Page 304 - Total War on PTSD

alien to them; and c) the search for a new normal as a strategy to reconnect. As one Veteran in the study noted, “I can tell stories all night long and [my family] probably won’t really grasp what’s going on” (p. 5). Similarly, in a study with British Veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (Brewin et al., 2011) one Veteran lamented “our lives are completely alien to civilian lives. I think it always will be a them-and-us situation’ while another noted that “it’s hard to fit back into Civvy Street. I’ve been out 18 years now. I’ll never do it. It’s just, y’know, I talk like a squaddie, I act like a squaddie” (p. 1737). Thus, the first fundamental need that may be critically compromised for returning Veterans and thus give rise to their loneliness is the human need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). As Hynes (2001) notes of war:
if it makes men, it also isolates them from other men — cuts off the men who fought from older and younger men who did not share that shaping experience, and intensifies the feeling every modern generation has anyway, that it is separate, a kind of secret society in a world of others. (p. 6)
1. It is important to note that identity issues may differ between individuals, and more so between armies. In conscript armies (e.g., in Israel), wherein a large percentage of the population serves for a predetermined period of time, the “warrior” identity may be less dominant. Nevertheless, as I argue below, PTSD may fortify that identity regardless of whether service is mandatory or not.
Contributing to this sense of alienation is Veterans’ conviction that civilians would never really be able to understand and Veterans will never really be able to explain, not fully, not sufficiently. The experience of war is ineffable. After all, how does one explain
304 of 1085