Therapy: Doesn't always work

This is a subject that to this day remains in limbo. There are more than 600,000 veterans with PTSD, you are not alone in this fight.

600,000 is a big number. It is a big enough population of people for me to safely say this: Therapy does not work on all of them. Myself included, for me the only this scarier than having PTSD, is talking about it. 

Since I got back, everyone always says, "You should get some help", or "You should see someone about that", and inside I am screaming like a small frightened child. My inability to talk about PTSD is so great, I can't even read my blog posts out loud. What people don't realize is PTSD is manifested and made real when you talk about it. Some, yes some, people can go to therapy and support groups and find all the help they need. But those of us that can't talk about, we need a way of connecting with others to know that we aren't alone, that we are just one more person dealing with things that make us human. 

This blog is my way of doing that. My friends who served with me, read this blog, and we talk about it. They are all the same, we are all the same. Lost, confused, feeling like monsters where a man once stood. We all feel like the world moved on without us like we were a cog that slipped out of place, and the world just ticked on by. 

Therapy does not help all of us, it helps some, but others are left to  fend for themselves in a world we no longer fit in, in a world we no long feel part of. For those of us that feel like this, therapy is a 6 letter word for hell on earth. Just the IDEA alone, of walking into a support group, with men and women with missing arms and legs, you know the real super soldiers who gave more than anyone alive. And sitting there talking to them. that frightens me to the core. Not because I feel I will be judged, they did way more than I ever have, but because I will be trapped in a room, forced to relive all those things I fight on a daily basis, in an unknown location, with people I don't know and don't trust. 

At least when I am home, I am in a safe place, a place I made safe. Full of people I could and can trust, to a degree. 

My words can be a poison on my mind, but when written down they become like an I.V. bag slowly dripping the cure into my lifeless heart reactivating the person I hope I am. Someday when I reach the end of this journey I hope to find out who I am really am, when I am not fighting this demon 24/7.


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