I'm Lost, Totally Lost and Don't Know Where To Turn.

[Shamrock]

Tactman

You and I have VERY similar backgrounds. Please e-mail me at
Not that I can be of much help as I am processing my own issues. But it will be nice to speak with someone familiar with life inside the "colors of the rainbow."

 

[baileysemt]

There are many things I would like to get off my chest that I cannot say on a public forum. My unit's chaplin has told me to find a person that I do not know, will never meet, and get some of the things that bother me off my chest. If you or anyone else would have 10 minutes of free time to speak on one of the chat servers I would really appreciatte it. He has told me one of the best ways to combat PTSD is to talk about it to someone not in a combat zone that has an open mind.

Tactman, I wish I could help you this way. I wish very much. That is what makes me feel the best: helping other people, making them feel better. (Hence why I am an EMT)

Unfortunately I know that to hear the detail of what you are witnessing, would rip me up. It would just rip me to shreds emotionally. To try to help you, would hurt me terribly, because of my PTSD.

And since everyone else here suffers from PTSD, we have "direct circuits" to our horror/fear centers, it is abnormally easy for us to envision the bad things we hear about, as well as to take the actual pain of those events upon ourselves... it's that "caring too much" thing... we are too sensitive, too empathetic.

So please don't be offended if people aren't jumping up to talk with you about certain things in detail. I agree that you do need to get it off your chest, we just need to find you an outlet where you can do so without accidentally hurting the other person. :smile: The people here are fragile and wrangling their own issues themselves.

I am sorry I can't help you with this. I really want to. I just know that it will send me backsliding into flashbacks and nightmares and that God-awful suffocating morasse, and I don't want to go back there again........

Still praying for you and sending positive vibes your way, though. :smile:

:smile: Bailey

 

[tude]

Tactman, I am glad you found this forum. YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
There is a lot of useful information here. Here I have also found hope.

This past summer I was temporarily and voluntarily re-assigned away from "the face of death". It did help. It did get depressing though. I felt useless and bored and a burden to my team. I returned to regular duty and it has been challenging. Learning and practicing healthy coping skills has helped. Not beating myself up and being gentle with myself has helped a great deal. As a civilian now, "Honor, Courage, and Commitment," still have meaning.

Honor- my actions are congruent with my belief in recovery

Courage- to be vulnerable, take risks, be honest about how I feel,

Commitment- committed to myself, my well-being, and spiritual progress

Take care of yourself Tactman. No one else can.

Semper Fi,
tude

 

[Tactman]

I really appreciatte everyone's help. I had hoped that my team was going to be assigned to another part of the world but it turns out (you can read CNN and figure this out) were being put right in the middle of it again. I've come to a cross road and feel that in this cross road I am going to have to turn off every human emotion I have and just focus on "completing my op".

I hope to one day be able to regain these human emotions. I am curious if anyone has ever actually been able to recover from voluntarily killing your concious and then being able to eventually move back into society as a normal citizen. It's a paradox when you are awarded a Purple Heart and realize you would have rather just become another KIA statistic.

This battle in my mind is the hardest battle I have ever fought in my life, this coming from someone who was one of the first American soldiers to ever enter Fallujah.

I thank everyone for all of your advice and help. As an American soldier I have one thing to ask of each and every one of you. Please vote in this up-coming presidential election. Don't fall for the smoke and mirrors, vote for someone whom you feel will do what is best for OUR country. The country that as I am writing this young men and woman from every corner of our great country is spilling their blood. Think of the parents, the brothers, sisters, grandparents, friends and neighbors who are losing their lives here.

Any candidate that says they will pull EVERY soldier out by a certain date is a fool. It is impossible to do. While they may do a mass troop withdrawal there will be a select few of us left behind and when this happens it will be a blood bath for those of us left. Use your head, vote with your heart, do what YOU as an American citizen feel is the right thing. Not only will a sudden withdraw literally slaughter thousands of our soldiers, the murder on the innocent Iraqi people will be on a genocide level. I have been lucky enough to have made friends with quite a few of these famalies. These people want the same thing we do. They want to live in peace, worship in their own way, watch their children grow and prosper, and live.

 

[Tactman]

Tactman, I wish I could help you this way. I wish very much. That is what makes me feel the best: helping other people, making them feel better. (Hence why I am an EMT)

Bailey, I can understand some of the things you have witnessed and why speaking of them would open up wounds that are hard to close. The medics in my units are some of the most brave men and woman I have ever met. In the middle of a firefight you will hear someone scream "Medic Up" and guess what happens. A medic is on their way there to a downed soldier, a fellow soldier.

I salute you as a civilian medic and I appreciatte the job you do. Believe it or not I actually think of the medics and emt's in the states quite a bit. My family is trusted to people of your calibers skill. All you hear about it law enforcement and the fire service, very few people recognize Emergency Medical Services. I want you to know that I do recognize you and your sacrifices. I salute you maam.

 

[grace5555]

Tactman,

While I cannot personally speak to your level of suffering as my PTSD is from another source, I did want to thank for the sacrifice you are making for all of us on such a deep level. I will be voting in the presidential election and I understand fairly well what you are saying and I agree. I just wish there was an easy way out where we would be safe from terrorism, the Iraqi public would be safe, and you could safely come home. No easy answers, but I just wanted to say thank you so much for fighting for us.

