I had two great things happen this week or maybe last. The first was getting an email from Amazon saying since you like history, here are some books you may like: Recovering from the War,  Chickenhawk, and two others. 
I about fell over.

They have mentioned Bob's Chickenhawk before, after all it is the bestselling Vietnam memoir and the best selling helicopter book ever, but they have never mentioned my book before, so I hope this is an email to a lot of customers because I know the book is helpful to vets and their families and friends.
The other thing was that I got an email from the wife of a current vet who is in the hospital. Her 5 year old was upset and acting out, so she took him to a counselor who gave her Why Is Daddy Like He Is? The kid LOVES it and apparently it has made a big difference. I cried, I was so happy. Click on the title to go to my website where you can download a free copy of the book. There is also a kids book for the children of women veterans.

Here is a prayer I wrote which was recently used in a book, Resilience by Dennis Charney, MD and Steven Southwick MD:

Prayer for People with PTSD
Higher Power, I know that it’s not within the harmony of the universe that I be healed from the trauma of remembering ____________________________ without pain.
Help me through the pain.
Surround me with the golden light of healing, fill me with the white light of peace and love.
Help me to bear the pain as I go through these memories. Help me to c
ry.
Help me to remember.
Help me to love myself no matter what happened to me or what I did to survive.
Help me to release and to let go of my survival skills, the things such as anger and numbness that helped keep me alive, as I become aware of how ineffective they can be in getting me what I want today.
Fill me with light and love until I am green and growing again in the harmony of the universe, if it be thy will.
Amen.

More helpful places.

I have recently found a couple of new websites:
Forums.battlingbare.net
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Military-Minds-Spouses/441543835866153?fref=ts
http://www.facebook.com/MilitaryMindsYT
http://www.facebook.com/LivingWithPtsdVetWives  has a link to a group on yuku that has many wives sharing experience strength and hope.
http://www.fastinitiative.org/ (Families and Soldiers Together)
A lot of people are struggling to find ways to help.

There was also a well written post:
Top 10 things  not to say to someone with PTSD
1.There's nothing wrong with you. It's all in your head.
2. Just stop dwelling on it and pull yourself together.
3. I understand. It is like when I ...
4.  How many people did you kill or People die. It's life.
5. At least you came home.
6. Are you okay? Have you taken your meds?
7. You volunteered for it.
8. You're not gonna flip out and kill someone are you?
9. At least you didn't lose your arms and legs.
10. PTSD isn't real.

It was originally from MilitarywithPTSD.com but I can't find it there.
They also posted this

http://militarywithptsd.com/
1. we will also put number 2 here. PTSD is not something you can just get over or will away.
3. You don't! You can't possibly relate any experience you have had to what they saw in war.
4. You don't have to kill people to have PTSD.

5. Yes they came home, but many have survivor's guilt for coming home when their brothers didn't.
6. I am human. I have bad days too.
7. Yes we volunteered for it. We did it so you and others didn't have to and protect your freedoms.
8. We are not monsters. You can thank the media for painting us that way.
9. Not all wounds are visible. PTSD is a injury too.
10. PTSD is very real, there are physical changes in the brain.

Ten things your combat vet wants you to know

Found this on Operation Resilient Warrior. 

Very well said!!

Top 10 Things Your Combat Vet Wants You To Know:

1. He is addicted to war, although he loves you. War is horrible, but there is nothing like a life-and-death fight to make you feel truly alive. The adrenaline rush is tremendous, and can never be replaced. Succeeding in combat defines a warrior, places him in a brotherhood where he is always welcome and understood. The civilian world has adrenaline junkies as well; just ask any retired firefighter, police officer, or emergency room staff if they miss it.

2. Living for you is harder. It would be easy for him to die for you because he loves you. Living for you, which is what you actually want, is harder for him. It is even harder for him if you are smart and do not need him to rescue you, since rescuing is something he does really well. If you are very competent at many things, he may at times question if you need him at all. He may not see that you stay with him as a conscious choice.

