Healing Combat Trauma

Quotable Quotes -- American Poet Walt Whitman on the True Nature of War

Famous American poet Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892), author of "Leaves of Grass," volunteered as a nurse in the Civil War. He is reported to have been profoundly affected by what he saw, and wrote about it in an essay called "The Great Army of the Sick," published in a New York newspaper at the time, and also in a later book called "Memoranda During the War." He claims to have visited almost 100,000 wounded troops, though that claim is likely to be an exaggeration, and is thought to have sat at many wounded soldiers' bedsides, drafting letters home for them to their loved ones, among many other kindnesses he performed.

In the tone of Vietnam combat veteran Tim O'Brien who wrote "The Things We Carried," who famously said, "A true war story is never moral," Whitman wrote, "The real war will never get in the books."

Whitman had originally journeyed to find his injured brother, George, who had enlisted with the Union Army, traveling to battlegrounds and eventually to hospitals in Washington, D.C. Along the way he wrote his mother, tellingly:

"Now that I have lived for eight or nine days amid such scenes as the camps furnish … really nothing we call trouble seems worth talking about.”

Editor's note: This photo of Walt Whitman during his Civil War years is by the famous photographer Matthew Brady, and is in the archives of the Library of Congress. A collection of his work in the National Archives, online, is linked here.

Happy Veterans Day 2011 -- Joe Galloway on the Experience of War

"War is about men who love their country but even more than that love each other. I left that battlefield knowing that they will continue to sacrifice for me. There are some events that are so overwhelming you can't simply be a witness. You can't be above it you can't be neutral you can't be untouched by it. You see it, you live it, you experience it and it will be with you all of your days." -- Joseph "Joe" Galloway, from "Vietnam in HD" on the History Channel. 

Editor's note: Longtime journalist Galloway, who served as a war correspondent in the battle of Ai Drang during the Vietnam War, has been decorated for his bravery under fire. He's also the author of "We Were Soldiers Once, and Young" with Lt. Gen. Harold Moore (Ret.), which has since been made into a movie; and he's featured in the excellent Michael Samstag documentary about war correspondents in the current era, called "War & Truth." 

Comparing Risk of Suicide in Veterans to Non-Veterans

Periodically I wish we were doing a section on this site called "What We Knew, When" because the unfortunate tendency in the world at large, for whatever reason, is to suggest that so little is known about PTSD and combat veterans that we can keep re-discovering it, at great expense and to the detriment of the veterans affected themselves (and their family members, who also have to cope with this).

One case in point that I ran across the other day is this. Back in 1986, before some of the servicemembers in the current war climate were even born, the New England Journal of Medicine reported in a study that veterans were "65% more likely to die from suicide and 49% more likely to die in a motor vehicle accident than non-vets of the same age."

The article's authors affirmed, "We conclude that the most likely explanation for these findings is that military service during the Vietnam War caused an increase in subsequent deaths from suicide and motor-vehicle accidents." (N Engl J Med 1986; 314:620–4.)

I bring this up because even the other day, a civilian wondered -- on hearing the statistics of how many suicides are being reported in the Army -- how the rate of suicide in those who've served compares to the civilian rate. The short answer? It's much higher. The current figures for servicemember suicides are one every 36 hours; for veterans, an also-shocking 18 every day -- and those figures have been valid for a while. (If you want to learn about civilian suicide rates, you'll have to do your own homework here, but the NIMH is a good place to start. The figures are a bit old but periodically update.) As a general point of reference, in 2007 it was known to be twice that of the civilian population.

Periodically new studies arise that make different claims -- a recent one says there's no difference at all, but perhaps their window of "in the past year" was too small -- but as a general rule of thumb, it's higher than civilians and the NEJM reference cited above is an interesting metric about how much higher. It also makes mention of motor vehicle accidents, which have a certain overlap with suicide in terms of method. 

Another recent study which seems to have gotten no traction in the news is that suicide is also higher for veterans who've suffered traumatic brain injuries ("TBI"). (The figure they mentioned is 1.55% the rate of non-veterans.) And of course TBI and PTSD frequently go together in recent veterans. This isn't to impugn the current veterans' sturdiness level in some manner, but rather to remind us all perhaps of the higher costs of serving. Let's all keep an eye on this issue, and exercise both compassion and interest as it develops over time.

Editor's note: Over the years, we've written quite extensively on suicide on this site, so there's lots of good information if you want to delve into it further -- from personal essays to suicide maps across the U.S. to even what seems to help forestall or prevent suicide. And of course this section also includes some worthwhile wisdom from the acknowledged "father of suicidology," Edwin Shneidman, M.D., whose words are well worth knowing and remembering.

Quotable Quotes -- A 5th Century Mercenary on the Warrior's Life

"It is one thing to study war and another to live the warrior's life." -- Telamon of Arcadia, mercenary of the fifth century B.C.

If you want to have a clearer picture of what it takes to live the warrior life -- and the ongoing attempt to integrate and embody those experiences into one's current life -- be sure to watch the remarkable documentary starring Rudy Reyes which we wrote about recently, here. The documentary, by In Their Boots, is entitled, "The Way of the Warrior."

I think of all the warriors I have known, and they're all still integrating what they've learned and been into who they are right now. It isn't easy, and it never stops. But healing does and can happen.

Quotable Quotes -- Chief Dan George on the Necessity of Love

It's not always easy to love a combat veteran with PTSD. Heck, it's not even easy to BE a combat veteran with PTSD and manage to love yourself, or those around you the way that you want to.

But part of healing is getting back in touch with how important love is, and even respecting its own form of therapeutic, healing power. Listen to these words from a very wise sage about just how important love is, in the natural order of things:

"Love is something you and I must have. We must have it because our spirit feeds upon it. We must have it because without it we become weak and faint. Without love our self-esteem weakens. Without it our courage fails. Without love we can no longer look out confidently at the world." -- Chief Dan George, Canadian First Nations chief, poet, author and Academy Award-winning actor.

Martin Luther King Jr Had a Dream for Combat Veterans, Too

Martin Luther King Jr., from a speech delivered exactly one year before he was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.:

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love." -- Martin Luther King Jr, speech at Riverside Church in New York City, April 4, 1967. 

Editor's note: A link to the online text and audio of his full speech is here.

Marine Recon Rudy Reyes in "The Way of the Warrior" Documentary from "In Their Boots"

The documentary series "In Their Boots" does a great job at showcasing important aspects of the servicemember, veteran, and family member experience in short films on subjects as varied as the participants themselves. Every single one of the episodes is worth watching and taken together, they represent an entire educational arc about the OIF/OEF veteran experience. Periodically we highlight one of the documentary series' new episodes here.

Rudy Reyes, former Marine recon sniper, star of "Generation Kill," and author of "Hero Living" is the star of the recent "In Their Boots" episode entitled: "The Way of the Warrior." The charismatic and exceptionally authentic Reyes carries the entire show himself, making crystal clear the conflicts within and without that the warrior faces. Reyes, not unlike many other veterans, has been fighting serious battles on and off his entire life. The way of the warrior has always appealed to him; and he speaks with powerful candor about the costs, as well as the camaraderie, this life has brought him.

Confucius wrote, "He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior." Rudy Reyes is on that path. His level of honesty is not typical, is not ordinary, and does not come without a very high price; but you honor it with your attention. So many other warriors cannot be this clear or this forthright about articulating their inner struggles. While we give warriors points for subduing others in combat, those who watch this territory know the hardest battles are fought and won within. Rudy Reyes continually finds, and challenges, this personal edge. In this way, he truly embodies "the way of the warrior."

Editor's note: The link to the film is below. The photo pictured below is not Rudy Reyes.

Quotable Quotes -- Smedley Butler, Maverick Marine, on the True Costs of War to Veterans and Their Families

USMC Major General Smedley Butler wrote a remarkable and well-known piece of work called "War is a Racket," originally delivered as a stinging speech. In it, he takes the war profiteers of World War I and beyond to task for forgetting who it is who fights the battle, and who bears the ultimate price of war. His words are, of course, as relevant today as they ever were. In fact, it's intriguing to read his words and quiz ourselves how alike -- or different -- are conditions today.

So many people want to say, "Oh, we're just finding out about PTSD, that's why the system lags behind in treating vets." But in fact, this is not the case at all. The phenomenon of combat-wounded bodies, minds and spirits has been around as long as there's been war, irrespective of what name we've used to describe the malady. "Shell shock"? "Soldier's Heart"? "Post-Traumatic Stress"? Ultimately, it's all the same thing. And documentaries from "Hidden Wounds" and "The Soldier's Heart" back in 2006, which I wrote about here almost five years ago now, to HBO's recent "Wartorn" all make this point quite eloquently.

But back to Smedley Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor winner who served more than 33 years on active duty in the Marine Corps. Here's a sampling of his direct comments on what happens to the wounded and their families, and we quote it at length because there's just so much material here to really chew over and decide how "new" the struggles we're facing really are, re-integrating veterans after combat. His words:

"But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.

If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.

Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.

Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.

In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.

There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.

That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.

But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.

Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.

Napoleon once said,

"All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."

So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.

In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.

So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed.

And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies . . . to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.

Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."

Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.

All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill . . . and be killed.

But wait!

Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state -- and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.

Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.

We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back -- when they came back from the war and couldn't find work -- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!

Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.

When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.

And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying."

-- Smedley Butler, "War is a Racket." (1935).

Editor's note: You can read "War is a Racket" in full at several places on the Web. It's well worth reading. And, if you'd rather hear key parts of it delivered as a speech, which was its original form, check out this link from YouTube.

Helping the Brave Fight Their Final Battle: A New Book on Death and Dying

"Rage, rage, against the dying of the light," wrote Irish poet Dylan Thomas about not going peacefully into that good night, death.

Yesterday's LA Times had a story about veterans making that final passage. The article, entitled "Helping the Brave Fight Their Final Battle," is linked here.

The article talks about a book by a nurse practitioner who is the director of the hospice program at the Bay Pines, Fla. VA. The book is called Peace at Last: Stories of Hope and Healing for Veterans and Their Families, by Deborah Grassman.

About the author: Deborah Grassman is a Nurse Practitioner at Bay Pines VA Medical Center in St. Petersburg, Florida. She has been with the VA for 25 years and has been the Director of the Hospice Program at the VA for the last 14 years. She has been a featured speaker at Hospice conferences throughout the United States and has published articles on providing Hospice care to veterans in numerous professional journals. She pioneered identifying the effects of past trauma on the quality of a person s dying process, as well as ways to effectively respond to issues that surface at the end of life. She has a B.S. in Nursing and an M.S. in Psych-Mental Health Nursing from the University of South Florida.

Editor's note: In future articles, we will talk more about hospice care and veterans.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0918339723?tag=fivelementcom-20&link_code=as3&creativeASIN=0918339723&creative=373489&camp=211189New

Finding -- and Keeping -- Your All-Important Balance

With the holiday season fully underway, here is a message that's foundationally true not just now but also every single day of the year.

It's vitally important to find -- and then maintain -- your personal balance, whatever that may be. We've spoken before about creating what's known as a "personal practice" -- be that meditation, qi gong, T'ai chi, yoga -- something that you can do daily that resets your own internal rythym and reminds you that you have substantial ability to affect your own mood, energy level, and emotional health.

Here's one thing we'd highly recommend be part of that, an attitude that is sadly missing from many people's lives, and also lacking expression in many others. It's a simple word that holds a universe of emotional health within it, and that simple word is GRATITUDE.

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow." -- Melody Beattie.

Quotable Quotes -- Joseph Marshall III on the Warrior as "the Shadow Man"

After a discussion with his grandfather about the words their native Lakota Sioux tribe use to discuss war and their warriors, story teller Joseph Marshall III writes:

"One day, still somewhat confused by the seemingly convoluted labels, I asked my grandfather for some kind of clarification. Consequently, he brought up an entirely different phrase and its concept: nagi wica, or "shadow man." He expounded at some length on the issues of war and warriors. His explanation was a foundation for insights I am still developing over this most chaotic of human institutions, and of understanding those who are thrust into war or go by choice.

In my grandfather's opinion, war is really a fight between the good and the bad sides of humans, and both emerge during the hostilities.  It is within each of us to bring out the best or the worst part of ourselves. In all endeavors, he said, we must strive for balance, even within the context of war." -- Joseph M. Marshall III, "Walking with Grandfather: The Wisdom of the Lakota Elders."

In saying this, Marshall's grandfather, and Marshall himself, are espousing some of the central concepts of the Warrior in the Tao, that of integrating the yin and the yang, the darkness and the light, within the same being, and that in that route lies greater emotional and spiritual health.

Quotable Quotes -- William Gladstone on the Nation's Care for Its Dead

"Show me the manner in which a nation cares for its dead, and I will measure with mathematical exactness the tender mercies of its people, their respect for the laws of the land and their loyalty to high deeds." -- William E. Gladstone, former British prime minister.

Advancing the Dialogue: Can Veterans and Civilians Really See Eye-to-Eye?

We've all heard the horror stories about what ignorant, impertinent questions strangers and even family members ask of veterans sometimes. "Didja kill anyone?" "How many people did you kill," etc.

It doesn't take much sophistication or awareness about the topic of veterans and PTSD before you realize, those questions aren't appropriate at all, ever; and in general, when it comes to questions about combat experience and what veterans suffered, very clearly let them lead in terms of the disclosure. Don't press. But if they want to talk, be able and willing to listen, if you're so inclined.

Apparently the word hasn't gotten out as far as it should have, though. The other night, I went to a screening of some films by a veteran about his experience, and certain questions by audience members afterwards just made me and many of the veterans in the audience squirm.

I share them because I think it shows how far we all have to go if we actually desire authentic dialogue between the two groups.

(An appropriate disclaimer would be, I'm a civilian too, but I've spent the last five years learning from veterans about what they experience in combat, and about how post-traumatic stress disorder affects them and their loved ones.)

The setting was a small community college auditorium, where members of the public gathered to watch a series of short films produced by an Iraq veteran about his experience reintegrating. The film showing was followed by a panel discussion with a handful of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, both men and women, and a few who'd served earlier. The films were good, and portrayed the experience well, and afterwards, the panel took questions from the audience. Several of the (undoubtedly well-meaning) questioners make me wonder if it's possible for civilians to breach the gap with military on something so raw, personal and volatile as their war experience.

Certainly, when the Vietnam veterans returned, they were met with open hostility and outright neglect, both of which were a problem, and where those after-effects are felt even to this day. Many who were alive during those days, both veterans and civilians, regret those times. It's certainly true that veterans today are getting a different reception -- but is that reception necessarily better, particularly if it includes questions like these? 

One audience member, an older woman, said -- though she had a son who had gone to war and was on the panel -- that she herself was a pacificist. "So I'd like to know," she asked (I'm paraphrasing), "just why you would have joined the military?"

The filmmaker who was hosting the panel responded that the answers to that question would be as different as individuals, and that there was no one way to answer to it. To which a young audience member, referring to the woman's question, replied privately, "Just because you don't personally agree with someone else, isn't any reason to question their motivation for doing what they did."

"Spill your guts"

"Take this opportunity right now, you have it, we're listening," another older woman suggested to the panel of veterans, "and tell us, right now, what you would like us to know, about the worst of what you experienced in war."

The panel was, as a whole, taken aback, incredulous; it was the equivalent, of her saying, "here, right now, spill your guts -- on the most difficult memories you  have -- what's stopping you? We're listening." In an auditorium full of literal strangers, the question was absurd.

One young Marine, who was on a tour in Iraq where many of his brothers-in-arms died, and has since gone on to study social work, demurred that even when his mother asks him, there are questions about what he experienced that he just doesn't feel comfortable answering.

One teenage audience member, at 18 a few years younger than the youngest veteran on the panel, had a question he wanted to ask, which might have gone over much better than some of the more insensitive ones. What he wanted to know is when veterans self-identify as such, whether they feel that the "label" of veteran helps them to integrate better into the community, or whether they feel it sets them apart?

A question like this, which didn't get heard, would have been one of the more pivotal ones to address. Because while it's great that being a veteran has "come out of the woodwork" so to speak -- and the veteran experience is now one that seems to elicit some interest, versus during the Vietnam era -- that also cuts both ways. For veterans who want to be accepted again for who they are, not necessarily thought of primarily in terms of their war experience, however much it's changed them -- it's hard to say whether identifying publicly as a veteran helps this or hurts it.

And while 'm glad to see civilians embracing to some extent the veterans in their community -- and giving them the recognition and to some degree, attention that they didn't give their Vietnam veteran counterparts -- the reality is, it still needs to be done with compassion, understanding and empathy. And NOT the desire to put veterans on the spot and make them squirm under the spotlight of fairly ignorant questioning, no matter how "well-meaning" their interest.

Someday I hope we'll all find the right balance on this: respecting veterans for their service and their sacrifice, and letting the veterans lead the conversation about how much they really want to say about it. In the meantime, the appropriate posture for the rest of us -- both individually and as communities, is to wait, not press, and certainly not pressure -- veterans to talk about what they've gone through.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution. 

