Veteran on the Edge

This post is inspired by reading Patience Mason's PTSD Blog about her new book idea. She asks, "Reality is that most people who come back from war, or survive another trauma, are not fine, so if that might fit you, here are some questions to think about: How or why might you be fucked up?"

Dear Joe Public,

I would doubt you were in the military or a veteran if you could not recite two or more times a curious and insensitive clod trampled through your trauma to relive his boyhood romanticized thriller of the military life.

For the insensitive thinking that leads a stranger to ask intimate questions, and then discount my story because it does not match the official narrative. Even though most know the television and government lies about everything.

I am not fine. Why the fuck would you expect me to be? Because my war was a little war and does not matter? I hear this all too often, recently and even from veterans.

I am angry and full of rage when not numb or heavily medicated. Hear my witness, in three days my brigade killed over 24,000 Iraqi soldiers under the Desert Storm.

When I got home the idiot box repeaters called me a liar further altering people's perceptions of me as unstable. Caregivers know the safest people in the world are standing next to veterans with PTSD.

When I got home it took filing seven times with the Veterans Administration to get a 0% service connected rating for hearing loss.

In 2005 unchecked PTSD led me to get stabbed in the face and precipitated a crisis. Hospitalized for two weeks in psychic ward and then transferred to a two-year intensive treatment center for veterans.

It took the ninth case, to get a 30% rating for PTSD. Without the support from the treatment center I would not be alive or have a stable life.

Fast forward past the bouts of homelessness, and over 12 hospitalizations for suicidal ideation, in 2007 and the eleventh case, I was finally awarded an 80% service connection for PTSD, hearing loss and tinnitus. Which seriously exacerbates PTSD and infuses the flashbacks and hallucinations with sound, when I am doing deaf.

Do not ever forget. I participated and witnessed in a massacre. For I cannot. My mother shared stories of our great-great grandmother walking the Trail of Tears as a child. I now know her level of sorrow, a lost Cherokee of an unknown clan, branded with genocide where the past meets the present.

Today, if I make perfect financial decisions every month I can barely get by. But, I am not only human and prone to the same mistakes and stresses everyone faces. That is a base for a veteran with combat PTSD, MST and TBI, welcome to our good day. Now heap on hyperstress and crippling anxiety that literally makes your skin crawl. Welcome to our good day. For a great day, heap on cannabis. I don't make enough money to have that the whole month though.

Why the fuck would I shoot bullet eyes when you ask, "Are you okay?" No, I am on the edge. Are you ready to listen?

PTSD: Get Over It

Ever been told to get past it? Or told to get over it and can't?

I wouldn't ask you to beat your noggin against that wall, my head hurts just thinking about it. But, working through it; that won't be as difficult. Our language says much. "Getting past it" or "getting over it" suggests it's something to be pushed aside or to get around all at once. To work through suggests that it can be managed, one trauma at a time, and one therapy session at at time. Outside of therapy you can start by learning from others who have been in your shoes through online social media sites; Facebook is an excellent tool to network Additionally I suggest learning coping skills, guided imagery to lessen anxiety, becoming familiar with your triggers, and mindfulness of thoughts and feelings to help process. Grounding techniques such as putting a rock in your pocket can help ease anxiety along with learning to pray and meditate. Journaling is a tremendous instrument in purging and self reflection, a tactile sensory expression of our experiences allowing differing perspectives on ourselves.

Wartime Trauma Versus Childhood Trauma

For the last year or better whenever I am stressed or have highly emotional experiences I find myself being brought back into my wartime memories, flashbacks, emotions and perspective.

I was having a conversation the other day with someone close to me about the possibility that my wartime trauma may be getting in the way of healing from my childhood traumas. She suggested that I have a pattern of submerging myself within my wartime trauma to avoid healing from my childhood trauma. I talked to my therapist yesterday about my childhood issues and as we talked she commented that it appeared I had done a lot of work in that area. I was pleased to have her discern the 18 months of therapy that I spent on the topic. I do have more work to do in this area, but I think that my wartime trauma gets in the way of my recovery today.

My therapist and I made a deal to begin processing my wartime trauma with Acceptance Commitment Therapy and EMDR in conjunction.

