Healing Combat Trauma

Quotable Quotes -- E.M. Forster on a Life in Transition

In a quote that rings true to those who have suffered something as life-changing as PTSD, after combat -- or for that matter, what happens in the life of the caregiver or loved one of the combat vet with PTSD:

"We must be willing to let go of

The life we have planned

So as to have the life

That is waiting for us." -- E.M. Forster, British novelist (1879 - 1970). 

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Quotable Quotes -- Heraclitus on the Real Warrior Brings Others Back

"Of every one hundred men, ten shouldn't even be there, 
eighty are nothing but targets, nine are real fighters... 
We are lucky to have them, they make the battle... 
AH but ONE, one of them is a Warrior... 
he will bring the others back." 

-- Attributed to Heraclitus, circa 500 B.C.

When it comes to real warriors with PTSD, who will bring the others back? Rhetorical for now, but it won't stay rhetorical forever... There are ways to improve the condition of a warrior with PTSD. Read more about that here.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Quotable Quotes -- Charles Dickens on Happiness Being a Gift

"In every life, no matter how full or empty one's purse, there is tragedy. It is the one promise life always fulfills. Thus, happiness is a gift and the trick is not to expect it, but to delight in it when it comes, and to add to other people's store of it." -- Charles Dickens, "Nicholas Nickelby" 

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Quotable Quotes -- Audie Murphy on Getting Over Combat

Audie Murphy, left, in his day, was the most decorated American soldier from World War II, winning the Medal of Honor, among 27 others. He also famously told a reporter, "You know, you never get over combat. I don't think you ever do." (Quoted in Chaim F. Shatan, M.D.'s famous text, "The Grief of Soldiers," from 1973.) He died at 45 years old.

We would wish for every Audie Murphy, and every other combat veteran, more relief from his struggles, and more healing, than Murphy himself was able to know. Let it be so.

© 2010 by Lily Casura / Healing Combat Trauma. All rights reserved. Use with attribution.

 

Quotable Quotes -- Transformation and Metamorphosis for the Returning Warrior

"The soul of a returning warrior must go through a metamorphosis to return to a different world, to ascend from Hades, as is indicated in myth and teachings of the ancient teachings of many civilizations. To understand the angst of combat trauma, one must learn the old myths and folklore, and learn to listen to the shadow of the returning warrior." -- A concerned veteran.

Editor's note: "Metamorphosis" comes from Greek, by way of Latin -- to change one's form.

(For more on ritual and the returning warrior, please see our recent series, linked here.)

Quotable Quotes -- Lindsay Wagner on Looking Within to Heal

"A lot of people say they want to get out of pain, and I'm sure that's true, but they aren't willing to make healing a high priority. They aren't willing to look inside to see the source of their pain in order to deal with it." -- Lindsay Wagner, American actress and activist.

Quotable Quotes -- Sarah Haley, M.S.W., on Combat's Effect on the Veteran

"Combat veterans may play down or embellish their 'war stories,' but initially their reports should be taken at face value. The only report that should not be accepted at face value, although one may choose not to challenge it initially, is the patient's report that combat in Vietnam had no effect on him." -- Sarah Haley, M.S.W., "When the Patient Reports Atrocities: Specific Treatment Considerations of the Vietnam Veteran," published in Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 30, Feb. 1974.

Quotable Quotes -- Neale Donald Walsch on Integrating the Dark and the Light

"I realized then that all of these aspects of my being were qualities for which I had been praised at one time or another. No wonder I was confused! It was only then, when I looked at my "shadow side," and I saw clearly why others sometimes called these my "negative" behaviors, that I also saw the gift in each of them. All I had to do was use those behaviors differently. Not repress them. Not disown them. Simply use them differently.

I have come to understand the extraordinary importance of leading an integral life. That is, of allowing myself to first notice, then to blend, all the aspects of who I am -- those that I and others have called "positive" and those that I and others have called "negative" -- into a grander Whole.

Through this process I have made friends with myself at last. But, oh, how long it took to get there! And how much shorter the process (could) have been..." -- Neale Donald Walsch, author of "Conversations with God," in his introduction to "The Dark Side of the Light Chasers," by Debbie Ford.

Quotable Quotes -- Carl Jung on Integration

"Would you rather be whole or good?" -- Carl Jung, Swiss psychotherapist and author.