Conflict as Combat: When Words Become Bullets

A great comment in a panel discussion by veterans on re-integration, where one veteran was discussing how being asked the wrong questions can put him on the defensive and elicit an undesired response, thanks in part to military training and the normal reaction to being backed into a corner. "When rifles are no longer involved, words can become your bullets," he said.

For anyone who's ever been on either the "giving" or the "receiving" side of a difficult, heated conversation where it felt like life or identity was at stake, it's easy to understand exactly what he meant. It's also, obviously, not a prescription for harmonious communication that resolves issues effectively. For that, very different communication styles and skills are necessary. We try to cover that here from time to time, when we find someone with a worthwhile and constructive point of view -- and experience in the trenches, either as a veteran or a spouse of a veteran with PTSD.

Editor's note: To access that series of articles on communication skills, including those written by veterans and/or their spouses, click here. We're continuing to add more material to this section, including an upcoming article about "fair fighting." 

Intimate Survival: When the Veteran You Love Commits Suicide Anyway

Today is the 12th annual "National Survivors of Suicide Day." It's also a day of healing for survivors of suicide loss around the world.

Every day 18 veterans take their own lives; every 36 hours, an active duty soldier does. The pain is immeasurable, not only for the one who cannot bear it anymore and takes his or her own life, but also, importantly, for the ones they leave behind. They wait for time to heal those wounds; but it's almost impossible for time to do that; the loss is so great, particularly where there was also great love.

Because of how many veterans die each year at their own hand, affecting so many others in suicide's wake, we wanted to honor these relationships by asking a wonderful woman to tell the deeply true and deeply painful story of her own loss of her love to suicide. By telling the truth about these stories, and bringing this sadness into the light that truly so many share, we can embrace one another in the courage and compassion it takes to carry on. Marilyn has graciously shared her story, below. We are blessed to have her presence here.

---

"The Language of Suffering and Healing: Lessons Learned from Loss and Life with a PTSD Vet"

Suffering has its own language.  Old words take on new powerful meanings, and some words that formerly brought up feelings of joy now are redefined with fear and terror.

When you live with and love someone with combat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, you develop a new vocabulary related to the disorder/the suffering.  The word “anniversary” used to be one associated with dressing up, going out to dinner, exchanging cards and gifts of love. Then it came to be associated with the anniversary dates of horrible, tragic events from the war -- i.e. the day a buddy was blown out of the air in his helicopter during a mission.  The word “trigger” has a common definition referring to a part of a gun -- now it referred to a smell, a sound, a sight, a verbal exchange, a situation that could set off rage, depression, anger, or isolating.

My late Vietnam vet husband, Denny, suffered with severe combat-related PTSD.  Truthfully, we both suffered from his PTSD.  Even though technically I wasn’t a soldier in Vietnam, it seems for a time, during the final ten years of our marriage, I became a prisoner of that war.

I feel I need to let you know right off that this story does not have a happy ending.  On December 9, 2009, my husband successfully completed suicide.   I say “successfully completed” because he had tried numerous times before in the last several years, but I had been able to save his life those other times.  Not so, this time. 

So now, in reality, I have my own set of “triggers” and “anniversaries” stemming from Denny’s PTSD behaviors and suicide.  I am sure these will be with me the rest of my life; but hopefully, with focused healing work they will hold less sway with my emotional well-being.

Countless articles, journals, blogs and books have been written about combat PTSD, each one with its own unique focus.  In this reflection piece, I can only do two things: I can share my own personal experience of living, loving a Vietnam vet who eventually committed suicide; and, I can share what I have learned from these experiences.  After all, isn’t that what it’s all about? What happened in your life, and what you learned from it.

Meeting Denny

The moment I met Denny, I knew my life had been forever changed.  I felt a connection with his soul I had never before experienced -- and I’m pretty sure, I never will again. 

He was a professional storyteller who came to my fifth grade classroom, to enhance the reading curriculum and increase the students‘ academic performance through an artistic approach.  He taught the students a love of story and characters through the sharing of folktales, fairytales, and the narratives of his own personal experiences.  And, oh, the personal experience narratives he had had in his life!  Denny told of sailing a boat during a Nor’easter, living in a tree house in Peru and hiking the Machu Pichu trail, fighting forest fires from a helicopter, hitchhiking across North America -- more adventures than most of us could ever dream of having.  And he told his adventures with a gleam in his eyes and a song in his heart.

But another story was being written during his time in my classroom, and that was our story. We fell in love, got married, and between the two of us raised seven children (from previous marriages) and four grandchildren.  Our marriage was far from fairytale perfect, even in the beginning.  We had both been married and many hearts were broken in our coming together.  But we endured and learned and clung to each other through the good and the bad times. 

PTSD Enters

At about the 12 year point in our relationship, a new entity/force entered the picture.  This was an uninvited presence, unrecognized at first – but the behaviors it produced and the unwanted consequences it set in motion seemed to have a life of their own.

On September 11, 2001, when the planes crashed into the towers in New York, and the war ensued with Iraq – for Denny, this was the final unleashing of his own, internal war. He had been battling this war privately for years, but now, his inner battles consumed him.  At this time, “our” war with PTSD began in earnest. PTSD was the new entity in our marriage, and 9/11 was the trigger.

Within two weeks after 9/11, Denny was in a mental hospital due to suicidal ideations.  I had never even heard that term, “suicidal ideations,” before, but my vocabulary education was just beginning.

Denny was depressed and despondent.  After his release from the first of many behavioral hospital stays, he felt somewhat better for a while and the depression meds seemed to help. 

But periods of happiness and calm were short-lived and mostly non-existent.  He began canceling his performances due to severe anxiety attacks.  Much of his time was spent on the couch under a sleeping bag watching certain movies over and over.  The movies -- Gladiator, Fly Away Home, and SeaBiscuit -- all had the same theme, personal triumph over adversity and challenge.  But they also had a lot of sadness and tragedy embedded within them.

It was also an extremely confusing time for me. 

Denny had been such a force of talent and admired by many.  He performed before audiences of thousands, but now, he was a shell of his former self.  He had also been my rock of strength, my touchstone for love and sanity in life.  Now, he struggled just to survive each day.  He once told me during his intense depression times, that he felt like he was walking through life with a heavy rubber suit on.  Very sad. 

Waiting for the diagnosis

Denny still had not been diagnosed with combat PTSD.  The doctors we were seeing were on the civilian side, and they missed the combat connection to his present day state of being.  His diagnosis was “severe chronic depression and anxiety.” Under their care, he received some therapy, numerous anxiety and depression meds, and even 15 rounds of electric shock therapy – at Denny’s own request.  He so desperately wanted to feel “normal” again.

Over the next several years, his behaviors escalated to include: alcohol abuse, drug abuse, repeated suicide attempts (always by taking meds), extramarital affairs, physical abuse, severe anxiety attacks, night tremors, rage, isolation, and flashbacks. 

Each of these were ongoing and extremely painful events to deal with and live through, for both of us. 

Eventually our local doctor suggested we take Denny to the VA, suspecting his combat experience was in play with his ever-increasing risky and damaging behaviors.  After a 45 minute intake interview, I learned the term that seemed to define our current situation and the outlook for our future: combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Denny had it and he had it bad.  His time in Vietnam as a helicopter pilot had damaged him mentally, emotionally and spiritually.  And it seemingly had returned to completely claim its victim.

The VA knew more about his PTSD, but for Denny their attempted therapies, meds, support groups, etc. did not work.  He was spiraling down and I knew if I did not get help for myself, I would go right down with him.

Starting to take care of myself

I had joined Al-Anon (a 12-step program for people who loved someone with addiction) when it originally seemed like Denny’s problems stemmed from alcohol and/or drug addiction. 

It was not easy to join a support group because I had always believed I could fix or handle any problem that came along in my life.  Only it was obvious my methods were not doing any good in this situation, and if anything, I was only getting into a depression myself.  In those Al-Anon meeting walls/rooms, with those other suffering people, my first ray of hope began to appear. 

I started to learn and accept some critical information to save my own sanity:  I did not cause Denny’s problems, I could not control his behaviors, and I could not cure him.  The people in my Al-Anon group, my sponsor, the readings, the meetings were the beginning of my effort to find my own peace - no matter what was happening with Denny and our marriage.  Before I felt hopeless, confused, angry, out-of-control, and frustrated trying to get him the help he needed and trying to fix him.  Now I was beginning to feel some peace.

Love and loss

I also learned in these meetings about loving detachment -- that I could still love Denny but detach myself personally from his actions.  In other words, his choices were not about me  -- no matter what he said or did.  It was never about me - it was always about him and his suffering.  His pain had begun long before I met him even though the drastic behavioral manifestations did not appear until much later in his life -- about 30 years after the war.

After Denny was diagnosed by the VA, I was asked to join a support group for women married to or living with a vet with combat PTSD.  This group met weekly at the VA and was facilitated by a woman counselor.  The other ladies that attended these meetings have become dear friends through the years.  Their marriages were practically cookie-cutter versions of my own.  The same issues, the same behaviors, the same frustrations, and ultimately the same sense of loss -- for that was the bottom line for us all.  We all felt that we had lost the man we fell in love with.  That man did not exist anymore.  It seemed we lived with a man/child made of ice -- frozen emotions, feelings frozen in a time and place inaccessible to any of us.  Ultimately, whether Denny could not heal or chose not to heal, I will never know.

The beginning of the end

In the first few days of November 2009, Denny and I had an argument that set off a trigger for him.  He went into a severe rage and physically attacked me.  I was lucky to get out alive.  I left our home of 20 years, as I had three times before when it was not safe, but this time felt eerily different.  It felt
“of the end,” somehow.

I moved into an apartment and after a few weeks passed, I began returning Denny’s almost hourly phone calls and innumerable texts and email messages.  He was not doing well, to say the least.

 He could not remember the attack fully but he did feel “shame” from it.  He begged me to come home but I told him I could not until he committed to serious long-term mental therapy and it was safe for me.  One of the last emails he sent me said, “I want to be loved so desperately, yet have no patience for love”.

On December 8, 2009, he called me two different times and threatened suicide as he had so many times before.  I called the VA suicide team and the sheriff’s department to tell them what he had said.  They checked on him twice that day, both times he was able to convince them he was fine – remember, he had been a professional storyteller. 

But sometime that night, he decided he had had enough suffering.  I cannot speak to what went through his mind at the end, but I know he swallowed many bottles of VA prescription meds and the next morning, he was gone.

It is too painful to describe seeing him in our bed that next morning, so I won’t .  I can tell you this, after the medical examiners took his body, they handed me gloves and bags and told me I had to dispose of the “hazardous waste” of our  bedding due to the contamination of his bodily fluids.  That scene, that experience is now one of the triggers/anniversaries that haunt me.  As I continue to choose to heal, I know the pain will be lessened, but that memory will never be erased.

Denny’s suffering ended that day – and mine took a new turn. Attempted suicide is horrible; completed suicide is devastating.

Turning to healing

But there is a new language and a new vocabulary I am learning now.  And that is the one of healing. 

During the worst times of his PTSD and my resultant confusion, I began to understand through support groups the difference between adjusting and adapting.  Whenever I had tried to “adjust” -- i.e., Denny’s behavior, circumstances -- my life only became more frustrating and out of control.  When I learned how to “adapt” -- I began to have more control over my life and emotions.  By learning how to adapt, I became proactive instead of reactive.  I sought out the help I needed through understanding friends, family, but most critically, through the hard work of consistent participation in support groups of my peers.

Through all of these experiences, I believe I have become a more compassionate person.  I have learned not to have expectations of others -- only of myself.  That does not mean I cannot have boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable behavior -- and I do.  However, I find I do best when my focus is on my own behaviors and setting realistic expectations for myself.

I have learned we are all on our journey together and alone.  When we are together, we must do all we can to love, support and help ease the suffering of those we are with; and when we are alone, we must find ways to do this for ourselves.

The most significant lesson I learned -- above all else -- is the importance of reaching out and accepting help.  We all need to be able to let go of our egos -- to realize we don’t have all the answers and that there are others out there who share in our suffering and trials.  When you can dedicate yourself to getting the help you need in these situations, there will still be pain, but you need not suffer.

My suggestions would be to find support groups in your area, through the VA or the Vet Centers.  Read related articles, books, online resources, blogs, websites that offer wisdom and support.  Whatever you do, remember you must take care of yourself before you can be of any good to others, and that includes your vet.

I am so grateful to have known and loved Denny.  I am so sorry for all the pain he endured and I am hopeful he has found the peace he could not find here on this earth, in this life.  And I miss him every day more than I could ever have imagined.

My wish for those reading this is the following: If you recognize yourself and your loved ones in any of this writing, that you will reach out, seek out, and accept the help that is available for you.

May you learn the lessons you need that will guide you on a journey of compassionate love for yourself and all those in your life.

Namasté.

-- Marilyn.

---

Editor's note. In addition to being grateful to Marilyn for sharing her story so graciously and courageously, we also need to share some resources. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention has a well-stocked website filled with resources, linked here, including a section on "Coping with Suicide Loss," linked here. Their website is well worth a look. There's also the "Fierce Goodbye" website, a faith-based perspective on suicide, based on a documentary (put together by the Mennonites), linked here. And on the military veteran side, the American Widow Project, most of whom have been widowed by war -- and yet a few by suicide -- is linked here, with the stories of suicide linked here. For more material from our website here on suicide, as it relates to veterans with PTSD, click here. Additionally, crisis and hotline phone numbers are listed here. With love to all concerned...

© 2010 by Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

Veterans with PTSD Want to Get the "Massage" Across

Every once in a while I hear an interesting comment from a VA consumer -- in other words, a servicemember or veteran who's using the VA for health care. (The VA does a lot of great things for veterans; but there's also a limit to what they do or authorize, and veterans often want MORE.) Here's a recent comment, illustrating that point. The veteran with MST and PTSD was getting his or her request for going "outside the system" to get massage therapy on a fee-basis denied. Here's what the denier said:

"If the VA did fee-basis for massage everyone would want it! They are not going to approve you for that; maybe acupuncture, but not massage."

The literature indicates that massage does help PTSD symptoms. (Here's one article to whet your interest on that topic, but there are many more.) Massage is also an affordable form of stress relief that doesn't rely on medication or talk therapy for its results. And there are plenty of massage therapists available for work with veterans, whereas there often aren't enough talk therapists to meet the need. So while the VA employee above may not be speaking for the VA officially, it's a shame to think veterans aren't able to access such a low-tech, high-touch therapeutic modality that (apparently) many vets would enjoy if they could!

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Quotable Quotes -- Dwight D. Eisenhower on the How the Soldier Hates War

We've quoted former president Eisenhower before on this site, here, but this is another good quote, from a man who knew:

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. president and Army five star general.

"The War Experience Project" Distills Combat Memories into Art

Iraq veteran Rick Lawson's "War Experience Project" will be holding an artists' reception from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday, November 13, at their new gallery location at 906 Broadway in Tacoma, Washington. 

Lawson is a 27 year old OIF combat veteran, who came back when he was 22. Together with his wife, who has a degree in human services, he created an art project that depends on moving beyond words to express truths about combat experience and what it was like. Veterans who are artists from every war are invited to participate.

For an insight into Lawson's project, watch this moving, Emmy award-winning video by Seattle's King 5's John Sharify, linked here. The segment is called, "What's It Like to Be in Combat?" and that's one of the most irksome questions Lawson used to get asked, too many times. He turned to art for the answer.

Lawson says, "Very often veterans are put in the position of answering questions," but through the art experience, "We are putting veterans in the position of speaking on their own terms. Since words are often misinterpreted or cannot convey the experience properly, we are using artistic expression to speak" instead.

The artists' reception will feature the work of "veteran artists" Erick Schmidt, Christian Hamilton, Patricia France, and Al Thompson, along with numerous others. The program has gallery space for a few months, and will be selling arts and crafts created by veterans.

If you watch the moving interview with Rick Lawson, above, you'll see how difficult it is to "have to talk" about combat experiences. Lawson's evident frustration with baring his soul about what often can't be told reminded me of a conversation I had a few years ago with another combat veteran, Steve Piscitelli, from a different war -- Vietnam. I wrote about it on this site at the time, but I'll excerpt below what we said, because it relates so exactly. (The full article is linked here.)

From 2008:

"Recently I interviewed a former Marine, Vietnam veteran Steve Piscitelli, who said that when he first was treated at the VA for PTSD in the course of the Vietnam war, his psychotherapists at the VA wanted to discuss standard psychological topics, such as his childhood, and how he felt about his parents, when he was aching in his desire to discuss what he believed was affecting him -- THE WAR. Eventually, Piscitelli turned to making art about his experiences -- to convey the images he remembered from war -- in an effort to turn the conversation with the therapist around, and focus more on what he believed the bigger issues were. 

