That is the idea. Some will choose not to read or will and relate. This forum triggers everyone, but life is full of them. While this may not be a military geared site, it is a PTSD site. People have PTSD from what they have done or have had done to them. Either way PTSD is the same. That is why Anthony went out of his way not to form cliques on here or let people group up in sections like military, rape, shootings, or what ever incident that gave one PTSD. We have all the symptoms to one degree or another depending on where we are in healing or how severe the PTSD is (and any case of PTSD is severe really as why we are diagnosed this extreme). PTSD is the same no matter your source.

As a result with how this forum is run we have people of all walks of life from many backgrounds who have one thing in common, PTSD. And everyone here knows exactly how the next feels as we all have this. It has made a large community with many different takes on how to get better and how to handle the many symptoms.

Also, people do not judge here. All we ask for is honesty. We are well aware of the many ways people get this.

Thanks Veiled, I appreciatte your response. I am going to state now that I am going to get something off my chest that is one of the major factors of my PTSD.

My suggestion to people who are sensative, vunerable, or having a difficult time dealing with their own emotional problems may want to just skip this thread and move along.

I was officially diagnosed with PTSD and Thanatos. I feel one of the main reasons I am so affected by PTSD is that in the course of everything I have been and am being exposed to has cause to me lose my faith in God. I have witnessed senseless killing, more than any one person should ever have to. I am sure you have read or seen on CNN about the little boy who was drug from his house, doused in gasoline and sat on fire. These people that we are fighting are brutal murderers and people who have no respect for human life. The incident that caused me to finally lose my faith in God was when I came upon the bodies of several children who had been beheaded. This was right at day light and the village hadn't really come out to begin their day. The parents of these children thought their children were in bed asleep.

These children were murdered because this villiage in northern Iraq accepted humanitarian aid from coalition forces. The insurgents in turn took these children and beheaded them as a way to control this villiage and other villiages. I was working solo this night and to be honest there isnt many nights that go by that I don't find bodies. I have just never found children butchered like this.

In my operational details if I am on an operation and I witness insurgents commiting acts such as this I can engage these people only if I am positive it will not jeapordize the success of my current mission. I have had to make decisions in the past, as I am certain I will in the future, to not get involved as I watched an active murder take place. It was simple math, I was solo and out numbered. On the flip side, depending on the equipment I have chose for the operation at hand I have engaged multiple insurgents but have been able to do so in a way that the insurgents had no idea of where the direction of fire was and how big of a potential force they were facing.

The morning I found these children I had an emotional breakdown. I found myself sitting against a building just 20 feet from the bodies of these children, unable to function. My next plan of action of course was one of revenge. Even tho I had completed my assignment for the night I moved through the villiage, house by house, until I found the insurgents whom were responsible for murdering these children. It is common for the insurgents to stay in these villages to be a show of presence when the villagers find their children. These monsters were playing some form of a game while they awaited the villagers to wake up. This was one engagement I was involved in that I have never lost a wink of sleep over.

This is the single most horrible experience of my life. I have lost dear friends in combat, held them as they died, held their famalies as they grieved, and have tried to explain to an 8 year old little boy of one of my soldiers who was killed as to why his father died in a war. Children are so smart. He asked me why his father was killed in a war when there were no enemy tanks at his school or near his home. How do you explain this to an 8 year old?

I plan to finish my military commitment and have began to try to figure out how I can live with my PTSD and Thanatos. I hope that when my commitment is finished I can finally find peace within myself.

There are so many more instances that I could write about but it gets redundant. I welcome and actually hope that someone has some advice or direction. I know I need to re-establish my relationship with God but as I sat in that street with those murdered children, I lost every bit of my faith. What is God's master plan for those children?

I thank you for taking the time to read this. If this is too harsh then a moderator can delete it all.

Tactman,

Just wanted you to know that I hear you, your pain, your suffering...Thoughts are with you, and your buddies. Come home safe, and thank you.....

I am a coward and could not do or face what you have....

Tactman, you're going through some truly horrible experiences. I'm very glad for your sake that you're getting things out here. Just wondering, how much longer are you committed to the service?

I don't think you need to make disclaimers about what you're writing or warn people and so on. We're all adults here. People don't have to read everything. At least that's my opinion. What I really like about this forum is it doesn't contain all those ***Warning: Triggers*** notices that a lot of other PTSD forums seems to contain. And a bit of triggering is good anyways, for me at least.

Actually I really appreciate you sharing all this here Tactman, I come from a military family and my father and brothers don't talk much about what's happened to them on operations. It's good for me to read someone's experiences, it helps me to understand a bit better. You really have had some horrible things happen, like Hodge said, it's good you're talking about it.

