You can mate, but you would need to get everyone when diagnosed with PTSD and put them on a 12 month intensive program. You see, with boot camp, you lived and breathed it. You were broken down and turned into a military person.
Jimmy, you are thinking towards the concept of RE-training. The idea of taking all Combat Vets and putting them into a "Become a Civilian" Boot Camp. A reality that will never work because a Combat Vet has reached the epitome of their training and danced with the devil. The devil does not like to lose as the Combat Veteran does not like to lose. So, he follows us home. Which means that we are now in a new Theater of Operation where the reaction possibilities have changed (in a sense).
We have already been trained and in truth: I have had enough training and have no desire to be RE-trained. Yes, you can say I am copping-out or I have come to realize that the military taught me to survive in the most dangerous places on earth where everybody and their brother, mother, sister, niece etc. wanted to kill me and I survived. So, why can I not survive my new Theater of Operations using the same training?
I joined the Army to become a soldier and learned that I am a very good at it. A truth that not very many can say. I would still be one today if I had not acquired lung damage, however my heart has not changed. Once a Soldier always a soldier. I do not need non-military therapists or Psychs to tell me how to exist as a civilian. I have already been trained to survive as a civilian.
ONE:
Identify - I go out into public and my 'Combat Mindset' kicks in I step back and figure out what it is that has caused me to revert to that mindset. It can be something simple as a war movie on the television I am looking to buy? A child shooting his toy gun at everyone? or 50 people in line at the register waiting to cash out.
The point is that I stop and Identify the trigger.
TWO:
Interpret - ie: the movie bothers me? I leave and find another way to let the salesman know I want that TV ignoring the movie (mental note- avoid that movie). The child is no threat, Just a little one being a little one and react accordingly, and the 50 people at the register? - I leave.
The reality being is that I take a moment to decide whether the trigger is a danger or no danger. Yes, we as individuals have to take the time to learn how to do this, because the military taught us to do it in a nano-second, but it is not retraining it is adaption. The training is still the same. The timing has changed.
THREE:
React - Once the first two aforementioned actions have been completed this one is self-explanatory. We as soldiers will do what is right, because that is what we have been trained to do. There are always the exceptions to the rule and there are always those assholes that step over the line. That cannot be helped. However, The honest truth is that a Combat Veteran needs to realize that they have already been trained to deal with Surviving being a Civilian. The training is no different, the enemy has changed.
