A SOLDIER'S PERSPECTIVE
THE WEB'S LEADING MILITARY BLOG SINCE 2004
When a combat soldier or veteran exhibits little to no patience with family or society, he or she has been stripped of all the interpersonal intricacies that society thrives on. That which seems mundane and abhorrent to the combat veteran or soldier lubricates the interactions of civilization and serves to engage and breed closeness, familiarity and possibly the formation of trust by way of situationally appropriate gradual process of self-disclosure.
Through the proper revealing of information in a contextually rich environment; the person weighs the customs, personal values and boundaries against one another to assess whether or not they might seem compatible with others. If this seems so, then a person might incrementally reveal more of themselves after establishing a level of trust where common or shared revelations can lead to closer relations.
The Combat Values Theory I propose, has to do with a value structure that replaces or overrides our civilian values schema. They consist of primitive instinctual defensive mechanisms of survival and the disintegration of our inhibitions of taking a human life. Identity, cognitive dissonance, hindsight bias, attachment structures, memory and dissociation all have component features in trauma based disorders with evolutionary and cultural considerations. “The culture of combat veteran is formed by a shared experience, often traumatic and rooted in the work of soldiers” (Hobbs, 2008).
The combat veteran’s or soldier’s organization and structural dissociation of the personality has both defensive and survival motivated components governed by an “combat othering” internal values system. When a persons principles conflict with necessary actions to preserve life, the memories become encoded, an integral part of the combat self. The disconnection of idealized experiential meaning cordons off the memories and render them inaccessible to the conscious mind, but still influence unconsciousness through intrusive thoughts, emotions and sensory intrusions, due to the lack of integration leading to the structural dissociation personality. Decompressing and integration of compartmentalized memories could be the difference between a soldier or veteran becoming dissociative later.
Combat PTSD has its own sense of self, a survival system separate from the person and has a regulatory feature that intrudes upon the combat veteran or soldier relational interactions. An evolutionary defensive mechanism with purpose of get a person through survival situations and PTSD is like a button stuck on survival and when in combat or such, the person seems to be “normal” it is when they return from war that the problem becomes apparent
The combat veteran’s or soldier’s value structure and sense of self have been fundamentally altered and do not match that of society. They have been conditioned to react to visual and auditory stimulus in the environment and to tune out that which poses no threat. Since societies interactions greatly differ from the combat zones, the combat veteran’s or soldier’s reality has been torn asunder by having been removed from the troop-organism. The closed circuitry of the troop-organism blocks out all attempts of interpersonal communication and interprets this function as an attempt to penetrate the boundaries of the now completely dysfunctional identity of the combat veteran or soldier.
Hobbs, K. (2008). Reflections on the culture of veterans. American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, 56(8), 337-341.
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SSgtJ
I really appreciate what you are trying to do for our fellow veterans. That said, I am not quite sure that I understand all of your writings. Are you saying that virtually all combat veterans will eventually get PTSD? There is no prevention. There is no cure. Furthermore, we need to hire someone to monitor all veterans for the rest of their lives to make sure that they don’t commit criminal acts upon themselves or others in society?
Roman General
I do not think that I said or implied any of what you suggest. An individuals reaction to any given trauma has a direct and indirect relation to their development, genetics, upbringing, environment, level of support, culture, level and number of traumatizations and a multitude of other considerations. Most trauma reactions will not lead to a pathological reaction. The implications of reactions to extreme stress have considerable ramifications to those of us who manage day to day with PTSD.
Structural Dissociation of the Personality
Relationship Between Dissociation and Identity
Personal Attachments, Before and After Combat
Combat Attachments Born of Blood
Dissociative Spectrum
Do I think prevention is a viable cause? Yes, we can do much more to prevent PTSD than we do. Will this prevent everyone from getting PTSD? No, we train to drive a car. Does it prevent all accidents? No.
Fully Train Our Soldiers For the Rigors of War
As to whether a cure is to be had or found, that depends on the severity of the traumatization and the individuals response to it. Most with PTSD (simple PTSD) will become symptom free, others more chronically affected in all probability will not. Every person afflicted with PTSD can find considerable relief from major symptoms. Do I think that chronic, complex or combat PTSD can be cured? For most, no I do not. Do I think that we can find relief from major symptomology? Yes. I have had three years of extensive therapy (20 months in an in-treatment facility) and have resumed therapy again, with probably at least two to three more years to go.
None of the questions you pose brings an easy answer, if it did then we would not see the problems we see today. An attempt to fully answer your questions could be a dissertation topic, to say the least extremely time consuming and cumbersome. If you truly want to understand more, then read these articles. They address your questions,
Statistics, Effects and the Realities of Multiple Deployments
Combat Saturation
Experiencing PTSD
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: From A Combat Veterans Perspective
Dissociative Posttraumatic Stress Disorder & Influences on Criminality
Combat Veterans and Institutions: A Systems Analysis
sheservd2
These items were brought up: “Are you saying that virtually all combat veterans will eventually get PTSD? There is no prevention. There is no cure.” : and having been within the growing numbers of the Few and the Proud that have slipped into the darkness of the Great Abyss.
