Silver linings...sardonic reminiscence
I begin to think there may be a small bit of good to be derived from the horrors of the Fort Hood shootings.
Ever since the Naval hospital experiences I've noted here and there in this oeuvre, I've been aware that the experiences of military caregivers are a ripe target for those people who feel obligated to minimise the horror of all but certain narrow classes of military trauma. For the Vietnam era generation of caregiver (and people like me, who were just batboys to the caregivers), this has meant a lifetime of clamped-down silence about sights and sounds and smells that could freeze the blood and darken the soul. One can't discuss it, because most people don't understand or don't want to hear and some, as I said, will go out of their way to say the experience is nothing and to get over it.
I cannot imagine any of the caregivers I was associated with, who heard and saw as much or more as Maj. Hasan, doing what he is alleged to have done. (I suppose we have to grant him the alleged.) I can easily imagine suicide as a response to what happens to caregivers in military hospitals, but not murder. The excuse, in my book, has no merit at all.
In the aftermath, I am hearing all sorts of psychiatric diagnoses that did not exist 35 or 40 years ago. Then, caregivers (and batboys) who showed the symptoms we now call secondary trauma were judged to be "non-hackers;" to have "immature personalities" or more significant personality disorders (to the uninitiated, that means "crazee"). No therapist bothered to ask why all these people were crazy; they just blamed the victims and left it at that.
I gave up silence in 2003, when this idiotic war started. I've come to believe silence just enables people who think war is any kind of solution to anything. Apparently silence also enables excuses for people who think mass murder solves anything. But back to the small bit of good. The discussion that is following this despicable act has torn the curtain off, and I hope for good. War is toxic for everyone, including those who try to heal the minds and bodies torn in it.
Ever since the Naval hospital experiences I've noted here and there in this oeuvre, I've been aware that the experiences of military caregivers are a ripe target for those people who feel obligated to minimise the horror of all but certain narrow classes of military trauma. For the Vietnam era generation of caregiver (and people like me, who were just batboys to the caregivers), this has meant a lifetime of clamped-down silence about sights and sounds and smells that could freeze the blood and darken the soul. One can't discuss it, because most people don't understand or don't want to hear and some, as I said, will go out of their way to say the experience is nothing and to get over it.
I cannot imagine any of the caregivers I was associated with, who heard and saw as much or more as Maj. Hasan, doing what he is alleged to have done. (I suppose we have to grant him the alleged.) I can easily imagine suicide as a response to what happens to caregivers in military hospitals, but not murder. The excuse, in my book, has no merit at all.
In the aftermath, I am hearing all sorts of psychiatric diagnoses that did not exist 35 or 40 years ago. Then, caregivers (and batboys) who showed the symptoms we now call secondary trauma were judged to be "non-hackers;" to have "immature personalities" or more significant personality disorders (to the uninitiated, that means "crazee"). No therapist bothered to ask why all these people were crazy; they just blamed the victims and left it at that.
I gave up silence in 2003, when this idiotic war started. I've come to believe silence just enables people who think war is any kind of solution to anything. Apparently silence also enables excuses for people who think mass murder solves anything. But back to the small bit of good. The discussion that is following this despicable act has torn the curtain off, and I hope for good. War is toxic for everyone, including those who try to heal the minds and bodies torn in it.
posted by Uncle | 01:18
2 Comments:
Indeed for war, but why are shrinks infamously mentally unstable? For that matter, physicians are prone to suicide, particularly radiologists ... radiologists?
Having been born into the military and avoiding enlisting when old enough, I long ago concluded that the regimentation that makes that all work is soul pulverizing, even in peacetime. The war factor is too much to add to the mix.
I recall even as a young man knowing WWII vets who still woke with starts finding themselves ready to attack the nearest person, often their sleeping and blameless wives. They said they had never resolved or acclimated to what they had experienced.
Re Shrinks: that's a point I should have made. I read--recently--that the people who are elbow deep in blood and save more people than they lose come away with a sense of accomplishment that overrides the horrors. Psychiatrists are one notch removed from the physical manifestations, and may have no idea if they have saved anyone,so perhaps the imagination starts stampeding.
Radiologists and dentists too have a lot of exposure to weird radiation and stranger substances.
PTSD, under whatever name, and likewise compassion fatigue and secondary trauma, have been with us at least back to Thucydides. It seems like 2500 years is enough of a learning curve. I shall go on about this.
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