According to Vietnam veteran and author, Larry Heinemann, “the Veterans’ Administration —now kicked up to the Cabinet level—has never been regarded by Vietnam veterans as an advocate of their health and well-being.”[i] Luckily, there are grassroots organizations, founded by Vietnam veterans, which provide alternatives to the VA’s idea of treatment.
">http://www.authorsden.com/members/blogs/#_edn1" name=_ednref1>[i] Luckily, there are grassroots organizations, founded by Vietnam veterans, which provide alternatives to the VA’s idea of treatment.
“The Vet Center system is based on getting out into the community and reaching the vets,” explained Dr. Michael Cohen. “Where we can’t, we subcontract with a clinician who is well-versed in the area of PTSD. For many of us, this is a mission. We’re helping each other.” But he went on to explain that outreach programs—such as Vietnam Veterans of America and Swords to Plowshares—while focusing extremely well on social services—“dabble in treatment. Essentially they hire someone who is a clinician. That person becomes the clinical coordinator and maybe starts a group, sees one or two clients for counseling, but it’s not extensive and by no means is it the primary focus of the agency.”
In 1987, a grassroots movement began to grow around a technique called Traumatic Incident Reduction [TIR], developed some years earlier as means of inspecting psychic trauma. A synthesis of several classic disciplines, TIR, according to those vets who have worked with it, provided a new model for the treatment of post-traumatic stress, and one unencumbered by government bureaucracy or political agendas.[ii]
">http://www.authorsden.com/members/blogs/#_edn2" name=_ednref2>[ii]
Traumatic Incident Reduction: Back to the Future
Dave stares down, eyes focused on a point past infinity. His eyes are narrowed, his face ruddy, like a man who is exerting an enormous amount of effort to escape from something dark and terrifying that lives in the outback of his mind.
“Have another look,” says the facilitator, a big man with a silver beard sitting across the table.
Dave recounts his story for the third time and there is a perceptible edge to his voice, as if his boredom is curdling into frustration. “The district manager and I had this verbal agreement concerning the percentage of sales I would receive. But he decided to rearrange the commission structure before I was paid. We’re talking about nearly seven thousand dollars here. Damn it, I earned that money.” Dave breathes deeply and closes his eyes. His square jaw clenches tightly, and when he continues there is a slight trembling in his voice. “I know that I have to confront him. But every time I even think about doing it my stomach just knots up.” His face flushes with rage and humiliation. “Here I am, this bad-ass, black belt Marine, scared shitless over the thought of asking for money that’s actually owed me. I don’t understand why people always take advantage of me. Hell, I don’t know why I let them.”
Dave stops and swallows hard. He looks up, angst radiating from watery blue eyes, and shrugs resignedly, signifying that he’s once again reached “the wall”—a barrier beyond which his memory cannot penetrate.
The bearded man nods in genuine empathy. “Okay,” the facilitator acknowledges. “Now, take a look and tell me if there is an earlier, similar incident?”
Dave pulls a deep breath into his lungs, closes his eyes and attempts to pierce that tenebrous cloud of the past, where unspeakable phantasms lurk and disturb the sanctity of his sleep. “Yeah, there,” his facilitator says, “What do you see right there?”
Suddenly, Dave is a twenty-five-year-old Lance Corporal, 0351 [Infantry, Anti-tank Assault], walking through the bush near Chu Lai. It is January of 1967, and he’s on his second tour of duty, his ninety-second patrol in Vietnam. There is the smell of rain-soaked foliage and warm, redolent earth. It is dusk and the mosquitoes are beginning to swarm at the saline smell of human sweat. There are the sounds of jungle life signaling the ingress of night and, above them all, there is the sound of his own heart pumping adrenaline into his veins. It is not like a recollection, not some vague, distant memory. He is there, in the grip of a fear that has possessed him from the moment his boots touched Vietnamese soil. He has nearly eleven more months of hell to live through before they will lift his feet out of this fetid nightmare.
When the sniper fire begins, Dave drops to one knee and wields his three-point-five rocket launcher, instinctively aiming toward the outcropping of trees he believes to be the enemy position. He calls for his first gunner to stand by for loading, but the eighteen-year-old balks and runs for the nearest cover. Dave, livid with anger, rises up and in that moment is hit in the shoulder by AK-47 fire. Pain excoriates reason; rage obliterates the pain. As soon as Dave can reach the tree line he fully intends to beat the living shit out of the callow grunt who has left him with his ass in the breeze.
It’s all in slow motion now: the loping run toward the trees, the sound of “popcorn” and the rush of wind as thirty-caliber projectiles rip past his ears, the blood drenching his flack jacket, the numbing in his arm, and the overwhelming fury rising in him with the pressure of an erupting geyser. Now he spots the gunner, a solid grey silhouetted against the variegated grey of the bush, barely human in appearance, his hands shaking with spastic intensity. And in those hands is an M-16 automatic assault rifle, safety thrown, aimed directly at Dave’s chest.
Dave exhales a slow expletive, and only then realizes he’s been holding his breath a good fifteen seconds. “Shit! I just backed off, real easy. Only a flesh wound, man. No problem. I just knew if I even looked cross-eyed at this kid he would blow me away.”
The bearded man nods, signifying understanding. “I got that,” he says. Dave knows he has. “Let’s go back to the beginning and run through it again.”
Dave does so, three more times. At first it is painful, then boring, and then, on the fourth recounting, Dave chuckles to himself. It is a small escape of air accompanying a great explosion of clarity. The facilitator nods and queries, “So, how are you doing?”
Dave looks up and his eyes sparkle with amusement. “I’m doing fine.” His face has relaxed, as if some emotional pillory has been lifted from his neck. “It’s a stupid thing, really. It just occurred to me that not all the people I have to confront in life are armed and dangerous. I guess its okay to be pissed off if you’ve got a good reason to be.”
The bearded man returns Dave’s broad smile; it’s hard to judge which of them feels a greater sense of accomplishment in this moment. “That’s great, Dave. We’ll end right here.”
Dave’s TIR session lasted one hour and twenty-two minutes. But for him, its brief duration opened a window of resolution in a world of despair.
[i] Heinemann, Larry, "The Road From Afghanistan," (Playboy, July 1989, p.163)
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[i] Heinemann, Larry, "The Road From Afghanistan," (Playboy, July 1989, p.163)
[ii] Joyce Carbonell and Charles Figley of Florida State University identified four promising “power therapies” in a 1993-98 study of trauma victims. In addition to TIR, they included: Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing [EMDR], developed by Francine Shapiro; Thought Field Therapy [TFT], originally the Roger Callahan Technique; and Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation [V/KD], based on the Neuro-Linguistic Programing theories of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. All have proven relatively effective.
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[ii] Joyce Carbonell and Charles Figley of
Florida State University identified four promising “power therapies” in a 1993-98 study of trauma victims. In addition to TIR, they included: Eye Movement Desensitization and
Reprocessing [EMDR], developed by Francine Shapiro; Thought Field Therapy [TFT], originally the Roger Callahan Technique; and Visual-Kinesthetic Dissociation [V/KD], based on the Neuro-Linguistic Programing theories of Richard Bandler and John Grinder. All have proven relatively effective.
Continued in Part VIII
You can read the article in its entirety in Beyond Trauma: Conversations on Traumatic Incident Reduction. See http://www.BeyondTrauma.com
