Overcoming Military PTS(D), Moral Injury, and MST

This site was created by Veterans to help other Veterans end their inner wars. Everything here is provided at no cost.

If you’ve been dealing with invisible wounds, or are worried that you might be, you’re in the right place. 

Your military stories matter.

Are you ready to understand why some of them are still haunting you?

We Came Home to Disorder

Coming home from the military is not easy.

As Soldiers, we wake up knowing exactly where we need to be, what we need to do, and who's coming with us. There's a closeness with one another—and with the moment. We're alert to everything because our lives depend on each other. This level of shared mission, aliveness, and mutual support is almost impossible to find in the Civilian world.

The unresolved intensity we carry also makes it hard to move forward. I left the service with an iceberg of buried rage, grief, and other emotions. I never learned how to handle the losses I experienced and wasted years pretending my nervous system wasn't as tormented as it was.

The biggest mistake I made was thinking I was supposed to handle everything on my own. I discovered there's a part of me that knows I'm only as strong and secure as the strength my community. It took finding the right community—of other Veterans—for me to fully come home.

My main challenge wasn't "trauma"—it was carrying too much alone.

During boot camp, we were initiated into a life of Purpose and Belonging. But that initiation was never completed, and it's one that the Civilian world doesn't know how to complete.

When we come home as Veterans we can get caught between two worlds: the Civilian world we’ve returned to and the Soldiers world we left behind.

Being stuck in this gap can lead to challenges that often get labeled as post-traumatic stress or PTS(D). For me, the "(D)" is always in parentheses because these challenges are not "disorders". They’re healthy adaptations to an unhealthy environment. 

Adaptations like being hyper-vigilant and going numb to our emotions kept us alive. They helped us stay us alert to new threats, get the job done, or simply get through the day—even when our bodies were screaming in fear.

In many ways, it’s the society we’ve returned to that is disordered.

Only a disordered society would:

• Continue to sacrifice the lives and sanity of its bravest youth in a 23-year—and counting—“War on Terror.”

• Maintain its ignorance around the widespread sexual misconduct suffered by its service members—our brothers and sisters in uniform.

• Abandon the Afghani and Iraqi translators who worked alongside us. They joined a brotherhood unrecognized by the system and we vowed to protect them. They are now defenseless as they are being hunted down and slaughtered. In the Soldier’s world, leaving them behind is intolerable.

• Taking Veterans struggling with circumstances like these, and treating them as “disordered” and numbing them with medication—in cases where what’s most needed is deep listening and empathy—is also not tolerable.

Only a disordered society could continue these kinds of actions, for decades.

It’s also important to recognize that the VA defines post-traumatic stress as a “disorder”, because working with systems like the VA is critical for many Veterans.

Disorder: an illness or condition that disrupts normal physical or mental functions.

That’s how the medical profession uses the term, and sometimes, using their words helps us get the support we need.

We're straddling two worlds here.

This Series is about Overcoming Military PTS(D), Moral Injury, and MST—and building bridges between these two worlds. 

What to expect in this Series

I served as an infantryman and deployed to Iraq during the OIF invasion in 2003-2004. My world got rocked. In the 20 years since then I’ve experimented with every post-traumatic stress treatment I could get my hands on.

I’ll be sharing the resources that helped me wake up to a life worth showing up for again.

While I often use examples from my deployment, what I share will be helpful for many different kinds of military-related trauma.

We're gonna cover ways to put our intense military experiences into words because:

We’ll also go over ways to deal with PTS(D) symptoms, such as:

• Unprocessed shock experiences: It's time our most difficult stories are heard by the people who matter to us. Fully and vulnerably. We’ve carried too much in silence in order to keep protecting the ones we love.

• Chronic agitation: Our restless nervous system can relearn it's safe to breath deeply and slowly again, right now, in this moment.

• Buried Rage/Grief/Shame: Every emotion we've swallowed down deserves to be listened to with respect.

• Isolation: True Belonging can be restored, by once again knowing our inseparable connection to the Veteran community, and our inalienable home in the natural world.

And the transformation that started in boot camp needs to be completed.

The mature warrior's journey, which roots us in something deeper than culture and re-integrates us into the fractured families and communities that need us in order to become Whole again.

As they always have.

And will.

Am I moving too fast?

There aren't enough quality years left to keep hesitating on taking care of this.

Let's get to it. 

 Click below where it says Chapter 1: The War Before the War