Great post. I recommend saving it for future reference. Not a professional but I now see PTS as after-the-fact stress caused by most any mental or physical trauma.
Approximately 12-years ago “Things” were getting to me and defied my attempts to understand much less sort out. Issues appeared related to service in RVN but I blew it off thinking I’d made peace with that long ago. Finally I went to the Vet Center on Rt.1 in Alexandria, Virginia. Spoke to a fellow, giving him the basics of my concerns and requested to sit in on at least one session of a group discussion with other Vets.
His unequivocal answer was NO.
Based on no more than our benign conversation, his judgement was that my participation would be disruptive to the group. Oddly enough and unbeknownst to me, a fellow from my company was a member of that group. We’d met at a battalion reunion and I recognized him from a group photo.
So off I went into the backroom of my Cave. It was there one Sunday morning that by chance I heard Dr. Jonathan Shay discuss his then new book “Achilles In Vietnam. I credit Dr. Shay and his follow-on volume with helping understand myself. That said, the time on either side of getting here wasn’t easy. Worst of all, I wasn’t the most congenial of persons.
I’ve now successfully been in “Recovery” for 10-years. I understand the pitfalls of self-medication whether “how to” book or otherwise. Even so, honestly responding to the warning signs listed in the posting reveal me to be a “work in progress”.
Fine Business.
sorry I took so long to reply. The ongoing work with veterans is proving that one-on-one counseling is having better results than group therapy, and your hearing Dr Shay “by chance” is again making my monitor blurry because I pray for y’all every day and you are an answer. There is no such thing as coincidence. “He’s got the whole world in His hands” always runs through my head after I say, or type, that.
Being a work in progress, remember one important thing, we are not only mind, but also heart, soul, and body. Take care of all of you. Comedies, exercise, and of course, church or, as I do, read the Bible with a topic study in mind. :) Got a question? Do a study.
Thanks for the Dr Shay reference. I’ll pick it up.
How was the reunion?