I think if I asked a room full of people, a room full of students, a room full of friends, whatever, 'Do you have Post-Traumatic Stress?' Even if you’re talking to military veterans, they’re going to look at you like, 'I don’t really know what that means.' It’s not a term that we’re familiar with. It’s not an emotion that we deal with in our daily lives. One of the interesting things about war and the people we’re treating is that the vast majority is not suffering from fear-based post-traumatic stress. It’s not that they’ve had a near-death experience and they’re worried about dying—they’re not going through their lives scared. What it really is, is post-traumatic grief, that they’ve lost a friend. A lot of therapists would compare the loss of a friend or comrade in war to a parent who’s lost a child. It’s that deep degree of grief. I think there’s also a level of moral injury. You have people who hold themselves to a very high standard. People in the military are not used to failure, and one of the things that’s going to happen in war is you’re going to fail. You shoot too soon, a civilian gets killed; you shoot too late, a buddy gets killed. And that leads to feelings of shame that you failed, feelings of guilt over an action that you took, or didn’t take. Now, if I asked a room full of people, 'Have you ever felt guilty in your life? Have you ever felt shame? Have you ever felt grief?' suddenly, that’s familiar. Suddenly it’s not this inaccessible term like “post-traumatic stress.” Of course, when my best friend Ronnie Winchester was killed, I’m going to feel grief. It’s normal to feel grief. There’s nothing wrong with me for feeling grief. And when you articulate it in accessible terms, it really sort of leads to the healing process and fights the stigma, because you realize you’re supposed to feel guilty.[Photo via]
I think if I asked a room full of people, a room full of students, a room full of friends, whatever, 'Do you have Post-Traumatic Stress?' Even if you’re talking to military veterans, they’re going to look at you like, 'I don’t really know what that means.' It’s not a term that we’re familiar with. It’s not an emotion that we deal with in our daily lives. One of the interesting things about war and the people we’re treating is that the vast majority is not suffering from fear-based post-traumatic stress. It’s not that they’ve had a near-death experience and they’re worried about dying—they’re not going through their lives scared. What it really is, is post-traumatic grief, that they’ve lost a friend. A lot of therapists would compare the loss of a friend or comrade in war to a parent who’s lost a child. It’s that deep degree of grief.
I think there’s also a level of moral injury. You have people who hold themselves to a very high standard. People in the military are not used to failure, and one of the things that’s going to happen in war is you’re going to fail. You shoot too soon, a civilian gets killed; you shoot too late, a buddy gets killed. And that leads to feelings of shame that you failed, feelings of guilt over an action that you took, or didn’t take. Now, if I asked a room full of people, 'Have you ever felt guilty in your life? Have you ever felt shame? Have you ever felt grief?' suddenly, that’s familiar. Suddenly it’s not this inaccessible term like “post-traumatic stress.” Of course, when my best friend Ronnie Winchester was killed, I’m going to feel grief. It’s normal to feel grief. There’s nothing wrong with me for feeling grief. And when you articulate it in accessible terms, it really sort of leads to the healing process and fights the stigma, because you realize you’re supposed to feel guilty.
[Photo via]
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