Quotes & Sayings About Soldiers With Ptsd

I guess I was always looking for something. What it was, I didn't know. I wanted help from the VA, but didn't want to go back, didn't want to be subjected to that second-rate treatment any longer. I wanted to find peace within myself, but didn't know how or where to locate it. I wanted to be a sergeant again, a writer, less angry, a better husband, and to ward off the constant bombardment of war-related thoughts. Most of all, I didn't want any more Americans coming home from Iraq in boxes or with jingle-jangled minds. — Clint Van Winkle

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it. — Paul Fussell

I did a study of soldiers returning from Iraq, and their levels of PTSD were much higher if they had had to shoot a woman or child, even if they knew the person was a suicide bomber. — Mia Bloom

Congratulations for conquering PTSD. And now you're fucked. — David Finkel

I met soldiers coming back from war and I was impressed by their description of PTSD, all the symptoms: the outburst of violence, the impossibility to cope with reality anymore, all that stuff. — Alice Winocour

One group of people that get a lot of PTSD are soldiers who have been in combat. You know who gets more PTSD, has higher rates of PTSD? Women who have escaped prostitution. That tells me that the war that men wage against women is actually worse than the wars they wage against each other. — Lierre Keith

Trauma is not the sole province of victims. If that were true, soldiers returning from Afghanistan wouldn't suffer from PTSD. — Jane Leavy

The truth will set you free! — Linda Diane Wattley

People generally don't suffer high rates of PTSD after natural disasters. Instead, people suffer from PTSD after moral atrocities. Soldiers who've endured the depraved world of combat experience their own symptoms. Trauma is an expulsive cataclysm of the soul. — David Brooks

By 1989, the total number of Vietnam veterans who had died in violent accidents or by suicide after the war exceeded the total number of American soldiers who died during the war. — Vladislav Tamarov

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters. — Edgar Degas

The lessons learned, then, in Robinson's case: "Additional training is required to inform soldiers of the dangers of self-medicating along with the associated risk of overdosing" is the first. "Encourage the use of a battle buddy among warriors" is the second. "Increase suicide prevention classes" is the third. "Increase communication to twice a day with high-risk soldiers" is the fourth. "Continue improvements in leader communication" is the fifth. And that's that. Eight months. Five minutes. The army moves on to the next suicide. Case forever closed. — David Finkel

Evolution is a theory in a special philosophical sense of science, but in terms of ordinary laymen's use of language, it's a fact, .. Evolution is a fact in the same sense that it's a fact that the Earth is round and not flat, [that] the Earth goes round the Sun. Both those are also theories, but they're theories that have never been disproved and never will be disproved. — Richard Dawkins

Even now, I am anxious about the naked thoughts that I have shared. The observations are blisteringly honest and of course they have to be. — John Conrad

Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops. — Clint Van Winkle

I would probably say David Bowie and Prince are the perfect people. They dress feminine/masculine and they're really sexy. Not many people can wear high heels and look sexier than a woman! — Aino Jawo

Many veterans feel guilty because they lived while others died. Some feel ashamed because they didn't bring all their men home and wonder what they could have done differently to save them. When they get home they wonder if there's something wrong with them because they find war repugnant but also thrilling. They hate it and miss it.Many of their self-judgments go to extremes. A comrade died because he stepped on an improvised explosive device and his commander feels unrelenting guilt because he didn't go down a different street. Insurgents used women and children as shields, and soldiers and Marines feel a totalistic black stain on themselves because of an innocent child's face, killed in the firefight. The self-condemnation can be crippling.
The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015 — David Brooks

I had experience with PTSD myself; probably that's why I felt so close to the soldiers and the testimony. Also, because I had experienced this myself, I wanted to make a really physical and carnal film. — Alice Winocour

Since PTSD is being exposed to death and the death of someone close, I felt really close to [the soldiers]. — Alice Winocour

After being rejected for years, I found a publisher for 'Keeper,' and it won prizes, and then I had to write a second and a third book because I kept taking the money and spending it. — Mal Peet

Don't get me started on the government and its failings with regard to our soldiers. It's criminal. The military tends to equate PTSD with weakness or cowardice. But they're going to have to get on board, especially because troops are doing multiple tours. We need to make the VA and the government start addressing the needs of its soldiers at home. We need to shine a light on this and erase the stigma. This case is important, Michael. Maybe you can help another broken soldier and save some lives. — Kristin Hannah

I wanted to share the risks the digger in Afghanistan took every day. Whenever I could I joined patrols 'outside the wire', walking the same dusty tracks and fields as the ordinary soldiers. I did everything in my power to keep them alive, I failed. In that year I lost ten soldiers under my command, killed in action. I personally identified the remains of each of them, sending them home to their families. More than sixty of my soldiers were wounded, some horribly. — John Cantwell

I stroke them, and they always like that, because old people don't have anyone who touches them, and I get them hooked on a TV series, because nobody wants to die before the final episode. Some of them find comfort in prayer, but there are lots of atheists here, and they don't pray. What's most important is not to leave them on their own. — Isabel Allende

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Ace!" Tate shouted, both Wendy and I jumped and twisted our necks to look his way. "You cashed out or what?" Tate asked still in a shout.
"I'm cashed out," I shouted back.
"You wanna socialize for the next hour or are we gonna go?" He was still shouting and I was acutely aware, due to the fact that the noise level declined significantly, that the entire bar was listening.
"Keep your pants on!" I yelled.
The noise level disappeared.
"Babe, get your ass over here," Tate ordered.
"Patience, Captain, I'm talking to Wendy," I shot back.
"Ass. Over. Here!" Tate commanded.
I looked at Wendy and snapped loudly, "He's so darned bossy!"
Two men and a woman sitting at the bar close to us burst out laughing.
"You better get your ass over there," Wendy advised, I rolled my eyes and stomped across the bar. — Kristen Ashley

What you learn when you direct a film, even more so than as a producer, it's a marriage. It's like a relationship with that film so you've got to make sure that it's really something that you want to live with for three years or however long it is. So I haven't found the right thing to marry yet. — Grant Heslov

Peace surfaced here. Hard to imagine a person finding peace through war, but no one finds peace in war - peace finds you. It crawls into your sleeping bag and helps you fall asleep, nudges your arm, tells you to turn over, think about home. — Clint Van Winkle

War becomes a part of you. It is a feeling just as much as an experience. If you can't feel it, you weren't paying attention. And if you weren't paying attention, you are probably dead anyway. — Clint Van Winkle

I am also deeply concerned with the widespread, often undiagnosed, incidents of PTSD and the alarming suicide rates amongst our returning soldiers. — Barbara Lee

I don't believe in skipping ahead Dale. I read the book all the way through. — Jay Crownover

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story. — Clint Van Winkle

According to Hoge and colleagues (2007), the key to reducing stigma is to present mental health care as a routine aspect of health care, similar to getting a check up or an X-ray. Soldiers need to understand that stress reactions-difficulty sleeping, reliving incidents in your mind, and emotional detachment-are common and expected after combat... The soldier should be told that wherever they go, they should remember that what they're feeling is "normal and it's nothing to be ashamed of. — Joan Beder