Thoughts, Feelings and Behavior
August 23rd, 2008 by Roman General
I would tell PTSD suffers to begin with these three things and keep them in mind if they want to make changes in their life. Thoughts, feelings and behavior. Today, the only thing you can change is your behavior, by changing your behavior over time you can change your thoughts and your feelings. The three basics incorporate values and emotion identification.
Further on the topic of the combat veteran’s value and principles, these systems have a connection to feelings and emotions or the lack thereof with one who dissociates as most PTSD sufferers do. Emotions and feelings are the arbiters of values, principles, and morality. Without emotive interaction the ethical dilemmas that keep most people in check, can get bypassed with a combat veteran’s lack of affect. The higher level processes of cognitive interaction delve into a consideration of choices and consequences, whereas the traumatized brain operates from the lower base of primitive survival systems and defensive mechanisms. A normal reaction with a non-traumatized brain would trigger an emotive response cascading into consideration of an appropriate response. Where the traumatized brain engages the primitive portion of the mind into a reflexive response forgoing the thought of repercussions.
Value identifications has importance to the combat veteran with PTSD, as their value system have been compromised by the acts of killing and war. The values and morality of war greatly conflict with society’s norms and principles. When the combat veteran brings this survival perspective home with them it alienates them from everyone who has not experienced combat, war and or trauma. Combat changes and alters the soldier’s sense of importance and trivializes niceties that lubricate society’s interactions and exchanges. Without identifying what values and what the veteran or soldier deems important they will continue to operate from the old combat values set and wonder why people do not understand them. While some will find them on the wrong side of the law.
Normal or average ways of dealing with stress before combat usually and generally was sufficient to interact in society and with family. Now that the veteran has an exaggerated anxiety and stress reflex they have become susceptible to stressors that before would not have set them off and the old coping skills less successful. Stress reduction is paramount to the combat veterans healing and moving beyond the fringes of insanity.
Without the combat veterans clarification of values and identification of emotions they do not take responsibility for either prior to consequences, leaving them baffled as to how they arrived in their current calamity. They cannot change the way they think or feel today, but by paying attention to their thoughts, feelings and emotions they can gage an appropriate reaction and behavior. By changing their actions today, they can change their thought and feelings over time.
Posted in PTSD Perspectives
Thank you, Roman General for citing remedies in dealing with PTSD. Thoughts. Feelings. Behavior. Emotion. Common everyday concepts with which most humans deal and that do not require concentrated adjustments, but to the combat veteran, each stressful situation must be met with careful control over thoughts, emotion and most important – behavior.
Only those who have experienced the hell and horror to the same degree that combat veterans have can comprehend what happens to the mind, heart, soul, and more seriously, physical reflex and reaction when confronted with stress-triggers.
Thank you, not just for caring – - but for supplying helpful specifics.
RG, that was a very thoughtful and informative post.
However, according to the book I read by Dr. Jonathan Shay (I referenced this in a previous commentary), there are three steps to conquering the demons of PTSD. First is sobriety. The veteran must be free from the clutches of alcohol and/or drugs in order for any kind of treatment to be effective. The second is reconnecting with your community. According to Shay's 20 years of experience in dealing with the most extreme cases of PTSD, veterans have a very difficult time trusting others because of the danger that is associated with that during war time. Finally, the veteran must create a personal narrative. He/she must connect his/her past with the present, and the future. This is the last, and most important step. While at war, the body adapts to survive (of course, I don't have to tell you this, but others might not appreciate the magnitude of the adaptations), creating the primitive/rational response problem that you referenced above. The soldier in a combat zone lives everyday in a high stakes atmosphere of life or death, so thoughts about the past and future are completely eliminated. Anyway, I could go on all day about this, but I think you, and others here, should definitely consider reading his book.
Shane
Thank you Shane for a well rounded outline of the combat veteran's dilemma with reintegration. It seems that you have a place in your heart for the returning combat veterans.
I have covered most of these issues you have brought up in my blog PTSD, A Soldier's Perspective, but as you have pointed out I have yet to write a inclusive article on the theme you have brought up.
Below you will find articles that reflect the issues you have brought up.
My original paper on the complexities the returning combat veteran faces, it touches on reintegration on a personal and community level:
PTSD, From A Combat Veteran's Perspective
Post on combat veteran's associations and attachments with the military community and how that supersedes the family and community connections:
Warrior Archetype
And finally, a post on how spirituality and sobriety are cornerstones to my recovery:
What I Did to Battle PTSD