Doing this -- literally, making art from war -- created a breakthrough in Piscitelli's therapy, he says.  Suddenly, what he'd been wanting to express was being understood.  From that day forward, he's made art on his own, often using it to purge the images he remembers, and destroying the art once it's "function" has been served.  At the same time, he's gone on to study art formally, and has become a sculptor, who vacillates between images of great aesthetic beauty (in his case, the form of ballerinas) and the most hideous images available to him, which come straight from his subconscious mind in the form of memories he carries with him from Vietnam."

We wish Rick Lawson & Co. all the luck in the world with bringing the "War Experience Project" forward to help veterans have a chance for self-expression in a positive way that brings any amount of catharsis. Please support their work. For more information about the "War Experience Project," click here for their website, or find them on Facebook, here. There's also a recent PBS interview with Rick Lawson about the War Experience Project, linked here.

---

Editor's note: For more articles on combat veterans, PTSD and art, click here; for more articles on art therapy, click here.

 

The Color of Blood, and the Eternal Reciprocity of Tears

Wilfred Owen, a veteran of World War I, died at 25 years old, shortly before the Armistice was announced. (Armistice Day became Veterans Day, which we just celebrated.)

Before Owen died, he had been seriously wounded in combat, hospitalized, and then diagnosed with the era-appropriate term for post-traumatic stress, which was "shell shock."

While in the hospital, he met fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon. Robert Graves, another important British literary figure and veteran, wrote "Wet Bond of Blood," describing the relationship among combat veterans, for Sassoon. (We wrote about that poem several years ago, in an item linked here.) All three men -- Owen, Graves and Sassoon -- fought in World War I and all three of them suffered from what we now know as PTSD. Owen used his time in the hospital to write many of the poems that later made him famous.

There's a terrible/beautiful one called "Insensibility," whose phrases speak powerfully of combat, loss and numbness. A few key lines, pulled out of sequence so we can sense their evocative power, are those selected below. Think about how much they relate to veterans today. Combat and its effects, including PTSD, are timeless. The HBO documentary, Wartorn, just released makes that point powerfully by following individual soldiers' unraveling after combat from the Civil War to the present. But Owen's poem also covers some of the same ground. A few lines in particular stand out:

 

"Happy are men who yet before they are killed

Can let their veins run cold."

---

"And some cease feeling

Even themselves or for themselves."

---

"Happy are these who lose imagination:

They have enough to carry with ammunition.

Their spirit drags no pack.

Their old wounds, save with cold, can not more ache.

Having seen all things red,

Their eyes are rid

Of the hurt of the colour of blood forever."

---

And the closing lines, about men ("dullards") who never fought, but feel nothing for those who died:

---

"By choice they made themselves immune

To pity and whatever moans in man

Before the last sea and the hapless stars;

Whatever mourns when many leave these shores;

Whatever shares

The eternal reciprocity of tears."

 

Editor's note: For more about famous WWI poet, Wilfred Owen, click here. For a selection of Owen's poems, all about war, online, click here. For the full text of Owen's poem, "Insensibility," referenced above, click here.

Paul Sullivan, Veteran Advocate, Reflects on the Meaning of Veterans Day

Paul Sullivan served our country in the Army, and our veterans in his stint at VA and as founder of the indispensable "Veterans for Common Sense," responsible for many of the advances veterans appreciate today, including the passage of a new law expanding healthcare and disability benefits for Gulf War veterans -– a law that now extends to Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans.

Here he is in an essay from 10 years ago, still relevant today, about what Veterans Day really means. Reprinted with permission.

A Better Way: A Gulf War Veteran Reflects on the Original Meaning of Veterans Day 

by Paul Sullivan 

A Gulf War memorial service at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.Ten years ago I served in the Gulf War. Since my return, I’ve had the honor of attending the poignant Veterans Day ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery.

This solemn day represents a special responsibility and rare opportunity to share with the young people of the world that they are in the enviable position of being able to learn about war and to chart the course of history toward peace far more than they may realize.

In short, empower yourselves. Register and vote. Do not turn away from difficult choices. Do not be satisfied with the status quo. Ask the tough questions leading to a better way to resolve conflict.

Raising Questions is Crucial
Unlike the tidy endings of quickly forgotten 100-minute war movies shown on Veterans Day, the jagged and bitter memories and injuries of real wars last an eternity. This is because warfare cannot be truly captured by Hollywood, where, sadly, the industry often turns warfare into entertainment, glorifying the deaths of innocents.

But there are exceptions. For an unvarnished film about war, consider viewing All Quiet on the Western Front, released in 1930. The film raised such serious questions about World War I that many nations banned it during the buildup for World War II.

The opening 20 minutes of the 1998 film Saving Private Ryan have striking similarities to the trench warfare scenes in the 1930 classic. For a taste of veterans’ post-combat emotions, watch the exceptionally inspiring Oscar-winning film, The Best Years of Our Lives.

View these three films with friends, family, classmates, and church members, not for entertainment, but to ask questions about how the characters and themes relate to Veterans Day and current events.
These films bluntly convey the reality of war. They point to the need for world peace on our small and fragile world. And world peace was the intention behind Armistice Day, the original name for Veterans Day.

What is Veterans Day?
In 1926, in the aftermath of World War I, Congress called for a national day of peaceful reflection to be held on November 11th. In 1938, November 11th was declared a holiday. As World War II loomed on the horizon, it became "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be hereafter celebrated and known as ‘Armistice Day.’"

In 1958, after World War II, the name was changed to "Veterans Day." In 1978, the official meaning was changed to "a celebration to honor America's veterans for their patriotism, love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good."

Honoring and recognizing veterans is important. Yet what happened to Armistice Day – celebrating peace and having friendly relations – especially today, as the Gulf War continues to rage?

What is the Gulf War?
The Gulf War began August 2, 1990, and the bloodshed continues today. There is no armistice or peace treaty ending the Gulf War. Last year alone the US staged more than 1,000 air missions against Iraq. The President and the press never seem to get it right, either. President Clinton, for instance, misspoke when he declared, "America is not at war." (Washington Post, October 15, 2000)

Two laws allow Gulf War killing to continue. The first law "constitutes [a] specific statutory authorization for the use of U.S. armed forces required under the War Powers Resolution." Under it, President Bush authorized the Gulf War on January 14, 1991. This law requires the President to report to Congress every 60 days on the status of efforts to obtain compliance by Iraq with several United Nations resolutions. Congress voted to enter into war on January 12, 1991.

Under the second law, on March 21, 1991, Congress voted to start the Gulf War retroactively on August 2, 1990, the date Iraq invaded Kuwait. President Bush signed this law on April 6, 1991. It also "requires certain reports on costs associated with the Persian Gulf War."

Who will end the Gulf War and when? Where are the reports required every 60 days under the War Powers Resolution? Where are the reports regarding the costs, especially the enormous toll of human deaths and casualties?

What is the Gulf War Casualty Count?
Contrary to the sanitized videos produced by the military and shown on television, the Gulf War was not "smart" bombs striking empty buildings with pinpoint accuracy.

The tragic truth, ignored by the press, reveals that hundreds of thousands of people died, and many more die each day. For the US, deaths during Desert Storm in 1990 and 1991 were more than 300. Others were killed in the region in the bombing of US barracks in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (19 killed) and the attack on the USS Cole last month (17 killed). For Iraq, 100,000 died between January 17, 1991, and February 28, 1991. In simple terms, the US casualty rate was about 1 per day. The Iraqi casualty rate was about 2,400 per day or 100 per hour.

The war continues through the use of economic and military sanctions which do not allow Iraq to rebuild its devastated infrastructure or to meet the human needs of its people. By 1999, the death toll in Iraq exceeded one million in a country of 20 million, about five percent of the population. If five percent of the US population died, deaths would exceed 14 million, more than all of the people living in the state of Pennsylvania.

Calling the Gulf War by improper names such as "sanctions," "embargo," "blockade," or "no fly zones" is terribly misleading. The Gulf War is death and destruction, period.

We Must Find A Better Way
War doesn’t magically end when the President says, "America is not at war," or when uninformed journalists don’t check the facts or the law. Sadly, the casualty count climbs as the Gulf War continues with little public debate.

Have we lost the meaning of November 11th? Veterans Day, or Armistice Day as it once was called, should be a day to recognize and honor veterans. As a war veteran, I believe the original intent of Armistice Day should be recognized as well. Peace is not a want; peace is desperately needed for the survival of the human race.

My surviving the Gulf War means I have the opportunity to learn from the past and a responsibility to share those lessons with the next generation.

I pray we find a better way to secure peace and freedom as well as avoid war. That’s what I’d like to see this Veterans Day.

Postscript: Paul Sullivan writes, "The statistics used in this essay are from 1999.  The situation has grown much worse for veterans.  As of 2010, after more than 20 years of war in Southwest Asia, VA has treated a combined total of one million new veteran patients from the Gulf War, Afghanistan War, and Iraq War.  VA reports uncovered by Veterans for Common Sense using the Freedom of Information Act reveal that 10,000 new, first-time Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are treated by VA hospitals and clinics each month."  

About the Author
Paul Sullivan served as a Cavalry Scout in the Army’s 1st Armored Division during the invasion of Iraq and Kuwait in 1991.

Editor's note: For more information about Paul's work at Veterans for Common Sense, click here. For information on his "Veterans Bill of Rights" initiative, intended to fix problems with VA, click here. You can also find Veterans for Common Sense on Facebook, linked here.

Quotable Quotes -- A Marine Sniper on True Combat Age

Someone asks the former Marine sniper, pictured at left, how old he is.

"How old am I?" he replies.

"I am 2 combat deployments, 47 dead friends, a handful of confirmed kills, one year of college and 24 years old." "You'll have to add all of that stuff up," he continues.

Then he adds as a postscript, "Unfortunately now I'm 52 dead friends and 26 years old."

-- Sgt. Richard V. Gilbert, USMC Retired, Scout/Sniper

(Quote and photo used with permission.)

Editor's note: Happy Marine Corps Birthday. 235th today.

 

Healing Green: Therapeutic Gardening for Combat Vets with PTSD

The Financial Times (UK) just published a wonderful article, linked here, about therapeutic gardening for British combat veterans with PTSD.

The article, written by the FT's longtime gardening columnist, Robin Fox, makes the extraordinary claim, which we are bound to dispute on a lack of evidence, that "in nearly two-thirds of the American states, the state Veterans Administration runs designated 'horticultural therapy' programs." If so, that is the first we've heard about this!

Nevertheless, gardening for veterans and its near-relation, farming for veterans, both have their enthusiastic adherents.

In the UK, Anna Baker Creswell, featured in the article, sounds like she's doing tremendous work for veterans with her nonprofit, Gardening Leave, linked here. The FT article describes her work:

"Three years ago, Anna Baker Cresswell began her charity, Gardening Leave, in the belief that “horticultural therapy” might be a way out of soldiers’ PTSD. Now in her early forties, she is admirably forthright about her aims and ideas and “naturally bossy”, as she describes her impressive practicality. Since 2007, Gardening Leave has already helped 200 veterans with individually targeted work and social support. It has grown to employ nine salaried staff and to deploy an annual budget of £300,000, all of it fund-raised by Anna and her team."

Closer to home, here are the remarks of Dale, a Vietnam vet:

"I have been flower gardening for a few months now since I've moved to Southern California from Chicago. I was depressed in Chicago, as one can imagine with the long winters stuck indoors. I do feel better now that I'm doing my yardwork, planting seeds and flowers that I get from the very large nursery nearby. I have even been posting photos of my roses and others on Facebook. Not so depressed anymore; I don't have time for it!"

Having high hopes for gardening...are those realistic? Fortunately, it's not being suggested in lieu of other treatment -- that's important -- but in addition to, as a worthwhile endeavor for the veterans. There are many ways an experience can be "therapeutic," after all, if we broaden the definition of what that is, and horticultural therapy definitely has its benefits.

As Gardening Leave writes on their website, "Non-clinical interventions such as Gardening Leave and fishing which help to get veterans together again, also play a big part in helping to reduce the social isolation and exclusion which affect many veterans." YES! Absolutely...

A newspaper in New England talks briefly about horticultural therapy for veterans:

"Lorraine Brisson is president of the Northeast Horticultural Therapy Association, a nonprofit organization located in Massachusetts but with a membership that covers all of New England and New York. She also has worked as a horticultural therapist for 22 years at the Northampton Veterans Administration Medical Center in Leeds.

“I've had veterans leave my program who are totally different individuals from when they came in,” she says. “I had someone in a wheelchair a few years ago and we built a special raised bed for him and he had his own garden, and I'll tell you it was the most beautiful raised-bed vegetable garden I ever saw. Before that, he was not taking care of himself. That improved and he got himself a companion dog and starting taking the bus to work. I see a change in their whole attitude about themselves and what they can accomplish.”

Source: The Cape Cod Times, article linked here.

According to the American Horticultural Therapy Association ("AHTA") horticultural therapy has a long history in the United States, starting with one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. From the AHTA website:

"Horticultural therapy (HT) is not only an emerging profession, it is a time-proven practice. The therapeutic benefits of peaceful garden environments have been understood since ancient times. In the 19th century, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and considered to be the "Father of American Psychiatry," reported that garden settings held curative effects for people with mental illness.

 Rehabilitative care of hospitalized war veterans in the 1940’s and 1950’s greatly expanded the practice of HT. Today, HT is recognized as a practical and viable treatment with wide-ranging benefits for people in therapeutic, vocational, and wellness programs."

Here's another article talking about the benefits to veterans who experience gardening through a VA facility in Brockton, Massachusetts. For the veterans cited in the article, "horticultural therapy nurtures their spirit, and it helps them move forward." Here's the link.

And Kellie, a former Marine in the Midwest who served in Iraq, says her husband, also a Marine, enjoys his time in the garden. 

"My husband has an amazing green thumb. He enjoys his garden so much. It is very therapeutic for him."

Editor's note: For more about the American Horticultural Therapy Association, click here.

Talking -- and Listening -- with Your Combat Vet

On the topic of communicating with your vet, the "big three" to me are all women: Patience Mason, Aphrodite Matsakis, and Kathie Costos. I remember something wonderful and gracious that longtime veteran psychiatrist and advocate Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D. wrote about several of them, that if everyone involved with combat veterans had read their books and absorbed their wisdom, there'd be nothing for him to do.

We've also written recently about how hard it is sometimes for families to hear about what veterans have gone through; and yet, how important also it is to ask and genuinely care enough to listen.

Here's an item from Patience Mason's classic, "Recovering from the War," about how to talk with -- and listen to -- your vet:

"Ray Scurfield said, "The vet's difficulties in sharing about his war experiences are at least partly due to the (mistaken) belief that 'only another vet can really understand what I'm going through.'

However, if you have experienced profound rage, grief or loss, fear, numbing, horror, shock, violence, tragedy, betrayal, etc., then you do have an experience base from which some understanding is possible. The vet has probably had his war experience rejected and avoided by others. 

Don't let him do the same to you and your valid life experience. Point that out to him if it's happening. But don't compare. Saying something like 'Maybe I can understand some of it. I notice you get so angry, and when my __________ [fill in the blank], I just felt like killing everyone, the police, my roommates, everyone.' There's a big difference between this and "I got over being almost raped. Why can't you get over Vietnam?"

She also writes, and this is very significant, that Ray Scurfield also advised, "You must ask yourself, 'Do you really want to know some of the dark secrets that trouble this vet so -- can  you really handle them if they are shared with you?" This is a heavy question and one that must be considered."

True. Wanting to listen to someone's stories and "be there" for him or her is very significant and worthwhile. After all, "first duty of love is to listen." But be aware that you need to also be prepared for anything they may say, and count the cost in advance about how that's going to affect you to hear. You may want to line up a therapist or some support of your own. Once spoken, those words can't be taken back, and you may end up with some vicarious trauma of your own from the telling. Which isn't necessarily a reason not to engage; just a reason to be wise in advance and be sure that you also have support and awareness about what you're possibly getting into by asking to hear...

As someone who's heard a lot of stories from combat veterans, I would have to say, being real about what I can and can't absorb, and at what pace, has also proved helpful. It communicates respect but also wisdom about not overwhelming the listener. As one veteran said, "telling me how to tell you was great because you weren't rejecting me, you were expressing how you could hear." Thank you.

Editor's note: For a link to Patience Mason's book, Recovering from the War, click here. For more on communication skills, about which we write as often as we can, click here. 

Willingness to Learn from Our Vets Can Be Very Healing for Them, Too

We've written before here about Thich Nhat Hanh's wonderful comment, as quoted by Claude Anshin Thomas, about how veterans understand deeply the nature of suffering, and because of that can be "a powerful force for healing in the world."

