Monday, October 29, 2018

Charles Griffin: Training to Come Home


Charles Griffin
ENG 102
Professor Michael Benton
Training to Come Home
War is something the military is very good at because we as human beings have been in different variations of war since the beginning of time. Since then we have gone from using stones and sinew from animals to developing, creating and innovating the most sophisticated weapon systems imaginable and to enable soldiers to use them. We are good at making war and we are good at making soldiers fight these wars, yet when we consider the experience of the modern day combat veteran we start to see that we have not been as good at preparing them to come home. Why is that? Well, the generations before ours lived immersed in conflict and they fought right where they lived. So, until only recently during America’s revolutionary history, there was hardly a need to learn how to come home from war because we had never needed to before. That’s not really the case anymore. Since the revolutionary war from 1861-1865 we haven’t fought on American soil unless you consider the attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941 a war or conflict fought on U.S. soil. America’s unpreparedness to return soldiers home from conflict without proper reintegration and training is resulting in many soldiers with PTSD suffering from the effects of untreated mental illness. It is imperative that the American government provide soldiers with proper reintegration tools after they return home from war, because the government has a responsibility to give soldiers the best chance of a normal life after conflict. 

The military is great at training soldiers to harness rage. A rage that most people don’t realize they have, in combat that rage kept me alive as a soldier in the military, at home that rage almost killed me. Before 2009, I had never been west of Kentucky but often wondered about life outside a small town. I really wanted to be a part of something I wanted to show my worth. January 2009, I enlisted into the army with hopes of going to war and fulfilling my childhood fantasies of participating in combat and having that bond of brotherhood. From day one in basic training, we were broken down mentally through “smoke sessions”: multiple exercises lasting past muscle fatigue of one soldier or group of soldiers, and reminded at all times we knew nothing, we were nothing, and all life experience up to the point of joining the military was irrelevant. This was the process of building soldiers, by hardening both the mind and body until feelings was something unnoticed, we continued this process until we became desensitized. The military fosters a sense of brotherhood, but also benefits from enforcing the idea that killing the enemy is of upmost importance. We were taught many call and responses that were directly linked with violence, where most people would answer a question with yes or no, we used phrases like “kill” which means yes with a high level of enthusiasm. When the drill sergeants ask if we were motivated the direct answer given back with no hesitation was always “Motivated. Motivated. Hell yeah, motivated! Ooh, ahh, I want to kill somebody! Ooh, ahh I want to kill somebody! Ahhhhh!” If the drill sergeant didn’t  like it we yelled it again. Another one belted out daily on multiple occasions was: “What makes the grass grow green? Blood blood bright red blood ahhhhhh!” As we made our way through the chow line we were asked: “What are the two types of people in this world?” We replied with, “the quick and the dead!” Which one are you? “The quick!” Who are they? “The dead!” The military uses hundreds of these call and response chants, with the purpose of creating and channeling hype and aggression. Enemy personnel are targets or silhouettes, these are also terms we become very familiar with, soldiers never use terms like “person,” “man,” “woman,” or “child” because those terms have emotion attached to them, which could cause hesitation or confusion with a decision to take a life. Any training covering the concepts of coming home and dealing with direct death would have been valuable and useful because we were heading to war.

It wasn’t until I was deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom that I came to realize that war, true war is not at all a childhood fantasy or anything close to it. One of the most traumatic things a soldier can experience is Harm to others, even the enemy. In a survey taken after the first Gulf War by David Marlowe, an anthropologist, combat veterans reported that killing an enemy soldier, or being a witness to one being killed, was worse than being wounded themselves, but the worst thing of all was losing a buddy (Junger 82). It only took one day to transform me from a normal functioning young man into a mere shadow of the boy who left home seeking out an adventure and some form of belonging, after my best friend died as a result from an IED (improvised explosive device). After returning home from Afghanistan in 2013, I self-medicated with alcohol, went through a divorce, and literally lost everything I owned besides my military clothes/gear and a military duffle bag of civilian clothing, along with a few personal belongings. Nightmares and flashbacks of the firefights, explosions and cries of my friends consumed me and I sank into severe depression, feeling like I was the only one going through this. It wasn’t until reaching the point of attempting suicide and luckily failing that I decided to approach my chain of command and ask for help. One of my closest friends only a week later hanged himself. He didn’t get the help he needed in time. This was a real wakeup call to me that I wasn’t alone.