3. "The training kicks in" means something very different to him. It is direct battle doctrine that when ambushed by a superior force, the correct response is "Apply maximum firepower and break contact." A warrior has to be able to respond to threat with minimal time pondering choices. While this is life-saving in combat, it is not helpful in the much slower-paced civilian world. A better rule in the civilian world would be to give a reaction proportionate to the provocation. Small provocation, small response (but this would get you killed on the battlefield). When the training becomes second nature, a warrior might take any adrenaline rush as a cue to "apply maximum firepower." This can become particularly unfortunate if someone starts to cry. Tears are unbearable to him; they create explosive emotions in him that can be difficult for him to control. Unfortunately, that can lead to a warrior responding to strong waves of guilt by applying more "maximum firepower" on friends, family, or unfortunately strangers.

4. He is afraid to get attached to anyone because he has learned that the people you love get killed, and he cannot face the pain again. He may make exception for his children (because they cannot divorce him), but that will be instinctual and he will probably not be able to explain his actions.

5. He knows the military exists for a reason. The sad fact is that a military exits ultimately to kill people and break things. This was true of our beloved "Greatest Generation" warriors of WWII, and it remains true to this day. Technically, your warrior may well be a killer, as are his friends. He may have a hard time seeing that this does not make him a murderer. Although they may look similar at first glance, he is a sheepdog protecting the herd, not a wolf trying to destroy it. The emotional side of killing in combat is complex. He may not know how to feel about what he's seen or done, and he may not expect his feelings to change over time. Warriors can experience moments of profound guilt, shame, and self-hatred. He may have experienced a momentary elation at "Scoring one for the good guys", then been horrified that he celebrated killing a human being. He may view himself as a monster for having those emotions, or for having gotten used to killing because it happened often.

6.He's had to cultivate explosive anger in order to survive in combat. He may have grown up with explosive anger as well.

7. He may have only been nineteen when he first had to make a life and death decision for someone else. What kind of skills does a nineteen-year-old have to deal with that kind of responsibility?One of my veterans put it this way: "You want to know what frightening is? It's a nineteen-year-old boy who's had a sip of that power over life and death that war gives you. It's a boy who, despite all the things he's been taught, knows that he likes it. It's a nineteen-year-old who's just lost a friend, and is angry and scared, and determined that some fucker is gonna pay. To this day, the thought of that boy can wake me from a sound sleep and leave me staring at the ceiling."

8. He may believe that he's the only one who feels this way; eventually he may realize that at least other combat vets understand. On some level, he doesn't want you to understand, because that would mean you had shared his most horrible experience, and he wants someone to remain innocent.

9. He doesn't understand that you have a mama bear inside of you, that probably any of us could kill in defense of someone if we need to. Imagine your reaction if someone pointed a weapon at your child?

10. When you don't understand, he needs you to give him the benefit of the doubt. He needs you also to realize that his issues really aren't about you, although you may step in them sometimes. Truly, the last thing he wants is for you to become a casualty of his war.

One of the free things on my website, is a format for a 12 step group for veterans and families and friends. Recently I have gotten two phone calls from veterans who have been in 12 Step programs for 20+ years who are interested in starting Combat Veterans Anonymous. I hope it happens.
I wrote the format for Vets and Families, but like AA and Alanon, I think the two groups would do best to be separate. There are three or four other things on that page related to the 12 steps, too.
http://www.patiencepress.com/patience_press/PTSD_Help-12_Steps.html
I am in a couple of 12 Step programs and find them really helpful in dealing with life, the universe and everything...

Change of plans: The Spiritual Retreat for Combat Veterans and Spouses, put on by the National Conference of War Veteran Ministers November 4 - 6, 2012, at the Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Mariottsville, Maryland.has been cancelled because no one signed up for it. So I won't be there!
I am sorry this is not going to happen because I love connecting with veterans and their wives.