It doesn’t happen all at one time, either.
It actually begins to slowly occur until one day you realize that you are not the outgoing person that you once were.
You are the most miserable feeling person alive. There are days that you don’t want to wake up or get out of bed, totally devoid of energy. The Depression has set hold and gotten a firm grip on you.
Most feel this happen when there is some kind of traumatic injury to their once-health and energetic bodies. They awake to a huge scar or missing digit or limb, or to find a best friend gave their life to save them. Survivors guilt sets in then…
No prevention and no cure.
Like telling a child the will fall when they run fast on pavement. They are going to run and they are going to fall.
PTSD is not that simple.
IF you were to think of PTSD like a fine drinking glass that had a liguid in it, wine or water- it doesn’t matter; and wet your finger and go around the top of the rim – it makes that bell sound.
(You know like in Miss Congeniality?)
If you could do that long enough and the liquid were to be able to evaporate and you could continue to have the glass vibrate, the glass would begin to stress crack and evenually shatter from the stress on it.
the human brain is as fragile like that glass in that way.
No one knows how much pressure or stress anyone versus someone else can take; therefore the differences that break someone down into the reactive path of PTSD is different for everyone of us.
Mine personal opinion on having people monitored is that is IF the services were out there for people to get help then there would not be a fear then that they would over-react.
To release the stigma of mental health issues the military members would be able to seek the help they desire and need.
Until the stigma and repercussions really do leave then there will be no improvement nor any help for the removing of the possibility of the military members getting to utilize the resources they need, even if you tried to force-feed it to them!
The whole thing would leave their individual careers hanging in the balance if they are/were to seek counseling for the mental health issues DESPITE what any paper says in black and white.
Unspoken, Unwritten and notoriuously a career ending blow to your professional image is what those kinds of admittals end up being in the end.
For the individual that is trying to do the best that they can — that is not the sacrifice that they are willing to make.
I do agree, that the level of support has a whole lot to do with the healing process.
Peole can overcome their upbringing and environments and even develop new coping skills and open their opinions to new cultural ideals. The personal development can be improved upon by seeking knowledge and understanding the issue(s) at hand and the background at which they are going through.
Genetics – play more of a role in mental issues that are in line like ADHD, Bi-polar, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, and other genetic disorders like diabetes, heart deformations and sickle cell – those types of things.
The pathological reaction stems from more of a complicated thing.(in my personal opinion and I am NOT a doctor)
I know that personally I have reacted at least twice in a verbal rage to things that when stimulated to a point of reacting I was sent “there” from a high stress environment that I had allowed stress to build up.
The time/place came that the pressure became too much and I literally began to feel the world shutting in on me and I began to say lots of truthful things that were offensive to people. Despite the fact of their truthfulness or not. It was not pretty –
imagine getting blasted in the face by a hurricaine force wind by a verbal torrent of harsh reality and full of dirty secrets but in front of a group of your peers.
My mind was in control enough to not embarrass the folks indiviudally BUT it was addressed in general terms. Loudly and in a very uhm, Passionate, yup that is a good word for it; Passionate terms.
then, the guilty parties were quick to be the ones to identify themselves with the tears and the storming out of the meeting.
I am not totally proud of that moment at all – but It did make me feel better.
The details surrounding it at this time really are of no relivance.
When you see in the news a Marine has shot an intruder to their home, then folks are outraged. I ask them why? They say it is because another Marine back from the war has killed someone. Yet if it is a 90 year old gramma that had shot the intruder OR say whacked the same intruder over the head with an Emeril pan THEN that is something to praise?
What a double standard today folks have.
More awareness on all levels should be given to mental health to remove the stigma of it.
It would help immensely.
Explain it to the young children in simple terms as possible so they can understand it and then as they get older explain it again in more complicated terms when they are ready. That way when they are older they are not the ones having to guess what may be going on inside their heads – they may actually be able to go to the doctor and say can we check “this” out, I think I have (_______) , I am having ( symptoms) and then that would be progress !
All for awareness & Awareness for ALL !
mwest1971usn
Sheserved2, don’t even consider jumping in somebody’s case when they ask for it, deserve it, and NObody else in the room has the backbone to deliver the chewing out that’s necessary to identify back-stabbing, 2-faced, forked-tongued, busy-bodies that think that God took a 2-week vacation, ..and left them In Charge Of The Universe.
Take note that every bit of the 2008 article ASSUMES that all of the problem is between the vet’s ears. I submit that the possibility exists that vets come home, observe civilians running arnd yammering BS that is not from experience, but assumptions and attitudes, which the vet correctly identifies as a mobile Charlie Foxtrot, and either walks on dwn the hall, or calls out the pompous inexperienced civilian, and provides a short, intense, verbal education evaluation of the civilian subject.
Hold your head up. Argent, 1973.