Understand that I am not a doctor. I write about this from my own personal experience as well as having been in contact with many other veterans who are suffering. When I chose to look at the root causes of my Post Traumatic Stress and depression, then I started to get better.
There is no cure here. This is not a disease. It is about what has happened to us. Because it is not a disease, it can't be cured. The memories never go away. However, the hurt and angry emotions behind these stressors and triggers can be healed once you understand what they are and then formulate a plan to deal with them.
1. Self Esteem
Self esteem is how we see ourselves as well as our sense of self worth. When we see someone we love, particularly a buddy, die in front of us, it has a traumatic effect. We ask ourselves questions like "Why am I still here?" "What could I have done to prevent this death?" "Why did God take my loved one?"
We feel horrible because we believe we might have been able to prevent what happened. Sometimes we feel that the person who died deserved to live more than we do. The feelings behind the loss are often complex, and we feel angry, hurt and cheated by the loss. In cases of sexual trauma, the victim often feels he/she did something to deserve what happened. Often we feel that somehow we did something that caused the bad thing to happen to us.
2. Guilt
Because of a lack of self esteem, we often feel guilty too. We feel guilty because we are still alive, or in the case of sexual trauma, we feel guilty because we didn't fight back, or we didn't fight hard enough. This is when "coulda, shoulda, woulda" sets in, and we believe that somehow we had control over the event or events that happened, and we could have just done better.
3. Living in the past
One of the most dangerous things a person with Post Traumatic Stress can do is to keep flashing back to the memories, to get stuck in those memories. Often that is what happens especially if we have multiple instances of the same trauma. Our expectation becomes that it will only happen again, and there's nothing we can do about it. Because of it, we get stuck, and we get stuck in a self fulfilling prophecy.
The key here with these three areas is to look at why we feel the way we do. What are the unresolved feelings behind these events? Often those feelings are rage, anger and resentment over what happened.
Reframing these events, especially if someone else was involved as a perpetrator, means accepting that we did nothing wrong. It means taking responsibility for our feelings and then looking at ways to heal those feelings and self esteem issues.
Although the memories will still be there, we have the power to remove the pain behind those memories. Living fully in the present rather than staying stuck in the past will help us too. Although this may seem impossible, it can be done if we want to live instead of just survive. The most important thing to remember is that we are not alone. Others can and will understand if we allow it.
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