Page 208 - Total War on PTSD

incidentally, and this client stated that he was still able to sleep through the night and the flashbacks had not returned. This man told me that without the help of Esotherapy he would probably have killed himself.
Iraq War Veteran
A Veteran of the Iraq war came in for therapy due to heavy meth use. Unlike other users, he would go out into the desert where no one could see him, alone, to use the drug. He understood that he was killing himself slowly, but did not
care. He had been in counseling for many years, with almost no improvement. He explained that seeing his nephew around him was a big trigger and, since he was from an extended Spanish family living together on the same ranch, he would see his nephew frequently.
He explained that during the war in Iraq, he was an MP and one night, he was in the watchtower. From the corner of his eye, he saw a silhouette that had jumped the fence and entered a building before he could react. He was on the radio communicating, when the silhouette exited the building and tried to jump the fence back out. Thinking it was an enemy that had planted a remote-controlled bomb, he aimed and fired. The silhouette slid off the fence and onto the pavement. He ran over to the body and saw a 14-year-old boy whose shirt was soaked in blood. There were potatoes on the ground, and some potatoes were still rolling out from under his bloody shirt. The boy had been hit in the head and chest and was dead. The client stated he was frozen with guilt and horror; realizing that the boy had come to steal potatoes, probably to feed his family, since the war had had created a condition of famine where people were starving to death.
My client said the boy’s face looked just like his nephew’s...as if they were twins. He said that after he came back to the U.S., every time he saw his nephew he was reminded that it could have been his nephew he had killed. Because of
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