Why do we try not to cry? Especially as a therapist we try not to get overly emotionally involved with our clients’ traumas. It looks and seems unprofessional. We should be trained, educated observers not participants. After all, if we delved into each client’s life, joined them in their emotions, feeling what they feel but not knowing really why but just feeling, we’d have no defense against it all piling up on us, burying us in our own as well as their despair. But I find myself welling up in tears routinely while counseling my veterans and active duty military members. I refuse to apologize or hide my tears. They are real and heartfelt and I’m not ashamed to feel what I feel when I hear a soldier reveal his or her pain at dealing with the mind-bending, heart-rending experiences of combat. After years of training to do what a soldier must do, then when required to do it, a soldier realizes that he has never killed anyone before. He has forgotten that his sergeant told him that it might be hard the first time. But he must not hesitate. Hesitating could get everyone killed. He tells me of his fear hidden behind his duty. He tells me of his trained instant reaction to pull the trigger as many times as it takes to stop the aggressor, no matter how small or vulnerable they look – no matter how unthinkable that this approaching young person could be so devoted to kill before he is killed himself. No matter how strange and unconscionable – how automatic and robotic that advancing body seems – hesitating to react is likewise unthinkable. Hesitating might kill everyone, not just the automaton facing him who begins to whisper, not a customary shout, but an almost inaudible utterance of a familiar Islamic litany. He does not hesitate. Suddenly the soldier finds himself pinned down, having to hunker down with his enemy’s limp bullet-ridden body there facing him. He did his job. He did not hesitate. This soldier tells me he is flooded with feelings of exhilaration and conquest then enveloped immediately afterwards questioning what he knows he must fully and completely suppress or go crazy. I reach down deeply into my soul to offer my patient my willingness to hold his pain and grief as he whispers over and over again to someone who is always with him, “I’m sorry, Mom, I’m so sorry.” His face betrays the deep moral damage he has endured. He continues to whisper only loud enough for me to barely hear, ‘You did not raise me to do this. I am not this person, really, Mom. I’m so sorry, please forgive me, Mom. I would have died not to feel this pain in taking out the person sent to kill me. I’m so, so sorry, Mom”. And as this soldier buries his head in his hands, he whispers in a slow guttural realization, “Mom, I know now…I know why I feel this pain…I know now that ‘He is me’.” So, I’ll cry if I want to…
WE ALL MUST HELP – DO WHAT YOU CAN
Journalist and military advocate, Lily Casura, went to bat for a young soldier who had lost all hope for help towards a livable life. She showed her dedication to the healing of our military suffering from the invisible and very visible wounds of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. We will see more and more of “our” veterans who, like the young veteran Lily assisted, are far removed from DoD and VA service centers. I know I have seen military members who have had their trusted clinicians changed without their knowledge, their benefits altered without warning and no immediate provisions made for a warm handoff to another qualified clinician. It takes time to build trust and a therapeutic alliance. When a military service member feels like that trust is not honored, they do like many of us; they simply stop in their tracks. It is individuals like Lily who say, “No, this is not right. This will not do.” And they make sure that others outside the VA and DoD who can help, do just that. There are so many who need help, the VA simply cannot be everywhere. That means each and every one of us must take up the slack and make sure our troops and veterans get the care they need. Sometimes that means listening and asking questions, doing some research and asking more questions. Just don’t give up – on the process or on the service member. If you need to get more resources, the American Legion is a terrific source. Lily’s website, http://www.healingcombattrauma.com, has a plethora of blogs, books and resources. Go there and be informed. It takes all of us to heal this village of America. If you want to know how to form a suicide prevention peer support for anyone you are worried about, go to https://www.jsp3.org. Or you can read more about it in “Just Because You’re Suicidal Doesn’t Mean You’re Crazy”. If you need help, do what Lily did, step in and do it. This is going to take all of us getting involved. And thanks to all who do what they can.