Today we celebrate those who came home and remember the ones who did not. This day of remembrance holds more of a special place in my heart as the years go by and I find comfort here on this day today.
After 1991, upon coning home and many years after I could not stand alone very well on this day, due to my insulation and isolation. Today I realize that it was my insistence upon doing it all on my own that was the making of my downfall.
I lost a friend yesterday, his life was taken from him. I can remember his laugh, his good natured personality, he would help anyone who asked and he died by himself.
Today I am going to go to school wearing my veterans hat and later go to dinner with some friends and remember the ones who have fallen and will never again stand alone.
November 11, 2008
November 10, 2008
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.
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.
November 8, 2008
Combat PTSD: Relationship Between Dissociation and Identity
Lately I have been thinking about how identity issues have an integral part of becoming whole in PTSD survivors. During my research I found an article on dissociative identity possibly being a major part of combat trauma. I have experienced this phenomenon many times and once in particular I was at a party and found myself convinced that my life was a sitcom where I was the star of the show (yes, a bit narcissistic) and having just realized this I began to seriously question the interactions I was having and wondering what my lines were supposed to be.
Of course the incident was triggered through a drug induced psychosis (alcohol and marijuana), again a commonality in the deeper spectrum of PTSD and identity crisis; a further distancing with the loss of self. I kept going from room to room trying to get away from the "cameras" that I could not see, but was convinced that were there. I was having homicidal thoughts along with the delusions, I kept hearing voices that was telling me to kill everybody and was convinced that I could hear the "in studio audience" laughter. I was convinced that they were laughing at me, which I told myself, "of course they are you are on a TV show." This moment could have been the breaking point and I was extremely close to totally separating from my consciousness.
In the last quote you will notice that I was not using first person conjugation, but second person. This was a conversation with myself, but I was convinced otherwise. My self dissolution was teetering on a complete psychotic break from reality, where anything was possible concerning my behavior.
In a moment of clarity I realized this thinking pattern was quantitatively deficient and possibly a precursor to violence. I was scared to death when I had this brief awakening and ran out of the house without saying anything to anyone and I believe that this was the last time I had any significant social interactions in my second wives life, we where separated at this point and had entertained the possibility of getting back together.
Thinking back on that now, I remember blaming her for us not getting back together, when in reexamining this part of my life just now I must have been operating more from my shadow self, a shallow self that can dip down into the murky pool of delirium and insanity. It was my fear from the resulting brief moment of lucidity that made me flee, subconsciously I could feel the submerging actualities skimming the opacity of the break waters. Somewhere inside me I felt that I could not do the work I needed to regain my complete sanity by staying, so I left never to return.
Yes I agree that finding an identity would be important in recovery and discovery of self. I had not made this connection until lately, but it seems that a higher power knew of this and governed my arrival to this without me formulating the thought of this brick within the foundation of my life. Thank you for your part in guiding me to this realization.
Of course the incident was triggered through a drug induced psychosis (alcohol and marijuana), again a commonality in the deeper spectrum of PTSD and identity crisis; a further distancing with the loss of self. I kept going from room to room trying to get away from the "cameras" that I could not see, but was convinced that were there. I was having homicidal thoughts along with the delusions, I kept hearing voices that was telling me to kill everybody and was convinced that I could hear the "in studio audience" laughter. I was convinced that they were laughing at me, which I told myself, "of course they are you are on a TV show." This moment could have been the breaking point and I was extremely close to totally separating from my consciousness.
In the last quote you will notice that I was not using first person conjugation, but second person. This was a conversation with myself, but I was convinced otherwise. My self dissolution was teetering on a complete psychotic break from reality, where anything was possible concerning my behavior.
In a moment of clarity I realized this thinking pattern was quantitatively deficient and possibly a precursor to violence. I was scared to death when I had this brief awakening and ran out of the house without saying anything to anyone and I believe that this was the last time I had any significant social interactions in my second wives life, we where separated at this point and had entertained the possibility of getting back together.
Thinking back on that now, I remember blaming her for us not getting back together, when in reexamining this part of my life just now I must have been operating more from my shadow self, a shallow self that can dip down into the murky pool of delirium and insanity. It was my fear from the resulting brief moment of lucidity that made me flee, subconsciously I could feel the submerging actualities skimming the opacity of the break waters. Somewhere inside me I felt that I could not do the work I needed to regain my complete sanity by staying, so I left never to return.
Yes I agree that finding an identity would be important in recovery and discovery of self. I had not made this connection until lately, but it seems that a higher power knew of this and governed my arrival to this without me formulating the thought of this brick within the foundation of my life. Thank you for your part in guiding me to this realization.
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