When the Hero takes a fall: an intersubjective approach to healing veterans
- Posted by Editor JPR
- Posted in Editorials & Commentary, Psychotherapy, Trauma
Journal of Psychiatry Reform vol. 11 #11, October 1, 2024
Author Information
Katrina Wood Ph.D
While post-traumatic stress disorder is experienced by many during a lifetime, a diagnosis of PTSD resulting from trauma experienced in war has a particular type of impact on Veterans often in profound, hidden and shattering ways.
Veterans who serve, are regarded as the ‘heroes and heroines ‘of their communities. The archetypal pillars of their country, their world.
Invincible protectors of all. It is an order of the tallest, broadest and highest expectations. Yet one which in many ways is certain to fail psychologically and emotionally. The duty to serve and protect is exercised with formidable honorable commitment, loyalty, duty and excellence. Such demands require considerable awareness, responsibility to exercise caution, and consideration for the inevitable backlash that will befall our wounded warriors.
A hero’s welcome and a return to home, implicitly suggests a state of invulnerability. Flags waving, congratulations, idealism and reinforcement of strength and honor. Often burdened by such collective requirements from the community. Authentic feelings of being shattered, feelings of pain, loss, aloneness or anger are required to be sequestered for the greater good. Representing requirements to be “strong, proud veterans often return home as ‘outsiders’, never really belonging. Their Odyssean journeys have taken them to places unseen by most with experiences that could not be endured my many. The life of the Veteran discrete, profound, special, dangerous, isolated. Seeking help for emotional and psychological distress unacceptable until recent years.
NO LONGER ONE OF THE NORMALS
Veterans returning to ‘home soil’ expecting, hoping, wanting to be part of the ‘normals’ often experience crushing blows. Re-integration is hard. Such expectations often proving impossible for Veterans who entered foreign worlds and have returned as aliens to their home societies.
HEALING POWER OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE DARKNESS
A darkness trails the world of a Veteran. A darkness which only those who have recognized they have experienced trauma may understand.
To have peered behind the curtain of such a life requires honesty and willingness and a requirement to have peered behind the curtain of one’s own trauma states in life to truly be part of a relational conversation. The capacity to be able to lean into such traumas without hiding behind a shield of objectification, to be able to bear and be present are aspects essential to authentic relating and potential for healing .
‘YOU CANNOT RETURN HOME’
Returning ‘home’ for veterans is not an easy re-entry. As if returning from space, gravity pulls its veteran capsules back fast and hard to earth. Shock and disorientation occur , often difficult and fearful to express. Society requires a heroes return to preserve an illusion of normalcy for their citizens. Platitudes of ‘thank you for your service ‘are expressed then moved quickly along.
Veterans not only require time but also a profound awareness that they have experienced the unthinkable, the unimaginable and that their lives will never again be that of the ‘normal’, nor should they be or expected to be. This would be a massive breach of attunement. However, integrating to ‘normal’ in certain ways is important to bridge the divide that is so often experienced.
A therapist would be well advised to view working with Veterans through the lens of being one of the ‘brothers and sisters in the darkness’. Such a shared authentic journey contributes to important shame reduction. Many who are traumatized now impose harsh self-judgment.
Such a term is in no way pejorative rather this awareness accurately provides insight into how traumatized individuals live their lives in shadows, hiding normal, understandable feelings, emotions and thoughts deemed unacceptable by those who require ‘normalcy’. Veterans often fear that there is something wrong with them for no longer being one of the “normal ones”. A painful organizing belief that somehow, they are unrelatable.
SHAME – SHARING AND BEARING
Such self-imposed harsh isolation often fuels crippling shame states making suicidal ideation a real risk. Understanding how the impact of trauma brings a sad and painful loss of ‘innocence ‘requires a deep and fierce candid exploration of the impact of a person’s own experiences with trauma.
A journey of healing requires a place to grieve where shame of loss of innocence, and a hero’s vulnerability may be understood. Such grief brings understandable sorrow as self-imposed harshness. But shame can loosen its ruthless grip through sustained empathic inquiry lessening feelings of alienation and providing meaning and making sense Of the hero’s experiences.
War transforms a human, bringing with it a sense of disconnection and alienation. Those who have not experienced such traumas are not able to relate, but rather label ‘you have changed’ or ‘you’re not the same anymore’ magnifying shame for veterans who carry a belief that something is wrong with them. Such damaging beliefs are deeply misattuned to the impact of feelings of disorientation and disconnectedness that arise after exposure to unnatural horrors of inhuman engagement.