In the same vein are these comments by Patience Mason, in her book "Recovering from the War." While she was writing specifically about the Vietnam combat experience, once can substitute the word "combat" throughout and receive the benefit of her wisdom on this. The emphasis is still on letting the veteran guide the extent of sharing about his (or her) combat experience; and encouraging supportive listening, which communicates respect and appreciation for the vet and what he or she experienced. Mason writes:

"Saying to your vet, "I never realized what you had been through" can mean a lot to any vet -- brother, son, father, husband or lover. In its way, that's a paraphrase of his entire experience and an invitation. Willingness to learn from our vets can be very healing for them, too. They are the experts on [their combat experience]. When they came home they found that this expertise was a handicap. Some buried it. Some lived with it every day. It is still there for all of them, and sharing it can give them a sense of appreciation and respect that was owed when they got back from [combat] but never paid. Discussing [their combat experience], if it is done at all, should be done at your vet's pace."

Editor's note: Patience Mason's book, "Recovering from the War," is linked here. Claude Anshin Thomas' book, "At Hell's Gate: A Soldier's Journey from War to Peace," is linked here. For more on the all-important communication skills between a veteran and his or her loved ones, click here.

The Hard -- But Necessary -- Work of Welcoming Veterans Finally HOME

With Veteran's Day approaching, it's time to think about an often-neglected theme, which is the "Welcome Home" that many veterans never had. The Vietnam veterans, who fought, died, and suffered -- not only on the battlefields of Southeast Asia, but also here at home. 

Talk to any group of Vietnam veterans, or even singly, and you find most still feel the pain and ache of no one welcoming them home -- with a parade, with open arms, with gratitude and appreciation for their sacrifice and service. It's an open wound that still smarts today' and it's also our national shame.

One Vietnam veteran, John, who served in the Army, was writing about how this indignity still rankles him today -- because it goes much deeper than the community at large not welcoming him home. His own family didn't even!

Here's his story:

"Time to bring my younger self home, back from combat? To be honored? In PERSON?

I'm sure this is a well intended idea - but, I don't know how to do that, and I'm not even sure I would -- if I even could.

Sometimes I think I left that young man there, on purpose, to keep fighting for the freedom of the South Vietnamese -- and, yet, I find him deep inside me -- still, surviving, struggling, striving for strength! He is the -- MY -- ultimate Warrior Within -- MY Primordial Personhood -- the very Soul of Soldiering! He's ME.

It's been 38 years - and no one in my family has ever cared enough to even ask about him! I remember finding my Grandmother crying over her kitchen sink one day, weeping out loud that "My Sweet Johnny has been lost to War!" And I recall, thinking "She's right - I'll never, ever be the same!" All I could do was hold her and let her cry for awhile...then, we said not a word between us - and I left my hometown behind forever!

A few years ago we did have a big "Welcome Home"-themed Veterans Day Parade dedicated to Vietnam vets - and I couldn't even get a single family member to attend (when I was one of many being specially honored) -- like most, they just want to forget it all, while we are obligated to remember and honor our fallen -- too many Americans don't even want to admit reality, let alone face the facts, or take responsibility in the slightest degree!

In fact, we're having a long-overdue family reunion, and one family member mentioned that "No one wants to even hear the "V" word! So, I'm going with the "What about those (insert sports team name here)?" and "Is it getting hotter (cooler)?" strategy of only safe-talk...oh, and there's to be no discussion of politics or religion either - you know, because they are all experts in these subjects - sad, Sad, SAD!

I suspect, after all these years, they are carrying the shame of knowing how they did not even lift a finger to get me the help I needed when I came home - even when I became homeless...and I want so much to tell them there's no rational reason for any such shame -- they didn't know what to do - no one knew what to do for combat vets back then, we didn't even have the diagnosis of PTSD back then!

I want them to know I do love them, and that I do take full responsibility for the decisions I've made in my life, and how I have forgiven their lack of effort long ago... I want them to know they too paid a price for peace in my volutarily sacrificing on their behalf -- that I went to war to protect their peace - and it's all O.K., Freedom is not FREE! But, I'm not sure how to say it, or when -- I'm not even sure they even care? Ideas anyone? "

(Reprinted with permission.) 

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

March with Veterans to Honor Survivors of Military Sexual Trauma

Sometimes it helps to be heard. A "public service announcement" on behalf of the well over 100,000 veterans who have experienced military sexual trauma:

There are opportunities this year to march in veterans' parades to honor those who have suffered military sexual trauma, both active duty and veterans -- whether yourself or someone else.

You can march on your own behalf, or if you're not able to come to one of the parades but would still like to be represented, you can ask a veteran to carry your photo or that of another sufferer. Details follow. 

On the West Coast:

What: The largest veterans' parade West of the Mississippi. The City of Auburn’s 45th annual Veterans Day Parade & Observance is scheduled for Saturday, November 6th. This year’s event is honoring the VFW.

When: Saturday, November 6 · 10:00 a.m. -- 1:00 p.m.

Where: Auburn, Washington

Who: We will be marching with the Vietnam Veterans of America -- as a group behind theirs, early in the parade.

How: We meet up on the 6th on L Street SE and Main about 10:00 in Auburn with the VVA.

Contact person: Kira @ PackParachute.org. 

On the East Coast:

What: The NYC Veterans Day Parade.

When: Thursday, November 11, 2010, 11 a.m. -- 3:30 p.m.

Where: Madison Square Park, 5th Ave and 23rd St. 

Why: Help us make this a historical event by joining Service Women's Action Network (SWAN) and American Women Veterans in the legendary NYC Veterans Day Parade. We march to remind the world of women's incredible contribution to the United States military. SWAN supports, defends, and speaks for all military women. We welcome Military Sexual Trauma survivors and LGBT veterans and servicemembers to join us and to help the nation remember all of those who are otherwise forgotten on this day. 

How: Please RSVP to Kalima (SWAN) at kalima @ servicewomen.org or at 212-683-0015 ext. 324.

Quotable Quotes -- Harry Truman on the Disposable Nature of War Heroes

U.S. president Harry S. Truman, who'd also served in World War I as an artillery officer, wrote privately to his wife, Bess, in 1936 something telling about the transitory nature of being a war hero. He points out how disposable the "hero" label can be, or how short-term people's attention really is. World War I was over, and World War II had yet to start, but he observed that:

"War heroes are no longer that. They are now looked upon as a sort of nuisance and are considered fools to have gone." 

(It brings to mind the Bill Mauldin cartoon where his heroes, Army buddies Willie and Joe, visit the hospital bed of a fellow WWII veteran who is recuperating from his war wounds. The injured soldier asks his buddies, "How's things outside, boys? Am I still a war hero, or a drain on th' taxpayer?")

(The photo below right is of Truman in his WWI uniform.)

"The Vietnam Experience: A Soldier's Story" (Museum Exhibit)

The photo at left is of dog tags -- one for every local servicemember who died in combat during the Vietnam war -- hanging off the exhibition banner announcing a special show about the Vietnam War at the Petaluma Historical Museum in Petaluma, CA.

The exhibit, which is called "The Vietnam Experience: A Soldier's Story," opened mid-September and runs through Thanksgiving weekend. It features the personal stories and memorabilia of local veterans who served in the war.

According to the museum's website, "The exhibition includes historical artifacts, photographs, and documents interwoven with remarkable oral histories. Highlights of the exhibition include simulated living conditions, a Reflection wall, a speaker series, and film “The Vietnam War” which will air every Saturday at 1:30 p.m."

They add, "Over 278,000 Allied soldiers would die along with 1,470,000 Allied wounded in one of the most controversial wars in American history. Our goal is to honor the men and women of both the United States and Vietnam who served their countries in a common cause, and to educate our community about the sacrifices that they made."

The exhibit has been made possible with material from local US veterans, the collection of the Pacific Coast Air Museum, the Sonoma County Vietnamese Association, and the Petaluma Military Museum. General admission to the museum is $3, and free to any allied veteran.

For more on the Petaluma Historical Museum and the Vietnam war exhibition, click here. There's also quite an excellent, robust and extensive speaker series associated with the exhibit, linked here.

 

Those Progressive Danes! Their Purple Heart Just Extended to Include PTSD

Those (ultimately) progressive Danes!

In a momentous development yet to be mentioned in the American or the English language-speaking press, we've learned that Denmark has expanded the criteria for their version of our Purple Heart medal -- given to those who have been wounded physically in combat operations -- to include those who suffer the less-visible wound of post-traumatic stress disorder.

(We wrote about the topic back in 2008, linked here, about whether it would be wise to extend the Purple Heart's criteria to include PTSD. That proposal generates controversy here, but the Danes have since moved past the controversy to actual recognition.)

From an official Danish government publication, issued date October 10, 2010, and translated here: "In 2010 Her Majesty The Queen approved that...veterans who are wounded physically in international operations can receive the Armed Forces Medal for Wounded in Service."

Importantly, the publication adds, "The Government recognizes the psychological harm on an equal footing with physical damage, and has therefore taken the initiative to add recognition of physical and mental injuries treated. The Defense medal "Wounded in Service" will from now on be attributed also to those mentally wounded."

(The medal, pictured here, was established in 2006, and is awarded to "military or civilian personnel killed, seriously wounded or disabled as a result of enemy or terrorist action.")

Some background on the novel step the Danes have taken:

This past summer, the Jutland Post (Jyllands-Posten), one of Denmark's largest-selling newspapers, published a video expose of Danish war veterans "so frustrated by society's lack of empathy for suffering war-related post-traumatic behavioral issues (PTSD) that they have gone beneath the radar and are living in forests, eating berries and catching wildlife to survive," according to Danish journalist Bent Lorentzen, who wrote about it, here.

Then Gitte Lillelund Bech, the first female Defense Minister, offended many Danes when she suggested that it was up to the veterans to find their own mental help. The head of one Danish veterans' organization, Lars Christensen, responded angrily (translated) that her remarks were "a great insult to the people who today are suffering after having served Denmark. We urge all veterans to send their medals for us and we will return them to the Minister. When Gitte Lillelund Bech send people to war, it is also her responsibility to treat them properly when they get home."

(See news story from the Danish press illustrating this controversy, linked here.)

In a follow-up to that controversy, Danish journalist Lorentzen wrote that, "In a statement to Sunday's (June 27, 2010) Jyllands-Posten newspaper, Gitte Bech now admits that there is a need for the nation to seek out Danish war veterans and offer them crisis help. Denmark's Military Service-persons Society (Hærens Konstabel og Korporalforening) praises Gitte Bech for becoming wiser. Apparently now, the decorated war veterans threatening in solidarity to return their medals of honor and bravery are holding off and seeing what will occur." (Lorentzen's article is linked here.)

We have yet to find a Danish press article on the expansion of the medal criteria to include PTSD, though when we do we will post that. (There is this recent article from The Copenhagen Post, talking about 19 new initiatives the Danes have just put into place to recognize and support those who serve, linked here, and that's well worth reading.) In the meantime, the official government publication, quoted above, is proof that it happened and that it is now official policy. Whether other nations will follow Denmark's progressive lead on this controversial question remains to be seen. We hope that they do.

Editor's note: Gitte Lillelund Bech became Denmark's first female defense minister in late February, 2010.

Additionally, many thanks to Danish war veteran Dean Lyngaard for his invaluable help researching this article! Lyngaard served in Operation Desert Storm, Bosnia, Croatia, and the Sudan, with the French Foreign Legion, with NATO and with Danish forces.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

The "Moving Meditation" of Qi Gong -- One Veteran's Opinion on How it Helps

I asked a Vietnam combat vet, Marine, three purple hearts, shot five times and left for dead, star of the "Eyewitness to Combat" segment of this site, who's been doing Qi Gong lately, what he liked about it -- and how he would describe it to a fellow vet. Here's what he said, verbatim:

"Are you tired of feeling miserable every day and dragging your ass around? If you are, I've got something that takes 24-28 minutes, doesn't require any exertion/doesn't feel strenuous, will give you energy all day long and change your whole attitude!"

He's been doing it pretty faithfully lately, and losing weight -- possibly another of its many benefits, since it appears to work on metabolism. I asked him how he felt about having skipped a few days, unavoidably. "I missed it!" he said; adding, "I got lethargic, lazy, and listless; lacked energy; and my joints started hurting again. I missed the peace that it creates as well..." He also said, "I like Qi Gong because it gives me energy; it gives me a sense of well-being; it actually calms me down; and actually makes me feel good. It's almost like a narcotic, but a very pleasant one. It's not overwhelming; but it  has a very subtle calming -- and -- energizing effect. It gives me energy without psyching me up and getting me hyper. About halfway through, I start feeling really relaxed and good and then I don't want to stop."

Now that's what I call a ringing endorsement :-) Remember, YMMV -- "Your mileage may vary" -- and also, be sure to check with your healthcare practitioner before beginning any exercise program. That said, Qi Gong is probably one of the more mellow, but useful, exercises you could begin.

Last month, Jane Brody, who writes about health for the New York Times, had an article called "A Downside to T'ai Chi? None That I See" about a counterpart exercise to Qi Gong. (That article is linked here.) "After reviewing existing scientific evidence for its potential health benefits," she writes, "I’ve concluded that the proper question to ask yourself may not be why you should practice tai chi, but why not." (The rest of her article is well worth reading.)

Says Brody, "There is no question that tai chi can reduce stress. As the study authors described it, tai chi “combines meditation with slow, gentle, graceful movements, as well as deep breathing and relaxation to move vital energy (called qi by the Chinese) throughout the body.” She continues, "If nothing else, this kind of relaxing activity can lower blood pressure and heart rate, improve cardiovascular fitness and enhance mood. ... Regular practitioners of tai chi report that they sleep better, feel healthier and experience less pain and stiffness, though it cannot be said for certain that tai chi alone is responsible for such benefits."

So there are two choices, among several others, for "moving meditations" that provide health benefits and relaxation. I've been enjoying watching how much this combat vet has enjoyed Qi Gong, though, so I thought I'd ask him for his own opinion on it. As someone who's done both T'ai Chi and Qi Gong, I think Qi Gong is easier and more accessible; the vet seemed to agree, because he found it easier to learn and also required lower overall fitness, yet still produced benefits. The most important thing of all is finding an exercise that produces value that you can incorporate regularly. Like healthful eating, these practices don't help if you don't do them; so find one that works for you and make it a part of your lifestyle.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

"Fighting Fair" vs. "Picking Your Battles" with a Combat Vet with PTSD

Everyone needs a friend like Kathie Costos. Kathie is my go-to person when I have questions about how to communicate with -- read, resolve conflicts with -- the combat vets with PTSD in my life. (She's also known as "Nam Guardian Angel" -- she's married to a Vietnam vet, Jack, with PTSD, and she's written a book about the experience, as well as created innumerable blog posts, videos which are widely disseminated on PTSD, and probably had enough conversations with spouses and family members to save a small army herself.)

Best of all, she's an absolute fount of wisdom, whose advice is spot-on, and comes from the trenches: 28 years of loving, and 26 years of being married to, a combat vet with PTSD herself. Very wise and compassionate lady, whose friendship and advice I treasure (and who I've been lucky enough to be able to meet in person). I thought I'd share her side of a recent email dialog we were having. As she puts it, she's giving advice to her younger self -- the advice she wishes she'd had, decades ago, but had to figure it out the hard way.

Her conversation is flecked with spirituality, but of a kind that even someone non-religious, or irreligious, can handle. It's golden-rule spirituality, and common sense heartfulness, that is so very rare indeed. Here she goes -- the context was "giving up" because "I can't win." She wisely responded:

"Winning depends on which battle you choose to fight.  Twenty years or so ago, I gave up on a lot of battles. My husband had changed from "best friend" to opposition and I was tired of giving up my life in all of this.

It was during a time when it didn't matter if I lost or gained 20 pounds, cut my hair shot or just let it grow, moved furniture around or let the apartment get dirty.  Nothing was noticed by him.  It was also the time I noticed that he was showing symptoms of OCD, focused on something's like a pit bull not letting go and basically worrying about not having anything to worry about.  It was one needless fight after another until I surrendered on certain things that had more to do with my ego than anything else.

I stopped letting my self worth be determined by his mood.  Not to say that I did any of this perfectly but what I couldn't "win" on was not a battle I was willing to fight anymore.  I got happier.

The more you learn about what PTSD is and what it does, the more you will be able to adapt and find your own "life" in all of this.  I spend most of the time happy when we share parts of our individual lives together but not regretting when we do our own thing.  He's welcome to spend time in my world but I won't give it up anymore when doesn't want to go there.  He's welcome to come where I go but I don't change plans or let it hurt me that he isn't there.  There was so much that I gave up to stay with him but the things I need, I fight for and the rest really didn't matter enough to go to war with him over.

Mood swings, ambivalence and neglect should only be allowed to go so far and then it comes into unacceptable behavior and you have to let him know that.  If he wants you in his life, he has to open the door to let that happen.  There are still times when my husband gets the best of me because no one is perfect in this but spiritual healing took a lot of the anger/blame/shame away.  Much of coping skills with PTSD comes close to AA and allowing a "higher power" take over some things in order to live again.

As he healed it was important to let go of the past negative feelings, hurt, disappointment and regrets. Hanging onto them would have filled me up with so much junk that I wouldn't have had room for what was good being returned to our lives.  It took good old-fashioned faith and what Christ taught me so that I could forgive him as well as myself.  For others, they can turn to their own spiritual healing by turning it all over to their own "higher power" to let it go so they make room for the good stuff to come back into them."

