Page 308 - Total War on PTSD

additional strata to this experiential isolation and thus exacerbates the Veteran’s loneliness and deepens it. As George Atwood poignantly stresses:
The loneliness of the trauma victim is of the most extreme kind that one can imagine: It has as its essential feature that it is felt as absolute, never to be relieved. The loneliness is cosmic, rather than terrestrial. It extends throughout the universe and seems, to the person suffering it, to be eternal. It is not conceivable that it can ever be addressed, diminished, soothed, escaped. It is damnation. (Atwood, 2012, pp. 128-129)
The Isolating Burden of PTSD
Findings indicate that having PTSD may implicate survivors’ loneliness (van der Velden, Pijnappel, & van der Meulen, 2018). Developing PTSD may be isolating in multiple manners. First, there is the matter of identity. PTSD is the case wherein past experiences remain pathologically and unrelentingly present in one’s conciseness. It is, as patients often stress, not so much the case wherein one cannot let go of the past, but rather it is the past that does not let go of the person. PTSD, therefore, strengthens three interrelated identities: a) the “Veteran” or “warrior” identity, b) the “trauma survivor” identity, and c) the identity of a person whose mental-health has been compromised.
Above, I discussed the manner in which the “Veteran” identity may sever the person from society. Reliving the war repeatedly, drives that identity deeper and adds to it the torment and strife associated with mental injury. When one sustains an injury on the battlefield, its presence serves as a reminder of the battle wherein it was sustained. The same process occurs with combat stress injuries but more forcefully, because the unrelenting memory and reliving of the experience is inherent to the injury. Moreover, being mentally-ill is an identity in its own right (e.g., Cruwys & Gunaseelan, 2016).
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