PTSD: Another Perspective

2016-05-12T09:58:55-04:00

As most of you know, in my limited spare time, I work as an advocate for Veterans trying to bridge the gap between civilians and Veterans. It is no secret that this gap exists and, in some areas, is very hard to cross. One of the topics that come up a lot is that of PTSD, or PTS if you prefer. As a Veteran who deals with the daily struggles of this issue, I feel that it is important for civilians to see us for who we really are and not these crazy, overly sensitive people who will snap at any second.

Earlier today, I was talking with a friend of mine and we started to discuss the subject of PTSD. During this conversation, this friend of mine, Casey, shared with me her personal view on what could be a leading cause for the development of PTSD in some people. She said the following:

"It's my personal opinion that the prevalence of PTSD is in part due to a lack of problem solving skills in every day life and a lack of proper coping mechanisms. People don't deal with true 'hardships' in life anymore. The idea of a horrible day is when you get a flat tire or something. People used to lose some of their children and people died from things like pneumonia all the time."

After seeing this, I stopped and went through it again. And I found what she said to be pretty fair and thought provoking. Have we, as country, lost touch with "real problems"? You see #FirstWorldProblems used to describe issues that people are facing, normally as a joke. Does this make us mentally weaker and make it harder to deal with some of the world's true hardships? While death is an everyday occurrence, the way in which it is seen in combat is unlike anything most people will ever see. War is truly humanity at its worse. Hunger, disease, poverty, are seen everyday but for the majority of us, we rarely have to deal with it directly. It is a 30 second commercial on TV or one person standing on the side of the road with a cardboard sign. Then, we are thrown into combat where we are forced to face such things. We are asked to not just deal it, but to thrive in it.

Then following our 12, 16, 18 months in combat, we are returned to our normal, boring lives where these issues are once again seen from our couch or in passing. We are left to process everything we saw, smelled, and heard and make sense out of all the craziness in our once "normal" but now abnormal world. People are talking about #FirstWorldProblems while never having seen the things we have. Never dealt with what we had to deal with. Never forced to thrive in ways we had to thrive. For some, the closest they have been to seeing a disease take a family member is during a game of Oregon Trail. We, as veterans, find ourselves unable to make sense of this all.

PTSD is one of those things the medical community finds hard to explain. Why is it that two people can go through the same event but both come out of it differently. Is it from a lack of exposure to real world problems? How can we best live and raise the next generation to better understand the world outside of their well manicured lawns and big TVs and iPads?

Response by CSM Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2016 10:19 AM

2016-05-12T10:19:00-04:00

Veterans that live with Post Traumatic Stress (PTS) every day of their lives, are experiencing a very normal reaction to very abnormal experiences. It is about bridging the gap to find ways to manage, adjust, and improve on the lives of those living with PTS. This way they can not just survive, but thrive and start living again.

Response by SSgt Terry P. made May 12 at 2016 10:34 AM

2016-05-12T10:34:05-04:00

SGT Ben Keen Most people do not see "violent death" or dismembered bodies and their "everyday " problems are priorities,as they should be.But combat soldiers see more than violent death,they see people trying to exist in areas where their lives and livelihood is threatened daily.Also we see people starving ,living in real poverty,without clean water,electricity,etc.all the things we take for granted here.Gives us a different perspective of what is important and causes mental anguish when someone is whining about their steak being too tough.

Response by LCDR Private RallyPoint Member made May 12 at 2016 10:42 AM

2016-05-12T10:42:06-04:00

I think we all have our thoughts about what 'PTSD' really is, and how best to manage it...but we fear stating it openly as everyone's experience is different, and the guy who did a year baby-sitting ANA doesn't want to tell the Marine who deployed four times to Iraq to just "shake it off".

That said-yes; I think you're on to something.

The training we all go through would be considered "abuse" by our civilian counterparts. Some of that training can kill you. That's all before spending long periods away from family, in places where clean water is a rare as reliable "connectivity" with the possibility of death lingering overhead on occasion. "They" try to "get it"...but they can't, so the civilian world defaults to a "syndrome" approach, and starts looking for ways to medicate and placate instead of inculcate.

Then, there's the inverse situation where after all of that training and preparation...one is confronted with the fact that they were on a FOB, and didn't see anything more than a stray mortar. You come back home and get "lumped" into the same group of guys who fought house to house or got pinned down in some wadi somewhere by people who understand neither situation well enough to make distinctions. Still, your fellow vets know, and you know.

I think that's why some people decide to fight that battle on their own terms.

