PTSD Will Never Leave

The pain started to subdue over time. The therapy helped. But Linda believes PTSD will never leave her completely. “I still go through symptoms and have to push myself in a lot of ways. But I am resilient. I knew I didn’t want to live the rest of my life being numb and pretending, when inside I feel nothing.” 

Having seen the effects of war on soldier, Linda enrolled at the University of San Diego to become a specialized psychiatric nurse. She believes there will be an epidemic of PTSD in the coming years with so many soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Linda wants to help these thousands of returnees to heal. She now goes to conferences to talk about her experience with PTSD and volunteers at VA facilities to support veterans. She shows videos about her time in Iraq. She produced them with the help of her husband. In the process she has been able to share with him for the first time the sad sights of war.

Linda links PTSD with neurobiology. PTSD is not about whether a soldier is weak. Evidence shows that continued exposure to trauma changes brain functions. The brain goes into a “survival mode” to rescue the victim from trauma, she explains. “I can help all those other people, because I understand what they are feeling. Studying the neural biology of the brain helps me to understand it. Research says that your brain changes when exposed to trauma day after day. And that’s what my brain did. So I am hoping I can help at least one or two others.”

Linda fears for the future of returning young veterans. She does not want them to end up homeless and alcoholics like so many Vietnam veterans who suffered from PTSD. “A lot of people self-medicate. They drink and take drugs, because they want to forget. People with PTSD don’t want to die. They just want to stop what is in their mind. And they can’t get away, so they kill themselves, because it is so horrendous to relive things over and over again and thinking they didn’t do enough for their buddy.”

Linda has also become an advocate who wants the society to realize the magnitude of the veterans’ plight: PTSD, increased suicides and homelessness. “I want people to realize this thing is huge. I really don’t think the public is aware how much this is affecting all of us. It is not like Vietnam. In this war, some soldiers have been back three or four times. One of the veterans in my group killed himself two days ago, and you don’t know what it takes to get this country to understand what the military goes through,” she says.

Linda wants to see much more support from the government, VA and wider society. It is too easy to ignore the war at home where only the military families experience the human result of the conflict. There is a huge need for therapists and helpers to support the returning veterans, Linda says.

Linda believes she is on the good road to healing. She accepts though that some symptoms will always stay with her, such as hypervigilance, jumpiness and sleeplessness. She no longer counts anymore how many times she has woken up at night. She prefers to see whether she feels rested in the morning. Studying takes more time than before and she's unable to have music on when trying to focus. ” I don’t know if that will ever go away, and that is ok. I understand now how my brain physically changed. I wasn’t weak. I truly went and did what I was supposed to do. My brain did what it had to do in order for me to do that every night. But I am determined,” Linda says.