(After reading this I realized that I spent too much time on my childhood trauma lately [before a couple of months ago] that I was unable to test reality against each other because I would get false positives out of it. In that, had I tested reality against others around me. I couldn't do that well with others in my family because they also carry the triggers of war...I battled on

I hear the chatter on the intercom of the division radio within my BFV, when I put on my new hearing aids I was transported back in combat, I had my headset on, I looked around to check if it was real...and it was....till I realized the hurting in my ear and remembered that my new hearing aid was probably hurting. But the Veil of Combat did not come down until I removed the hearing aid....)

Finding a Therapeutic Framework for Trauma-Based Disorders

I received a comment last night from Jeannie and thought that this would have a wider application to those of us who seek treatment for our trauma-based disorders. Talk therapy is an extremely useful tool when utilizing a proper framework with a trauma-based philosophy, which is beyond the scope of this posting. So, intimacy in a therapeutic framework is where I want to go. Without establishing this environment with a therapist we could run the risk of intellectualizing our trauma and not actually internalizing it. To internalize our trauma and absorb it within our consciousness is to finally find freedom from a foreboding foe.

To all of you who are seeking help with ptsd keep on working at it. My years of sexual abuse hapened over 50 years ago (I'm 62 years old) and I have lived my life with more then my share of ad bad choices, bad decisions and worse choices in relationships.

I would like to mention that finding the right right therapist and the right treatment is like tring to find the right pair of jeans. If the fit between you and your therapist isn't working it's not your fault...the fit just doesn't work. Please don't give up. Seek referrals and don't be hesitant about requesting an informational interview.

PTSD therapy is about as intimate soul bearing as it gets. It is imperative to find the right person to help you through the process.

EMDR - just had my second treatment and I am truly amazed. If the light bothers you then you can close your ears and just listen to the beeps.

My comment,

Jeannie is absolutely correct. It is imperative to find the therapist that you can connect with. The nature and structure; the kernel of trauma-based disorders rest in the most recessed parts of our minds. We will not be able to access this information properly if we do not bond with our treatment provider. To begin the journey of recovery we must find a therapeutic window into our minds substrate. Without developing intimacy between your this would not be possible. This could take several appointments, please be patient you deserve it.

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.

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.

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?"

Stabbed in the Face

To the Man Who Stabbed me in the Face,

I never realized until later how I had offended you the many times that I did, I honestly was ignorant of my causing you to lose face in front of people you had grown up with. I see now the symbolism lost to both of us in the moment, by your attacking me when you perceived an honorable way to recover your lost esteem. I was flippant, arrogant and unable to quantify your sarcastic attempts to inform me of your slighted facade. Facades do clash.

Today I see how you interpreted my willingness to jest with you as a sign of disrespect, for I have been educated in the ways of jousting by seeming immortals of the sport. My pretense in the way that I carried myself during this time was in the order of a knight ready for battle.

I was thinking of how at one time that I felt it unjust for the punishment that you received for nearly taking my life, these thoughts led to me writing these words. I was thinking how you had to use your house for a property bond and the fear you must have felt to possibly loose your new home you labored mightily for. I likened this intense apprehension to the immense anxiety I felt after having been triggered into another compartmentalized Post Traumatic psychosis. Although one more weighty than the other we both received our consequences from the ordeal.

I realized today that I had confused my pride for integrity which lead to infamous righteousness indignation. I have told many people how our actions combined to provoke a change in my life and credit you for bringing about my willingness to transmute everything about me that I found lacking.

Combat PTSD and Crying

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

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

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

My comment on the post where I wrote about dissociation,

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

Why is everyone hung up on this one line?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trauma, Chronic Pain & Craniosacral Therapy

I have been having an interesting and engaged conversion with Ambivalent Hippie from another post over at A Soldier's Perspective, on the subject of the mind-body connection and how that effects trauma survivors and figured that others my benefit from this exchange. Here she describes her quest for learning to help our veterans,

I'm a massage therapist, getting training in craniosacral therapy, which deals with a fair amount of neurological reprogramming after the dissociation and compartmentalization that often comes with trauma. I want to help these guys and honestly am struggling to maintain hope, feeling somewhat powerless.

A comment by me concerning chronic pain and trauma:

...I have read some about how the body remembers trauma even if the conscious mind does not. How this somatic connection can manifest in the body becoming ridged and tense leading to chronic pain and fatigue. In the reading I have sampled massage has released this tension and in doing so unblocks the memories that have been suppressed.