Grace

 

[Linda]

Hi Tactman and welcome to the Forum. I hope you will find it helpful.
Take care,
Linda

 

[Tactman]

The past day has been horrible. I'm not sure how this forum works. Can I share events that are affecting me or in doing this might I make others relive events in their life.

I wish there was a military forum available which was designed in a way so they could not trace who the person posting is.

When I do sleep the nightmares are horrendous. Things replay sometimes in slow motion and the smallest details that I didn't percieve at the time of the event become a part of the dream.

Flashbacks. I always thought flashbacks were something that happened in later life, not while you are living the stressors.

We meet with pschologists on occasion to make sure we are handling the extreme amount of stress we are presented with. Not once has any of these guys seemed to really become involved in a conversation with me.

I do want to stress that when it comes to my operational status I am 100%. I do my ops as ordered and will not fail them.

I just need someone to talk to I guess, someone who won't judge me for the things I have done.

 

[Deleted member 93]

Can I share events that are affecting me or in doing this might I make others relive events in their life.

That is the idea. Some will choose not to read or will and relate. This forum triggers everyone, but life is full of them. While this may not be a military geared site, it is a PTSD site. People have PTSD from what they have done or have had done to them. Either way PTSD is the same. That is why Anthony went out of his way not to form cliques on here or let people group up in sections like military, rape, shootings, or what ever incident that gave one PTSD. We have all the symptoms to one degree or another depending on where we are in healing or how severe the PTSD is (and any case of PTSD is severe really as why we are diagnosed this extreme). PTSD is the same no matter your source.

As a result with how this forum is run we have people of all walks of life from many backgrounds who have one thing in common, PTSD. And everyone here knows exactly how the next feels as we all have this. It has made a large community with many different takes on how to get better and how to handle the many symptoms.

Also, people do not judge here. All we ask for is honesty. We are well aware of the many ways people get this.

 

[Tactman]

Thanks Veiled, I appreciatte your response. I am going to state now that I am going to get something off my chest that is one of the major factors of my PTSD.

My suggestion to people who are sensative, vunerable, or having a difficult time dealing with their own emotional problems may want to just skip this thread and move along.

I was officially diagnosed with PTSD and Thanatos. I feel one of the main reasons I am so affected by PTSD is that in the course of everything I have been and am being exposed to has cause to me lose my faith in God. I have witnessed senseless killing, more than any one person should ever have to. I am sure you have read or seen on CNN about the little boy who was drug from his house, doused in gasoline and sat on fire. These people that we are fighting are brutal murderers and people who have no respect for human life. The incident that caused me to finally lose my faith in God was when I came upon the bodies of several children who had been beheaded. This was right at day light and the village hadn't really come out to begin their day. The parents of these children thought their children were in bed asleep.

These children were murdered because this villiage in northern Iraq accepted humanitarian aid from coalition forces. The insurgents in turn took these children and beheaded them as a way to control this villiage and other villiages. I was working solo this night and to be honest there isnt many nights that go by that I don't find bodies. I have just never found children butchered like this.

In my operational details if I am on an operation and I witness insurgents commiting acts such as this I can engage these people only if I am positive it will not jeapordize the success of my current mission. I have had to make decisions in the past, as I am certain I will in the future, to not get involved as I watched an active murder take place. It was simple math, I was solo and out numbered. On the flip side, depending on the equipment I have chose for the operation at hand I have engaged multiple insurgents but have been able to do so in a way that the insurgents had no idea of where the direction of fire was and how big of a potential force they were facing.

The morning I found these children I had an emotional breakdown. I found myself sitting against a building just 20 feet from the bodies of these children, unable to function. My next plan of action of course was one of revenge. Even tho I had completed my assignment for the night I moved through the villiage, house by house, until I found the insurgents whom were responsible for murdering these children. It is common for the insurgents to stay in these villages to be a show of presence when the villagers find their children. These monsters were playing some form of a game while they awaited the villagers to wake up. This was one engagement I was involved in that I have never lost a wink of sleep over.

This is the single most horrible experience of my life. I have lost dear friends in combat, held them as they died, held their famalies as they grieved, and have tried to explain to an 8 year old little boy of one of my soldiers who was killed as to why his father died in a war. Children are so smart. He asked me why his father was killed in a war when there were no enemy tanks at his school or near his home. How do you explain this to an 8 year old?

I plan to finish my military commitment and have began to try to figure out how I can live with my PTSD and Thanatos. I hope that when my commitment is finished I can finally find peace within myself.

There are so many more instances that I could write about but it gets redundant. I welcome and actually hope that someone has some advice or direction. I know I need to re-establish my relationship with God but as I sat in that street with those murdered children, I lost every bit of my faith. What is God's master plan for those children?

I thank you for taking the time to read this. If this is too harsh then a moderator can delete it all.

 

[Deleted member 541]

Tactman,

Just wanted you to know that I hear you, your pain, your suffering...Thoughts are with you, and your buddies. Come home safe, and thank you.....

I am a coward and could not do or face what you have....

 

[hodge]

Tactman, you're going through some truly horrible experiences. I'm very glad for your sake that you're getting things out here. Just wondering, how much longer are you committed to the service?