The Cure for Combat PTSD is Prevention and Empathy
Post Traumatic Stress disorder is considered a mental disorder that affects people who have experienced something painful or unbearable. These experiences can involve witnessing or causing death and destruction.
For example, if a man signs up for military service and is spirited away to strange lands to kill strange people—he becomes a likely candidate for PTSD. It is difficult for anyone to don battledress, blow up unfamiliar people in their homeland and maintain composure and sanity. Thus, it is no surprise that soldiers are one of the populations to acquire PTSD.
PTSD symptoms include intrusive thoughts, feelings, and sensations that are characterized by immeasurable and intense terror. These are alleged symptoms attributed to PTSD:
- Recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive memories.
- Traumatic nightmares.
- Dissociative reactions (e.g., flashbacks) which may occur on a continuum from brief episodes to complete loss of consciousness. Note: Children may reenact the event in play.
- Intense or prolonged distress after exposure to traumatic reminders.
- Marked physiologic reactivity after exposure to trauma-related stimuli.
Luckily, there is a "cure" for PTSD in soldiers—the main cure is prevention and empathy.
How Everyone Can Help Prevent PTSD
Everyone must stop persuading innocent young men to sign up for war. They must condemn the practice of military acculturation and stop worshiping slaughter lest more young people blithely undo their humanity. After seeing and enduring evil things, it is no wonder flashbacks, anxiety, fear, depression, and sickness paralyze the soldier.
So as long as people continually condone violence, their reward will be more broken heroes with broken spirits; it will be haunted and scarred warriors; warriors with shattered minds and hollow feelings. Their reward will come in the form of ghost towns filled with ghouls and guilt. Their payback will be the diminishing returns of shallow victories and maggot-torn corpses. The champions of war will wallow in this self-created hell until they sate their vicarious thirst for bloodshed, which can only happen when they discard their love for militaristic death cults.
PTSD, then, stops when war stops. Currently, people believe war is for self-defense. But it is not. War is the result of social engineering, political machinations, and chessboard games played by men with poisonous hearts. Instead of pushing for war and defending these psychopathic warmongers, people should empathize with the would be soldier. This will allow them to stop instigating the PTSD epidemic.
Discovering Empathy for People Thinking about Becoming a Soldier
True empathy requires understanding what soldiers might go through prior to enlisting (and after enlisting).
Discovering this empathy depends on the seeing humans as an end in themselves and not the means to an end. No one wants to see soldiers languish away as a result of their actions or their enemy's actions.
If people genuinely hate seeing soldiers suffer they should stop imagining that his service is necessary. This is the only way to completely love and connect with young men who want to soldier. If someone internalizes that they are celebrating the idea that young men should kill and die, they may wake up and know that they were making a mistake, and were not understanding the concept of their own selfish and sadistic desires. This is the most powerful form of empathy, and also a workable method for dissuading young men from joining the war squadrons.
It is how everyone can work together to become more humane. That is what everyone should vie for, and what a more peaceful and tranquil individual looks like.
Warfare is the firmament of emotional turmoil, and keeping our young men at home is tantamount to ending combat and combat-related PTSD. And everyone must embrace this change in order to finally stamp out the night terrors, recurring dreams, and murder memories.
It is the path to peace and love.
“Alone with thoughts of what should have long been forgotten, I let myself be carried away into the silent screams of delirium.” ― Amanda SteeleThe Cliff
My name is Sterlin. Follow me @ Psychologic-Anarchist. I also run the Psychologic-Anarchist Facebook page and produce many YouTube videos. My interests lie in the intersection of counseling psychology and anarchism. I write about the depredations of psychiatry, and also the new philosophy of compassionate anarchism. We have a large community devoted to discussing psychology and relational voluntaryism.
I went awol. And got out before I made it to deep. It's possible and people were willing to help.
Once your are in a mental blender that can't seem to be stopped, how do you do to come out of it... if there is no seemingly possible solutions but darkness and despair. The best direction I found for myself, if you are willing to explore the dark ally of your mind with last resort perspective... some chemical compound may be of help if you so choose. Research deeper about MDMA and some psycadelics, particularly Ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is the one that helped me... not from a religiouse perspective, but from a lets address trauma, from within.
Be safe. Research much. Live long.
so much agree with this!
It would be wishful thinking for us to have our men not enlist on their own free will. All it would cause is major drafting again. I find it interesting that only men were mentioned. What about the women whom are in the military? They too, would be going through it. Did you know that starting next year that girls will be required to register just like boys, as soon as they turn 18? For the boys, it will not matter anymore if they are the only male in the family, they too have to register. Until the Gov stops getting involved with fights in other countries, we will always be at war, and many men AND women will suffer. But, maybe there is hope somewhere out there.
I only mention men, because men make up the vast majority of people in the military. However, this is not to discount the women who serve. As for the draft, that is something that we will have to stand up against as it totally destroys individual rights.
I am anti-violence and pro-empathy. I appreciate the tenets of this post.
Thank you. Yes!
How do you feel about all the teens claiming to have ptsd from not getting the outfit they wanted or the new iphone?
People like these should be treated naturally, let them engage in good communication activities because it will make up his mind. Also, they should be encourage to go out and mingle with people instead of hiding at the back of the curtain.
In short, engagement is the best resort to anybody who are experiencing this kind of disorder.
Another great piece, Sterlin. It takes a lot of bravery to shun militaristic patriotism
https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@mattclarke/my-overdue-introduction-personal-declaration-and-a-new-tag-whitefeather
Thanks so much, friend.
While a agree That the best cure is prevention. The current generation of soldiers ( and their families) will live with this burden for the rest of their lives.
Yes. That is certainly an issue, and it is also worth discussion. For the record, I am not discounting that they have to deal with it. I think there are methods to help assuage their anguish. It's a difficult situation, though.
....
At first I thought you were going to bring some valuable insights to the table.
Then I realized it was just a subtle appeal to the utopia where there isn't bloodshed and warfare across the globe.
I'll wake you up if we ever get there.
I too am a bit disappointed with this kind of prevention is a cure b.s.. Prevention is better than cure.
I never appealed to Utopia. Part of the purpose of this piece was to target people who support warfare and the killing of people overseas. In this sense, if we are to start combating combat PTSD, we must go to the source. That is warfare. And obviously, the world will never be perfect or devoid of total bloodshed, but we can certainly start addressing the meat of these issues.