suicide prevention

"DOC!" BY THIS POINT IN MY JOURNEY, I figured I had it all under control. My self-aid consisted of spearfishing and free-diving to quiet the physical aftereffects of combat and writing to understand the emotional ones. I had developed my self-awareness to the point where I was able to understand the genesis of my emotions and reactions significantly better than before. I felt I had successfully moved past my combat experiences and had really, finally, come home. But I hadn’t. Unresolved aspects of my combat experiences lingered deep beneath my well-adjusted exterior. I’d handled the physical and emotional issues pretty [...]

LOOK AT IT "By itself, reconstructing the trauma does not address the social or relational dimension of the traumatic experience. It is a necessary part of the recovery process, but it is not sufficient." —Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery, p.183 I HAD A GOOD FRIEND in college who loved to get hammered and expose himself in public. More than once I lost track of him while stumbling home from the bars only to find him standing proudly in the middle of the street, pants around his ankles, shouting “LOOOOOK AT IT!” to anyone within earshot. This is only tangentially connected [...]

EMOTIONS, SHIT. "Narrative can transform involuntary reexperiencing of traumatic events into memory of the events, thereby reestablishing authority over memory.Forgetting combat trauma is not a legitimate goal of treatment." —Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.192 IF YOU HAVE ESTABLISHED your own safety and sobriety, either through self-, buddy- or corpsman-aid, then you are ready to move forward. The next challenge you must overcome is figuring out how to reestablish authority over your own memory because, even if you don’t remember these experiences, you can’t forget them. Great, that’s super helpful. So how the hell are we supposed to go about making [...]

GETTING PHYSICAL AT THIS POINT I have to assume two things: First, that what I’ve explained about the warrior’s journey, and how we’re only prepared for some of it, makes sense to you and, second, that you’re getting tired of background information. That information was critical to set the stage for the rest of the book—but I agree. It’s time to start hammering out the details. From here on out, the focus will be on the specifics. We will separate the challenges into their components, understand the support that is available to overcome them, and develop a plan to move [...]

THE VALUE OF MYTH "Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted as biography, history, or science, it is killed. The living images become only remote facts of a distant time or sky. Furthermore, it is never difficult to demon- strate that as science and history mythology is absurd. When a civilization begins to interpret its mythology this way, the life goes out of it, temples become museums, and the link between the two perspectives is dissolved. . . . To bring the images back to life, one has to seek, not interesting applications to modern affairs, but illuminating hints from [...]

SOCIETY'S ROLE ". . . I cannot escape the suspicion that what we do as mental health professionals is not as good as the healing that in other cultures has been rooted in the native soil of the returning soldier’s community." —Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam, p.194 SOME SOCIETIES THROUGHOUT history had specific ways of helping their warriors heal the inner chasms created by combat trauma. They had rites of passage, rituals, and meaningful ceremonies designed to welcome the returning warrior, cleanse him of the caustic emotions of battle, and reassure him of his honored position within society. In his book, [...]

DEADLY MISCONCEPTIONS MECHANICAL ADJUSTMENTS are easy. If a pistol-shooter consistently hits low on the target, it’s more than likely they’re anticipating the shot. A good pistol coach can break that bad habit and have them drilling the bull’s-eye in short order. The same cannot be said for mental adjustments. Mental adjustments cannot be externally imposed—they have to come from within. In order for us to change how we perceive the world, we need some motivation, some personal understanding of why the adjustment is necessary. Years of inertia must be overcome before most people will even listen to a different viewpoint, [...]