The Combat Veteran and the Birthing of Dissociation

Combat Attachments Born of Blood
I think that the world needs to know what a combat veteran goes through on a daily basis. If PTSD goes untreated, more than likely it will become a permanent and chronically debilitating mental wound. The combat attachments born of blood do not leave us because we depart the battlefield, they become an empty feeling inside of us. The soldier develops a highly narrow functioning self-organization in conjunction with his or her other squad members. This organization, a "troop-organism," becomes an extension of the combat-self, no different than an arm or leg. We do not will our arms or legs to move, we react from the expectations of intentional imagery based upon the combat values structure. It happens, such as the members of the "squad-herd" where each part of the troop-organism acts in a homogeneous way, each troop becoming part of the others self-states.

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

Without an reintegration of the self, a combat veteran can and will run afoul of friends, family and society. The returning combat veteran face hurdles that they have not been trained to handle, the training and experiences they have navigated and survived leads them to think that civilian life will be easy compared to the battle life. What they do not realize is that they are still operating from the combat value system and attachments, where in American society the individual is the central concern.

Military enculturalization subsumes the civilian self with the combat self, what I term "combat values theory" into an identification with a culture of survival, born of blood and dependent on the assimilation of the “firing squad” mind set, where a troops thoughts and actions relate to an extension of his battle buddies. Fluidity of boundaries births and envelopes the “troop organism” and forever impairs the returning combat veteran by returning home without his “other selves.”

What to Say to Your Soldier or Veteran Who Confess to You Their Sins of War

By listening without judgment and negativity you are giving your soldier something extremely valuable. It may seem insignificant, they are pouring out their soul to you and in doing so you can have a unique opportunity to help them reclaim what they lost on the battlefield.

Living through combat changes who we were. We may choose to remain in denial because if we can pretend to be who we were then we might not have to face who we have become.

Your soldier has chosen to look into their soul and share with you. When they delve into this abyss they experience it for the first time as well as you. In combat we have to compartmentalize all of the horrors of war due to our inability to process it, to do otherwise would get us killed.

By listening and giving them comfort they can begin to regain that part of the mind that has been ravaged by war. They are not proud of the things they will share with you. Do not tell them that you are proud of them in these moments for this is a judgment. Deep down they know it's not their fault, this to is a judgment.

They may blame themselves, guilt of surviving and leaving your battle buddy behind is a crippling cycle of incrimination and damnation.

Tell them soothing things that a mother would tell her son or daughter when he or she comes running home and crying. There, there. It's ok, it's ok. I am here for you. I love you. I am glad you made it home, etc. Also encouraging words or phrases; Uh huh, yeah, ok, go on, I'm listening, etc. can help encourage the veteran to go on. Silence can be an effective communicator of interest in listening.

Remember, this is more about the veteran. Let them lead the way and do not push them into talking when they would not be comfortable.

I hope this helped, if you want to understand why they do the things they do or what may be going on in their mind; browse my blog, I have poured my heart out in it and think that it closely resembles what many combat veterans think and feel.

Complex-PTSD, Should it be Included in the Forth Coming DSM-V?

I was just discussing the argument on the case for Complex-PTSD, or C-PTSD. The argument goes to how far should this "new" classification should go or if it should be included at all. Some of the leading theorists say that personality disorders, PTSD, and dissociation belong on the same continuum and should be treated as such. I agree with this leading thesis and definition of, and yet lest agreed upon, nomenclature for trauma based disorders (TBD). I base this on scant research and mostly from my personal experiences, one of my recent articles describes this event as it pertains to PTSD and extreme dissociative states. I have this on my list of things to further research and write about.

C-PTSD does not necessarily need to be of multiple traumatic experiences (MTE), it depends on the degree to which the person was impacted. Many rape victims suffer from symptoms that could be classified as C-PTSD. The need for a broader PTSD spectrum of diagnosis comes from the fact that dissociation has a high prevalence in persons diagnosed with PTSD, most having experienced MTE. I see a compromise in not including persons with single experiences in a C-PTSD diagnosis in the DSM-V, which would be tragic as I suspect that this would exclude many rape victims.

Where do psychosis, dissociation, personality disorders, Acute Stress Disorder, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders relate and how?

You are still thinking in linear terms concerning TBD. Take away all of the differing classifications,...now,...throw every TBD together, all of them. Somewhere along the way one leads to another and could possibly vacillate back and forth, which would explain why all TBD have the same symptoms but different clusters of symptomology for a definitive diagnosis (a wholly ineffective attempt to categorize).

Psychosis would be a temporary result of an extreme overload of anxiety or stressors triggered by some mitigating factor, a defense mechanism overload where a blending of fantasy and reality merge and explode into the conscious from the unconscious.

In my post "Relationship Between Dissociation and Identity," the triggering factor was the drugs (drug induced psychosis), the mitigating circumstances where feeling disowned or disemboweled in a place that once was my comfort zone (dissociation) and the blending of fantasy and reality was I had always wanted to be the center of attention hence my starring on a TV show (narcissistic personality disorder). All in one night, a smorgasbord of anxiety inducing defensive mechanisms relegated by past trauma, yeah!