Quotable Quotes -- Artie Egendorf on Bearing Witness to the Past

"When people say time heals, they usually mean the passage of time, the rush of many things that happen. If enough new events crowd into our lives and capture our attention, we have no time to think of old pains, which thereby subside into a background gnawing. This is how we use time to dull pain, but it's not the same thing as healing.

Healing occurs as we express ourselves genuinely. In expressing how it was and is, we make ourselves the witness -- one who sees rather than one who has merely been tossed about by passing events. In reaching out to grasp a troublesome past, we cease to be at its mercy, and the more we reach to make ourselves a witness to the past, the less we are its victim." 

-- Arthur Egendorf, Ph.D., "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam." (Egendorf is a Vietnam veteran, Army.)

Quotable Quotes -- Suffering from What We Keep Silent within Us

"What is the source of our first suffering?" wrote philosopher Gaston Bachelard. "It lies in the fact that we hesitated to speak. It was born in the moment when we accumulated silent things within us."

(With thanks to Rob Breszny for highlighting a really cool quote.)

Quotable Quotes -- Half Full or Half Empty or Just...Right?

A wonderful quote from a longtime combat veteran from the other side of the pond, which expresses so well the "integration" we'd love to see for all veterans with PTSD. He writes:

"Sometimes my glass is half full... Sometimes my glass is half empty. I don't mind either view because when I sit back , have a think about stuff, I realize that my glass is really big. :-)"

Quotable Quotes: The Transition from Real Person to Soldier to Ghost

Every once in a while you run across a quote that just puts everything into perspective. Here's a combat vet, woman, with PTSD and MST, raped multiple times(!) in her deployment -- a form of hazing? A highly intelligent woman, coming to terms with what she's gone through, but it isn't easy, and it did involve unspeakable things. Here's how she describes it: 

"I remember so many things I want to forget. I remember once upon a time I was a real person. Then I was a soldier. Now I am a ghost."

Editor's note: For more on military sexual trauma, also known as MST, which affects equal numbers of men and women, despite their disproportionate numbers serving, click here. For more on PTSD, read the rest of this site :-)

Quotable Quotes -- A Spouse's View on How War Changes the Veteran

We wrote about Vietnam veteran, Marine and National Book Award-winning author and poet Larry Heinemann yesterday, and his quote about "War and the Veteran's Heart," linked here. And we've certainly written quite a bit -- as in very often -- about the spouse or partner's point of view, of living with the combat veteran with PTSD. Those articles are linked here. Today we bring those both together, with an excerpt from Larry Heinemann's wife, Edie, about how war and combat changed him. We're sure that many spouses and family members can relate. From a long article about his writing:

"They met at a college dance almost 26 years ago, six months before Heinemann left Fort Knox, Kentucky, for Vietnam. Edie Smith, from Long Island, New York, was doing her undergraduate work at Nazareth College in nearby Bardstown. "He was a clown, very funny and very easygoing," Edie says. "He told some good stories, about his family, about his grandfather." Edie Heinemann says everything about her husband Larry, including his complicated relationships with women, his moods, his present sense of humor, and why he became a writer, was forged by Vietnam.

 "I don't think I've ever told this to anybody on the record, but I married a completely different man than the one I met. Larry had a warmth, a genuineness, a humor about him, even a naivete that was completely stripped away when he was in Vietnam. When he came home all I saw was the bitterness and the edge and the distance. For so long he held so much of this inside, and I don't think I ever fully realized how much pivoted on his experiences in Vietnam. Only recently, with the work he's done, the writing and the other things, has he begun to shed what happened to him, revealing more humor and everything else that was taken away in Vietnam."

Source: "Heinemann's New Style," by Patrick Z. McGavin in the Chicago Reader, (date unknown, but possibly July 23, 1992), linked here.

Quotable Quotes -- Larry Heinemann on War and the Veteran's Heart

"Any soldier returning home must rediscover his humanity and establish a livable peace with the discovered, liberated, permanently dark places in his own heart -- the darkness that is always with us." -- Larry Heinemann, Vietnam combat veteran (Marine) and author, winner of the National Book Award for Paco's Story.

Quotable Quotes -- Jon Kabat-Zinn on Meditation -- and -- Healing

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., is familiar to viewers of the Bill Moyers' PBS series, "Healing and the Mind," from the early 1990s. He brought "mindfulness" or "mindfulness meditation" to the attention of the U.S. public through that series, focusing on his work at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. He's also the author of a number of books, including "Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness," from which the following two quotes are taken.

