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.

From Freudian Superself to Maslowian Self-Actualization and Buddhist Transcendence

Freud set us on the right track with his engineering of the Superself, a higher mediating construct of the ego verses Id conflict based mind. This system has its limitations, due to the fact that it still rests in the manifestations of the Ego driven by the primitive instinctual desires of the Id in a systematical, if this than that theorems of delineated thought.

The problems with a person who has been stricken with PTSD, their minds have become deeply entrenched and compartmentalized. Wherein the psychic energy becomes channeled through the rails of the heavily imprinted synapses feeding the body with responsive synergy for explosive reactions needed for survival. These encoded processes have subsumed the rationale of analytical considerations to forge a frontier of force.

To disallow the primitive mind to reign supreme one needs to form a more than Freudian superself to a Maslowian self-actualization, akin to the Buddhist transcendence of self.

In my post on Dissociative Spectrum, I spoke of a feeling that "...I was more alive than I had ever been, except that there was no conscious processing of information and a total lack of emotion, absolute detachment. Time had suspended itself for me, I was eternal, I had accessed a part of me that was omnipresent."

This feeling of becoming one with the universe I have only been able to achieve briefly and never as completely as I did for 100 hours of the ground war in the first Gulf War.

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.

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?"

Soldiers in Combat Develop a Powerful Attachment to one Another

The question about will a soldier seek out help when they are losing sleep and exhibiting signs of PTSD. Probably not if they are still in the military, because the military has a deep ingrained belief that PTSD is a weakness.

Another thing to consider, soldiers in combat develop a powerful attachment to one another. The strength of this 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 experinced before. People have an instinctual need to feel a belonging such as in a herd where they feel safe.

A small combat squad that has experinced several fire fights develops a sense of oneness with each other, they have become one organism through the forging process of fight or flight. Due to the nature of killing and survival all of their other 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.

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 they have been through, so they seek others who do.

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.

My First E-mail Response

I received my first email and would like to share my response,I am honored with your acknowledgment and inspiration. I encourage you who is reading this to e-mail me, comment on my articles good or bad, digg it, stumble it, your criticism is welcome and especially your stories. By coming together and sharing our passions, narratives, compassion, empathy and humanity we begin to heal what has been broken.

My response to my first e-mail:

I sure do appreciate your email and your interest in our veterans, they need our love and support. The soldiers that are in denial will have to figure out for themselves that they need help. The sad thing is that it will probably take years for their mental illness to progress to the point of prison, unemployability, divorce, addiction, homicide, and finally suicide. Giving them information and support will help, but they will not get help until they are ready to.

The whole soldiering thing trains us to believe we are self sufficient in matters other than survival and combat. You know the ad on TV that says an Army of one. As much as they drill team work on a firing squad, movement, and never leave a buddy; they instill this facade of invincibility. Most of our soldiers are at the age of ego development, where a good dose of identifying emotions and empathy would negate the aggressive side that young men feel. It is an evolutionary instinctual part of a boy growing into a man. In primitive cultures their are rituals that incorporate the aggression and identify it for what it is and integrate this "warrior" archetype into the complete person. Usually along the way an elder mentors them and helps them identify the emotions and differing parts of the psyche while instilling an integration of the differing selfs, mother earth, community and spirituality.

In the military this ritual just concentrates on the drilling and killing so that it becomes automatic, a reflexive response to aggression and survival. My point is that the focus is on how to kill and do that, not how do I deal with it after they go home to their community and family. They are left without a ritual of connection to community, family, and wholeness. Their formative connection is back in the field of combat and killing, they leave part of themselves there with their buddies who are not coming home yet and take with them the guilt of leaving their buddies behind. They feel that egoistic "warrior archetype" connection with the military and the battle buddy who has his or her back in the combat zone. In this type of mind frame when the veteran goes home; they become lost in a world that no longer makes sense to them because they have been taught to not process the five senses and emotional attachment to interaction. The hard wiring of the combat veterans mind acts as if their life depends on it. How do I live in regular society if I am stuck in this malposition?

Well did I just rattle of some stuff or what. No I do not even know what EFT is, but I will certinally research the approach and look into its value and techniques. As far as volunteering you do not need a degree. Just research different groups and decide which one appeals to you and offer your help. If they do not have the area of service you would like to help with, then organize it yourself. I am looking into groups who mentor young veterans coming out of the military to help with the process of reintegrating back into society and help them access and identify their new roles and other aspects of their intrinsic values and principles.

I am 40 and in school, I have seen many people in my classes who are in their 50's and older. Go to school and chase your passions, by doing so work becomes something other than a task. It becomes a part of you that connects with people in a way we were meant to be, a community of people supporting one another.

I would like to talk more with you and keep in contact by email for now. Thank you for your response to my blog I am deeply appreciative of it. You are the first to email me about it, again thank you. If you would, write some comments on articles that interest or touch you the most. Also, if you would subscribe, digg it, stumble it, email it to all your friends and tell of my mission and the epidemic of mentally ill veterans we will be faced with in the coming years.

You brightened my day,

Scott

(e-mail edited for clarity and fluidity)

Duality Dissociates Discernment

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

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.