I just had a funny conversation with a VA secretary from a hospital out west.
She wanted to order my pamphlets After the War and The War at Home.
She was actually on my website and didn't notice that I was giving away the all the pamphlets and kids books I used to sell.
I led her to the PTSD Help links for the Gazettes, for Kids, for Spouses, for Twelve Steps, and the Essays, which has Home from War  for the new veterans, several popular essays from the Gazettes, plus Returning from Vietnam by William Crapser and Approaching Trauma Survivors from a Spiritual Perspective by Caterina Spinaris and even A Short History of PTSD by me.
It made me wonder if the site is not clear enough for people to use.
Please let me know what you think.

Fan page for Robert Mason, my vet

Just started an author/fan page for Robert Mason, Author, otherwise known as my husband, Bob. If you like his books please like the page.
It is at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Robert-Mason-Author/405956022798941
Bob wrote a memoir about Vietnam, Chickenhawk. He came home with PTSD when "it didn't exist" and wrote a second memoir, Chickenhawk:Back in the World, about that. They are both good reads.

A Petition to Prevent Veteran Suicide by Addressing the Hidden Wounds of War Before Service Members Leave The Military

Prevent Veteran Suicide by Addressing the Hidden Wounds of War Before Service Members Leave The Military This is probably the most important thing we can do for veterans, reach them before they are alone in a room with a gun, or driving a car into a telephone pole because they have lost everything including themselves, or are about to because they do not understand what is happening to them and think it is weak to be affected by war.
Everyone is affected by war. War hurts. It makes you angry, alert to danger, annoyed at those who don't understand. It makes you intolerant of everyday concerns, cold to your loved ones, and it sticks itself in your face day and night when you don't want it and least expect it.
I hope everyone who reads this blog will sign this petition and share it on facebook or whatever groups you belong to.
And if you feel alone and crazy, there is help, starting at Patience Press where there are a bunch of free articles that might make you feel like a survivor instead of a loser. After all, PTSD is proof of survival. Dead men and women don't get it. It is evidence of courage, luck, skill, fast reflexes, and a whole bunch of other positive qualities.
Beyond that, there is a lot of help out there including free therapy from caring therapists who volunteer.
And my heart is with you, along with the hearts of a lot of us.

Post-Traumatic Gazette # 2

Post-Traumatic Gazette # 2
Gazette Number 2 was a lot of fun to write because it was a chance to share what I had learned about myself as I worked on my own recovery. I really enjoy laughing at myself because I was soooo uptight before I got into recovery for myself.
A favorite quote:
"trying to fix Bob. I didn’t know he had PTSD, but I knew he had problems (not me) so I kept coming up with solutions: read this book, see a shrink, move, new job, read this book. None of them ever worked, partly because I did not know what the problem was (PTSD) but mainly because I didn’t know whose problem it was. I thought it was my problem. I thought he was my problem."

I discuss some of the ways I reacted including:
"•Personalizing: The families of trauma survivors may personalize everything due to our very natural frustration. I feel hurt, therefore he or she meant to hurt me. Feeling Good, by Dr. David Burns talks about this kind of cognitive distortion. The book was very helpful to me and Bob. Family members feel the survivor is doing this to me. Angry at me! Depressed because of me! Jumpy because of me! Numb because he doesn’t love me anymore! It may have nothing to do with you, but if you are wrapped up in someone else’s life the way I was it is almost impossible to conceive of the idea that something not related to the relationship is at the root of the survivor’s reactions. And of course being human, survivors will tell you it is your fault, especially if they don’t know about PTSD. Yeah, if you kept the kids quiet, I wouldn’t be so jumpy. It’s not true, but it seems reasonable so we try harder and harder so the survivor won’t be upset. It doesn’t work. There is also a seductive egotism in personalizing everything—we are so important. This can also lead to the idea that after all I’ve tried, if I can’t fix it, nothing can. Don’t believe it."

