I got an email from an old friend who flew with Bob and his unit in the
First Cav in Vietnam. He said he was having problems again and didn't
like it, so he had been reading through his old copies of The Post-Traumatic Gazette and they helped a lot. I suggested he might be
having an anniversary reaction to New Year's Day, since people were
killed in the Cav because troops were shooting at the troops on "Hong
Kong" hill and they shot back. Then he remembered we are coming up on the anniversary of one of the pilots being killed, the first one in their tour. Good insight.
One of the most interesting things to me about PTSD is that the reptile
brain, where it resides, can't speak English and can't tell time. It
never knows you have been home for years and are safe, yet it does know
what time of year it is, so you get anniversary reactions.
For those of you who don't know, I wrote The Post-Traumatic Gazette for 7 years, and all the newsletters are free online at patiencepress.com.
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