Reading Forum Increases Symptoms!

Yep, no warning needed. It is the nature of the forum.

Tactman, you are in the absolute throes of PTSD.

Right now, your brain is just sitting there in horror, seeing a changed world, where nothing is safe and the world is a bad bad place. Your brain sees only that this is the worst and only someone exactly being in my situation, can possibly understand.

And your brain is wrong.

Go and read our stories. Read some of the trauma diaries, some introduction threads. And you will see countless stories of unspeakable horror, each different, and all of us understand each other. You are now part of this community. We do not need to compare how bad each of us has seen, done, or had done.

My son sleeps ten feet from me. As I toss and turn, kicking in sleeping in my sleep, where even my dog won't stay, my son does the same. He suffers from PTSD, from different trauma from mine, but we are completely in sync. I get the nausea, IB symptoms, shaking, nightmares, zoning out, raging, shut downs, shut in, flashbacks, etc... When I got here, I learned that I share that, my son shares that with many different people here. I belong, they belong, and we don't have explain or justify.

People read my story, it's not that mine is worse, it's not different, it's because the feelings, the reactions, the illness, and the process to get better, is the exact same. It's why I read their stories, why I post here, work here, made friends here. We all live in that bad, bad world.

I am also glad that you are sharing it with us. I can read it and feel the same horror I feel over my own life. I can also read it and know hope, as I know it gets better, we can get it in control, we can improve, we can work through it. When someone says, you have to remove yourself from the environment or you will get worse, but leaving you can work to get better. We say it because we are living it. The first step is always seeking help. You finally realize you need to get this dealt with. You already did this. The second step is realizing your not alone. Some people do understand, even without having lived it. Your almost there. The third step is learning how to get better. The fourth is doing it.

bec

hang in their
we must lest not forget the ones who have sevred us and the ones sevreing and the ones to come

this is good place for all ptsd

I cannot begin to tell you how much I feel for Military personnel who are confirmed PTSD sufferers and still deployed.

I send you strength Tactman.

Another event, Im going to talk it out. There is a kid near the town Im in now, an Iraqi child, who is just a great kid. When we first moved into this area the natives were nervous with us being here as we are not a conventional fighting force which led to some tension at first. Over time I, along with several other operators, befriended this young man. His life ambition was to join the Iraqi Army and fight for his country. This kid, or young man, really impressed us.

When we would leave town for ops we would always slip out under the cover of darkness. This kid knew we had left within the past few hours every evening and on countless times we watched the kid through NV or infrared. He didnt know where we were at, and about 90% of the time he was facing the wrong direction but he was always saluting us, basically he was saluting an empty desert. This kid is an example of what will eventually make Iraq a country that will be able to defend itself.

While returning from an op one night in the recent past he knew to NEVER approach us because we had warned him that our weapons were loaded and we carried other dangerous incendiary devices that could harm him if he were to get too close and an accident would happen (I have hugged this kid so many times). We didn't want him to hug one of us and something happen.

As we came into the villiage we noticed him sitting in the center of town. He stood and with a look I had never seen in his face he began to walk as us. As he got closer we moved into a defensive permiter and began to yell at him to stop. The look on his face was one of complete devastation and horror. As he became closer we became more aggressive with ordering him to stop and one of my soldiers began to try to load a less lethal round into his secondary weapon. All at once he breaks out into a dead run at us and when he is around 50 feet away we see that he is crying and is wearing a suicide vest.

I had no choice, I shot and killed him which detonated the suicide vest. The vest was designed in a way so there was no way he could take it off and he held a pressure swith that if he released it the vest would explode. We immediately reported the situation to socom and began our own investigation. The first place we went was his famalies home where we found his family murdered. Stating that finding his family murdered does not state what these animals did to this young man's family, I just find no need in sharing details.

The investigation yielded that an insurgent force put this suicide vest on this young man and ordered him to approach us and detonate it. If he did this then his entire family would be safe. Within 10 minutes of this young man leaving his hime the insurgents murdered his family.

This young man is a huge loss. This is the type of young man who wanted to fight for freedom, he wanted to join the Iraqi army and in addition to everything else, he was a good person.

This is yet another injury added to my ptsd injury. I have flashed the moment back, dreamed about it, and it just hurts, I loved this kid.

I have about a 6 year commitment left. With events such as this happening on a weekly/bi-weekly schedule do any of you think that when my duty to my country is finished that I will be able to fit into society as a normal person?

I will do whatever it takes to get control of my ptsd/thanatos. I guess I am just looking for some positive reinforcement. Thank you for your time and allowing me to share my latest trauma.....