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Military Sebastian Junger

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Military vets please watch the short 13 minute video in the above link and give me your feedback. I watched this video today in group and it shed some light on something I didn't know how to put into words before I saw this video. This is not to discredit combat trauma (as I suffer from combat trauma) but there was also another component that I just couldn't put my finger on until I watched this video.

I told my wife the other day how much I missed my buddies and how at peace I was when they were with me. I didn't need them around so I could talk about my trauma, as much as I just needed them around to feel that connection. Anyways I am bad at articulating what I want to say, so I will let Sebastian Junger say it for me. Please watch this video and give me your feedback.
 
Yep... the social bond on return home is a massive factor towards recovery. Society today is becoming more isolating than ever, and it is common for veterans to want to redeploy so they have that mutual bonding combined within a location where they understand and accept what is happening.

It is hard to see and see the things we do on operations, to then come home where the larger stress is something like getting groceries and what gossip is happening in your street. Family bonds are strained more than ever nowadays. We live as individuals instead of groups. Our lifestyles have segregated us.

Some of the most honest living with the healthiest minds is done in group living. Prisons is one such example. Whilst the US has a large issue with violence in prisons, most countries do not, and thus the results from group living in such conditions is quite good for rehabilitation. That is just one example...

I agree though... communal living has health benefits, along with removing these walls we have all built for ourselves in society today.
 
I often wonder if I would not have developed PTSD if I would have stayed in the military??? It wasn't until I was removed from my job that things really started to go downhill for me. I was removed because I had PTSD so maybe it's not fair to say I wouldn't have developed it, but I functioned at a much higher rate when I was still in, so maybe I should say that recovery would have been easier (or even attainable) had I have stayed with my unit, whereas I fell to pieces once I was removed. I guess the job was all that was holding me together.

It would be nice to have that kind of support network (in the flesh and bone) out here on the outside.
 
I don't personally think staying in the military would have made a difference. PTSD is something that can lie dormant for years before raising up and wrecking your life.
Sooner or later it would hit you, and you would have to deal with it, whether you were active or not.
 
Look... theories are wonderful, but they're just theories, and every single person will be different.

I was still in the military when PTSD kicked my arse. Staying in the military was making me angrier, basically having to accept the idiotic crap that often came down from above and having to say, yes sir, to it. I gave up smoking and it whooped me... staying in was not doing me any favours.

What would have helped me, but again... just theory... is redeploying instead of sitting around. Being in an operational zone, that I could rationalise and idiotic decisions where few and far between there. I could accept those surroundings, I couldn't accept the civilian ones.

There's good reason why many Vietnam vets went bush and setup camp living like they did over their, because they could actually live again. They couldn't live in society where someone stubbing their toe was catastrophic.
 
I guess you're right. It doesn't pay to put to much effort in what "might be". Things are what they are, and I have to deal with them as such. I just get frustrated sometimes when I think about my retirement as it didn't come willingly.
 
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