-- Kathie Costos, Senior IFOC Chaplain, DAV Auxiliary Chapter 16, independent PTSD Consultant

Her blog, linked here.

Her website, linked here.

Her downloadable PDF book, "For the Love of Jack," about life with her husband, a Vietnam combat vet with PTSD, linked here.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

 

Quotable Quotes -- Larry Pence on Making a Difference

“There are people who go through their entire lives and never help another individual," says Larry Pence, adding "Don’t be one of them."

-- Pence is a retired Army command sergeant major who volunteers regularly with various veterans charities, including U.S. Army Caisson Platoon Equine Assisted Programs in Washington, D.C. (Read more about that, here.)

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

There's "Room at the Inn" for Veterans and Their Loved Ones on November 10th

More about the good work of innkeepers celebrating military and veterans, which we talked about yesterday, here. From today's mailbag:

Veteran's Day is Turning Into a Reciprocal Chain of Kindness

Hundreds of Bed and Breakfasts Give Veterans a Free Night; Restaurants, Others, Chime In

NEW YORK, Oct. 13 _ An effort of good will started by the bed and breakfast community to offer a free night stay to veterans on Veteran’s Day is turning into a reciprocal chain of kindness, pay-it-forward-style. Now hundreds of bed and breakfasts have offered complimentary rooms. Meanwhile, restaurants, even massage therapists have joined the effort, offering everything from free meals to free pampering. It seems an ember of kindness can spark into a really big deal.

“There’s a basic human emotion called moral elevation. When we see acts of service, sacrifice, and generosity, it moves us. Such acts give us a warm feeling in our chest and motivate us to do good deeds ourselves,” explained Jonathan Haidt, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and author of two books on positive psychology. Haidt, who actively studies positive emotions, such as elevation, admiration, and awe says kindness can be contagious. “Many of us in America are elevated by the sacrifice and service of our veterans. A natural expression of this is the desire to do something good for them, to call attention to the service they’ve done for us,” he said.

The bed and breakfasts were the first group to come together, teaming up to offer a free night’s stay to veterans on Wednesday, November 10th, the night before Veteran's Day.  Men and women currently serving or those who have previously served our country are eligible for a complimentary stay at a participating inn. The only requirement for these rooms is a valid military identification. Veterans can obtain an I.D. from the Veterans Administration.

The program, started in 2009 by the West Virginia B&B Association used to include about a dozen inns. This year it’s grown dramatically to more than 600 inns, 40 states, plus other countries. Gillum House Bed & Breakfast and The Thomas Shepherd Inn sponsor the site that lists participating inns at www.bnbsforvets.org. So much changes each day that the Thomas Shepherd Inn has found it challenging to timely mark inns as “full” and add new properties. Not to mention, ready for guests at the inn now and prepare for veterans coming to stay there too; the inn has contributed three rooms to the promotion. Jill and Wade Linger, a veteran Air Force computer programmer, will be in one of them. “I read about it in the newspaper,” said Wade. “I thought it would be a great idea, something different to do with my wife.” (For more info on the Thomas Shepherd Inn, click here.)

Mass emails to veterans, social media, and press have made it possible for vets to learn of the program, it’s also made it hard to turn them away. Jan Leksich, owner of the Victoria Resort Bed & Breakfast in South Haven, Michigan initially planned to set aside one room at the inn for a veteran. “The calls kept coming. I booked five of my nine rooms for veterans. It’s a big chunk out of my inventory but what can I say? I have a soft spot." Leksich’s father was a veteran, as is her best friend’s husband. “I feel it’s the least that I can do,” she said. The Victoria Resort B&B is now offering vets that missed the free room a buy-one-get one night free the following week Sunday through Thursday. (For more info on the Victoria Resort B&B, click here.)

At the White Cedar Inn in Freeport, Maine, innkeepers Monica Kissane and Rock Nadeau have donated all of their rooms to the cause, and then went a step further and called local restaurants trying to get their soon-to-stay vets some complimentary meals. “We approached some restaurants and three said they would foot the bill for the service person’s dinner,” said Monica. Now Azure Café, Jameson Tavern, and Grittys Brew Pub are pitching in on this wonderful effort too.  (For more info on the White Cedar Inn, click here.)

“We’re over here trying to make a living and they’re over there fighting for our freedom, trying to take care of us. When our veterans need a break Jameson Tavern wants to be able to help out,” explained dining room manager, Carol Brown, who took the call from Monica weeks ago.

An update on MyMilitaryMommy.com alerted Tricia Knack to the promotion. She and her husband Tyler, an inspector general with the Air Force scheduled to deplane in Baghdad in January, are planning a visit to theTimmermann House Bed and Breakfast in Aviston, Illinois. When Sandy Timmermann first got the call she took the reservation but felt she needed to do more. “I immediately called the massage therapist that comes here to do massages for our guests, who jumped at the chance to participate with complimentary massages… then I called Popeye’s Chop House and spoke with the owner, he’s a vet too. The restaurant will offer its food buy-one at full price and the second at half price,” she said. The women who sell jewelry at the inn told Sandy to make sure Tricia chooses something she likes.

Masseuse Donna Rhoads who frequents the Timmermann House said the cause really hits home. “I have a son in San Antonio and he’s sixth generation Army. When Sandy called me out of the blue it just seemed like the right thing to do. For me it’s you give and God gives back. These people suffered and their families sacrificed everything and I think they deserve it,” said Donna, who is offering two-hour massages to both Tricia and Tyler. (For more info on the Timmermann House, click here.)

And though the promotion really lasts for a day, many inns have incorporated special discounts to service men and women throughout the year. For more information on military specials visit the Salute Our Heroes specials page on BnBFinder.com, linked here.

For a full list of inns participating in the bnbsforvets program visit http://www.bnbsforvets.org.

For more information on Veteran’s Day specials or bed and breakfasts for military personnel, visit BnBFinder.com or contact Maria Coder at 212.480.0414 x 16 or email [email protected] . And tell them Healing Combat Trauma sent you! :-)

# # #
About BnBFinder.com
BnBFinder.com is a comprehensive online bed and breakfast directory, providing site visitors with more than 130 search categories, including availability, price, location, and local attractions. Founded in 1998, BnBFinder.com was the first directory to offer advanced interactive technologies, including RSS feeds, a blog, downloadable content for mobile devices, and guest reviews. BnBFinder.com is a 5-Star Rated directory with thousands of B&Bs, inns, and small hotel listings from all over the world.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

Bed and Breakfasts "Salute our Heroes" on November 10th

What are you and your significant other doing on November 10th? Here's an idea from the mailbag, today -- and certain gracious bed and breakfast owners across America:

"Hundreds of bed and breakfasts across the country are teaming up to offer a free night’s stay to veterans on Wednesday, November 10th, the night before Veteran's Day. Men and women currently serving or those who have previously served our country are eligible for a complimentary stay at a participating inn.

The program, started in 2009 by the West Virginia B&B Association has grown to include over 40 states and more than 600 inns. For a full list of participating bed and breakfasts visit www.bnbsforvets.org. The only requirement for these rooms is a valid military identification. Veterans can obtain an I.D. from the Veterans Administration.

Innkeepers’ appreciation for our men and women in uniform continues year round and packages honoring our heroes can be found by clicking here.  For example, the Andon-Reid Inn Bed and Breakfast in Waynesville, North Carolina has created a special promotion where two active military couples in need of a special getaway may send an email or letter and qualify to win an all-inclusive two day getaway (Sunday-Thursday, non-holiday) starting mid-March. The stay includes signature candlelit breakfasts, snacks throughout both days, and free use of the inn’s fitness studio and sauna, among other perks. All letters from interested participants must be received no later than February 1, 2011. One letter per person is allowed. (For more details visit Andon-Reid, linked here.)

• Andon-Reid is participating in the free night’s stay this November as well but the inn is now fully booked. In the meantime, BnBFinder.com has put together a sampling of inns that, at press time, still had availability for a free night for military service people on November 10^th:
• The Candlelite Inn in the heart of the scenic Lake Sunapee Region is offering a free night’s stay to men and women with heart – aka veterans and active military personnel. Located in historic Bradford, New Hampshire this Victorian inn features a parlor with a cozy fire, games, and complimentary apple cider. It’s also minutes to major ski areas, restaurants, and seasonal outdoor activities. The inn serves a full three-course breakfast daily, including homemade dessert, jellies and jams, and freshly baked muffins and pies. 
• The Huffman House at Creekside Farm in Newport, Virginia is offering a free night stay for active and retired military personnel to show its appreciation. The Huffman property features three historic buildings, including the inn, an early nineteenth century barn and a farmhouse built in the 1800s, which was remodeled in 1906. The inn, listed on the national register of historic places, is still a working farm. It sits on 61-acres of streams, ponds, and pastures, with abundant wildlife. Despite its old time appeal, Huffman is minutes from downtown Blacksburg and modern day conveniences.

For more inns participating in the B&Bs for vets program and those offering special deals, discounts, and add-ons for uniformed heroes visit the BnBFinder.com "Salute our Heroes" page, linked here. 

Editor's note: For a full list of which B&Bs are participating, and their vacancy status, by state, click here.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

PTSD and MST Affect Men, Women Servicemembers and Veterans Alike

A few months ago, I attended the week-long clinical training program in post-traumatic stress disorder (“PTSD”) at the National Center for PTSD in Menlo Park (Veterans Administration) as well as the “Brain at War” conference in San Francisco, put on by the Department of Defense. Both made clear how much money is being spent on research ($500 million) but as for success stories, they can be hard to find. PTSD affects veterans, their families and communities; it can also lead to suicide.

Current statistics show an active duty suicide every 36 hours, and that 18 veterans a day die by their own hand. Suicides are on the rise in every branch of the military that’s seen heavy combat in the current wars -– Marines, Army, National Guard -- and so far this year, there have been more suicides than combat deaths. 

The problem extends to women veterans as well. According to the American Psychiatric Association, “Women veterans are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than nonveteran women” -- and also die at a younger age, “between 18 and 34.” 

Clearly the problem is serious and troubling. But suicide is also the final step on a journey of misery, pain and despair that can potentially be halted earlier, by intervention that increases a veteran’s chances of survival and success.

Five years ago, after writing about integrative medicine for years, I created the nonprofit Healing Combat Trauma, a website devoted to therapeutic resources for veterans with combat-based PTSD. Today, that’s becoming an actual program to lead combat vets with PTSD through, using integrative medicine -- “the best of East and West” -- to help them recover from the scars of war. 

Two years ago last week, a combat vet, Marine, who’d served in Vietnam, and suffered TBI from explosions and a head wound, as well as 40 years of severe, chronic PTSD, flew out to meet me, and together we went around the country, experiencing specific therapeutic modalities in the hands of experienced practitioners that were targeted to address his PTSD. (Watch "A Veteran's Healing Journey," here, for more of his story.)

Initially actively suicidal, once his symptoms receded, so did his threats of suicide. He had gotten his life back, and was eager to stay involved in it. And the cost of helping him reverse his symptoms, and improve his quality of life? Under $10,000, including travel, lodging, and practitioner visits.

As much attention as PTSD receives in the media, military sexual trauma (“MST”) – which frequently leads to PTSD – receives even less. A more taboo subject, MST affects roughly the same number of men and women, approximately 60,000 each, between 2002-2008, despite their disproportional numbers in the services. 

According to the VA, “Approximately 1 in 5 female patients … reports MST,” and MST is associated with “increased risk for mental health conditions including PTSD, depression and substance abuse disorders.” VA reports the prevalence of MST among OEF/OIF veterans is 15.1% among females, but anecdotally the figures are much, much higher, typically under-reported because of shame and fear of reprisal.  And MST leads strongly to PTSD. Among Gulf War veterans, for example, women who suffered MST were at 5x higher risk of contracting PTSD.

But for a sense of the human toll, read how one young woman soldier expressed her misery, after multiple sexual assaults in a single deployment in Iraq, followed by a suicide attempt: 

“I remember so many things I want to forget. I remember once upon a time I was a real person. Then I was a soldier. Now I am a ghost.”

Earlier this summer, another young woman combat veteran, Angela, with whom I’ve become friends, spent time staying out here, around our both attending a local retreat for veterans and their families. Angela has MST and PTSD, and a service dog to help her manage her PTSD symptoms. 

Even in the brief time she visited, taking her to practitioners chosen to help her recovery, she was able to reduce her smoking by half, and said she couldn’t remember when she’d felt so relaxed – certainly not since she’d experienced combat. (A former Army sergeant, she’d been in Baghdad during the surge in 2003.)

A few years earlier, Angela had attended the VA’s “cutting-edge” program for women vets with MST. The program housed the women vets –- all of whom had experienced sexual assault -- in a men’s homeless shelter(!). The stress of that experience was so great, Angela said, that her fellow attendees all relapsed into substance abuse. She credited her own experiences with integrative medicine as what kept her, barely, on the path. Out here this summer, she was able to expand those options further, in positive ways that continued to help her heal. 

Now we want to offer that opportunity to more women veterans (and later, men) in a pilot program. Please help us do that.

---

 

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

When Is PTSD NOT PTSD? When Stubborn Pride Takes Control

Editor's note: We're not giving you medical or psychological advice here; consult with your own health care practitioner for that. What we are doing is sharing a longtime PTSD sufferer's opinion with you about his own situation, on the off-chance that it may instruct or enlighten. We have the feeling, now that he's outed himself, others may quite enjoy learning the distinctions he shares from his own life. And when we say "others," we mean spouses, significant others and family members...

From the subject of "Eyewitness to Combat," a Vietnam vet, Marine, with 40 years of "experience" on the subject:

"Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has many faces and it sometimes masquerades as a behavioral problem; conversely, there are times when behavioral abnormalities masquerade as PTSD.  In other words, sometimes PTSD is mistaken for just stubborn Pride; and sometimes stubborn Pride is excused as PTSD.  There is also a third face, the one in which we appear completely “Normal.” So the “trick” becomes knowing which one is in control – the PTSD one; the PRIDEFUL one; or the NORMAL one. 

One of the most frustrating and difficult problems in sorting this out with traumatized MST or PTSD combat vets is that by their very nature, MST and PTSD sufferers are very complicated individuals, to say the least. It’s almost as if we are different people at different times.  And in fact we are.  My wife used to say she “never knew which one” of me “was coming home.” In other words: “PTSD really screws us up: mentally, emotionally, socially, personally, professionally and physically”.  However on many of the occasions that get blamed on PTSD, it is in fact our own personality “quirks” that have intervened, kidnapped and magnified the suffering from PTSD. And in the healing process, this habitual behavior must be sorted out before any true healing can “stick.” It’s true that we can be healed from our PTSD “disorder” but also allow our pride, habitual bad habits and negative attitude to completely mask any real improvement.