One issue that the VA and military has with helping veterans and soldiers is that there isn’t enough doctors for the amount of veterans and soldiers seeking help (Oppel Jr. and Goodnough). “Suicide is often seen as an extreme expression of PTSD, but researchers have not yet found any relationship between suicide and combat.” (Junger 83). With that being said for an average of twenty veterans a day committing suicide, waiting is not an option (Shane III and Kime). Veterans seeking treatment will more than likely receive two forms of therapy. The first is cognitive behavioral therapy and the second is prolonged exposure therapy. After doing both of these I must admit that the difference these treatments made was significant. Little did I know in January 2017, I would be medically retired/discharged from the army for multiple injuries to my back, shoulder, severe anxiety and depression, and PTSD.
PTSD is extremely common among service members who have seen combat. The VA defines PTSD as ‘the development of characteristic and persistent symptoms along with difficulty functioning after exposure to a life-threatening experience or to an event that either involves a threat to life or serious injury.’ In addition to military combat, PTSD can result from the experience or witnessing of a terrorist attack, violent crime and abuse, natural disasters, serious accidents, or violent personal assaults. (Reisman).
According to Matthew J. Friedman, MD, PhD, Senior Advisor and former Executive Director, National Center for PTSD, Links between the trauma of war and post-military civilian life were established around 1980. Until recent years, the science of PTSD just wasn’t there. Friedman goes on to say that in the fiscal year of 2013 more than 500,000 soldiers were treated for PTSD and were receiving treatment at VA facilities across America. Prior to this society didn’t know what to do for veterans suffering from PTSD. Some would be heavily medicated and some just told to go home and forget about their experiences. More recently methods like therapy dogs, and wilderness retreats have been used to treat PTSD. I have participated in many of these treatment facilities and activities including white water rafting, rock climbing with Wounded Warrior, sky diving, and deep sea fishing to name a few. The problem with these sorts of treatments are that they may temporarily relive stress, but don’t target the actual PTSD along with its symptoms. Things have changed though and through new scientific studies it is shown that soldiers with PTSD can manage those symptoms through repetitive training. It is shown that the best treatments for PTSD actually use the same training principals that the military uses to train its soldiers for war (Garcia et al.).  

When the United States decides to go to war with another country we now have the technology to tailor the training that soldiers undergo according to the enemy and terrain that they will be fighting in, and then drop them in to fight anywhere on the globe. When they’re done we simply jet them back to normal every day civilian life. Just imagine for a moment what this must feel like. One day I’m in a five hour firefight in Afghanistan and only seven days later I’m in a hospital meeting my son for the first time carrying diapers, baby wipes, and formula instead of a rifle, C4, and an MRE (meal ready to eat). There’s a term veterans use for things that cannot be explained with words but only the experience itself can explain, and that’s “mindfuck.” While we spend countless hours training for war we have only recently come to understand that soldiers also require training on how to return to civilian life.

In the army, we don’t simply hand a soldier a Browning .50 cal, show them the trigger, hand them some ammo, and expect that all will turn out well. No. The military meticulously trains soldiers until proficiency is achieved. This training occurs over and over and over again until lifting a weapon and engaging a target is so ingrained into muscle memory that it is performed without even thinking, even under stressful scenarios and conditions. This same concept of training is also true with PTSD according to Hector Garcia a clinical psychologist specializing in PTSD. The first of these treatments is cognitive behavioral therapy Which is kind of a mental recalibration. Garcia explains, “When veterans come home from war their way of mentally framing the world is calibrated to an immensely more dangerous environment. So when you try to overlay that mind frame onto a peacetime environment, you get problems,” (Garcia). Soldiers returning home with PTSD seem to go through a very common trend, drowning in worries and dangers that don’t actually exist, loosing trust in those closest to them including family members. This is not to say there aren’t dangers in the land of the free and home of the brave, because there most certainly are, but the chances of encountering them compared to that of, let’s say, Afghanistan are astronomically lower.

