What They Never Told Me

My Mouth is an I.E.D.

By definition a war veteran has a “war story.” It is not a slanderous term unless it causes harm. The “war story” or narrative  veterans  create to represent their experience  can be as dangerous to them as an Improvised Explosive Device (IED). An IED is a homemade weapon.  A “war story” becomes  hazardous to the veterans when they let it define who they are and it contains negative elements like avoidance, “amputations” or inner vows as explained below.

AVOIDANCE:  When a veteran’s war story is shaped by the areas they do not wish to discuss, this warrior  has become a casualty  of  the war. Overtime the war-story begins to influence the “peace story.” Through repetition veterans can convince themselves that a similar situation in their normal life is now beyond their control.

AMPUTATION:  Like a physical loss of a limb or other body part, emotional amputation occurs when the veteran’s war-story  itemizes  their personal losses during deployment. Declarations like, “That’s when I stopped feeling” or “I stopped caring” or “nothing matters any more” are signs that the veteran has declared some part of their personality  a casualty of war.   
 
INNER VOW:  An inner vow is a phrase like, “I will never . . “ or “I always  . . .” or “ I told myself . . .”. Through repetition these self-promises become as  binding  as a set of handcuffs or leg irons. When they are part of a war-story, the veteran is a POW.

My Brain Can Change Shape

The shape of a warrior’s brain has become the subject of intense interest to military medical personnel. Brain scans are being taken prior to deployment in order to establish a baseline to later determine if the warrior has undergone a traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Along with PTSD, TBI has become part of the dynamic duo that are the signature wounds of the current wars. Both conditions reshape the human brain.

Recently the military has actually begun to inform warriors that combat stress injuries can change the make-up or shape of their brain. Using the analogy of a tree in the wind, veterans are told that stress can reshape their brain’s biological composition. The primary reason for this instruction is to change the perception of combat stress from a psychosomatic phenomenon to a real wound of war.

The part that has not yet been revealed to our veterans is that this change does not have to be permanent.  There are currently projects in civilian medicine that are tracking  changes to brain composition as a result of certain kinds of therapy. It is too early to predict when this training of the brain will become as important to the military as physical training, but it is now possible to restore the brain to its condition before emotional injuries like combat stress.  

I Was Wounded Before I Left

There have been incredible advances in body armor and personal protection since the Global War on Terrorism began.  This has increased the survival rates for warriors from traumatic injuries. 

Unfortunately, on the psychological front, modernization of “armor” to protect warriors from combat stress or PTSD has been much slower in reaching the troops. The single biggest predictor of injury from combat stress in a unit is not the intensity of the combat the units experiences but whether or not their chain-of-command was fair in the months before the unit deployed.  Being “fair” doesn’t mean being soft.  A chain-of-command is “fair” when the same treatment is given to all members of the command without regard to race, creed, color, gender, and most importantly , favoritism.  If there are favorites in the unit before deployment, the “non-favorites” arrive in the war zone already wounded in their soul. It is from this wound that combat stress or PTSD can grow.

If you or someone you know shows signs of being wounded from their pre-deployment experience, please make sure whoever they see for treatment is aware of their “pre-existing condition.” It will be difficult to recover from combat trauma without  addressing  the bitterness of unfair treatment. 

My World Would Shrink

It is hard to believe how small a warrior’s world becomes when they are deployed. Common sense would have us believe that traveling the world would expand our horizons, but when the travel is at the behest of a combat force, the vision of the world becomes as small as the bulletproof glass on the side of an armored vehicle. 

The other constricting  factor can be unlimited internet access. This too is counter-intuitive.  For some warriors the time they spend back at base will be occupied at the internet café doing marathon sessions on Skype with their significant others.  Skype is great, and a real blessing for most families if they use set some boundaries. But for people from dysfunctional backgrounds, Skyping hour after hour will shrink their social horizon down to whatever field of vision the camera can capture. In effect, two jail cells are created on opposite sides of the world through their computers.

The best  prescription for shrinking world syndrome is to intentionally expand the warrior’s social circle before deployment. This means actual person-to-person encounters in order to establish the relationships that will keep the veterans horizon from shrinking under the pressure of war.