I do know that true healing from the destructiveness of PTSD is possible and real. I know this because I lived with all three faces of it for forty years and I have been healed.  Not “cured” but healed to a point that I now have a mostly “normal” a life rather than a mostly PTSD, prideful, bad habit and negative attitude life.  From this very long journey to healing I am able to speak from wisdom and experience on behavioral abnormalities disguised as PTSD.  I have been there; done that; and, for the most part, “have gotten away clean with it.” Now looking back, I am embarrassed and ashamed of myself for falling into the “pity party” that “works for me” trap.  I allowed myself to become “victimized,” believing that I was “entitled” to feel sorry for myself and that everyone else should feel sorry for me as well.  My PTSD actually made me feel “special” as everyone was made to “tiptoe” around me like a king walking among his subjects, so as not to “set me off”.  Trust me when I say that “this gets very old very quick” to those who love you, care for and about you; and it should be of no surprise when they begin to get a little bitter and non-empathetic toward our behavior.  It just gets tiring!  Upon entering the 90 day VA in-house PTSD treatment program years ago, I came face-to-face with a sign over the door of our billet, made by one of the previous vet therapists, that said: “How long would YOU put up with YOU?!  Well, not very damn long, I can tell you that – and that sign made the point for all of us.  So why should we expect others to do so?!  And if that’s true, why do we resist healing? Suffering from PTSD for most of my life made me very familiar with all of its symptoms and destructive consequences, along with what it does to our own physical body.  I am well aware of how devastating it is upon the family, friends and employers of those suffering from this disorder.  Today though, when I’m substantially healed, (see “before and after” story, linked here) I find that I can still act like a full blown PTSD’er.  The only difference is that now it’s my choice when to move into that arena, or not.  As my youngest grown son would say, “I’m going with NOT!”.  So in going there now it’s a premeditated decision to do so, not one dictated by PTSD. It’s premeditated because I first think about it, usually when my feelings get hurt, and then I stop taking my meds, as in “I’ll show them”, followed by then I stop doing what I know to do to keep me grounded and clear of stress such as EFT or Qi Gong.  Then I isolate myself in my all-too-familiar bunker, and “Away I go!” But this time it’s stubborn, God-damned pride that is pushing my behavior and keeping it in play, NOT PTSD. It might look like PTSD, sound like PTSD, feel like PTSD – and I am enjoying the effects. My world is now totally miserable, and I am glad – because I am back in control! The poet John Dryden put the sequence this way, “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us”.  Relinquishing control to our Prideful self is a habit we simply cannot afford if we suffer from PTSD.  It will destroy us and everyone around us. Again, if it is so miserable and so devastating, why stay in it? They “why” is PRIDE: Stubborn God-dammed, destructive PRIDE, a shitty attitude and very bad habits.  How does this fit into having PTSD?  It doesn’t fit into HAVING PTSD at all, but it DOES fit into KEEPING it!  And why would we want to KEEP Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder going, when we have the tools to get rid of it? Because it’s comfortable; it’s normal to us; it gives us control whenever we want; it gives us an excuse for bad behavior; it gives us an identity; it’s amusing to “shock” others; it draws attention to us; we don’t have to follow the rules and get a pass for doing so; it gets us “stuff”; it makes us somebody special and we can even be “paid” to have it.   And if you are getting “paid” to have it, it makes you a professional PTSD’er.  Sooooo why not act like one and let the spouse go to work; you get paid not to! You can sit on the couch and own the friggin’ remote and when you want to watch something cool you can clear the room and get a beer delivered to you in the process.  All the while someone can give you the beer, the TV and the couch.  I also know this to be true because I have spent up to a month terrorizing everyone in my life with my fucking PRIDE disguised as PTSD.  And I enjoyed the whole experience! But eventually even my pride got to a point that I couldn’t stand it anymore.  I allowed myself to be ashamed of this childish behavior and to apologize and ask for forgiveness so that I could come out of the corner.  NOW I really am ashamed of myself because I hurt those I loved and they didn’t deserve it at all.  But now I know what it is and will not go there again. (Publishing this handy little guide to PTSD vs. PRIDE of course will help!) I’ll use the tools I have been given in healing and use them gladly.  I do not want my loved ones to suffer the fool that I could become.  Scripture puts it this way in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I talked like a child; I thought like a child; I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me”.  In other words “it’s time we grow up!” Understand I am NOT talking about what “reaction” PTSD compels us to do that is destructive.  What I am talking about is what keeps us continuing the destructive behavior AFTER our PTSD moment has PASSED.  The fact that we suffer from a trauma-induced survival skill does not make us “crazy” or “insane” or incapable of being aware of our surrounding and how our actions affect others.  We still have the ability to know right from wrong and we know when we hurt others and we know when we hurt ourselves.  PTSD also doesn’t change our “moral code”.  If you were a nice person before; you are generally still a nice person and that becomes your “Normal” face.  If you were a courteous person before; you are generally still a courteous person and “Normal”.  If you were a grateful person before; you are generally still a “Normally” grateful person.  If we are truly remorseful for our actions which harm others, as we should be when we are “Normal”, then the abnormal behavior will stop until triggered again. And in our “Normal” state we are ashamed, embarrassed and truly sorry.  If we are not at least remorseful and/or our misbehavior is enjoyable, then we are either a narcissistic “asshole” or we are pretending to continually have PTSD behavior for control and that is our “Prideful” face.  If we are ashamed, embarrassed and sorry but continue in bad behavior, then we are stubborn “Prideful” fools using the ole, “That’s my story and I’m stickin to it” crap.  It will lead to your destruction and that of your family.  And PRIDE becomes the driving force, not PTSD, and the NORMAL face is destroyed.    That was PTSD.  But then I would get embarrassed and mad when “corrected” and take the Prideful mental position of: “Well I sure fucked that one up; so screw them all” and I would then “dig my heels in” and really make everyone miserable.  And I enjoyed it.  I was “showing them” for getting justifiably upset at me for my action.  That was PRIDE.  “They would learn to leave me alone whenever I would go into one of my “Marine Corps Moods”, as my kids would call it.  Yep, goddamn Marine Corps PRIDE!  (In truth, I have three kinds of pride: Texas pride! Irish pride! And Marine Corps pride! And that is a whole giant bucket of PRIDE…) Understand that I DID have severe PTSD and those triggering events happened a bunch but the moment I realized I had screwed up, PTSD ended and PRIDE took over to magnify the damage.  I was too proud to admit that I was wrong and then ask for forgiveness or even to say I was sorry.  For a Marine to apologize was a “sign of weakness”.  To take this action with those who love you only adds INSULT to INJURY.  However for a father, a husband, a son, a partner, to apologize is essential and your “Normal” self and is a great sign of love, appreciation, humility, strength, self-confidence and courage. When scripture states that “the meek shall inherit the earth,” it is not talking about the weak but the gracious, strong, self-confidently humble who attempt to right the wrongs they have done to others. Our families and loved ones know when that moment of awareness happens, and they appreciate it and respond to it, but conversely, with no remorse on our part they start to lose empathy for our plight, and rightfully so.  If our prideful attitude and bad behavior keeps up, they become aloof, distant, uncaring and bitter – and here’s the thing, we’ve helped to make them that way through our actions. PTSD is what causes the hyper-vigilance and other survival reactions triggered by events in our lives, but PRIDE is what causes us to stay in the now habitual act of PTSD.  True healing can only come when we understand that we will have the tendency to move into survival mode for the rest of our lives and that there are things we can do to effectuate a smooth, peaceful, happy life.  AND it is essential that we do those things consistently for the rest of our lives. (Examples would be taking our medication, and using the tools we can do at home for our own self-care, such as meditation, deep breathing, qi gong, EFT, music therapy, aromatherapy, etc. -- and knowing when it's PRIDE that's taken control!) We also must learn to be grateful to those around us who put up with our “moments” and have enough respect for them to swallow our pride and say we are sorry and mean it; then sincerely ask for forgiveness in love.  If you are unwilling to do this, then you are not ready to be healed because you are enjoying being miserable and making others miserable too much.  And I really feel sorry for you.  When we realize we have just had one of those “moments”; STOP, regain your composure, look around at what you have effectuated and apologize and mean it.  But if you do nothing else, just STOP and go to your corner.  When you have calmed down, then correct it before PRIDE takes control and kills everyone around you or before it forces you back into the “bunker”.  Your families know when you are faking PTSD and when it is real; so grow up and get your shit together."Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18. Even with PTSD!"

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

The Good Work of Talk: Healing the Wounded Heart Veterans Workshop

Practicing psychotherapist Allen L. Roland, Ph.D., tells the story of a group of veterans he's been working with in Northern California this past spring, along with Sal Ueda, M.S.W., counselor from the local Vets Center in Concord, CA. Roland writes (bolding is Roland's own emphasis):

"Five Vietnam veterans, all with PTSD, faced their fears and not only opened their hearts but found and began to heal themselves in the process.

The first meeting of the "Healing the Wounded Hearts Veterans Workshop" was on March 11, 2010 at 4 p.m.

They had never met me but they had been told about me, by their adjustment counselor Sal, and were prepared for an eight week commitment to face their fears and open their hearts in the process. They knew I was a Veteran and that made a big difference. 

I told them that this was an action based workshop and if they did their homework they would reach a place of not only another choice but would open their closed hearts in the process. They would also begin to see through different eyes ~ eyes unclouded by fear, resentment and unworthiness. I also explained through my Cycle Of Life chart how psychic pain will override Joy to the extent that most people have no idea that beneath their deepest pain and aloneness is love, joy and connectedness ~ the Unified Field. 

Of course, that first session I shared my own hearts journey to find a lost and alone little boy within myself who not only wanted to fly, and became a Navy Fighter pilot, but also to love as deeply as I loved my beloved grandfather before he was torn away from me at six years old. We didn't talk about the war ~ we all briefly shared our heart's journey and by the end of two hours ~ we became a band of brothers. Their homework was a life chart of the paths of their individual hearts. 

The second session, a week later, we all shared a childhood picture of ourselves and shared our life chart with the group describing our individual journeys to find love and acceptance as well as ourselves. We barely talked about the war ~ we all realized our commonality in that our lives had all been a quest to find meaning and that all of our love relationships had significant meaning. We were a band of brothers on an inner journey of the heart. 

The third session, a week later, they did the Vic/Acct exercise and had the chance to feel the lightness of being accountable versus the heaviness of being a victim. Their homework was to take the people they had resentment towards off the hook and realize that many of them they had deeply loved and were really gifts in their lives. 

Al felt it was the most meaningful aspect of the workshop ~ " I let my ex-wife off the hook ! I hadn't spoken to her in over four years. I was harboring extreme resentment. After the exercise, I was able to call her and let that resentment go. That alone has made a huge difference in how I feel today with her and my life." 

We barely talked about the war ~ we were a band of brothers on a common journey to find ourselves. 

The fourth session, a week later, they met the child within by means of a powerful guided visualization. Every one of them saw that long lost innocent child who told them what they needed to do to fully embrace him in their lives now. Their faces literally changed and became younger as they made that inner connection ~ it was like long dormant flowers suddenly blooming. I was moved almost to tears to see these Veterans suddenly claim their joy and innocence after years of self doubt and despair. For Tom it was the most meaningful aspect of the workshop ~ "Just seeing the look on the other Vets faces as they met the inner child." 

Their homework was to give that child a voice and hang out with him. 

The Fifth session, one week later, was all about gratefulness and thanking the people who have been there for them their whole life ~ with the help of a guided visualization. Many of them had not thanked anyone and certainly not themselves. Thomas shared his homework from the previous session and had 12 pages of notes on his experience. Here are some excerpts ~ " Once again, I was so surprised when it happened at the group meeting that I could hardly wait for it to happen again and again. Just the thought made me feel like a weight was lifting my shoulders and mind ... I meditated and saw him again. I asked him again ~ What do I need to do to fully embrace you in my life ? He immediately answered ~ Since birth, I have always been with you constantly. You just weren't looking for me. You just didn't see me or believe in me but I see a change in you now ~ more than any time since Vietnam." 

Thomas ended his notes by writing ~ " I can't believe that I have had this problem for some 40 years and I feel like a new born child. I'm still amazed that I had blocked out so much and yet this was the right key to change things for the better ~ and it was so simple to initiate ~ I feel good !!! " 

By now the Band of Brothers were inspiring each other on their common journey through fear ~ they were beyond the point of no return. Their homework was to thank at least 25 people who had touched them before the next session. We still barely talked about the war for there was no need to. They were already healing themselves by taking responsibility for love and coming from gratitude. 

The sixth session, one week later, was the Death Exercise where the group, through a visualization, were guided in a profound death exercise which helped them to experience the degree to which the people closest to them really knew them. The exercise actually simulates your death and the resultant shock of knowing that you did not truly share yourself with the people closest to you or that very few people really knew you.Obviously, it is a strong inner stimulus to open your heart with the people closest to you ~ and that was their homework to accomplish with the five people closest to them before the next session. 

Most of them enjoyed the element of the unknown that they were continually coming face to face with in these sessions, especially Al ~ " I enjoyed the element of surprise. It was hard to know week to week just what the activity would be and how it would effect me. Every week was different and unique but it all came together " 

The seventh session, one week later, reinforced that we are continually being called from within to the path of the heart, but few listen and fewer still respond. It is in this session that they understand that they have been called to the inner journey of the soul ( through Love) versus the outer journey of the ego ( through Fear ). This session ended with a visualization exercise in which they realize that the most precious gift they have always wanted is themselves ~ free from fear. 

For Barry, this was the most meaningful aspect of the workshop " For me, getting in touch with my inner child and having it pointed out to me that the key was just being myself and to trust myself without any fear or fears of the consequences." 

The Homework as well as ongoing homework was to share the gift of themselves with others but in the spirit of celebration ~ not deprivation. 

It was in that same spirit of celebration that we had our Eighth and final session where everyone acknowledged each others common journey through fear to the joy, love and light beneath. As George said, "Now, I truly know I have another choice and I can be loved for just being myself and I don't have to enable people to win their love.... I see the growth in my fellow members but also how we learned to love each other ~ a true Band of Brothers." 

It was also an incredible experience for both myself and Sal, a Veterans Readjustment counseling therapist (from the local Vets Center) who both formed the group and then fully participated in the sessions. 

Sal's most meaningful aspect of the workshop was "To witness and see the burden of fear, guilt and pain of each group participate lifted. To see the youthfulness return to their eyes, faces and demeanors. It is a blessed experience to see the joy return to these war veterans after years of despair. It is simply humbling and a beautiful sight." 

I was also humbled by this experience and validation of my empowering work as well as the receptivity of these veterans who obviously longed to be seen from the heart and not through eyes of fear. 

They had been trained many years ago to kill and I, in essence, jump started their hearts by re-training them to love and they began to heal themselves in the process by realizing that they indeed had another choice. 

And we never concentrated on the war for the real war had been waged within themselves ~ and they were now victorious."

-- Written by Allen L. Roland, Ph.D.  Used with permission.

Editor's note: The accompanying photo is of five other Vietnam veterans from a different gathering, not the ones described in the article.

Quotable Quotes -- Audie Murphy on Getting Over Combat

Audie Murphy, left, in his day, was the most decorated American soldier from World War II, winning the Medal of Honor, among 27 others. He also famously told a reporter, "You know, you never get over combat. I don't think you ever do." (Quoted in Chaim F. Shatan, M.D.'s famous text, "The Grief of Soldiers," from 1973.) He died at 45 years old.

We would wish for every Audie Murphy, and every other combat veteran, more relief from his struggles, and more healing, than Murphy himself was able to know. Let it be so.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Souls Go Out to Combat, Many Come Home -- Angels of War

More from the longtime Navy vet, a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement of the 80s and 90s. He writes:

Combat Trauma -- Angels of War

 

Souls go out to combat. Some come back as angels, brought on the dark wings of the Black Hawk. Rough hands lifting and holding the black bag containing the Angel, strain not just the arms backs also the Soul.

“You’re in the arms of the angel

May you find some comfort there

 

So tired of the straight line

And everywhere you turn

There’s vultures and thieves at your back

And the storm keeps on twisting

You keep on building the lie

That you make up for all that you lack

It don’t make no difference

Escaping one last time

It’s easier to believe in this sweet madness oh

This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

 

In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here “

 

Excerpts:

Sarah McLachlan  “Angel” lyrics

Valkyries in the heart of a giant Black Bird moving with the rough love of detachment -- fear of offending ones own soul, taking an Angel starting the journey  back from the crossing of the Styx of this world.

Combat trauma comes in many guises. Taking an Angel from its last battle in this life -- knowing the loss from this world has just begun, and will last in many hearts for years and lifetimes. The clatter of the mechanical Black Bird, lifts the Angel spirit, ferrying it away from the vast width of the Styx.

The soul of whom lifts the angel bears a burden the mind must ignore, shifting the grief to the soul. The strongest, yet most vulnerable in the struggle of love and life.

The Angel is leaving the field of horror, destruction, grief and despair. Taking the love and grief of those souls left behind. These Angels leave the field of dissolution with the ultimate honor. They did their duty!

Now their honor be born out of this dissolution by warriors, who must stuff the love, hate and tenderness in the soul, stuff it down, keep hidden away until it can be faced it in the light of awareness.

So many of us miss the vulgar life of destruction, the rage of absence of comrades who have gone before, crossed the river of absolution, the visceral reality that we must chose to exist -- to keep our souls here in this world, amidst the grief, angst, and longing for relief. We must honor those Angels who have been released from the torture of delivering the blessing of life or the deliverance of death.

For those who have been in the sacred place of combat, we must remember a sacred place must have the smell of shit and blood of sacrifice that makes it sacred.

We will all know the sound of beating wings, each time, for the rest of our lives, when vibration of a mechanical bird is felt by the soul long before the mind registers a sound. Our soul remembers Angels we know -- sometimes we say hello  -- mostly faces, sights. Floods up from the soul -- not down from the mind.

As a new friend said, “I am too old to fight “ but I might add, we will always remember when we were fighters, and honor those who have taken up the fight, living every breath, minute by minute, and those Angels who have finally come home."

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

The Way of the Snake -- Healing Combat Trauma

From the writer of the recent pieces on ritual and cultural healing for warriors, which we've all gotten to enjoy -- something I genuinely believe is the among the very best writing and thinking we've seen on this site this year. This is totally from the heart, and soul-level wisdom, soul to soul. He writes:

"Since writing these small pieces for your site, memories have come flooding back.I work hard at being detached and articulate, but when I get ready to send a piece, I get lost in a huge feeling of grief.

There are so many stories of love, even in the tragedy of combat, it brings me to tears. which I thought I would not have, trying to be objective in writing about combat and the soul. I am not sure I have ever had a muse, but if I do, she is kicking my ass today. I get so fucking lost in my feelings, working to objectify healing the soul.

I hope Mercury come out of retrograde soon. Just an attempt to ground myself.

Sitting here with tears, wondering WTF. You really are doing great work for warriors."