And here's what he has to say about healing:

"Healing is a coming to terms with things as they are, rather than struggling to force them to be as they once were, or as we would like them to be, to feel secure or to have what we sometimes think of as our own way." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.

And here's what he has to say about the power of meditation, which is part of how we are able to reach that equanimity:

"More than anything else I have come to see meditation as a radical act of love, an inward gesture of benevolence and kindness toward ourselves and toward others, a gesture of the heart that recognizes our perfection even in our obvious imperfection, with all our shortcomings, our wounds, our attachments, our vexations, and our persistent habits of unawareness." -- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.

Editor's note: Kabat-Zinn founded the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, an outgrowth of the famed Stress Reduction Clinic, "the oldest and largest academic medical center-based stress reduction program in the world." About that clinic: "Since 1979 more than 18,000 people have completed our eight-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, an intensive training that asks participants to draw on their inner resources and natural capacity to actively engage in caring for themselves and finding greater balance, ease, and peace of mind."

The Center also has an outstanding bibliography of material about mindfulness-based approaches to various medical conditions, linked here. If you'd like to search their directory for a mindfulness-based stress reduction practitioner in your geographical area, click here.

Quotable Quotes -- Friedrich Nietzsche on "The Abyss"

Although I'm more a fan of the concept of "the hand across the abyss" -- reaching over to grab the hand of the one who wants to climb out -- and we've written about that quintessentially therapeutic relationship, here, before -- still, this is a great quote from Nietzsche, that could very easily apply to combat and its aftermath:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” -- Friedrich Nietzsche

Quotable Quotes -- "Battle Is a Joyous Thing"

We've written over the years about the close camaraderie of servicemembers with one another, something that veterans (both those with PTSD and those without) very much miss upon their return to civilian life. One of the articles was this one, a poetic reference to the "wet bond of blood" in combat relationships, linked here. The following, though, is a quote I ran across today from the Middle Ages, referencing almost the same thing:

"Battle is a joyous thing. We love each other so much in battle. If we see that our cause is just and our kinsmen fight boldly, tears come into our eyes. A sweet joy rises in our hearts, in the feeling of honest loyalty to each other, and seeing our friend so bravely exposing his body to danger in order to fulfill the commandment of our creator, we resolve to go forward and die or live with him on account of this love. This brings such delight that anyone who has not felt it cannot say how wonderful it is.  Do you think that someone who feels this is afraid of death? Not in the least! He is so strengthened, so delighted, that he doesn't know where is. Truly, he fears nothing in the world." -- Jean de Breuil, 1465.

Quotable Quotes -- The Dalai Lama on Life Purpose and Satisfaction

That Dalai Lama -- he's amazing! If "personal outlook" were a software package, I'd ask for the Dalai Lama upgrade: because I like how he thinks. So compassionate and kind and reasonable, but not afraid of science. A fascinating, compelling combination. 

Some of his great quotes lately:

"We can't be useful to ourselves unless we're useful to others. Whether we like it or not, we're all connected, and it is unthinkable to be happy all by oneself. Anyone concerned only with his own well-being will suffer eventually. Anyone concerned with the well-being of others takes care of himself without even thinking about it. Even if we decide to remain selfish, let us be intelligently selfish -- let us help others." -- The Dalai Lama.

And another:

"Once you shift your focus from yourself to others and extend your concern to others, this will have the immediate effect of opening up your life and helping you to reach out. The practice of cultivating altruism has a beneficial effect not only from a religious point of view but also from a mundane point of view; not only for long-term spiritual development but even in terms of immediate rewards."

And another:

"The world's major religious traditions all give the development of compassion a key role. Because it is both the source and the result of patience, tolerance, forgiveness and all good qualities, its importance is felt to extend from the beginning to the end of spiritual practice. Even without a religious perspective, love and compassion are clearly of fundamental importance to us all."

And another:

"Satisfaction is characterized by inner peace. It arises from generosity, honesty and what I call ethical conduct, a way of behaving that respects others' rights to be happy."