Response by SGM Erik Marquez made May 12 at 2016 11:17 AM

2016-05-12T11:17:27-04:00

I don't discount the concept you bring up as i feel it is a contributing factor for some..
However
PTSD is not a new phenomenon, it has existed under other names since war began.
If you except that "Shell Shock" or "Combat exhaustion" terms used previously to "name" what we now are calling PTSD are real and like condition to what we are seeing now.. then the premise of ""It's my personal opinion that the prevalence of PTSD is in part due to a lack of problem solving skills in everyday life and a lack of proper coping mechanisms. People don't deal with true 'hardships' in life anymore"
falls on its face.. because "Shell Shock" or "Combat exhaustion" were commonplace at a time in history that "People used to lose some of their children and people died from things like pneumonia all the time."

Response by SFC Dr. Fred Lockard made May 12 at 2016 12:02 PM

2016-05-12T12:02:08-04:00

All of you that want to drop the "S" from PTSD need to stop and think about it for a moment. Yes, all people that go to combat experience some of the symptoms of PTSD at some point. Only about 15-25%, however, exhibit enough of the symptoms to warrant a clinical diagnoses of PTS"D". It becomes a disorder once it crosses the threshold and starts to impact most areas of life negatively. If it is not a disorder, it is not a VA compensable problem. If it is not a disorder, it does not need treatment. Lastly, a large team of psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, etc decided that it needs to stay PTSD for the DSM-V and I think we should trust professional clinical wisdom on this. Just my 2 cents.

Response by Maj John Bell made May 12 at 2016 12:26 PM

2016-05-12T12:26:46-04:00

I have never been in combat. But I saw my son get hit and killed by a car. Everybody was concerned about me being depressed or having PTSD. I was certainly much more quiet and tended to isolate from everyone but my wife and daughter. I did not keep up with my normal household duties except bringing in a paycheck. I slept a lot. I stared off into space a lot and didn't realize the passage of time. I wasn't mean or abusive. But I wasn't a happy person, and I clearly would not remain anywhere people were happy. This went on for about a month and a half. I finally agreed to go to grievance counseling provided by the county.

The first thing out of the social workers mouth was "You and your wife have less than a 15% chance of being married two years from now". That pissed me off. I was not going to allow another casualty in my life. I stood up, took my wife's hand and said "this fool has nothing to offer us". We left. And everybody put up with the change in my personality. It became the new norm. In retrospect if something had not changed the counselor was probably right.

Then my wife's Maternal Grandfather and her Dad visited. Grandpa Spence was a man I greatly admired and loved to spend time with. He was a WWII vet and served in Patton's 3rd Army. He sat down opposite me, knee to knee and told me to look him in the eyes. Grandpa Spence was a man who never swore, never frowned, never got angry. This to the best of my memory is what happened:

He slapped me hard. "Do I have your f_____g attention you sorry sack of s__t?! You better knock this crap off or I will thrash you to an inch of your life. You have a wife that needs you. You have a daughter that needs you. If you are not going to BE a man, ACT like one." Then stood up and he slapped me again, so hard I almost fell out of the chair. I was stunned. "I'll be back to take Kim and Jennilynn home with me the first time someone tells me you've crawled back into this shell".

I know the Patton approach is not in favor and probably dangerous. Grandpa Spence knew me, he may have been much more circumspect with someone he did not know. But in my case it worked. I won't say I was all better. But I faked it until I made it. I wasn't even willing to fake it before he demanded it.

My Dad was in the Navy and a combat pilot for WWII, Korea and in theater for Viet Nam. He held that it was much harder for Korea Vets and Viet Nam vets to integrate back into society than WWII vets because they were denied victory in a war they felt they were winning. Is it possible that rotating people out of the combat zone, bringing them home before victory is achieved, we cause even more confusion in their soul. Is it possible that trying to bring home to them in theater we do not allow them to be in a dissociative state from which recovery is easier? I'm not stating this as fact. I'm not trying to bring down the wrath of PTSD advocates. I'm just trying to understand why this problem seems so much worse than what were told about in history.

It seems that what we are doing now does not work. Are the statistics actually better or worse than other conflicts in our history, If so why? No mass solution will catch everyone that is falling. But is it time to re-evaluate and redirect?

Response by CPT Joseph K Murdock made May 12 at 2016 1:09 PM

2016-05-12T13:09:14-04:00

It is true some folks will have a predilection to getting PTSD due to emotional, physical, and emotional abuse or problems. However, this does not the "healthy" group that gets PTSD after seeing combat.