Then he quotes from a favorite poem, "The Way of the Snake" about combat trauma:

"I lost a year somewhere.

It must have been in Vietnam, I think.

The memories I have from there aren’t

real; they can’t be mine. I don’t know

whose they are, but I hope they

claim them soon—I’ve kept them

far too long.

-- Terry Hertzler, "The Way of the Snake and Other Poems: Writings from the War in Vietnam."

The writer continues:

I spent years looking for Terry, after finding his small book of poetry, and buying all six copies the San Diego store had, little knowing he lived in the same area. I used his writings with many men and women along my path. It as not until 2008, that I finally located Terry on the internet. I called him and we traded stories about his time In country, my use of his poetry, and his coming back stateside. I hope he will write about his “Achilles Tour” in coming back to America.

I write about Terry today, because he stays in my heart, as does his poems and recitations of the things he did after his return to the states. While I would love to recount stories Terry told, they are his stories, and he is the only one that has the right to tell them, however his poems show the effect of the trauma induced by combat.

I share some parts of poems, because he has given me personal permission to us his works. I am not so sure if I were as talented as he, I would be so generous.

I share these thoughts, because they reflect the view of a young warrior after war return, and know they reflect the feelings of many men and a few women I have talked with, in the reconciliation of my own deeds, and failure to understand what price my soul was paying, in all of my involvement in that war.

The fact, that I will carry some things until my death, and perhaps beyond has become less of a burden because I was seen, touched and loved by many people on my path of life. I have had, and still have, great teachers, and have been seen, as worth saving.

I have one picture of me when I was in Vietnam; it was a shock when I discovered it. It was when I began working toward understanding how I could help our returning warriors from these current wars. I could not accept how ragged, out of uniform I was. My mental picture was of a squared away sailor, not an uncovered. Shirt open to the belt, sleeves rolled up, and spiked uncut hair sticking out at angles a nineteen year old kid, standing on the bridge of our small converted LST.

That’s what happens to old veterans, the pictures are as they were, not as we like to recall. The exception is the agony of experience. A picture is perhaps in those days one sixtieth of a second. Memories are in the soul forever. As I was taught, the Huna belief is, the most powerful memories come unbidden in those unaware moments.

For one who has experienced the over pressurization of a M-2 fifty caliber machine gun, so well articulated by Colby Buzzell in his book “Killing Time In Iraq”, or the experience of thrown by the concussion of an explosion, the soul is never unaware.

It should come as no surprise that a returning warrior is hyper vigilant, startled by unexpected noise, people getting in their space, or nervous in crowds.

Returning warriors are evaluated by their chain of command with one purpose. Are they “good to go”. So basically, combat trauma is first observed and evaluated by the lowest ranking personnel in a supervisory position.  Of course highly scientific terms such as “Crazy as a fucking bed bug, but I need him” is the criteria for judgment of combat trauma. Does it qualify as a diagnosis, most assuredly yes! Is the troop mentally impaired? “Fuck No! He’s just like the rest of us!”   

Does obsessively disassembling, cleaning and reassembling a weapon represent a sign of combat trauma?  Who is to know? Perhaps the soul has given the body a function to eliminate physical or mental distress. “Has he got his shit together” “does she have her shit together”? Good to go!

Should we as a nation, or should congress, judge the effect of combat on a person eighteen years old, “Down Range”, when our learned specialists can not agree on what constitutes Combat Trauma. Perhaps we can rely on William Blake, when he wrote “You never know what is enough, until you know what is more than enough”

I return to Terry’s writing, a few excerpts from his writing, “A Vietnam Alphabet":

'D is for dead

E is for E-1, E-2, E-3, etc. those are army ranks. The higher the number, the less chance you will fall under D.

N is for nothing

O is for officers, they often knew nothing.

P is for piece it goes well with

Q which is for quiet. Sometimes too much peace and quiet makes me nervous

R is for R&R, rest and recuperation, rest and relaxation, rest and return.

S is for my friend Sam. Also for shrapnel. Sam stopped a piece of shrapnel with his heart one night.”

-- Terry Hertzler.

Combat trauma starts the first time one hears “Congratulations, you are now a member of the armed forces of the United States of America,” and it never goes away, after experiencing personal danger. It is with us day in, day out, the rest of our lives. The severity of actual personal participation can only be judged by a person’s Soul. To be given a pill, a shot, a cup of foul tasting goop, is not healing the soul. It may deaden, kill, alleviate, delay pain in the body, but it will never heal the soul. Only a person’s soul will know, what it will take to heal their soul, and many warriors are going to need soulful help, in finding comfort for their soul.

A final poem, "Year's End":

“When I was twenty, I lost

Christmas. Like Alice’s rabbit, down

Some dark hole, it disappeared.

I remember New Year’s well

enough. At midnight, the perimeter

Despite all orders to the contrary,

lit up with red, green and white

flares, as tracer rounds

from M-60 machine guns 

wove bright delicate patterns

through the sky.

But Christmas is gone and it frightens me

Christmas is gone—not veiled

in a mist of memory, or crouched

in some dark and secret corner

in my mind, but vanished, completely,

   like some Cheshire cat—leaving

   not even a smile behind

   not even a smile."

-- Terry Hertzler

And finally,

“we never asked to be put into this position

we never had high demands,

we never claimed to be on some kind of mission

like we had some kind of master plan,

it’s not as if we know exactly what we came for

so we settle for what comes our way,

we’re always unprepared for the final encore

what the fuck are we supposed to say.”

-- Clawfinger, "The Price We Pay."

In the Dungeon -- Laying Down the Burden after War and Letting It Go

More from the longtime Navy vet and former leader in the mythopoetic men's movement:

“We tend to call it the real war. The rest of it’s just the show biz war. The real war involves getting down there and killing people. And being killed yourself or just barely escaping it. It gives you attitudes about life and death that are unobtainable anywhere else.” -- Paul Russel, "The War" on PBS.

---

"He had 80 weight of Spanish iron

Between his breast bone and his knee

But Billie broke locks

And Billie broke bolts

And Billie broke all that he came nigh

Until he came to the dungeon door

And that he broke most manful lie."

                                    -- Old Ballad.

How can one be free, with 80 weight of “Spanish Iron” trauma between the breast bone and the knee? Out of the combat zone, out of danger, but not out of the trauma, but still have 80 weight of trauma between our breastbone and the knee, that one must carry. Is there a place one can store that “Spanish Iron"?

 Is there a place one can lay down the burden, perhaps just for a while? Just long enough to get some rest, sleep without dreams of horror, not jump from noise, trust someone to touch the body with compassion. Some place where understanding does not get in the way of rest. A place the body can move freely, not tense with expatiation or anticipation... 

If that weight is on the soul, how does one remove it, leave it behind for a while, remember where it is, trust it will stay there forever? We may have to back and check on it, a lot at first, but learn to trust it is in safekeeping. So we can continue on our path toward a new life, unburdened with “80 weight of Spanish Iron”.

There are old ways of leaving heavy burdens borne by warriors, returning from bloody encounters of enemies. There are ways other warriors and community can show a sacred place to store the burdens of war, guarded by ancient spirits of warriors past.

Each warrior has a choice of the manner in which to leave their burden. Some have been washed in lamb's blood, others blessed by a holy man or holy woman, Some, though not many have left burdens to be watched by Fairies and Unicorns. Others have sent their burden into a drum, or flute, instruments taken down from walls, held as one would hold a small child, playing with abandon.

According to ancient warriors, only a ritual or mystical path, will lead one to the right place. The soul of the warrior will know the place none other. Each soul knows the best path to take, though sometimes the body will resist, out of respect to the memories contained in the warriors' Spanish Iron .

Some bodies follow an unknown path, and find solace in a poor storage container. Sometimes these paths promise to be easy. They lead to containers of spirit smoke, and drink, and false intensity which is so familiar to the body, the voice of the Soul is muted.

The correct path for the warrior may also be his or her most difficult one. Many have words that describe this path. One spirit of courage left this saying for those who choose their path:

 “to be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.”

 “let it go-the

smashed word broken

open vow or

the oath cracked length

wise-let it go it

was sworn to

                     go

let them go-the

truthful liars and

the false fair friends

and the boths and

neithers-you must let them go they

were born

                to go

let all go-the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things-let all go

dear

       so comes love”

 -- e.e. cummings, U.S. poet (1894 - 1962). 

Warrior Suicides and the Need for Spiritual Rituals for Returning Veterans

(From our ongoing series on ritual for cultural healing after war; again written by the longtime Navy vet who was a leader in the men's movement.) He asks:

"How can we heal the wounds of warriors that are so deep and mystifying that the only solution is to end all consciousness, via suicide?

Vietnam veteran and therapist Arthur Egendorf in his book, Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," states that "Healing ins't complete when the pain subsides." He later quotes a Vietnam veteran, Bill Broyles, as saying, “Men love war.” One only has to read a little further to find he states this “is a deep dark secret” that men “don’t dare admit.”

War is combat -- and combat is the "arena of the Gods" -- where the ability to take life from another comes into play. It's the mystical world of life and death, decided in battle or struggle. Perhaps myths of the gods originally came from the miracle of birth, and the unknown of death. Where there was a blow to the head in anger, in play, or happenstance, and death came, unexplained. To cope with this unknown required the evolving human mind to accept the phenomenon of sudden death, such as happens in combat.

We know that combat preparation requires the transformation of a person from the everyday world of youth, which is mostly ignorant of mortality, its own or others', into a god-like position of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”. In the military, this transformation is accomplished through ritual. 

The effect of this ritual can be illustrated in writings of many veterans in speaking of their first Drill Sergeant or Company Commander. This induction into the world of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker” leads one into the Realm of the Gods. The power to deliver death or grant life extension, and be the harbinger of wrath and destruction, by the simple movement of one digit of the hand, is sanctioned by the indoctrination ritual. 

This reinforces the ritual in the body, mind and psyche of the warrior. Each sunrise, combat ration, sunset, night patrol or watch increases the intensity of the initial ritual. An additional ritualistic enforcement is the individual performance of cleaning weapons, combat ammunition load, water, stimulants, checking twice or more that everything is in place, and ready to complete the ritual of “Life-Taker and Heart-Breaker”.

Returning warriors come back to land of difference. No longer do they have the power of the Gods. They are returned to a strange land, whose customs are unfamiliar and the people are foreign. There is no ritual of forgiveness of the sins of the soul. There is no magic balm to heal the sin-sick soul. Only loss of life intensity. The skills that were necessary to stay alive and protect comrades are no longer needed.

The ancient way of ritual would be to get the village together and tell a “dilemma story,” and create movement from one world to another. By embodying the dilemma, displacement would occur, allowing the warrior to take a rightful place in the village, or society.

While the ceremony of returned warriors brought back under their shield is the most moving of military ceremonies, the grieving of remaining family and friends must be done outside the government care. One only has to read the stories of destitute loved ones of the abandonment of the relatives after the burial ceremony is complete to hear the angst of unresolved grief. 

Unfortunately alternative healing professions, or Medicine Men and Medicine Women, embodiment through movement, and other non-medical therapeutic modalities are not recognized by the government, the military, or some circles of society.

We lament about suicide but are unwilling to accept spiritual rituals as healing, in the face of veterans utilizing their own resources to obtain better health, through alternative, non-traditional, non-medical or non-Judeo/Christian methods."

After Combat, Healing the Sin-Sick Warrior Soul with Ritual

Periodically we have the honor here of running someone else's writing/thinking with their permission. In this case, it's a longtime Navy vet who also served as a leader in the mythopoetic men's movement in the 80s and 90s, writing about warrior despair, suicide and the culturally healing power of ritual. This is the first of several pieces on the subject. Look for the others, which will appear shortly. Here goes:

"Perhaps only those who have been to the "Arena of the Gods" -- and have been capable, like the gods, of delivering death and destruction -- can understand the true costs of warfare on the soul.

Jonathan Shay, M.D., Ph.D. writes: 

“Acts of war generate a profound gulf between the combatant and the community he left behind. The veteran carries the taint of a killer, of blood pollution...that many cultures respond to with purification rituals. Our culture today denies the need for purification and provides none, even though in the past it has done so.... In the medieval Christian church, everyone who shed blood in war had to do penance. If you committed atrocities, you had to do more penance, but even if you wore a white hat and were a perfect model of proper conduct, you had to do penance. Most warrior societies, as well as many not dominated by warfare, have historically had communal rites of purification of the returning fighter after battle...” 

An Israeli psychiatrist comments:

"It's important to understand the long-term consequences of war and to minimize them," says Dr. Zahava Solomon, a professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Social Work and head of the Adler Research Center for Child Welfare And Protection in Israel. 

“While people tend to perceive war as only taking place on the battlefield," she says, " for many the effects linger long after the battle is over.” "War does not end for a considerable portion of these individuals," she continues, "and relatively high rates of combatants continue to suffer from post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) [an anxiety disorder that can occur following the experience or witnessing of a traumatic life-threatening event]. They continue to experience the war in nightmares and flashbacks. We pretty much liken it to cancer of the soul," she said.

And finally, from a Christian leader's perspective:

 “The reality of war is that everyone gets wounded. Some wounds heal rapidly, but some last for a lifetime. The reality is that the wounds of heart, soul and spirit have a spiritual component that is not being adequately addressed. Despite the valiant efforts of many organizations and the commitment of billions of dollars to address these issues, there remains a serious gap – the faith gap.” -- Major General Robert F. Dees, US Army (Retired), Executive Director, Military Ministry, from his introduction to "The Combat Trauma Healing Manual: Christ-Centered Solutions for Combat Trauma," by Chris Adsit.

A recent article by Barbara Barrett covered the work done by a Defense Department task force "devoted to preventing suicide in the military." According to the article, the task force presented 76 recommendations in four primary areas, and additionally made 13 "foundational" recommendations "considered vital to developing a comprehensive Defense suicide prevention model." But none of these recommendations made any mention of the spirit or the soul, or more importantly, how to heal the souls of our returning warriors. Though our currency may say "In God We Trust," the military makes no acknowledgment of the soul of its warriors, and no provisions for their spiritual healing. 

(Ironically, though, it does send warriors off with ceremony. Troops go into battle often accompanied by a chaplain, priest, or other "holy" person, who invokes a "spirit" to bless them in their mission - which in its own way is usurping their opponents' right to life and death.)  

We lament as a nation that so many of our warriors are committing suicide. But at the same time, we ignore the need for any healing rituals for our returning warriors. There is no balm in Gilead for the sin-sick souls. If we can't look to VA or DOD for methods that embrace ritual, perhaps we need to take a look at indigenous peoples in other cultures, or even a few years back in our own.

In the 80s and 90s in this country, men came together in “mythopoetic gatherings,” doing ritual to help veterans and others heal the soul wounds of the Vietnam war. A sacred space was established and the men used storytelling, poetry, music and movement to explore their path to healing. These gatherings were led by Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade and others, and I was privileged to be a part of them as an elder.

In some of the gatherings, Meade would tell what was known as a "dilemma story." The men would then choose sides and state their case for the correctness of their positions in an attempt to resolve the dilemma.  The ebb and flow of discussion often became heated. The ritual of the dilemma story became a container to hold the anger and angst of the discussion. Even though there was anger, sadness and confusion, the dilemma story remained in the Sacred Space, a container within a container, which guaranteed safety.

According to Meade, when a large group of men gather, there are two questions that reside in the limbic brain (commonly called the lizard brain). “Is someone going to be killed?” and “Is that someone me?” When the lizard brain is able to resolve these questions in the affirmative, the man could begin to participate in the gathering.

In 1992, Native American medicine men traveled from East coast tribes, Midwest tribes and Western tribes to San Francisco to hold a gathering of men. Those men, many of them veterans, participated in ritual alongside these medicine men, using rituals the medicine men brought from their tribal cultures. During this time as well, there were stories of an increasing number of veterans committing suicide. 

The returning warriors from the Vietnam war had fought in combat as a tribe, but then were returned "unceremoniously" stateside, rotated out individually, when their service was ended or when they were discharged -- to no fanfare whatsoever, and to a land that had become different since they left. Little if any attention was paid toward establishing a ceremony, much less a ritual, to help the souls of these warriors, women and men. And the results of this neglectful in-action are still evident in our society. The Vietnam war is a gaping wound in our collective consciousness, and the residual guilt has become one of the reasons why returning OIF/OEF warriors are being welcomed slightly more warmly than their Vietnam war fathers were.

One of the prominent medicine men who helped to establish sacred space and ritualize a healing process was Malidoma Somé. In his book, “Ritual: Power, Healing and Community,” he recounts a ritual done specifically for healing the internal wounds of Vietnam.

As a participant in that ritual, I recently revisited Malidoma’s writings, and the grief that was expressed. While as one of the Elders of the Gathering, I can say that is was one of the most powerful moments in my life. It is my feeling now, that those of us in a leadership role, did not realize the depth of grief men had about the war, and it transferred into the ritual. I believe every man in that gathering went away with a deep knowledge of how powerful ritual is."