---

Bringing this all back around to veterans with combat-based PTSD and their families, think how crucial what he's expressing are. Eighteen veterans a day kill themselves -- a shocking statistic -- and we seem to be at the beginning, not the middle or the end -- of that particular trend. Army and Marine suicides -- they see the bulk of the action, after all, in these wars -- are both up, despite the "best of intentions" on the part of the services to bring down the numbers. Pep talks on prevention and more prescriptions aren't solving the problem, nor are they likely to. Because, as one combat vet with PTSD said, "pep talks are hard to take seriously because that is for the normal life of a normal person, not for a veteran contemplating suicide because of combat trauma." True, that.

It's coming up on two years, shortly, of my first phone conversation with the combat vet, a Vietnam vet, Marine, with 40 years(!) of severe, chronic PTSD, which plagued his life, despite "all the best" of what the VA threw at him (his words, not mine), including an inpatient, residential PTSD program that was cutting-edge at the time. (Would it surprise you to know that most of his classmates in that program, according to him, are now dead, also from suicide?) After our first conversation, which seemed relatively pleasant and positive, he followed up with an email about wanting to drink and put a gun in his mouth to end it all, because he was sure God hated him; after all, he himself did. Sparkly stuff. Lots of unicorns and rainbows and fluffy clouds there...not one bit.

Of course, the end of his story is quite a bit more positive, mostly because it didn't end. He's made the transition from bleak, grim and grisly to mostly inspirational and awesome. And it took a while, a solid footing, a hand reaching across the abyss and pulling him up and out -- a hand which he importantly grabbed (it doesn't work if you don't ;-). It took some specific therapeutic treatments to help remove trauma from the body. We tried a few, intentionally, and they worked; there are others that might as well. And it took a huge motivation on his part to reach out -- however ugly his mess at the time -- to get some help and be real about where he was really at. For years, decades really, he'd been the one other vets' wives called to take the gun out of the mouths of their husbands. Now he finally had some hope to offer others. But it took commitment on his part, believing that the hope was out there, and going after it with all he had. Not always pretty, but effective :-)

(He's the veteran in the "Eyewitness to Combat" series on the site. Here are two items about his turnaround, linked here and here. The second is in his own words.)

Anyway, the upshot of the whole experience is wanting to build a program to bring other combat veterans with PTSD through, and help their families as well, who are often left holding the bag (of misery) but not really getting the help they need either. Combat veterans with PTSD have often lost their life purpose completely, and as we've been talking about lately, purpose is key.

The "eyewitness to combat" veteran, described above -- he and I share a purpose. It's helping others overcome. It's possible. And as the Dalai Lama says, that's being intelligently selfish -- taking care of those 18 vets a day who'll be killing themselves, BEFORE it happens. So it doesn't HAVE to happen. That's the best use that you and I could put our time and energy and compassion to. Please join in helping others so that they don't have to suffer so intensely, when there is a way out.

Editor's Note: A California-based psychology grad student is doing a Ph.D. thesis on Iraq vets with PTSD and life purpose. If you qualify based on the above criteria, he'd like to talk to you, and will pay you $50 for your efforts if you participate. Here's the link to his study. His brother is a combat vet. 

Additionally, you can "follow" the Dalai Lama on Twitter -- @DalaiLama -- and you can follow us on Twitter as well @HealingPTSD.

Quotable Quotes -- Rob Brezsny on What Qualifies as "Information" on a Subject, Even PTSD

Here's a great quote from American free thinker Rob Brezsny. I like it because it goes to the heart of what we're trying to do on this site. It's not the "same 'ol, same 'ol" -- it's an attempt to get people thinking differently about a topic that ruins many people's lives, yet within which there is still to be found a certain amount of hope.

This website has been going on for almost five years now. Tens of thousands of hours worth of researching, reading, interviewing experts, thinking and composing the almost 800 articles on the site, 200 recommended books, and dozens of experts. We when started, back in very early 2006, there really wasn't anything out there about PTSD and veterans on the Web, for troops coming back from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their families. I Googled it plenty to make sure I wasn't intruding on someone else's "space." In fact, Ilona Meagher was starting her work at about the same time, but Google hadn't picked up either of us yet. A few months later, when I found her site, I made a point not to read it, so that we could each keep to our original point of view, and not be accused of overlap.