Probably my favorite part is in the article "PTSD and Me"
"We lived with PTSD for 14 years without knowing its name, because it didn’t have one until 1980. I felt tremendous guilt, became very controlling, and started an other-centered quest for the thing that would fix my life: when I got Bob straightened out. I had no idea what was wrong, but I was sure it was my fault.
I thought he didn’t love me because of his emotional numbing, his attempts to isolate himself, and his lack of interest in things we had done together. I concluded I was unlovable. I saw his substance abuse not as self-medication to maintain numbness in the face of unbearable thoughts, feelings, and memories, but as deliberate naughtiness. Wild rides on his Honda 750 looked to me like stupid immaturity (except when I joined in) instead of a sense of a foreshortened future. The fact that he couldn’t sleep became a joke. Rage attacks meant he was a jerk. When he couldn’t remember something I’d told him, I got mad because I had never heard of the inability to concentrate, another symptom of PTSD.
My whole life became centered on fixing Bob. My upbringing told me that I could make other people happy. He wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. I figured I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I knew you can do whatever you put your mind to. It never occurred to me to try another way. Even after I found out what PTSD was, my quest was still what we should do to fix Bob. I had no idea that I had problems and that my actions and reactions were making it impossible for Bob to get better. We were stuck in a series of ineffective patterns....
I can only change one day at a time, (much more slowly than I’d like), but that gives me compassion when I see how hard it is for others to change. This has let Bob recover in his own way: His symptoms are much less distressing to him and to me than they were. Five years ago, I wrote in Recovering that Bob absolutely could not say when he was having a bad day. Today he can. That is a miracle."

The last article in this issue, "How Families Can Recover" suggests a lot of things families can do to recover, like taking the focus off the vet and working on ourselves.
I hope this issue will inspire people to stay together and work on recovery together, so the family becomes a sanctuary instead of a battleground.
If it is a battleground today, change yourself and see what happens. It is a slow process, recovery, but slow growth is good growth.

Post Traumatic Gazette #1

When I started the Post Traumatic Gazette in 1995, I thought our country would never be involved in another war, especially one like Vietnam without front lines and where anyone could turn out to be the enemy. I was wrong.
Because I knew so many survivors of other traumatic events, I wrote everything with them as well as veterans in mind. It took me more than six months to write issue #1, because I wanted it to explain the symptoms as survival skills in a way that would not be hurtful to anyone. I wrote and re-wrote and polished it till I felt it was as good as I could make it.
Here's one quote I am proud of:
"This is not some random collection of weird behaviors, but appropriate and effective biologically based reactions to extreme stress. They have a purpose: survival."
Many descriptions of PTSD symptoms make no logical connections between them and give no insight into why a person would react like that, but that was my big question when Bob got home from Vietnam: What happened to him? Why does he have that reaction?
Another quote I am proud of:
"These PTSD survival skills tend to become less appropriate and less effective with time and can wind up being really crippling ineffective behaviors. For a healing perspective, we need to keep in mind that the behaviors of trauma survivors are direct evidence, sometimes the best evidence, of what they have survived, of their experience. They are also evidence of ingenuity, creativity and courage. Reframing the behaviors in this light can be an enlightening experience for the survivor, families, friends, and therapists. Instead of being bad behaviors, they become useful evidence about the nature of the trauma or traumas and the guts and brains of the survivor, who, after all, survived."
A final quote which one guy wrote me started him on the road to recovery. It is from the second article: How to Begin to Recover:
"Willing to vs Wanting to: There is also a great deal of difference between the words “want” and “willing.” Spelled differently. Mean different things. Willingness may mean I do things I don’t want to do! If I wait till I want to do the things that will help me recover, I may never recover."
I hope some of you will go read the full issue and tell your friends about it if you find it helpful.

I finally got the Patience Press website online. Bob has been working on it for weeks. Everything I have written since Recovering about PTSD is now available free online at http://www.patiencepress.com/
Please visit and let your friends know.  I will be blogging on various articles in the future.

