PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder...
An Acronym of Danger.

by Stephen D Thomson

I live with a malady that causes me to look inwardly at myself several times a day. I'm constantly on the lookout for signs that my affliction is showing, or becoming evident, to others. Should that be the case then I rein myself in, give myself a good talking to, and promptly forget that the foregoing had indeed gone before. The psychological version of a Gordian Knot. I sometimes believe my psychiatrist should just do as Alexander the Great did with the knot created by Gordius (this was an intricate knot made by him when he tied his wagon to the gates of the Temple of Zeus) and just lop my head off, as he did the knot. It might work better than trying to unravel the twisted tangle of my psyche as he has been trying to do for the past nine years. Curious? It's called PTSD - Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Before I knew what it was and why it was causing such a mess of my mind, it had contributed to costing me over forty-four separate employers in my working life. Not just sideways shifts in my employment, such as moving from a computer analyst position in a company to the same, better paid, position in another company, but forty-four different employers - completely new jobs. Some of these positions were lost due my quitting in anger at some slight directed towards me or I lost the job due to coming to someone else's aid. This was usually someone who couldn't defend him or herself, an underdog, or who just wanted to let matters be. I couldn't let matters be, ever, for them or for me.

I had some interesting dismissals in my working career. As a telephone marketer for a company in 1995, I lost my position due to my throwing my employer against a wall, my hands around his neck and him turning blue. This was after he had grabbed my shoulder from behind and swung me around in my chair to harangue me for a mistake I had not made. Luckily, I wasn't charged (he assaulted me first) and I didn't go to gaol. Bus conductor. I lost that job when I grabbed my manager in the bus company and dragged him across his desk for accusing me of stealing when my bag came up short $ .45 in 1972. Back then, in Australia, that sort of behaviour usually ended up being sorted out in a parking lot behind the building or the employee was ejected from the premises. I walked out, before being ejected, but that is not the point.

In between those years I held jobs surveying, nursing, managing various businesses, operating heavy equipment, computer programming, computer sales, and the interesting list goes on. There are a couple that I may still not remember due to the sheer number of jobs lost - that's another symptom of the affliction. Things became forgotten. Why? Because they fall into the same category as the thing that got me here in the first place - trauma - and when anything is placed in that dark hole in my mind it has difficulty in seeing the light of day again.

Why does something in the dim, dark past, as in my case, cause such traumatic reactions in my relative present, and since the incident that nearly killed me? According to my psychiatrist, it was caused by my burying the reality. And keeping it there. In my case, I kept it buried for 27 years before I started the very painful process (traumatic enough, in and of itself) of "letting it out" piecemeal, in therapy, and not violently against others. It has taken 9 years of therapy for me to come to grips with what happened and has happened since. And I still have a long way to go.

I still have never related the details of the incident to my wife of 35 years. Nor to my four children. Not to anyone other than the psychiatrist and psychologist who have been dealing with the problem for the last 9 years. Then it took a great deal of time to get to the root cause. They came into the picture after I had reached "the wall," that place where you either slide down the face into an abyss of either sheer madness or death or you start climbing, trying to get over to the other side where there might be some light, a greener pasture, as it were. A radical point of view of the condition? No. A given. Reality. It happens. It requires help to climb that wall. And there are many of us out there and more are being created every single day.

Those of today - the car accident victims; the victims of violent crime; the soldiers in the streets of Iraq; and many, many more seriously traumatised people, for whatever reason, all around the world - will, hopefully, receive counselling before the trauma becomes buried and the locks hammered into place by time. Once that happens then the clock starts ticking on the bomb that is their psyche, ready to explode at anytime and even many times, as in my case, with my anger. Unfortunately though, very few receive that much needed help. Most are never offered it. Some refuse it when it is. Also, many just cannot afford the help when it is available. And, as it is said, life goes on. And society pays, in the end, a lot more than it would have cost had it dealt with the problems in the beginning. As I know more about the military side of this, I'll stick with what I know and what I have experienced.