I even chose the name, "Healing Combat Trauma," in a fit of inspiration -- because it was expressly intended to give people HOPE, who might be lacking it, or beaten down by the sheer overwhelming nature of what they had, that they could still get better. Something to cling to, that might help move them out of a state of despair, discouragement and demoralization into a sense that there was something still worth looking for, not to mention living for. "Without hope, the people perish" -- the Bible says. It's a very true statement. And there's nothing like illness to make people give up hope, because of feeling poorly in body, mind and spirit.

Today, almost five years later, the "landscape" surrounding this topic has changed quite a bit, but it's also heartening that people are beginning to find that we're out there and like what they see. The need is greater than it ever was. At least 18 veterans a day kill themselves because they've frankly given up, or feel too miserable to carry on, with the "best" of what they've been offered from the status quo (which fortunately is also improving, but maybe not fast enough, or in enough flexible directions to satisfy the need.) I made a decision early on that I didn't want to "just" report the news -- "misery everywhere! report at 11" -- because that was too easy to do, and didn't require any original thought. We're not cutting and pasting here; we're reading, analyzing, thinking, and talking to people who know -- and then sharing that information with you. 

And there's a certain amount of resistance. On Facebook, where there's a fan page for this site, linked here, with approximately 2,500 members, people occasionally recoil in horror when they read the title. "Healing" Combat Trauma? Why, they sputter, you can't HEAL combat trauma -- my doctor said so! And I just saw him. Of course, we've covered that topic, ad infinitum, but the basic interpretation is, there's a difference between "healing" and "curing" -- and healing is a nice continuum of improvement from bad to better that anyone can jump right on, at any given time -- especially when they're ready to, and not a moment before. "Healing" isn't something you want to drag unwilling people into; but it's also something that is available for those who want it, at whatever degree they can access it. (Even the VA, at least at the level of the National Center for PTSD, and their clinical training which I got to attend in May, is talking about switching the emphasis from a focus on "symptomology" to "functionality" with PTSD -- a needed improvement.)

I had the "healing versus curing" conversation many times with the subject of "Eyewitness to Combat," whose own story of great improvement is highlighted here, in his own words. After going to one treatment or another that appeared to improve him, he would be excited about thinking that he was now "cured" -- despite 40 years of chronic, severe PTSD, and having tried most of what VA had to offer, including a stint in an inpatient, residential treatment program for PTSD that was cutting edge at the time. I tried to explain to him, patiently and not always successfully, that healing wasn't a toggle switch between "ill" and "well," but a path from one to the other, which he was now on, and which he'd continue to be on, through the various things that we'd try and the progress that he'd make. It's also something that doesn't always need a practitioner to facilitate. Practitioners are important, but there are also things that a person can do for him or herself, to improve their overall health and well-being. And sometimes it's important to wedge people's minds open just a little tiny bit...in order that they can encounter something new, that might change their world view, which might (ultimately) help change their lives. Worth it.

Which brings us to the quote of the hour. It's an interesting one, because Rob Brezsny hones in on how something people aren't used to -- the idea that you can "heal" PTSD, for instance -- ruffles some feathers, and shakes some people up. But if they already knew it, what would be the point of hearing it again? Sometimes we have to step away from our preconceived ideas about what "can" and "can't" happen to enter the realm of the possible. In sickness, which is so laden with discouragement and guilt -- as well as hype and manipulation, sometimes -- that's no different from any other area. So let's see what Brezsny has to say about what qualifies as "information" on a topic:

"Let's define information as data and ideas that are new to you. If it's something you already know, then it's trivia or propoganda or dogma, not information. In fact, let's be tempted to use the terms "information" and "novelty" interchangeably. If you're not surprised, if your curiousity isn't piqued, then the message streaming your way may not qualify as information." -- Rob Brezsny.

Quotable Quotes -- José Narosky on All Soldiers Are Wounded

 "In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." -- José Narosky

A Corrective to Believing PTSD is Responsible for Everything

I found this line last night on a blog. It's jagged and funny because, really, people do blame too much on PTSD, when it's sometimes not PTSD's fault at all.  Here's one veteran's barbed but humorous take on it:

"As to PTSD, I know some veterans have been emotionally devastated by their service experience. In no way do I not respect their experiences. The majority are, I believe, like me. I was an asshole when I went into the Army. The Army didn’t cause that. When I got out I was the same, only with some stress added."--- Anonymous

The Combat Veteran's Lament: "My Mind is Not a Faucet That I Can Turn On and Off at Will..."

