--(PTSD is not about
fear it is about stress…traumatic
stress, even for that Marine clerk at a forward operating base
who wondered whether the next incoming (mortar or rocket) was going
to turn her into a sack of jelly or a vapor cloud; that’s
job related stress—not at all like stressing out over being
late for a nail appointment.) (1)
--… The tragedy here is that
a person perfectly adapted
to the harshest situations that mankind can encounter are labeled “mentally
disturbed.” Clinically they are suffering from a stress-related
disorder. Equally ironic is that they would not have survived without
it; yet they can’t survive with it, at home in our society.
--I
have to mention here that both soldiers and worst-case abandoned
children both acquire an emotionless state. Abandoned children
acquire symptoms similar to PTSD because abandonment is traumatically
stressful for children. There is no “rage” in
the total animal state of mind. There is no fear. Rage and other
symptoms do not surface until after they return home. These symptoms
surface as they try to readapt to the world. Sometimes they will
not surface until after another traumatic event occurs such as
loss of employment, divorce, or death in the family. In other words,
PTSD may remain undetected for years.
---Must we not expect
when deprived of the social enrichments that set in motion our
domestic social evolution, we regress in self-defense to our
primal animal instincts—when cast into hell on earth? Then,
must we not expect, when returning from the nightmare in which
we were cast, to be welcomed back with as much enthusiasm as
was given in our departure? Don't we deserve help, if by no fault
of our own or if by duty we went and served, to overcome the
demons encountered therein? (1)
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