The Truth About PTSD

1. INTRO:

My wife was half way through the pregnancy with our first Child. Desert storm had just kicked off an our 1st Marine support squadron was on alert status to deploy to the gulf.

There was a major typhoon heading for Okinawa so, I was working to help batten down the hatches on all our equipment before the storm arrived. I received a phone call from my wife that I will never forget.

All I could here on the other end of the line was the weak sobbing of her voice as she could barely get out the words the baby is gone, they cannot find the heartbeat. Our whole world came crashing down around us. We had to go into lock-down for the typhoon, since my wife was so far along in the pregnancy we had to wait until the storm passed for them to induce labor.

We sat in our small apartment in Okinawa for the next 48 hours as the storm passed knowing that on the other end of the storm was another storm that would forever impact our lives. Giving birth to a lifeless body, I can still see the visible picture of our child with no life inside of my wife’s body.

For months I took every deployment I could trying to ignore the dreams that I continued to have of holding the lifeless body of our baby boy. I tried talking about it but, it was just easier to ignore the pain and try to put the dreams.

After several years of this dream, I had a realization. That God created me to have dreams. What was the reason? Why the dreams? God what are you showing me?

Deirdre Barrett, a psychologist at Harvard University theorized that nightmares act as the brain’s way of focusing a person’s attention on issues they need to address.

Loss of first child.

This unlocked for me something special, a realization that I wasn’t broken, God designed me for a purpose, and I can get better. I can live within God’s design for my life.

2. PTSD Defined:

Is a normal response to an abnormal situation- why I can take stock in who came up with this definition. Victor Frankl (background)

Viktor Frankl was one of the first mental health professionals who worked with and wrote about victims of trauma and terror. His existential treatment approach with Nazi death camp survivors has considerable value and usefulness with other kinds of PTSD clients.

Note: For many years the indelible picture of holding our child would come back every time I would see someone holding their newborn babies.

This is because God designed us with a…

1. Limbic system

a. God designed us with this thing called the limbic system, it is essentially in the center of our brain and controls what’s known as our primal or instinctive properties.

4 F’s fight, flight, feed, fornicate.

Essentially what you need to know is that this system stores information and tells us what we need to do in the future. let me ask…

1. Who created you?

Psalm 139:13- for you formed my inner parts and knit me together in my mother’s womb.

2. Who has been in a life or death situation?

3. God’s providence has done 2 things,

1.) He has kept you alive,

2.) He designed you to respond in such a way that you would survive. And your limbic system stores up your experiences so that you would again survive in the future!

YOU ARE NOT BROKEN,

From this point on through the rest of the class we are going to drop the D in PTSD, but if you don’t believe me there is another credible source most of you will probably listen to.

General Mattis the warrior monk

I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans and that is they are somehow damaged goods, I don’t buy it. If we tell our veterans enough that this is what is wrong with them they may actually start believing it. While victimhood in America is exalted I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks. There is also something called post traumatic growth where you come out of a situation like that and you actually feel kinder toward your fellow man and fellow woman. There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

PTS is not a disorder. Our culture’s propagation of this lie leads to a variety of dumb crap

Disgruntled veteran

(Picture with Sarah)

Checking out on our kids, God given responsibilities, many of you need to go home and get eye to eye with the people you love.

Symptoms

Intrusive thoughts and memories- Holding babies

b. Avoidance

c. Anxiety, depression etc.

There are some solutions, though.

The world’s first response to what they believe is a disorder/disease is “Medication”

i. How many meds

ii. The pills on pills on pills.

iii. What is the endgame? Doc

Counseling

Biblical Counseling

b. Speaking about it

c. Replacement conditioning

d. Awareness

When do you think PTS started?

Trauma has been happening since the beginning of time.

Paul was stoned left for dead at Lystra, shipwrecked, bitten by a viper.

Psalm 6:2 ESV

2 Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; heal me, O Lord, for my bones are troubled.

Close

Searching for peace is at the end of the day what we are looking for. The question is can we, have it?

Romans 5:1–6 ESV

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. 6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Write this down- Why do I not have peace?

For me I was running away from my demons, cheating on my wife, living as a drunk. All in the name of trying to get peace.

What changed for me was that I realized I was running away from my demons but not running anywhere.

Everything changed when I started running towards Christ, and now I have peace through the grace of Jesus Christ.