Deeper understanding of the impact of war is required not only by those who have experienced trauma but by educating those who have not. Averting mischaracterization of what change really represents will bring deeper comprehension with respect to the impact of war hopefully leading to greater empathic relating.
TRAUMA TOUCHES ALL HUMAN EXISTENCE.
Behind every closed door of a child who lives or lived with a person with substance abuse , or who has suffered sexual physical or verbal abuse or was exposed to pervasive emotional or psychological neglect, a type of war zone exists or existed.
Candid confrontation of the impact of traumas in the therapist’s own life, bodes well for the development the capacity to join with a veteran’s experience. By committing to comprehending their own world-shattering experiences, whatever they may be, brings a deeper potential for connectedness and collaborative healing when working with veterans.
The observer is also the observed, authenticity is key. wounded healers now bring their own wounded capacities to collaborate with wounded warriors They possess a deeper awareness of what it feels like to have lived a life with horror, pain, loss and fear marked by feelings of , inadequacy, and a loss of innocence,. Insight into such authenticity suggests a greater chance of improvement in treatment. When open honesty exists in the therapeutic setting both Veteran and therapist will be transformed by the experience.
While the observer is also the observed it is expected that such ‘darkness’, is a space where both therapist and Veteran now reside with the knowledge that a shared vulnerability is part of a different ‘normal’ human existence.
ALIEN WORLDS
An additional awareness is that trauma requires acknowledgment that lives are permanently altered and that feelings of alienation, disorientation, and a sense of no longer belonging are very real. Veterans are forever changed. They cannot go back. Naively suggesting this as an optimal goal would be harmful and understandably would fuel unbearable feelings of shame and guilt and further disconnectedness.
Veterans carry unacknowledged shame forged by self and societal expectations that vulnerability and grief should not exist.
Expectations may have been embedded by parents or caregivers in early childhood, where cumulative trauma developed in hiding. A place where conditions may have been rife with various forms of abuse and neglect and requirements to be invulnerable pre- existed. Sentiments pre-reflectively repeated in military life.
GUILT
Deep guilt and shame also arise for many combat veterans who hold convictions that all must be saved. If one brother or sister falls on the battlefield, they are to blame, they have accountability. A pervasive sense of inadequacy lingers like a sore which will not heal. One which does not scar over. In many cases shame remains and represents this perceived sense of failure. Understanding of tenaciously held beliefs requires sustained empathic inquiry. Platitudes of reassurance will not dissuade.
Understanding of tenaciously held beliefs requires time from one who has also acknowledged the impact of trauma in their own life and does not shy away from its impact.. Organizing principles maintaining that heroes are invincible, and brothers and sisters who die are not options. These are firmly held convictions. Surviving and witnessing horrific injuries, lead to the brutal persistence of guilt and self-recriminating, harsh thoughts
Shame and guilt become forged by constrictive absolutisms, principles beliefs that heroes should be invulnerable. That heroes should not feel shattered and should not need emotional and psychological support.
Such harsh, harmful and painful beliefs do grave injustices to veterans who deeply require a particular type of insightful, empathic, deep understanding of what they have endured in psychological and emotional isolation.
PSYCHOEDUCATION
Aspects of psychoeducation is helpful regarding ‘trauma’ and how shame becomes embedded if its impact is not fully understood. Isolationism and its accompanied judgment of shame are essential to dispel. By leaning into the therapists’ own experiences, a veteran will be illuminated by such insights bringing relief that the therapist ‘gets it’. “Getting it” is key, for it means the veteran is no longer alone with negative isolating self-recrimination so that the shackles of shame can slowly begin to lift. When shame is reduced feelings of loss and grief may emerge, feelings shared by all humans. Now the journey of re- integration can develop.
VULNERABILITY BRINGS FREEDOM
Such collaborative work is a challenge requiring deep understanding of complex aspects of trauma. Veterans often experience being viewed through a lens of unacceptability as if trauma has exiled them from the rest of the world. Such lack of understanding of the complexity of the impact of ‘trauma on the human psyche is often the result of denying the impact of personal traumas and can fuel further isolation.
Those who confront and understand the abiding, shattering impact of their personal trauma stories, may provide a more effective transformational experience when an authentic relational home is provided.
As a deeper understanding evolves together ‘aliens’ in the darkness undertake a shared journey, a place of healing, a powerful opportunity to develop. A place where shame is reduced over time, where vulnerability is embraced and a veteran’s version of ‘normal’ can exist with an expansive understanding, bringing new meaning to the word freedom.
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