Page 303 - Total War on PTSD Final

circumstances, then returning to your original world only to discover that you are not understood, do not belong there the same way you did before, and the new world you have just left no longer exists, leaving you alone. Even when there are still the trappings of the world you once knew, they are no more, and there is no one to comfortably talk with about these things, so you keep these feelings inside and withdraw into them unless distracted by work or some crisis or some event powerful enough to draw your mind away from simply feeling like you no longer belong, anywhere really.
In what follows, I will do my best to unpack this description, so as to make the experience and its unfolding as explicit as I can manage for the sake of Veterans and their support-networks.
A soldier becomes a Veteran the moment he or she sets foot off the battlefield and departs for the journey home. Though for many this journey is full of excitement and anticipation towards reuniting with family and friends, often these may be overshadowed with a sense of loneliness. This loneliness may engulf the Veteran almost instantaneously upon departure, or it may gradually settle in. Recall that loneliness invariably entails a cognitive discrepancy wherein one evaluates his or her existing social connections against the backdrop of prior or imagined social relations that are more favorably desired. Thus, to understand and appreciate the Veterans’ loneliness, it is crucial that one gain an understanding of the military culture and the kind of bond that soldiers have. Because from the initiation of this bond, it will frame any social experience thereafter.
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