As Garcia mentions prolonged exposure therapy is the fastest of the evidence based, effective treatments for reintegrating. Prolonged exposure treatment was the treatment that I chose. The treatment began with exercises which were more like challenges. To many, these challenges would be simple everyday common errands but for me I found them to almost unbearable. For example, going to a grocery store, shopping mall, or going to a restaurant and setting with my back to the door. Staying in these environments not allowing myself to leave when the overwhelming feeling of anxiety and not having full control was extremely difficult. At first I was very anxious, I wanted to sit where I could scan the entire room and have more than one exit readily available. I wanted to leave but I didn’t. I remembered my training and I kept moving through my discomfort and every time I did the anxiety and panic came down a little and then a little more and a little more until eventually I had effectively relearned how to sit in a public space and just enjoy myself. I also watched videos from my deployment experiences over and over and over again I listened and watched until those memories no longer generated panic, anxiety, and discomfort. As awkward as it is to say, part of the trauma of war seems to be giving war up itself. Watching these videos and training my mind repeatedly was very similar to the training I received in basic training to enable me to kill without a second thought. I processed my memories so much that thinking of those experiences became a deep breath of air and reassuring myself that everything was fine. This is very different than erasing a memory, I will always remember the traumatic experiences that I have been subjected to, but with enough practice those memories are no longer as raw or painful as they once were.

One of the problems is that soldiers are taught that everything can kill them, then deploy and find that to be true. This creates a mindset that isn’t easily changed once returning back to the United States and civilian life. The way I have heard many veterans describe this, is like a switch that the military expects us to be able to turn on when deployed and turn off when returning home. The heightened sense of awareness and caution which lead soldiers to question every person, vehicle, piece of trash on the side of the road and so on doesn’t turn off when coming home leading many soldiers into a difficult daily life where normal functionality and interactions with every day citizens doesn’t take place because of fear. Sebastian Junger, war journalist and author of War and co-director of the film Restrepo talks about the struggles of soldiers returning home. Junger says that even as complicated as life may seem and look from the outside looking in, life is simple in war; there’s the enemy and then there’s your friends. Junger goes on to say that at OP (out post) Restrepo from the documentary Restrepo in Afghanistan where he was embedded with a group of soldiers, they knew who was on their side and they knew who the enemy was, and knew who loved them and they knew who didn’t (Restrepo). I found this to be spot on from my experience in Afghanistan as well. Often soldiers don’t trust civilians for help, but what we must recognize is that we aren’t looking for training to close within and destroy the enemy any longer. What veterans who suffer from PTSD need to seek out now is training on how to come home. The military should take the time when soldiers return home from overseas to place them in treatment that is mandatory. Expecting soldiers with mental or behavioral health issues to step forward on their own is unrealistic. Especially when there are often consequences for their career progression in the military. There needs to be better policy in the military and more actual acceptance for its existence. The training and therapy of returning home should be just as much involved and planned if not more than that of the training in preparation to deploy. Coming home is often more difficult than going to war. If we as a country want to set soldiers up for success, we need to not only train them to fight but also train them to come home.

Works Cited


Garcia, A Hector., McGeary, A Cindy., Finley, P Erin., Ketchum, S Norma., McGeary, D Donald., Petterson, L Alan. “Evidence-Based Treatments for PTSD and VHA Provider Burnout: The Impact of Cognitive Processing and Prolonged Exposure Therapies.” November 3, 2014. Web. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273895929_Evidence-based_treatments_for_PTSD_and_VHA_provider_burnout_The_impact_of_cognitive_processing_and_prolonged_exposure_therapies

Garcia, A Hector. “We Train Soldiers for War. Let’s Train Them to Come Home, Too” Ted Talks. (December 6, 2016). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnC_UBmeRxw

Junger, Sabastian. Tribe, Twelve, May 2016.

Oppel Jr. A Richard and Goodnough, Abby. “Doctor Shortage Is Cited in Delays at V.A. Hospitals.” NY Times. May 29, 2014. Web. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/30/us/doctor-shortages-cited-in-va-hospital-waits.html

Reisman, Miriam. “PTSD Treatment for Veterans: What’s Working, What’s New, and What’s Next.” Pharmacy and Therapeutics. October 2016. Web. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5047000/

Restrepo (USA: Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington, 2010)

Shane III, Leo and Kime, Patricia. “New VA Study Finds 20 Veterans Commit Suicide Each Day.” Military Times. July 7, 2016. Web. https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2016/07/07/new-va-study-finds-20-veterans-commit-suicide-each-day/


  



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