The neurological reprogramming that you mentioned along with dissociation and compartmentalization interest me as I have wrote extensively these matters from a psychological perspective. I would appreciate some expounding on your understanding of the connection with the physiological aspects of massage and the release of the psychological defensive mechanisms that trouble the mind-body connexion of the traumatized person.

Ambivalent Hippie's response:

Basically the idea is that our body is the vehicle for all of our experiences - we literally metabolize them. What often happens with trauma is that an experience is overwhelming enough that the body doesn't fully process it. It centers the disturbance and holds it in a particular location to contain it. The simplest example of this would be a "knot", or tension/spasm in someone's shoulder-blade, but this can also show up in someone's nervous system, with memories that have been shut out of consciousness or show up as flashbacks and disrupt functioning on some level. Either way, the experience can hold a tremendous amount of energetic charge.

With the trust of a safe therapeutic relationship, and learning to have a conscious relationship with one's own body, there can be space for these kinds of holdings to release. Physical releases often show up as tremors or shaking, as animals tend to do after a traumatic event. Our society and conscious minds can sometimes suppress this process from running its course. Emotional releases are harder to predict or describe, but they do happen also. Once the energy holding the traumatic memory in place in the nervous system and tissue has been released, the relationship to certain memories can be entirely different, allowing people to exist more fully in the present moment.

Some helpful books might be:

• Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine
• The Body Remembers by Babette Rothschild
• The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation and Disease by Robert Scear
• Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body and Society by Van der Kolk, McFarlane and Weisaeth
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman

Hope that helps!

My next comment,

AH, thank you for the education and information on the mind body connection. I have read a little on the subject and have considered doing massage therapy and hypnosis to get past the physical wreckage that resides in my body.

Most of the time I cannot sleep well and when I get up in the morning it feels as thought a truck has ran me over. I feel physical pain constantly everyday and very rarely am I relaxed. I have to remind myself to relax the muscles in my legs and buttocks, but have yet to learn how to mentally relax the muscle group in my back.

Lower Recruitment Standards Contributing to Military Suicide Rates?

Are you kidding me?

I was checking out the Army's Stand-To website to see what tabs were being kept on the blog world. I clicked on a link about military suicides and found a whooping flaming red flag of ignorance and decided to Try and put it out.

When I read the question of whether lower recruitment standards were contributing to higher military suicide rates, I immediately wanted to react negatively and harshly. But I had to think about where it came from and I had to deduce that it was from ignorance of military life and the nature of combat.

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.

This interconnectedness brings a sense of herdness into the human fold centered around the soldier. Developing and enveloping the individual perspectives while opening them to a cohesive togetherness usually not felt before enlisting.

I am describing the level of bonding that occurs on a military post before a war has been brought into the picture. Now add in a military conflagration and this level of interpersonal commitment and associations have become welded to each others identity.

Bonding through blood and battle takes the soldier to a whole 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.

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.

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, children and splinters everything that once was the bedrock of the American Soldier.

Add it all up and what do you think the equation equals?

9-11 A Day I Will Never Forget

My older sister was on the 33rd floor of the towers and was one of the first to get out.

We watched the TV frozen, numb and praying against all odds. We waited, four hours later he called from a pay phone to let us know he was alive.

The emotions that I felt were severely conflicted, elation, grief, anger, sorrow and a hundred more.

To this day I cannot watch images of that day, I do not need to. They have been etched in my mind for life.

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 PTSD Catharsis Channel

My writing here triggers me on a continuous basis with the issues of combat and war. I have had therapy for years to move beyond all of my core issues except my war experiences. It took me "growing" up through the cognitive-behavioral restructuring of my childhood to adulthood within the safe place of therapy. When I started writing this blog I began the "therapy" and reintegration of my combat and wartime issues.

I have had social skills training, cognitive restructuring therapy, anger management classes, coping skills training, values identification and the list goes on. I needed all these pieces of armor to face my war issues. This place for me here has become my sacred communion with the world, God directs my words and deeds today. I try my best not to get in the way of myself and his work.

Prior trauma can prime the veteran or soldier and put them at greater risk of developing PTSD and mental illness. I say both "PTSD and mental illness", because within the spectrum of mind fracturing lays depression, psychosis, dissociation, schizophrenia, and a myriad of other psychopathy.

