Vicarious Trauma and PTSD in Military Personnel Program Transcript

[MUSIC PLAYING]

RICHARD MALMSTROM: I was having the flashbacks. The intrusive memories. I can remember, probably the worst one I had was as a reserve chaplain I was serving as a school administrator along with being an associate pastor. And I had set up some training for my teachers. And I set up a room for them to get training on CPR. And when I walked into the room to see the dummies scattered all over the floor– and it’s just the training dummies. It just has the head and the torso. And in my mind’s eye, I was seeing the real thing. Not just a training dummy. And having the same visceral reaction to it. The increased heart rate. The sweating. The inability to concentrate. All of those things. It was just like I was back seeing these things again.

So I had a lot of the intrusive memories. I had trouble concentrating. I had trouble remembering simple words, like telling my kids to pick up their bowl to put it in the sink. I had to motion to the pick up your, your, you know, your– the thing. And my boys would say, you mean the bowl. And I’d say, yeah. I couldn’t even think of that.

I think what really freaked me out was I sitting at a stoplight one time, and not knowing where I was. I’d stopped at a stoplight and for a good minute or so I didn’t know if I was going to work, or coming home from work. Why I was in the car. What time of day it was. I had no clue what I was doing in the car, period. Or how I got there. And it shook me quite a bit.

I found myself very short tempered. I could go from 0 to 60, just like that. It took nothing to get me to lose my temper. Didn’t want to even go outside for a fireworks display around 4th of July. The sounds, the sights, the smells– all of it was too familiar.

Even just driving down the road seeing an animal that had been hit with a car, it would bring back memories, and I would see these things. Even in the church giving communion I would see the faces of some of these dead Marines sometimes. It was very difficult. I had a lot of the intrusive memories.

Numbing, as well. I had a hard time showing empathy. One of my secretaries when I returned home, her son was murdered on her doorstep– or on his doorstep. He was shot in the head in front of his daughter. And my immediate reaction was well, there’s just one. What’s everybody so upset about? It’s only one. Let’s have the funeral, and let’s get back to work. And I didn’t see the problem with it. I was smart enough not to say that out loud, especially talking with the mother. I knew the right thing to say. To say, I’m sorry for you’re loss.

©2013 Laureate Education, Inc. 1

Vicarious Trauma and PTSD in Military Personnel

And this is awful and terrible. But inside, I just couldn’t connect. I just didn’t think that it was that big of a deal. It took a long time to regain some of that empathy.

And eventually my wife, God bless her, she finally said, well, you need to go get some help. And she was at the point of saying if you don’t get some help, I am going to leave. So eventually, I said, well, OK. Fine. I’ll call the VA. They got me in to see a doctor right away, and started seeing somebody and talking with them.

But that took about three years of working on it. It didn’t happen overnight. It took about three years of talking with a counselor to get through to the other side, and finally get onto an even keel. And then to turn those experiences around and use them for positive experiences, rather than negative.

CLAUDE BOUSHEY: The kind of things I went through through my recovery were both physical, mental, and emotional. Believe it or not, the physical part was a lot easier to cover than the mental and the emotional, because physically you kind of know you’ve got a broken leg. It needs to heal. That bone needs to grow back. You have a crushed spine, so the spine needs to grow back.

Those were easier dealing with the mental part . I actually lost a buddy in combat during my recovery. So that was pretty hard, I mean, hitting that portion. Accepting what you are now. Walking around or getting wheeled around in a wheelchair. Walking with a walker or cane. Having things attached to your body that’s not supposed to be there to help you recover, of course. It’s mentally draining, because you want your body the way it was before. Before June 13, 2004.

And once I kind of accepted that hey, this is the new you, things got better mentally and emotionally. And it was a lot better on my family, as well. And there was a time– rooms like this, I’d sit in the dark and just hang out and relax. And that was my time, because I just wanted to reflect on what happened. And you go through a phase of woe is me. Why me? Why did it happen to me? Why couldn’t it happen to anybody else? I never did anything wrong. Why’d it happened to me? So you go through that phase. And you go through a phase of oh, man, I destroyed a $6 million helicopter. I let my unit down. They’re one less helicopter in the fight in Iraq. So you go through that phase. I let my unit down. I want to go back.

So September ’05 is when I went back on flying status, and then we started gearing up for the next tour for Iraq. And I volunteered to get on the next boat over to the next tour with my unit. So that was a goal that I need to fulfill. Because mentally, I felt that I didn’t get the job done the first time, because I crashed right in the middle of the tour. So I got sent home. And I wanted to complete a full tour for me, mentally.

©2013 Laureate Education, Inc. 2

Vicarious Trauma and PTSD in Military Personnel

I was offered other positions– to PCS. To change duty stations and go somewhere else and to stop deploying. But I elected to stay there and deploy with the unit.

STEVEN MATOS: I got back in August of ’03, and it wasn’t really the best homecoming. I ended up getting divorced. I ended up losing my youngest son. I went home to see my mom and dad and my brother and grandmother back in New York. And that was nice, but living here in Virginia– I dove into my work, I just did everything I could to keep busy.

My sleep was horrendous. I wouldn’t fall asleep until seven in the morning, the next day. I’d be up all night. Just couldn’t sleep until, finally, body was tired enough that I would just pass out.

Relationship wise the smallest things set me off. I don’t care if it was a little bit of spilled milk or just a dumb question, and I’m jumping at the hinges. And that’s when I realized, OK, something’s not right. And I got in trouble. I had an incident at home where I got arrested. And I ended up doing time in jail for it. And that’s when I realized, yes, I was wrong. I need help, because this is getting to the point that it’s dangerous.

Vicarious Trauma and PTSD in Military Personnel Additional Content Attribution

IMAGES: Images provided by http://www.istockphoto.com/

MUSIC: Creative Support Services Los Angeles, CA

Dimension Sound Effects Library Newnan, GA

Narrator Tracks Music Library Stevens Point, WI

Signature Music, Inc Chesterton, IN

Studio Cutz Music Library Carrollton, TX

©2013 Laureate Education, Inc. 3