Site Presented By
Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
While saddened for the soldiers and their families that are experiencing the psychological pain of PTSD and other related disorders, I wonder how it is possible that after three years of combat, no has ever discussed the emotional trauma the children of Iraq must be experiencing.
The soldiers are 1)adults, 2)armed, 3)there voluntarily, and 4)provided resources and support to help deal with psychological issues. As a humanist, my concerns are greater for the children who have spent the past three years experiencing the horror of our sophisticated weaponry and not-so-sophisticated insurgent attacks. As the mother of a young child, I can't help but imagine the deep psychological wounds that must be ravaging so many Iraqi children.
In the West, we carefully examine the effects on children of being raised in violent environments, like ghettos, or of playing violent video games. How can we overlook and NEVER EVEN discuss the effects of daily, horrendous violence on young Iraqi minds? If American youth is suffering from being desensitized by violent television and games, we have created a generation of emotionally unstable, frustrated, and angry youth in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When people wonder incredulously how so many young Palestinians, Iraqis, and now Afghanis are willing to blow themselves up, they go to the old stand-by of blame the religion. If Islam was a violent religion, Muslims wouldn't live anywhere peacefully, and it wouldn't have taken a 9/11 to bring such warrantless blame on the religion. In this country we understand the psychology of such urban phenomenon as road rage, but we can't (or won't) understand the psychological state of a Palestinian teen raised in oppression and violence?
This world is so much more dangerous than it was three years ago. We have and continue to create terrorists with our irresponsible and illegal wars. The U.S. should be very concerned with not only the physical damage it will leave behind in Iraq, but with the emotional and psychological damage that will create monsters out of regular children.
Be very, very wary of anyone offering PTSD sufferers a website that features a "payment" menu option.
Be very, very wary of anyone who wants to make "easy" those things which have come to you at great personal cost and sacrifice. Discounting your experiences is disrespectful of your need to own what only you can own.
Be very, very wary of pop psychologists who advertise processes for which there is little, if any, peer-reviewed research to back up their claims. Your sanity is more important than anything a quick, "magical" cure can offer you. Drugs and alcohol proved that last sentence to me in spades.
Be very gentle with yourself and go slow. The last thing you need to do is what I did -- get free and whole and then find yourself surrounded by people and a world where freedom and wholeness are far from highly valued or prized. Yet wholeness and freedom from fighting other people's battles inside your own head is the only path that I have found that honorably resolves what will drive you to resolve it, or perish. People need to compensate you for the space they take up in your head, especially when their presence causes you great grief and suffering.
Trauma turns the brain against itself, making it a bad and untrustworthy neighborhood. This is the unkindest cut of all. So don't go into a bad neighborhood without holding the hand of someone who has the bonafide experience of cleaning up their own bad neighborhood. Don't pay to have someone with letters after their name on a shingle retraumatize you. You have suffered enough without falling down an open manhole cover of hopelessness and despair.
There is real hope out there, but you have to want REAL HOPE. Everyone NEEDS real hope, but precious few know how to choose it. Before someone drives you to drink yourself sick or poke a bunch of needles in your arm, reach out to your elder brothers who have gone before you. Trust the process of healing that operates inside of you all of the time without your direct awareness of it. Trust your gut. It has gotten you this far.
To Ebonius, and everyone else... I understand what you're saying about quick fixes, and the way the armed services and the populace like to put a bandaid on things they don't understand, and then ignore the situation. I understand the frustration of being unable to get help when you need it, of having your experiences discounted. I don't tell people that they shouldn't seek truama trained help, they should. We also know that far too many of them don't. During the Vietnam era especially, see the base shrink would bring your career to a screeching halt. A friend of mine's father committed suicide because of it. You're also not the first person to tell me that it's not possible for this simple thing to work.
But I'll also tell you this, I've done medical massage for over 20 years. I've dealt with veterans who endured physical abuse so severe that it left me nauseated. I've had clients I've had to be extremely careful with because of PTSD reactions. I've had them react in the office. I've had clients with nightmares, some of them for 30 years or more. I've worked with police and firefighters who have similar reactions. I've always done my best to help my clients. In over 20 years of practice, I've never seen anything work like this. I've been using this for 3 years now, and the success rate I've had is at 98%. Sometimes it's a fast resolution, other times it's a process. It's been used at the VA hospitals, and there is video tape of actual sessions available. In the end the only thing that really matters is the results.
As for the original events, and the daily things that trigger a PTSD flashback, or a full reaction. It's not that they will never think of it again, or that nothing they went through will matter. EFT takes the choke-hold from the event, and breaks it. It puts YOU back in the driver's seat. It lets you decide how to react to things. Will some things come up that you didn't use EFT for, sure. But this is a SIMPLE procedure that anyone can do, and if something does come up, YOU can take care of it. It puts YOU back in control. Which is the real point. When you are in control, you can find peace, you CAN get your life back.
My point, my hope, is that if you or someone you love is suffering, please, at least investigate it. The manual is a FREE download, so what on earth do you have to lose? I have offered and continue to offer to speak and demonstrate it FREE. I've seen the results, and my clients have lived them. Whether a veteran learns to do it on their own, or sees me, or sees another EFT practitioner, doesn't really matter to me. It's another tool in the box to help you get your life back, and it's long overdue.
So here again, for anyone who wants them, are the links.
Emotional Freedom Techniques website: www.emofree.com
My own website: www.kaywarren.org
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