"People tell me to forget the war, telling me it is over. Their advice is sound and well-intentioned but impossible to follow. Simply because my mind is not a faucet that I can turn on and off and at will. I am working on it." -- Eddie H. Livingston, World War II combat veteran, former POW.

Quotable Quotes -- Albert Schweitzer, M.D. on the Doctor Within Every Patient

"Within every patient there resides a doctor, and we as physicians are at our best when we we put our patients in touch with the doctor inside themselves." Albert Schweitzer, M.D. -- Swiss physician, theologian and humanitarian; winner of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize. (1875-1965.) 

Quotable Quotes -- Andrew Weil on the Secret Wisdom of the Body, a Key Participant in Health and Healing

"It is a misnomer to call medicine 'the healing art.' The healing art is the secret wisdom of the body. Medicine can do no more than facilitate it. That is all healers can do, too." -- Andrew Weil, M.D., "Health and Healing."
  

Belleruth Naparstek to Mental Health Colleagues: "Please Stop Saying PTSD is Incurable."

Note to mental health colleagues: "You can recover from posttraumatic stress. Certainly, you can significantly reduce - not just manage - its symptoms. But - and here's the thing - not with traditional treatment. The problem is, a lot of my colleagues don't know this yet. So they go about it in traditional ways and pronounce the condition incurable, based on the results they get." -- Belleruth Naparstek, from her article "Note to Colleagues: Please Stop Saying Post-Traumatic Stress is Incurable," just published in The Huffington Post on May 1, 2010, and linked here. The whole article is excellent; please give it a read and a think as well...

Editor's note: We've written about Naparstek before on this site, here. Her guided imagery tapes, CDs and DVDs, including "Health Journeys: A Guided Meditation for Healing Trauma (PTSD)," and her book, "Invisible Heroes : Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal," are loved by many.

Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan -- Suffering and Love

It's interesting to live a life that's been bracketed on either side by wars in Vietnam and now Iraq and Afghanistan. It certainly created an awareness of hardship and suffering, and the need and desire to offset that. And it brings to mind a favorite quote: "Suffering accompanies life, but love is affirmation." -- Everyday Tao, by Deng-Ming Tao.

Quotable Quotes -- True Freedom

"True freedom is the ability to pause between the stimulus and the response, and in that pause to choose."

Quotable Quotes -- Where the Expectation of Healing or Recovery Comes From

Had a short conversation the other day with a Vietnam vet, now substantially recovered from the PTSD symptoms that plagued him for four decades. (See the recent part of his story, here.) We were discussing how, in both of our situations, me with chronic fatigue syndrome, him with PTSD, how crucial it was that -- despite how things looked from time to time -- we truly did believe, somewhere inside us, that we were going to get better. We didn't know how, and mostly it looked like it wasn't ever going to happen, but each of us in our own way refused to believe that there was no help to be had. We couldn't explain it, maybe, but inside us we both knew, someday we'd find a way to get better.  And we talked about how important it was to hold on to that small kernel of hope, even when circumstances around us looked so bleak, as they often did. It reminded me of this quote, about where that hope for recovery actually comes from...it comes from somewhere deep inside us. So even when we're tempted to give up, because the life around us can seem like a nightmare, the tiny kernel of hope for a better life, and better circumstances, is our innate belief that we can get better. As the quote says:

"If what was in your dreams wasn't already inside of you, how would you even be able to dream it?" -- Kobi Yamada.

Quotable Quotes -- the Oft-Neglected Role of the Caregiver in Illness

"As little as we know of illness, we know even less of care. As much as the ill person's experience is denied, the caregiver's experience is denied more completely." -- Arthur Frank, "At the Will of the Body."

Editor's note: We have a section entitled, "Caring for the Caregivers." Click on this link to expand.

Quotable Quotes -- Ajahn Jayasaro on the Refining Power of Empathy

"In a conflict, if we are convinced we are good, right, pure and the other side is evil, wrong, impure, we have lost our way... Thinking in terms of us vs. them, white vs. black, good vs. evil, is like a disease that has caused untold suffering in the world. Empathy...does not...cripple action, but makes it more intelligent." -- Ajahn Jayasaro, from "On Love."