Response by SPC David S. made May 12 at 2016 2:20 PM

2016-05-12T14:20:55-04:00

As you stated 'war is humanity at its worse' - I agree 'war is poison for the soul' and I think to some degree PTSD is a natural adverse reaction to the exposure of the violence and stress experienced in war. The abnormal stress levels experienced in war that trigger PTSD could be a viewed as a form of a psychological 'inoculation' that is designed to weed out such 'bad' behavior and acts as a protective mechanism for us. While mentally we can override our fears and still wage war there may be a much deeper unseen biological affects on the body that may help to explain why soldier A is not affected the same as soldier B. Natural selection and leukocyte telomere length (LTL) may be the culprit. I know the eyes just starting to glaze over but bare with me. Telomeres are involved in maintaining genomic stability and regulating cellular proliferation - more or less they help protect our DNA when our cells split. Stress has been shown to shorten the telomer length and in this case size does matter. The longer your telomeres you are more likely to be a healthier individual. A good deal of research has proven a correlation between telomere length and health and these little DNA end caps may even contribute to having a pessimistic outlook. So our individual biology may be just one of many determinants that seal our fate and likelihood of being effected by PTSD.

As to the civilian world understanding the human conditions of combat I don't this bridge will ever fully be crossed. Kind of like explaining the smell of the color 9. Not sure if the hipster bitching about Starbucks not having gluten free muffins is ever going to have any desire to make the trip over that bridge - if so they will more than likely be part of the 1% that signed up.

http://www.omicsgroup.org/journals/transgenerational-effects-of-ptsd-or-traumatic-stress-do-telomeres-reach-across-the-generations-2167- [login to see] .php?aid=30791

Response by PO3 Chris Amidon made May 12 at 2016 2:44 PM

2016-05-12T14:44:21-04:00

Something I wrote for work a while back... https://www.hillandponton.com/why-some-vets-develop-ptsd-others-dont/

Why Some Vets Develop PTSD, and Others Don’t - Hill & Ponton, P.A.

So, what makes some veterans suffer from severe PTSD from seemingly less traumatic incidents, while others are seemingly unaffected by the horrors of war? The answer is still unclear, but modern research has provided us with some answers.

Response by SPC Rory J. Mattheisen made May 12 at 2016 9:09 PM

2016-05-12T21:09:10-04:00

With my group, I have moved from calling it PTSD to a TSI (Traumatic Stress Injury) as I feel it more accurately reflects what occurred. I have gone completely out of the box and adopted different methods for describing what we are going through and different ways of realizing the big picture.

A lot of SMs do not have the TSI symptoms/troubles until after they discharge, because until they take the uniform off the last time the do not begin to reconnect with the world emotionally and the morality of warfare has not set in yet.

The only people in my personal experience, that come through war unscathed display sociopathic tendencies.

Response by Kim Bolen RN CCM ACM made May 20 at 2016 5:37 PM

2016-05-20T17:37:19-04:00

Great Post! PTS is real it is an normal reaction to an abnormal situation. Since our brains can not register repetitive trauma, we shut down and move in the manner in which we were taught to survive. It is during this traumatic experience we use our fight or flight response. This leads to a cascade of events within the amaglia, releasing adrenaline etc. The neuro-synaptic-fibers if you will become over stimulated and are unable to shut down leading to a multitude of symptoms. I have many vets that say they remain in a state of numbness and lack adrenaline. I could go on and on but I hope you do understand that some of us in the medical profession really do understand. The reason perhaps that some appear to "come out differently". Is the fact that the mask has not yet come off, they need to deal with life, however they can to survive. Look at any war, years later we hear of soldiers heart. shell shock etc. We know that we are changed it is how we manage our new normal that counts. Sometime we need to just stop and breatheee

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 2 at 2016 5:40 AM

2016-06-02T05:40:33-04:00

For a civilian to really understand combat in it's entirety I think would be essentially impossible. I have been dealing with PTSD for 11 years. There is a real life altering condition that you can find yourself trapped in with PTSD. It has hurt my military career, it has hurt my civilian career, relationships and everyday home life. I don't think the lack of being able to handle "real life" is what brings it on. I think it's more of a live or die situation that gives you this issue.

Response by SSG Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 10 at 2016 4:52 PM

2016-06-10T16:52:59-04:00

When I was finishing my BA in Psychology, one of my final papers was on PTSD. Although I do have it on my record, it is more anxiety than anything else. The thing I have found most interesting in its rapid occurrence is the broad spectrum of individuals affected. For instance, the memories that haunted me for the longest times eventually faded and I dealt with them. However, I have friends who went through the same exact events and have not recovered. I do think that my past experiences before the military helped me to deal with a lot of the stress and crazy situations that I faced while serving. I think the problem lies in coping mechanisms. If you do not have a healthy way to deal with the issues, then they will only get worse and eventually consume you. With that said, I have also met some very strong men who have been devastated by this "agent orange" of our generation. The severity of the experience, as well as the own individuals resilience have a lot to do with the recovery process. I find PTSD strangely fascinating and I hope in the future to be able to help our servicemen and woman fight this.

