"Healthy Grieving" Helps Combat Veterans

For soldiers coming home from combat, things will never be the same. “…Life itself permanently changes in the eyes of someone who is called to participate in war… and a once safe world becomes transformed into a threatening expedition,” authors Bridget C. Cantrell and Chuck Dean wrote in their 2007 book, Once a Warrior: Wired for Life.

Though the significant and often devastating effects of combat have been studied for more than a century, the medical and psychological communities are still learning about how complex and intricate the human mind responds in these environments.  Today, more humanistic treatments are being proposed, applied, and providing some greater relief from combat related stress and injuries.

Even those who have been groomed through many years of rigorous and exhaustive training are likely to experience traumatic experiences.  They will deploy, experience the myriad challenges of separation and the stresses of combat, and return with significant changes in not only how they view the world, but also how they view themselves.

I experienced this firsthand in 1971 when my father, a U.S. Navy officer and graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, returned home from yet another year long deployment off the coast of Vietnam. He almost never spoke to us about what he’d seen or done during combat operations, but I vividly remember that on this cruise, the violent percussion of his ship’s guns during shelling inland targets had broken his eardrums. Even today, I recall my father as tall and strong, but after this 1971 deployment, he became short-tempered and uncharacteristically quiet.

As far as I know, he was never diagnosed with any sort of combat-related disorder, but he was a different man than the one who’d laughed as he wrestled with me in the front yard only a few years earlier.  I knew that something had changed, something had moved in his heart.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, specific combat-related illnesses, like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), were just beginning to be identified and clinically diagnosed. The phrase shell shock was still used to describe soldiers, like my father—a phrase coined during WWI to describe the psychological stress and trauma that soldiers in the fields of France experienced under the fire of the most powerful explosive ballistic shells the world had ever known.

These soldiers often showed no outward, physical signs of combat, but displayed several common and disturbing behaviors, all of which have recently been categorized by the National Institute of Mental Health as recognized, treatable illnesses.  These symptoms fall into three main categories: 

• Re-experiencing the traumatic event
• Avoiding reminders of the trauma
• Increased anxiety and emotional arousal

As a senior officer, my father was also hampered by a very strong sense of loyalty, honor, and even some self-conscious doubt. Such feelings of duty and shame remain impediments to successfully addressing combat stress in veterans even today and the psychological community continues to struggle to transform the view of the quintessentially stoic soldier or sailor who takes his or her lumps and carries on without hesitation.

At the recent International Military and Civilian Combat Stress Conference in Pasadena, California, Cantrell said that successfully helping veterans deal with their combat stress symptoms requires a reversal in the traditional “stiff upper lip” philosophy that was ingrained in earlier generations of service members, like my father.

In order to allow victims of combat stress to come to grips with the trauma they’ve suffered and inflicted on enemy troops as well as give them a chance to return to a life of relative normalcy, Dr. Cantrell said soldiers and veterans need to address what she calls “healthy grieving.”  She suggests that veterans attempt the following:

1. Allow the feelings to come
2. Face up to what happened
3. Feel the pain by talking or writing about it
4. Accept the loss of comrades
5. Allow yourself to move forward
6. Give yourself permission to be happy
7. Forgive yourself and ask for forgiveness in turn
8. Accept the things you can’t change or prevent

Cantrell's processes aim to resolve the complexities of combat stresses.  As leaders in service to our country, soldiers merit access to some of the newer, more holistic treatment programs available today—yoga, meditation, mutual support groups, computer based immersion simulations, mentoring programs, and programmed dream intervention.

As noted in my May 25 post on this subject, the primary treatment in the field remains to administer anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs.  These other treatments, including the “healthy grieving” approach taught by Cantrell, are beginning to show promise and have resulted in notable improvements in the abilities of combat veterans to re-assimilate into their previous lives.

I wonder how things would have been different for my father had these treatments been available 40 years ago. Maybe he would've smiled more, revealed more, and spent more time with his children.  I wonder if today I’d remember him as a different, happier man.

 

-- Clay Sellers is a Ph.D. student in organizational systems at Saybrook University

Comments

[Kerubo]

Thanks Clay for a great posting!

Having recently listened to Jessica Goodell, US Marine being interviewed by Terry Gross on Fresh Air on NPR on her memoir Shade It Black: Death and After in Iraq, I see how "Healthy Grieving" can make a difference in helping veterans deal with the trauma and stress they experience while in service.

During this interview that aired on June 21st 2011, it was sad to hear Goodell explain that she knows many people she served with that have had to re-enlist as a way of coping with the post stress and trauma. She explained that they would rather re-enlist and be in a "structured environment" where they can stay connected with other Marines because they do not feel that have access to the tools and support they need to return to civilian life.

Thanks for sharing your father's story with us. I found it interesting to hear Goodell talk about how she had been socialized to believe that a Marine should always "protect the public" - even after service by not exposing them to the details and images of war. I wonder what this might have to do with the many veterans that do not talk about what they experience while in service that might be a contributing factor to continued stress or perhaps an obstacle in their recovery efforts.

Goodell explained that she has since changed her views on not talking about what she experienced while in service and her memoir is a result of a journal she kept on her experiences during and after service.