War and PTSD: Recent Episodes
Dave Mills
The purpose of this podcast is to explain how war and other traumatic events affect an individual and can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
When I went to the VA Disability Department to apply for disability for the ringing in my ears, I found out that a Vietnam Veteran who has had a heart problem could possibly qualify for VA Disability. I was told that the VA says that the heart attack of a Vietnam Veteran was probably caused by Agent Orange. I applied and was approved for 40% VA Disability.
In this episode, we will discuss how my personality, attitudes, and behaviors were changed from ‘normal’ to ‘dysfunctional’ as a result of my PTSD. I went from being a ‘good sailor’ in the Navy, to being a ‘bad sailor’ after my PTSD event in Vietnam. I carried those dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors into civilian life after my discharge from the Navy. For the next 50 years, I was described as ‘a bull in a China closet’.
Your mind controls your brain and your brain controls your body. When you have PTSD, your mind may no longer be in control of your brain. When that happens, your PTSD brain is on autopilot, and the signals it is sending out may be destructive to you. Let's discuss how to get your mind back in control of your brain and your body.
My personality changed while I was in Vietnam 50 years ago. I have always thought that my Vietnam personality, attitudes, and behaviors were the real me. But I have recently realized that my dysfunctional personality that I came out of Vietnam with was not who I am at all. My new personality (post-Vietnam) is a composite of all the symptoms of my PTSD. Those symptoms include: a heavy dose of hyperactivity, a severe lack of emotions, a total disrespect for authority, a 'My-Way-or-the-Highway' attitude, and lots of other negative attitudes and behaviors. Now that I know that my personality today is not who I really am (or want to be) I am now working on fixing it.
The lack of emotions, like sympathy, empathy, happiness and love, are major symptoms of my PTSD. I thought that not having these emotions was a normal part of my personality. Even though my lack of emotions was keeping me from having positive relationships, I thought there was nothing I could do about it, because that was who I was. I have recently realized, that my lack of positive and negative emotions are not personality traits, but they are caused by my dysfunctional PTSD brain. That means that being unemotional is not who I am, but it is who my brain is telling me that I am.
In this episode, we are going to discuss Dr. Sophie Mort’s blog post titled: ‘6 Ways to Switch off the Fight-or-Flight Response…and Feel Calm Again’. I have used 3 of the 6 techniques to help me get out of the ‘Fight-or-Flight Response’ mode. As we discuss those 3 techniques, I am going explain how I have used these techniques to get my brain to start operating normally again.
In this episode, I want to dig deeper into what Dr. Mort has written, by adding my experiences to her strategies. As I do this, you will see how I have applied her strategies in my life and how those strategies have helped me overcome some of the socially dysfunctional symptoms my PTSD.
In this episode, we will continue our discussion of the ‘Fight-or-Flight Response’. We will be discussing Dr. Sophie Mort’s next blog, titled: ‘6 Ways to Switch off the ‘Fight-or-Flight Response’ and Feel Calm Again’. The ‘Fight-or-Flight’ Response is one of the major symptoms of PTSD. It can cause nightmares, hyper-activity, sleep problems, relationships problems, and a host of other problems. Dr. Mort is going to tell us how we can minimize, and possibly eliminate, these problems by shutting down our Fight-or-Flight’ Response in our PTSD brain.
This episode is part 1 of a 2-part series. In this first part, we will discuss a blog post by Dr. Sophie Mort. It is titled: ‘What is stress? What is anxiety? And what is the Fight-or-Flight Response?'She describes what problems the ‘Fight-or-Flight Response' causes and how it is turned on. In part 2, we will discuss how to switch off the Fight-or-Flight Response. The ‘Fight-or-Flight Response' is one of the major symptoms of PTSD. It can cause nightmares, hyper-activity, sleep problems, relationships problems, and a host of other problems.
From 1972 to 1998, I have had 58 full-time and part-time jobs in those 26 years. I thought that having that many jobs was normal. It was in 1998, that a Vietnam Veteran’s counselor showed me that not only was having that many jobs not normal, but that it was a symptom of PTSD. Once I realized that, over the next 23 years, I cut the number of my jobs in half. I was doing better managing this symptom of my PTSD, but it was still controlling my life. Now, I finally understand what symptoms have caused my extensive number of jobs, and I have corrected it. It’s all in this episode.
Today, I finally realized why, and how, the ‘fight or flight’ mode that I have been in since the fire-fight in Vietnam has caused me to quit, or get fired, from 68 jobs between 1972 and 2019.
A few days ago, I was discussing my PTSD symptoms with a friend of mine. After our conversation, I had a breakthrough moment. I realized that a few of my PTSD symptoms were not personality traits, but they were a result of my brain functions. It was exhilarating for me. I will tell you all about it in this episode.
I volunteered to go to Vietnam because of my patriotism and my desire to defend my country against an enemy. Although my intentions were good, the outcome of that decision was not. In this episode, I will discuss more of the symptoms of my PTSD and how they affected my life and relationships.
In this episode, I will continue talking about my life before and after Vietnam. My mantra after I left Vietnam was; ‘nice guys always lose’. Because I believed that was true, I surmised that, ‘bad guys always win’. That is the way I saw my world after I left Vietnam.
In this episode, I will be talking about my life before and after Vietnam. The main difference centered around a new emotion, that I developed in Vietnam and fine-tuned after. That emotion is ‘hate’. As my time in Vietnam progressed, my personality changed from being a good sailor, obeying the rules and being a team player, to being a hostile, disrespectful, angry sailor, who looked at authority as a liability, not an asset. Hate was my motivator to make these changes.
This episode is about the actual fire-fight I was in while I was in Vietnam. During this fire-fight, the danger I felt caused my brain to go into the ‘Fight or Flight’ mode. When this happened, the rush of adrenaline that overwhelmed my body caused a permanent change in my personality. I was a totally different person after this event than I was before it.
This episode is to tell you about the events leading up to a combat situation that I was in, where I was so terrified that my body started creating hormones that changed the functions of my brain for the rest of my life and created my PTSD.
I am going to be telling you about a major breakthrough, that I just had in one of the symptoms of my PTSD. I didn’t know that one of my major negative personality traits was a symptom of my PTSD, until a few weeks ago.
The purpose of this podcast is to explain how war and other traumatic events affect an individual and can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.