Not all veterans will need intensive preparation before therapy, as many soldiers have received a solid family life in adolescence where they have learned most of these skills. Individualized attention needs to be given to each veteran or soldier as they have had different life experiences which impact the way combat and trauma affects them.

A thorough assessment considering these elements can determine where to start with therapy, counseling and the techniques that will be most successful in your particular case. Look for a therapist that you trust, one that will listen and guide more than talk.

Not all therapies will work for everyone, if something does not seem to be working let the therapist know. Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy was what worked for me as I needed an intensive concentration on most fronts of reintegration.

Today I use this medium as my PTSD catharsis channel.

Warrior Archetype

The military trains us to believe in self sufficiency in all matters other than survival in terms of 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 also instill this facade of invincibility.

The majority of soldiers in the military reside at the level of ego development, where a good dose of identifying emotions and empathy would help negate the aggressive side that young men feel (Sugar, 279-283). In primitive cultures, rituals help identify the aggression and integrate this "warrior archetype" into the complete person. Usually along the way an elder mentors them and helps 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 the ritual of drilling and killing concentrates on becoming an automatic reflexive response to aggression and survival. My point, the focus of killing without learning how to deal and cope after they go home leaves the returning veteran aimless and without a ritual of connection to community, family, and wholeness. Their formative associations have been left back in the field of combat and killing, where they have left part of themselves with the ones not going home and take with them the guilt of leaving.

They feel the egoistic interconnectedness with the military, the "warrior archetype" and the battle buddy who has been left back in the combat zone rather than with significant others upon returning. In this mind frame when the veteran goes home they become lost in a world that no longer makes sense as they have been taught not to process the five senses and emotional attachment imperative to social interaction. The combat veterans mind acts as if their life depends on a reactionary environment incompatible with the development of long lasting relationships (Sugar, 287). How do I live in regular society if I am stuck in this malposition?

Young combat veterans coming out of the military may need help with accessing and identifying their intrinsic values and principles and the process of reintegrating back into society and reestablishing their new roles.

Are You Saying That you Killed People in Cold Blood?

I had posted an article Dissociative Spectrum on A Soldier's Perspective.

This response was registered first,

Are you saying that you killed people in cold blood? 

in response to my,

The Iraqi soldiers we killed that were trying to surrender.

The responder also asks,

Why?

and then the next comment:

Yes RG (Roman General, me also), what is the full story?

The full story:

On or around February 13, 1991 one day before my second son was born and four days away from my eldest sons second birthday.

We were getting close to moving out, Christmas had come and gone. I was able to call home during that time. By this time I was ready to go, it was February and I had been listening to Baghdad being bombed for about four months straight. Everyday, all day boom boom boom off in the distance, I can still hear them. All I could think about was how many people our bombs were killing, so when we got the call to go I was ready. We mounted up into my Bradley Fighting Vehicle and headed into Iraq.

Our assignment was to cut the Iraqi Republican Guard off from retreating back into Iraq. We set out on convoy toward the front line with me driving on point. A report comes over my headphones that a couple of Iraqi tanks with their turrets turned backward, Geneva Convention for surrender, approached some Marine armored vehicles. When they were in range they turned and fired on them, killing three of our troops. I was shaking all over, mad as hell and could not wait to get some payback.

I was getting myself psyched up going into driving straight for 24 hours. Later after 48 hours of continuous driving I saw silhouettes appearing on the left flank on the horizon during the night and reported it to my track commander. My TC and I hated each other, but respected one another and would have no other.

Having received the reports the night before we were weary of enemy activity. One of our Bradley's fired 3 warning shots, with permission of higher up as the ground war had not officially started yet. They kept coming and we were given permission to fire upon the enemy.

Later in the next day we received an account of the engagement. A brigade of foot soldiers had been trying to surrender and we killed them.

No Offense to our Veterans?

There has been some talk lately as to the criminality of our returning veterans and its impact on our society. Inflammatory comments have been made and a defense of our veterans has been proffered. Validity resounds upon both sides of the argument as our veterans go on and try to live their lives.

I have only been arrested twice for driving under the influence, I say only because I have drove drunk many times. To say that this is the extent of my criminal activity would be misleading. Most of my felonious behavior resulted in tearing up my own personal property or my wifes, getting into fights with the whole bar, and instigating or looking for trouble in any form. It was gods blessing that I did not wind up in jail or prison on assault charges from the numerous times that I beat someone in a blackout of rage.