Just before I was discharged from the military, I put the locks on. I know now exactly when that was. It would have been so simple, on reflection, if someone had come to me and said, "Son, let's talk this thing through. Let's slay the demons that you're going to fight for the rest of your life if you don't deal with them now." It didn't happen. As a consequence I closed up. From day one. And, to a great degree I still am "closed up"...but, at least, I am still alive. And kicking.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Big name. Big problem. It exists. I could go deeper into the political side of this very real issue in this story but I won't. What I will say is this, something that the political spin doctors know very well: Familiarity breeds contempt. Pooh pooh an idea or concept enough numbers of times and it becomes the thing you intended it to become; something that is contemptuous, contentious, minimalised...and the PTSD sufferer suffers again. And the government walks away less out of pocket in the short term.

Soldiers are scoffed at by their peers and, quite often, by their leaders, and considered wimps if they complain of the stress they are under when in the field, in their barracks, or are feeling when they come home. They have a very real, invisible problem which is compounded each and every day they spend in the current war zone; a place fraught with dangers that prey on their minds every moment. Dangers that leave an indelible print on the psyche. For instance, IED's - Improvised Explosive Devices. To you and me, the device aspect of that acronym is; a garbage can; a stump; an old car lying at the roadside; a tin can in the road; whatever the imagination can devise and see can be an I...E...D. Think about this. You go on patrol enough numbers of times with the thought that anything, anything at all, you can see just might blow up in your face, then you are going to have problems when you get home...if you get home. How long is it that these men and women spend in Iraq? Here's a little twist on this war that separates it from Vietnam - only visually, not psychologically.

Except for the dust in the streets and the air, the languages, the holes in the walls, and the skins of the people, the towns these soldiers are patrolling every single day look like small town America. Australia. England. A stretch of the imagination? No. Try this simpler idea: A street is always a street. A corner is always a corner. Cars are always cars and people are always people. No matter where you are. In Iraq, any single one of these things can blow up in your face! Including the people. Every street can deliver the car bomb directly to you. Every corner might hide the bullet that goes through your face or your buddy's. And right now, you, your loved one, or someone you know has or is facing now, that reality every single day. For weeks. For months. And, in some cases, for years. And now, if you have been lucky enough to get that person back home, he or she may be in the bed next to you; walking down the street alongside of you; sitting in a bus behind you and they are reliving Iraq. Every moment of it and sometimes they don't even realise it themselves. Also remember, some will not be able to separate the now from the then. We've seen that already on the news. It all depends upon the depth of their trauma. And these people are not even the physically wounded! They are another matter altogether.

Currently, the soldiers that are coming home - those that can walk out of this war reasonably intact - are being given a questionnaire asking them if they are experiencing certain things psychologically. A majority of these soldiers laugh at the piece of paper and toss it. They're tough, not wimps. That's what they are led to believe sufferers of PTSD are, wimps. Unfortunately, a stigma has been attached to PTSD and, as far as they are concerned, they are certainly not going to allow themselves to be labelled. Not only is this a serious problem in and of itself but it is a dangerous problem. Others can, and will, get hurt. Please don't dismiss it. If you are a father or a mother, spend time with your son or daughter and find the help. If you are a wife or a husband, then spend time with your loved one and find the help. If you are someone who cares...help him or her to find the help. You just might save their life. Yours. Or even someone else's.

PTSD has shown me - to say the least - an interesting side of life I possibly never would have seen had I had an uneventful service in the military. That having been said, I would never trade my wife, my children, and my life as I have experienced it, to be rid of those demons if it meant that I should lose them, my family. To be fair - and this is as fair as I will be - to the military, these things happen. On the other side of the coin, though, just as a soldier can sometimes be treated for actual wounds, I believe that the military has a major responsibility, a priority, a duty, to hand its people back to civilian life and society intact as much as is possible, not only physically but psychologically as well.

As someone should have done with me, way back when.

About the Author:
Husband. Father. Son. Brother. Tinker. Tailor. Soldier. Spy. Not quite in that order...