lies. And because we are not perfect, we are not godlike, sometimes the boys and girls who depend on us die horrible deaths. We know that, it's a thought that's with us decades later. So we try to do better the next time.

And if that doesn't work… try something that I do. On a clear night, look up at the stars. Reflect that each of those tiny points of light is actually a vast ball of gas, more vast than you can imagine, burning matter into energy. And that they were there long before you or anyone you have ever heard of existed. That they will be there long after everything you know has turned to dust. Reflect on just how little even great tragedies matter in the grand scheme of things. How insignificant all our concerns are!

Now look again, and realize that every atom in your body has been created by mighty stars like those dying: it took one star dying to make the elements lower than iron, and then a Supernova, an exploding star, to twice-bake every atom of phosphorus, or calcium, or magnesium, or any of the dozens of other elements in your body. Not one, but two stars died to make you.

Then realize that each star you see generated photons, often many thousands of years ago, just so your eyeball could detect them on this one night. You are special, something rare and wonderful in the Universe.

It works for me.

Zoe, I do get help from the VA, I have therapy every three weeks and am starting exposure therapy next week. The therapist I am seeing has an awesome command of competency and skills. I trust her. I am 4 years sober, attend college at the Kent School of Social Work and have found my place and purpose in this vast stellar orchestra. Today I am working on the nuances of PTSD, as I have arrested the major symptomology, such as anger, resentments, and behavioral problems.

I have learned coping skills and have completed cognitive and behavioral restructuring. Today I feel the most prevalent problem I face would be the grief and guilt of witnessing such slaughter and surviving. I am not so sure that this spiritual wound will ever heal completely.

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.

A Combat Veterans Reflects on his Thoughts, Feelings and Behavior

I would tell PTSD suffers to begin with these three things and keep them in mind if they want to make changes in their life. Thoughts, feelings and behavior (TFB). Today, the only thing you can change is your behavior, by changing your behavior over time you can change your thoughts and your feelings. The three basics incorporate values and emotion identification.

Further on the topic of the combat veteran’s value and principles, these systems have a connection to feelings and emotions or the lack thereof with one who dissociates as most PTSD sufferers do. Emotions and feelings are the arbiters of values, principles, and morality. Without emotive interaction the ethical dilemmas that keep most people in check, can get bypassed with a combat veteran’s lack of affect. 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. A normal reaction with a non-traumatized brain would trigger an emotive response cascading into consideration of an appropriate response. Where the traumatized brain engages the primitive portion of the mind into a reflexive response forgoing the thought of repercussions.

Value identifications has importance to the combat veteran with PTSD, as their value system have 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 do not understand them. While some will find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

Normal or average ways of dealing with stress before combat usually and generally was sufficient to interact in society and with family. Now that the veteran has an exaggerated anxiety and stress reflex they have become susceptible to stressors that before would not have set them off and the old coping skills have become less successful. Stress reduction has become paramount for the combat veterans healing and moving beyond the fringes of insanity.

Without the combat veterans clarification of values and identification of emotions they do not take responsibility for either prior to consequences, leaving them baffled as to how they arrived in their current calamity. They cannot change the way they think or feel today, but by paying attention to their thoughts, feelings and emotions they can gauge an appropriate reaction and behavior. By changing their actions today, they can change their thoughts and feelings over time.

Forgive Me

I have been searching all over the web looking for like minded people to link this site to theirs. I came across this photograph shot by Zoriah, an independent embedded photojournalist, while in Iraq. The monochrome image embodies the deep sense of sorrow and duty that I was trying to convey in part of my last post.

Taking another's life in the name of freedom, patriotism and because of your job description profoundly changes the person. How do we reconcile the killing of another human being and still maintain our principles and values? Someone who has not done so can talk all they want about what they think or believe.

When a soldier goes home to his or her family, friends and community, how do we relate to people who expect the person that is no longer us? How do we tell them that each time we took a life that, we too died in spirit a little more?

They congratulate us on a job well done and we tell ourselves that we did our job, what we were trained to do. They tell us how proud they are, and we cannot make them understand how we feel guilty for that pride.

How do we tell them that we cannot get those faces or images out of our mind?

Excerpt from Zoriah's blog:

A couple of days ago I went out on a foot patrol in Sadr City with a young a soldier and noticed the tattoo on his arm, featuring a rosary and the words “Forgive Me.” I asked him what the story behind it was.

He said, “After my first tour in Iraq, I went back home to the states and all my friends called me a murderer and killer. I guess I started thinking a lot about all the things I had done over here…you know.”

© Zoriah/www.zoriah.com

Experiencing PTSD

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.

That is the mode of survival, now take out the danger part, you are safe. YOU KNOW you are safe, but that nagging sense that tells you "YOU ARE IN DANGER" for your life remains. You FEEL it in your bones, your rational mind says otherwise, but that does not take away the feeling that something is going to go wrong, terribly wrong. Imagine wanting to jump out of your skin, literally that's how it feels.

This can drive a person crazy; it does on a daily basis. Ok, now imagine that YOU DO NOT KNOW that you have this condition. Ok, now throw in the fear! Go out into the world and see how long it takes for you to find some trouble. See if you can properly discern an appropriate response in everyday situations, as regular social interactions have become a threat to you. You do not know why, but you just know it. Ok, throw in some denial, alright a bunch of denial. See if you don't end up divorced, incarcerated, homeless, unemployable, homicidal, suicidal or dead.

Right now writing about this is bringing it all to the forefront. Right now I am feeling all of these things. It is all racing around in my mind, a fevered pitch. I want to lock my door; it is open to let in some light in. But I have this obsession to go and lock it and shut it all out. Except that I know it will not lock out how I feel.

I have found that mediation helps considerably. If I close my eyes, concentrate on my breathing, imagining each part of my body is relaxing, I take my mind to every part of my body and relax it. Letting the tension go, to do just the opposite of what my body intelligence tells my mind. Let go, my mind does not command, it just imagines the letting go...I have a Buddha statue in my living room. I find that the image helps foster the feeling that I am looking for. Central to this is the breathing, slow deep breathing filling the upper part of the torso and the belly, and Belly breathing. When the body is relaxed go back to concentrating on the breathing. Do this long enough and with practice the mind will cease thoughts, suspending into everything and nothing.

Gotta go...from one extreme to another, that's my inner workings.

Hope this helped you understand what someone goes through with PTSD.