With a mind reeling in the cycle of survival, a feeling of need to engage the adrenaline rush overwhelms the person. The survival mode having been triggered feeds off of dangerous situations due to the fight or flight defensive mechanism. Survival depends on a reactionary responsive reflex, a instantaneous engagement of life threatening situations (Cercone, 302). A soldiers training suppresses the flight portion of this evolutionary apparatus leaving only one option for the veteran, self destructive behavior.

The driving force behind criminal activity for the veteran comes out in situations as unplanned overreactions to stimuli in our environment. Societies law enforcement, medical and mental health institutions, and judicial systems have little understanding of the war veterans perspective on life. A punitive approach to dealing with these individuals would only compound the mental health issues prevalent in our combat veterans.

When I hear of the offensive and incendiary conversations by individuals with little comprehension or compassion on the topic of combat veterans clashing with society I feel very much disrespected. I mean really, how do we expect our soldiers and veterans who have been on multiple deployments in Iraq to act? Most of these soldiers have been in a combat zone for an average of 2 to 3 YEARS, yes you read that right, years. Roadside bombs, their buddy blown apart right next to them, bullets whizzing by, RPG's, is that child going to blow me up? Try living with this for years and see how that might affect your mental ability to separate and distinguish cognitions into comprehendable interactions.

No offense to our veterans? Please, spare me the rhetoric. Go do some research and brush up on your knowledge of the situation from more than one narrow perspective.

Iraqi War Mental Health Epidemic

Image via Wikipedia

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. Now that being said, I know a guy that did 5 tours in Vietnam which was uncommon, most soldiers did their two years and the ones that survived went home.

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. They are 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. This information should be the on the forefront of discussion and conversation in the news and in the public arena. This is what is not being said about whats going on with this war.

The reason we don't have 20,000 soldiers dead compared to the Vietnam War 5 years into the war? Our medical knowledge and technical experience gained from another unpopular war.

What we do have are veterans that would have died in the Vietnam War or World War II that are going home with their bodies and minds shattered. The amputation rates have risen to twice that of previous wars. What will be the result of such unmitigated multiple traumas that the Iraqi veterans will be facing?

Some of the current thinking have postulated the PTSD rates of this war to be in the range of 30-50%. Come on America WAKE UP! Your freedom is due to the sacrifice of our soldiers lives, both in mortality and the possibility of becoming a meaningful and productive human being.

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

Never Give in to the Enemy

To say that with treatment we can get better seems to suggest that we can be cured. This is not the case, we can improve our standard of living by learning coping skills, become educated about our triggers, learn to identify and express our emotions. PTSD rewires the brains neurological landscape, it is as if we have been given a new brain with the same memories and no one told us of the switch. With this new brain we have been given hijacked neuropathways telling us that our survival is in jeopardy. Without the education, social and coping skills training, values identification, relaxation techniques, counseling and therapy, this debilitating and overwhelming mental illness will defeat us every time (Cercone, 305-307).

I dealt with PTSD by self medicating for 14 years until my anger, suffering, fear and unmet needs became overwhelming. It can take years for the problems to accumulate to the point of self-destruction. My realization of this began when a man stabbed me in the face because I had offended him numerous times and when he had an opportunity he acted on it. It took someone trying to take my life to realize that I was mentally ill and that I needed help. My behavior, attitude and cognitive processes had digressed to the point of self hatred and feelings of unworthiness.

I kept thinking of killing myself for 15 years or so, driving off the road, instigating fights, fingering my gun and imaging the relief I would feel if I just pulled the trigger. I could not do it myself, so I sought out people and situations that endangered my existence. How do I kill myself without me doing it? I thank God that I persevered through it and I am well enough today that I may help someone else like me, which was Gods plan all along.

If you know of a veteran or someone you may think is suffering from PTSD, help them get help. In the military we are trained to keep going, to never give in to the enemy. The returning veteran needs our help in reintegrating into society. They need our support and assistance to transition from a life or death struggle in combat to a new beginning in society. We will never be the same as we were before we went to war. But with your help and support we can redirect the negative outcomes from PTSD and become productive to society.

DO NOT WAIT FOR YEARS TO GO BY TO SEEK HELP, IF YOU DO YOU COULD LOSE THEM OR YOURSELF TO THIS ILLNESS.