Quotable Quotes -- On Reaching the Actual Breaking Point, Where Change Happens

"People come to the consulting room and lay out a collision of values with great embarrassment and agony. They want resolution but would have something even greater if they could ask for the consciousness to bear the paradox. A friend went for her hour with Dr. Meyer in Zurich who was famous for commenting with the single word 'ja' to anything he was told. In good English style my friend bravely laid out the complexity of her life. She burst into tears and cried out that she could stand it no longer. 'Ja, gut,' replied Dr. Meyer. "Now something will happen." This is stark medicine but it is correct for one who has the strength to bear it." -- Robert A. Johnson, Jungian analyst and author of "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche."

Quotable Quotes -- Jung on the Crucible of Personal Change

"Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next." -- Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and the father of analytical psychology. (1875-1961) 

Quotable Quotes -- Thomas Moore on the Importance of Individuality in Healing

"To keep your soul in the medical world, preserve your individuality." -- Thomas Moore, author of "The Care of the Soul," etc.

Quotable Quotes -- Suffering Confusion in Order to Heal

"To suffer one's confusion is the first step in healing." -- Robert A. Johnson, Jungian analyst, author of "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche."

Demons on the Battlefield, or, Integrating the Warrior Within

Back in the fall of 2005, I had a conversation with a Marine officer in Ramadi, when Ramadi was an extremely violent place. The officer was on his third or fourth tour, and confided that he thought he'd come back to Iraq "to lay my demons down on the battlefield." Not sure what he meant by that, I suggested that more likely the opposite was true. People picked up demons on the battlefield (e.g., post-traumatic stress) but were rarely able to lay them down. If they could, more people would probably want to go to war.

In any case, as our conversation progressed over the ensuing months, I strongly preached the "gospel" of integration: something I'd learned from my own excursion into Taoist acupuncture and Chinese medicine in general. The concept of embracing opposites within us, and not rejecting one side of ourselves while embracing the other; recognizing that the good and the bad are both equally "us." It's an abstract concept, and until there's a reason to face it head-on, perhaps we never really do. Post-traumatic stress is of course one great reason to face it. We're both the angels we were before combat and the demons we found ourselves being during combat.

Many a Marine and soldier has expressed their observation about being two people. The Marines even have a saying about it, how they know how to be "the best friend and the worst enemy." The yin and the yang, the dark and the light, both dwell within. Part of the exasperating hardship of PTSD is coming to terms with how this can even be true, and yet, not destroy you. Churches and sometimes even well-meaning friends and family members insist that you can only be one or the other: the good or the bad, and if you're conflicted, well, you must just need to "pray about it harder," or, "try not to think about it so much." In fact, while balancing two selves may seem quite precarious -- the ideal self and who you've actually become -- the reality is, synthesizing the two into the "non-dual" self may ultimately be a healthier expression and resolution of the conflict within.

With this as a background, it was with interest that I read the following passage in a short but powerful book by a Jungian psychoanalyst who wrote, addressing the intrinsic conflict in warriors,

"Medieval heroes had to slay their dragons; modern heroes have to take their dragons back home and integrate them with their personality." -- Robert A. Johnson, "Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche." 

Quotable Quotes -- Marcel Proust on the Life Journey That Brings Wisdom

"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." -- Marcel Proust, French writer and essayist, 1871-1922.

Quotable Quotes -- War Provides the Enemy Within

"A Jewish chaplain once told me that in war, you face two enemies. The easy one is the enemy, but the hard one is the one within — because it can bring out the worst in people. But it can also bring out the best in people." -- Lt. Col. John Fenzel, III. "USA: The Human Dimension of Human Rights," delivered at the "Ethical Dilemmas for Special Forces Workshop," June 11-12, 2003 Ft. Bragg, NC.

(Fenzel is also the author of "The Lazarus Covenant.")

Quotable Quotes -- Confucius on Walking the Healing Path

""Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." -- Confucius, Chinese philosopher and reformer. (551 BC - 479 BC.)

And also:

"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop." -- Confucius.

Unlikely Bedfellows: Sun Tzu and George Washington on How to Treat Veterans

It's remarkable that through the ages these two leaders and military strategists yet had expressed such a similar thought about the heart behind how to care for veterans. See if you don't agree:

"Regard your soldiers as your children, and they will follow you into the deepest valleys. Look on them as your own beloved sons, and they will stand by you even unto death!" -- Sun Tzu, from his martial classic, "The Art of War"

- and -

"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." -- George Washington.