Response by SSG Jeremy Sharp made Jul 5 at 2016 1:46 PM

2016-07-05T13:46:45-04:00

There are far more people in this country dealing with aspects of PTSD than just military veterans. For instance, most first responders; Police, Fire and EMS that have been on the job for any significant period of time have been subjected to horrible scenarios that humanity has thrown at their feet. The family members and victims who have suffered violent crimes perpetrated against them or their loved ones just to name a few. I agree with the author's friend who stated that coping mechanisms are what give some the ability to be less affected by an experience and I feel that this concept is the key to treating those that are suffering today. By fostering supportive peer networks, strengthening the injured to stability so that on-going counseling can help establish effective coping mechanisms in individuals that will allow them to return to some level of normalcy without struggling through their anxiety alone we could help others overcome the demons that dwell in thse dark memories and experiences.

Response by Sgt Martin Querin made Sep 12 at 2017 5:37 PM

2017-09-12T17:37:48-04:00

Solid thoughts. I think there is definitely some merit to this line of reasoning. When 911 happened I heard so many news people and others say, "this is unprecedented". Yeah in the US maybe, but tell that to the Somalians, Kenyans, Irish, Philippinos, Lebanese, Isrealis, and the list could go on. We have been blessed to not experience war on our soil for over 150 years; and to some extent as a culture we glorify it. I personally glorify the commitment of those that have served, but make no mistake, there is nothing glorious about war. So we as a people are generally unprepared for the ravages of human suffering and atrocities against humanity that are concomitant with war and once engaged they become a necessary part of any combatants survival.

Simply put, don't judge a someone that is doing everything they can to make sure they, and those with them, survive another day of mortal combat. I would say that few in this country understand the true meaning of that word "mortal" when they think about war, few have lived in constant purposeful mortal danger...not a bad neighborhood, but a place where there are people that are strategizing every minute of every day on ways to kill you. We say war is hell, well we haven't really been there yet, but the edge of conflict in war is probably as close as it gets here on earth. And it's not a surprise that it's hard to come back and "be normal" when you've been as close to the edge of hell as you can get in this life and then you come back to a place that thinks normal is losing it because you lost your cellular connection, or someone took your parking place.

Response by AN Eric Braun made Sep 12 at 2017 5:44 PM

2017-09-12T17:44:03-04:00

Unfortunately it is seen as a weakness, yes, and civilians attempt to play on it because it seems as if it's amusing to them, to see someone suffering from this affliction of PTSD as pushing their buttons so as to activate Bruce Banner's "Incredible Hulk." These people are truly the sick ones, the civilians that provoke someone troubled with this affliction, because they want to see the capabilities of violence and rage within the individual suffering from PTSD. Yes, I believe if they made military service mandatory for at least 3 years, or if these civilians seen 1/3rd of what we have witnessed overseas, then it would be treated differently. Now War is a video game, and "cool" to these newer generations. They would be the ones shell-shocked if they seen firsthand what WAR truly is.

Response by HA Amanda Nunes made Oct 5 at 2017 2:47 AM

2017-10-05T02:47:32-04:00

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Response by SP5 Dennis Loberger made Feb 26 at 2022 9:59 PM

2022-02-26T21:59:59-05:00

I have developed a very unsophisticated statement that does actually help my simple mind. When I am feeling the oncoming stress I remind myself.....If it's not going to be on my tombstone, it isn't important enough for me to get upset over

Response by SPC Paul Moore made Feb 22 at 2025 10:22 PM

2025-02-22T22:22:32-05:00

I wish I had the answer to raising kids that are resilient to life's struggles. Although I didn't get PTS while in the military I now have some flashbacks from my 24 years as a Corrections Officer. Responding to offender fights, slashings, murders, and staff assaults have taken their tole. I have been able to process through most of the trauma. It's my kids I don't know how to help because of how the different personalities handle the stress.
My oldest a police officer of 4 years, responding to day to day work related crisis has PTS. My second son, an 8 year active Marine, is silent about his duty in the middle east. But has made enough side comments to let me know he deals with his own demons.
What has been said makes sense, raising our kids to have better, have a longer child hood, have it easier has left them unprepared for the hardships of service. I would not have changed doing for our kids what we have. Except we could have exposed them to seeing hardships of others. Then how to process and help.
I guess we spared them to much..