Deep Wounds

Barriers and Bridges to Helping War Veterans Heal

by Dina Greenberg and illustrations by Annie Internicola, February 25, 2008

Bob Reiter, Director of Veterans Services for Rensselaer County, was a helicopter door gunner during two tours in Vietnam, and served on active duty in the Marine Corps and the Armed Forces Police from 1960 to 1968. He had never talked about his military service, not even with his wife and children. But last September Reiter traveled from his office in Troy to Wheaton, Illinois, to address a gathering of veterans who had served in wars past and present. The gathering was a three-day Soldier’s Heart Healing Workshop for combat veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Filling out this 65-member gathering were mental health care providers, social workers, nurses, and vets’ family members.

Reiter knows what PTSD looks like and he knows that there is no statute of limitations on the number of years a vet’s pain can be buried deep before it unexpectedly erupts. This was the case when he shared his story in a segment of the workshop where other vets did likewise. Surrounded by so many others who carried similar burdens, Reiter found his nearly 40 years of bottled-up terror and grief suddenly beginning to flow. Through tears, he described the fear that engulfed him when his helicopter was shot down by enemy fire. “We were in firefights every day. We got shot at every single day,” said Reiter, as if in disbelief. Two other Vietnam vets in the group embraced Reiter while he sobbed.

The workshop’s leader was Dr. Ed Tick, a clinical psychotherapist with extensive experience treating veterans. Tick describes PTSD as “frozen war consciousness,” a psychological reaction to warfare that causes survivors to repeatedly replay the trauma, sometimes months and even years later. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association (APA) added PTSD to its manual of diagnosis, in response to the flood of Vietnam vets seeking treatment for a host of physical and psychological symptoms.

While the APA categorizes PTSD as an “anxiety disorder,” those who work closely with vets know that the symptoms are much broader, encompassing physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and social dimensions. Hypervigilance, depression, anxiety, spousal abuse, sleeplessness, drug and alcohol addictions, and suicide attempts are familiar symptoms of PTSD sufferers. In his highly acclaimed book War and the Soul, Tick describes PTSD, first and foremost, as a spiritual disorder, a “soul wound.”

Tick began his psychotherapy practice in the 1970s, when, many of his first patients were combat veterans who had served in Vietnam. Now Tick encourages vets to tell their stories “in a safe and sacred space,” as he calls it, like that created during the experiential workshop that Reiter attended. There, vets’ family members, chaplains, social workers, and mental health care providers literally formed a circle around the veterans. “As witnesses, they share in carrying the burden of the warrior,” Tick explains. In another segment of the workshop, Reiter was among a roster of speakers—all veterans—who spoke to the numerous implications of PTSD and its prevalence among combat veterans.