Editor's note: Chaplain Kathie Costos, familiar to many as "Nam Guardian Angel," and a true source of wisdom and compassion at her site, Wounded Times and beyond, uses the George Washington line as her email signature, an ever-present reminder of the importance of doing just that.

Quotable Quotes -- Arthur Egendorf on When Healing Happens

“Healing occurs as we develop the openness, care and vision to cast in a worthy light whatever appears before us." -- Arthur Egendorf, Ph.D., from "Healing from the War: Trauma and Transformation after Vietnam," coincidentally my very favorite book on the subject, although unfortunately it's also out of print.

Quotable Quotes -- Carl Jung on Consciousness and Pain

"There is no coming to consciousness except through pain." -- Carl Jung, Swiss psychotherapist.

(With thanks to Kayla Williams, author of "Love My Rifle More Than You," for a great quote...)

Quotable Quotes -- Dwight D. Eisenhower on Inner and Outer Peace

"There can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men." -- U.S. president and five star Army general Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Quotable Quotes -- World War I British Doctor on Humane Treatment for PTSD

" Do not send your cases down the line ... when you get these emotional cases, unless they are very bad ... give him a rest at the aid post if necessary and a day or two’s sleep, go up with him to the front line, and, when there, see him often, sit down beside him and talk to him about the war or look through his periscope and let the man see you are taking an interest in him, [and] you will not have nearly so many cases of anxiety neurosis." -- Col. J. S. Y. Rogers, 4/Black Watch, Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into 'Shell-Shock’ (London, HMSO, 1922), 64. Quoted in "'Pitiless psychology': the role of prevention in British military psychiatry in the second world war," by Ben Shepard, published in The History of Psychiatry, 1999; 10; 491, linked in full here.

Quotable Quotes -- Helen Keller on Overcoming Suffering

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." -- Helen Keller

Quotable Quotes -- The Healing Process

"Heal the traumas, and the person's natural processes take over and the diseases fade away. The healing treats the traumas, and then the body naturally does what it was prevented from doing by the trauma. My friends in other therapies essentially follow this process. Healers do it. Massage therapists do it. Osteopaths do it. Psychotherapists do it in one way or another. That is the universal process we all have to go through to recover from trauma and live our lives to the full." -- Peter Chappell, "Emotional Healing with Homeopathy: Treating the Effects of Trauma."

Quotable Quotes -- Nate Fick on Combat Veterans, PTSD and Reintegration

"It took me a year to adjust after coming home from Iraq. Afghanistan was different -- it wasn't very violent and we came back on a ship. I had a month, including some vacation time in Perth and Sydney, before getting back to the States. But I left Iraq on a Sunday night, and was in San Diego on Tuesday. It was surreal. I had all the stereotypical little signs of post-traumatic stress disorder -- jumping at loud noises, nervous in crowds, short-tempered, insomnia. And you know what? I came back to a loving family and supportive friends. I had a good education and solid prospects for the future. This experience almost unhinged me. What about all the men and women who don't have the support I had? What happens to them? This is a question the military -- and our society more generally -- should be addressing. We'll have something like half a million combat veterans trying to reintegrate into American society over the next few years. They can be a source of wisdom or of destruction. It depends on how well we care for them." -- Nathaniel C. Fick, former Marine captain, author of "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."

Quotable Quotes -- Nate Fick on Understanding War and the Warrior

"This country needs its professional warriors. It also needs people in other walks of life who know what the decision to go to war means." -- Nathaniel C. Fick, former Marine captain, author of "One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer."

Quotable Quotes -- e.e. cummings on Unbracketing Death

In honor of April being "National Poetry Month," a wonderful excerpt from American poet e.e. cummings (1894-1962) about the continuity of life beyond life. Cummings was no stranger to war and its aftermath: he's one of several famous writers and poets who served as ambulance drivers, in his case, in World War I. This snippet of his poem, "since feeling is first," (Cummings was a big fan of unusual capitalization and punctuation) neatly conveys the impact of a life that goes on past its close, in the memory of the survivors left behind. In the right context, these words offer some small comfort, whether you're thinking about your own legacy, or remembering those you love who've gone before you:

"For life's not a paragraph And death I think is no parenthesis."

Quotable Quotes -- What Healing Is...

"Healing is about opening what has been closed, reclaiming what has been hidden and remembering what has been forgotten." -- Mary O'Malley, "The Gift of Our Compulsions."