Quotable Quotes -- Sarah Haley, M.S.W., on Combat's Effect on the Veteran

"Combat veterans may play down or embellish their 'war stories,' but initially their reports should be taken at face value. The only report that should not be accepted at face value, although one may choose not to challenge it initially, is the patient's report that combat in Vietnam had no effect on him." -- Sarah Haley, M.S.W., "When the Patient Reports Atrocities: Specific Treatment Considerations of the Vietnam Veteran," published in Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 30, Feb. 1974.

Guilty Giving, "The Whiny F'N Wounded," and the Lost Art of Saying "Thank You"

Generosity is great -- and for the most part, people don't give enough when it comes to veterans, and injured veterans in particular. But as with every good thing, there's always a shadow side, too. And giving to veterans is no exception.

On the one hand, there are service organizations and comfortably well-off do-gooders who shower injured veterans with goodies, like they'd won some sort of service-related jackpot. Flat-screen televisions, electronics, boating and fishing trips, new vans, bowling outings -- and I'm just thinking of what I know has happened locally. Scratch below the surface though and you sometimes find a bit of a guilty giver. One generous soul who's supported local veterans generously tells a tale of neglecting his own brother, a veteran, when his brother came back from Vietnam. Sure his brother was "screwed up," but the businessman in question never knew what to make of it, and so ignored him -- until decades later, PTSD was in the news and he realized what his brother's problem had been, all those years ago. Now, in a bid to offset the past and right that balance, the businessman makes sure to give generously to the young vets coming back. Generous? Yes. Mixed motivation? Definitely...

For a more interesting take on the after-injury "jackpot," though, we turn to one impressive injured former Marine, who I got to know years ago, after he was blown up in Iraq. He lost both his legs in an IED explosion, but came back strong, married his girlfriend, had two sons, and is remarkably now also back at work. Truly a success story, but pulling from a well of character that he's had all along. He's also been the beneficiary himself of some truly great "goodies" -- fly-fishing trips, shooting trips, and most recently, an adaptive home built for him and his family from the A+ organization, Homes for Our Troops. In this article, the former Marine talks frankly about vets who take do-gooding for granted, sink into entitlement, and fail to remember that a gift is just that. The F-bombs fly, but his talk is straight and to the point. Enjoy. (Used with permission.)

---

"This has been eating at me... THE WHINY F'N WOUNDED!!!

It was a problem when I was at Walter Reed and it still continues to be a problem today. No matter how much I have been exposed to it I cannot and will not ever get used to it. Fucking whiny entitled veterans. 

First off, as a Vet myself, I am obviously not talking about all veterans. Just the special few who feel they deserve so much that they feel the need to whine, bitch, and complain to anyone who will listen about what they aren't getting from the Government, VA, etc. Most of my friends who are wounded will recognize these types immediately and know what I am talking about. They are those vets who are so self-centered that they can only focus on themselves and their own well-being. Blatantly forgetting to say "thank you" or shake the hands of those who have helped them along the way to recovery post-injury.

And that is where it starts really, maybe the veteran said "thank you" in the beginning. But people suddenly start telling them, "No, don't thank me, thank you." And they hear it so much they begin to believe it. I firmly believe that when you stop saying "thank you" when someone does something for you, you lose part of your humanity, you start to believe that you are better than everyone else. They get the feeling that they are "above the law," and deserve to have things done for them without a thank you. 

Before you say, "Well, we don't have wounded warriors like that!" Bullshit we don't, ask someone who works with wounded vets on a regular basis, they will tell you horror stories about entitled vets, and vets trying to screw over nonprofit groups. The military is already NOT the home of the "best and brightest,"I would say the ratio is for every four good veterans you have one scumbag -- that's 20%. Some may disagree and say its more like 10%, but I like to remind them of all the DUI's, drug pops, UA's, etc that most units have on a weekly basis. Its far greater than regular society. (Except for maybe where I grew up.) 

Our military hospital system, specifically dealing with Walter Reed and BAMC, are breeding grounds for this problem. Wounded vets are showered with gifts, celebrity visits, trips, etc. And being given this special treatment so regularly it goes to their heads. They start expecting special treatment, they stop saying thank you, and bitch and complain when they don't get special treatment. It's a sad system really, people want to help the vets out so much they end up actually hindering them socially. At WR we called it the "Hollywood" effect, and not only does it affect the veterans it affects their families as well. 

Most of the time it's wives, but it does affect other family members occasionally. But I will focus on wives, because actually, they are the worst. They actually become more entitled than their veteran husbands. Why, you ask? Because all of the focus is on the veteran, ALL of the time. They are the ones who get the trips, gifts, privileges, even if the wives get to participate. So the wives are left out, and soak in any of the attention they receive. It's sad really, there should be more support for the wives, because it creates monsters. The ones who bombard their husbands' doctors and therapists with questions, to an overbearing degree. They chew out people who are trying to help them, and have the phone numbers for senator's or general's offices and actually use them to get their way. 

And when we get our little blue ID and become retired the same problems continue, but now it involves MONEY. The root of all evil, right? That check from the VA and Social Security Disability is great, but they want more (Don't feel bad for us, my annual disability is more than my parents made when I was a kid, its also non-taxable and for life.). They still want special treatment, above the normal benefits. They want more benefits not already in place. They want things to happen right now in a bureaucracy that is not a right now system. And because it won't happen, they turn to bitching. 

These veterans and their wives start bitching, and they don't stop, they dominate conversation with their bitching, even if it's unrelated to the current conversation. They bring up money and benefits constantly, and how they aren't getting as much as they want. They are downers and attention whores in the highest degree, especially annoying those of us who are just thankful to have what we have and that people give a shit about us at all. 

My frustrations boil down to this, what veterans are entitled to, and special treatment. Veterans are entitled to have their health care taken care of, they are entitled to education and job benefits, they are entitled just compensation for their (sometimes grievous) injuries, and for the more severely disabled, they are entitled benefits that allow for their mobility. Anything more than that is special treatment. And these veterans think they are entitled to special treatment, I will be the first to say, they absolutely are not. People choose to do nice things for us, out of the goodness of their hearts. And some just don't deserve that special treatment, just because they are an injured vet doesn't mean they are a good person. 

I will try and bring this to a close. I may get frustrated and complain about the VA, mostly because I put very little faith in their ability to do anything right the first time. Especially considering the mental health treatment vets are receiving (18 American Veterans commit suicide every day). But I also know that at least we have a country that does care. We have the best VA system in the world. And if you don't believe it, look up what wounded veterans from Canada and the UK go through, and what little benefits they receive if any at all. 

And I haven't forgotten to say thank you, I make every effort to do so when someone does something nice for me, from holding a door to my annual trip to Camp Perry. I can't not say thank you, its just not in me. And when someone says "Don't thank me", I kindly remind them that to not say thank you would be wrong on my behalf. Because after all, they didn't have to lend a hand, they chose to. 

I am so thankful for all of the support and assistance that myself and my family have received from all over. The VA, nonprofits, and individuals, have helped us so much over the years, and I can never thank people enough. I just wish that all veterans were as thankful as I am. It really embarrasses me having to deal with people like that.

...OK, I feel better now.... "

---

Editor's note: If you want to give you can always donate to us! We're using it to build a program to treat combat vets with PTSD with integrative medicine, and we promise to say "thank you" :-) Click here to donate, or contact us directly. Thank you.

The Sacred Brotherhood -- and Sisterhood -- of Those Who Understand

We read a few days ago Larry Heinemann's excellent quote about veterans after combat "carrying the darkness with us," linked here. And yesterday, in "War Creates Brothers," we learned about an historic gathering, a sacred ceremony of sorts, where Vietnam veterans like Heinemann met with Russian Afghansti veterans, at least a decade younger, and shared their stories with one another, bonding in the wet blood of brotherhood (and sisterhood, because it now applies to women veterans as well) from war. (That piece is linked here.) Now we synthesize the two together, with a quote from the article Heinemann wrote in 1989 in a national magazine, describing both the gathering mentioned above (lightly), and a much more extensive retelling of what the same Vietnam veterans' trip to Russia to meet with the Afghansti initially was like, a few months before.

Heinemann describes at great length the similarities and the bonds among the men that were formed, and tells the story of how the Russian veterans became involved in their own war in Afghanistan, leaving generally bruised and beaten "after nine years and 15,000 dead." Much of the article focuses on the stories of the Afghansti veterans they met in Russia, the grief of the devastated families of those who'd served, and the generalized indifference of the Russian government -- all of which he can compare, to one degree or another, to situations in our own country, after Vietnam. (As an aside, the bureaucracy of the VA seems to stand in for that of the Russian government in his analogy.)

As clearly as he paints the picture of the Russian veterans' suffering, and how it's mirrored in our own, one of the strongest descriptions he suggests is why the veterans on both sides of the conversation, separated by decades and culture, are nevertheless able to bond so strongly, through telling stories about their experiences, horrific and otherwise. This is the same principle we've been alluding to recently in the series about ritual, and the unburdening that can come from individual warriors when they meet up with one another, and have the safe "container" in which to share their suffering, confusion and grief. Here's Heinemann's remarkable quote:

"These stories and many others, came forward because the Afghansti finally had someone in their midst -- as we surely did not two decades ago [returning from Vietnam] -- who knew what they were talking about. We were fellow soldiers who could listen to the madness and know they were not mad; someone who could validate their worst blood-bath nightmares; someone who had an inkling of the brutality they had endured and inflicted; someone whom they could trust with stories about the deadest, darkest places in their hearts." -- Larry Heinemann.

Circling back around to Heinemann's earlier quote, mentioned a few days ago, we read in this article that it comes at the end of a longer declaration. As food for thought, I now include the full paragraph, in case it now adds fuller context, in light of the above.

"The Afghansti have caused a great many people a great deal of grief and have themselves suffered -- for a lie, let us not forget -- the same was we in the United States have caused much suffering in Southeast Asia, and have also suffered much in return, also for a lie. It was no small betrayal, no small lesson for a man to learn at the age of 19. Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart --the darkness that is always with us."

Quotable Quotes -- Artie Egendorf on Bearing Witness to the Past

"When people say time heals, they usually mean the passage of time, the rush of many things that happen. If enough new events crowd into our lives and capture our attention, we have no time to think of old pains, which thereby subside into a background gnawing. This is how we use time to dull pain, but it's not the same thing as healing.

Healing occurs as we express ourselves genuinely. In expressing how it was and is, we make ourselves the witness -- one who sees rather than one who has merely been tossed about by passing events. In reaching out to grasp a troublesome past, we cease to be at its mercy, and the more we reach to make ourselves a witness to the past, the less we are its victim." 

-- Arthur Egendorf, Ph.D., "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam." (Egendorf is a Vietnam veteran, Army.)

Self-Image in Veterans with PTSD after Combat: Same as Before, or Different?

We wrote an article on this site more than a year ago that was read very heavily, entitled "A Combat Veteran Asks Himself, Who Am I, on the Inside?" linked here. His response at the time to the question, "What's your greatest problem right now?" was very direct, raw and hard to hear: "I'm an exploding ball of hate," he said.

As tough as that "conversation" was to absorb, it might be time for a rematch, but on a slightly different topic. How does -- or does it actually -- a combat veteran with PTSD's self-image change, after combat, from what it was before combat? (Or before and after PTSD. Really, either question would produce interesting results.) 

It does seem that even in the literature, very little attention is paid to how servicemembers and veterans view themselves after combat. What was their self-image before -- and then did it change, or HOW did it change, after combat?

(By way of definition, "self-image" is different from "self-esteem." Self-image is basically how you look at yourself, pros and cons -- your sense of yourself and who you "are." It can be as simple as, I'm so tall and weigh such and such; I'm a good student or I'm good at sports; I'm social or I'm a loner, etc. Self-esteem has more to do with how highly you regard yourself (e.g., belief in yourself and/or self-confidence). It's also not the same as "self-worth," which is the value with which we regard ourselves. It's more purely "just"" how we see ourselves: bad, good or indifferent.)

Our self-image is who we see ourselves are -- how we would describe ourselves to others. "I'm fundamentally a good person." "I'm fun to be around." "I'm responsible." Ways we describe ourselves to differentiate ourselves from others. 

The illustration at left may help. It's a drawing a combat veteran with PTSD made based on an instruction to "draw himself as he saw himself, right now." Meaning, at this point in his life, not necessarily right after combat. He drew what amounts to a split personality, a "bad" and a "good" self, about equally weighted. He saw himself as both, at the same time. 

(Example from non-combat-related psychology, to further define what self-image is, by taking a look at what distorted self-image is: When an anorexic woman looks at herself in the mirror and "sees" herself as overweight, though she is underweight, we say that she has a "distorted" self-image. In other words, her correct self-image would be accurately that she is too thin. Instead, she projects onto the accurate image the distorted image she carries of herself, and she is able to see herself, wrongly, as not thin enough.)

I'm torn about including several quotes about war and the warrior, to get the discussion going...but I don't want to tip the scales one way or the other here. It's probably best to just think of the actual question: How did I view myself before combat/PTSD, and how do I view myself now, after combat/PTSD -- and have those two views of myself changed?

Quotable Quotes -- Half Full or Half Empty or Just...Right?

A wonderful quote from a longtime combat veteran from the other side of the pond, which expresses so well the "integration" we'd love to see for all veterans with PTSD. He writes:

"Sometimes my glass is half full... Sometimes my glass is half empty. I don't mind either view because when I sit back , have a think about stuff, I realize that my glass is really big. :-)"

Embracing the Warrior Spirit: Native Americans and Storytelling for Healing

Did you know that "large numbers of Native Americans enlist for military service and represent the highest per capita enlistment of any ethnic group in the United States?" It's true. 

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Administration for Native Americans, "Tribes view service, sacrifice, and courage as important values and part of an individual’s journey to becoming a leader, protector, and agent of change for his/her family or tribe."

I'd heard through the grapevine that a national museum devoted to Native American culture had a special exhibit about warrior veterans telling their stories. The Smithsonian exhibit, "Native Words, Native Warriors," is still on tour, through 2011. (In January through July of 2011, it will be at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.) Find out more about the exhibit, here.

In the meantime, I've uncovered some good resources about Native American warriors as veterans, and the extent to which their culture celebrates them and welcomes them home.

From the National Museum of the American Indian (part of the Smithsonian), a "workbook" online called "Coming Home: Strength through Culture."

From a segment entitled, "Healing after the War": 

"According to American Indian traditional beliefs, war affects a soldier’s well being, and makes it difficult for him to live in the everyday world. For American Indians, returning home means returning to a place — a land, a community, a family, and a culture — that you are part of, a place that you have a special relationship with. Participating in war interferes with your ability to be part of this place. It upsets the balance of life. This is why American Indian cultures have special ceremonies to help bring the soldier’s life back into balance — to make it possible for the soldier to once again live in peace and to be physically, spiritually, emotionally, and mentally healthy."

From a segment entitled, "Giving Honor to Veterans":

"American Indian communities remember their veterans’ sacrifices forever. Veterans are always respected and honored. Sometimes they are remembered in special songs that are sung in their honor. Native people often go to veterans for advice because they have strong mental abilities as a result of their many experiences. Depending on the community, veterans are given special prominence at different kinds of tribal events. For example, at powwows veterans always lead the grand entry of dancers. They carry the American Indian Eagle Staff, the flag of the United States, their tribal flag, and other important banners. Veterans are recognized and honored on special occasions with ceremonies and dances that relate their sacrifices to the community. For example, the Comanche Gourd Dance honors veterans. Sometimes a family member or a friend might hold a special dance or ceremony to honor a veteran. These are the lasting traditions that show respect to veterans for what they have done for the people."

In another section it describes how a Native American Marine Corps veteran of World War II, Navajo Code Talker Carl Gorman, experienced a ceremony upon returning home that helped allow him to put the past behind him and move on with his life:

"After the war, Carl Gorman returned home to Arizona for a short time. Even though he had been raised as a Christian, he talked about how the traditional Navajo ceremonies for warriors became important to him: "I didn't have a ceremony when I came home," he said. "I didn't quite believe in it anymore. A medicine man that was an old friend suggested that I have one, but I didn't have the money to pay him to perform it. He agreed to do a one-night sing over me for free. I participated in the sing and felt a great weight leave my mind and body. I felt very rested afterwards. I realized then that I needed to make peace with what I had experienced during the war." (Navajo Weapon by Sally McClain, 2001)

And from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service's Administration for Native Americans, an entire resource guide online about storytelling for Native American veterans. Segments include:  

• The healing power of stories;
• Tips on using storytelling for healing (with facilitation questions);
• Native American service in the U.S. military;
• Resources for Native veterans; and a
• Native American Veterans: Storytelling for Healing DVD that can be ordered, here.

We'll be developing this segment more in the weeks and months ahead, but for now this should provide some useful resources to start thinking about Native Americans and ceremony -- particularly storytelling -- for healing in community.

Editor's note: The painting at top is "First Furlough," by Native American artist Quincy Tahoma.