Page 590 - Total War on PTSD

and things only got worse. “From my experience with military PTSD, there’s a lot of triggers. There are so many noises that happen — a car backfiring or fireworks — that will bring up a previous event."
Worse, even the anticipation of being triggered caused Melanie to live in a clenched state of panic. “I had tightness in my chest and pain there all the time,” she said. After a decade of feeling untethered, Melanie, now a tattoo artist working out of
Lawrenceville, Georgia, sought the expertise of a therapist who helped her work through her survivor’s guilt. Still, she lived with that inescapable fear. “For a long, long time,“ she said, “I was very lost.”
Melanie looked into TM in 2016 and decided to learn. “Within two weeks of practice, I was driving my car down the road, and I realized, ‘wait, I don’t have any tightness in my chest. I don’t have that constant feeling of dread that I am going to die.’” She pulled over and called her meditation teacher. “I was laughing because it seemed so crazy. I’d lived with this anxiety for so long, and meditation was the missing piece to heal it.” There are moments, of course, where Melanie’s trauma returns, but the effects are not as severe, and it dissipates more quickly.
While Veterans make up only 9% of the population, they account for double – 18%. – the number of U.S. suicides. The first study of TM as a treatment for PTSD involved combat Veterans of the Vietnam War. The trial showed a 52% reduction in anxiety symptoms, a 46% drop in depression, and a 40% reduction in symptoms of PTSD after three months’ practice of the technique. Veterans who couldn’t sleep
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