A book I am dying to read

The Long Walk by Brian Castner sounds like my kind of book. He was a bomb disposal guy in Iraq. Since he lived, I assume he didn't jerk the wires of all the bombs he found like the hero did in that silly movie The Hurt Locker.
This is a book about the effects of war and apparently contains some episodes of typical VA crap, like one shrink telling him he didn't have PTSD. Reminds me of the time when the VA was trying to convince Bob he was a  manic-depressive because sometimes he was happy and sometimes sad... Fads come and go, but PTSD is a service connected disability and they don't like that...
There is so much effort by the military to prove that war does not affect anyone, while they pay lip service to trying to get rid of the stigma of having it. Here is a brave guy with PTSD who has written an honest book about it, and I am dying to read it.
 

Telling the kids

Here is a killer quote from Alanon's One Day At a Time daily reader for June 26th:

We who really try to use the Alanon program have various reasons to be grateful as we see the results.  This was one member's experience, which she told her friends at a meeting.
Her greatest difficulty concerned her children. "I never knew what to do about them when my husband came home drunk and disorderly. I felt they should be shielded from violence, yet over-protection wouldn't be good for them. I didn't want to influence them against their father; I knew he loved them, and they him.
"I found all the answers in Alanon. I made sensible explanations about their father's illness and found them naturally compassionate. I avoided scenes by not allowing my frustrations to erupt into anger. I tried hard to be consistent and fair to them. The results have been everything I hoped for, and I am so grateful to Alanon for this."
Today's Reminder: Our children are a first thing to consider first. Our attitude is the key to a successful family relationship - and their normal growing up.
"And above all, I never use the children as pawns in any conflicts. They respond so well to respect."




For me, this is what I would to do when one of the parents, father or mother, is suffering from PTSD in the  acute stage. Or even the chronic stage. When I recognize that my husband, Bob, is not trying to hurt me, is not able to calm down and that what I choose to do (argue or let go) will be the primary decider in the way the day goes. It helps me give up trying to point out what is wrong with him and work on myself, on being the kind of person who can say, "You may be right," and let go. I may be thinking on Mars, but I don't have to say it. After all, I don't have PTSD. He does. I married him for better and for worse. If he had cancer, I would not be expecting him to get over it, put it behind him, or be the same person he was. War changes people, but it also gives them experiences that can propel them to new levels of usefulness to their fellows. Like talking about the costs of war.


For a sensible explanation of PTSD symptoms for children, use my two kids books, Why Is Daddy Like He Is? and the deployment version of Why Is Mommy Like She Is? I was told by VA therapists who use the book that the kids stop at every page and talk over the symptoms and relate it to their lives and it is really helpful to them to understand that they are not causing the symptoms. Kids commonly worry that something they are doing is the problem. These books will be available as free downloads in the next week at Patience Press. Right now there are thirteen free articles available there. Hope you will download them and read them and find them helpful.

I will post when the kids books are up.

I was talking to a Vet Center counselor the other day about these manualized 8 to 12 week therapies for PTSD which some VA's are using now and calling a cure.
I don't like the word cure in relation to PTSD.
I really believe that these therapies do cause remission of very painful and troubling PTSD symptoms for a while. When they have 20 year follow-ups with no return of symptoms on all the participants, I will take it back. Meanwhile, the only person I have met who went through one of these programs and was "cured" and wanted to give a talk at a reunion, decided that they weren't treating him right, so instead of asking the organizers for the equipment he wanted, he never contacted them and just stayed drunk all weekend. Didn't seem like a cure to me.
To change the habits of a lifetime can take the rest of your life, and if the habits were learned to save your life, it will be hard to give them up.
One thing the Vet Center counselor said to me was that if someone told the mother of a young person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan that she could cure her grief in 8 to 12 weeks, everyone would be up in arms. Here are men and women who have lost more than one buddy (closer than family if you have been in combat together) and you are going to cure that grief, plus the pain of killing, the anger at waste of lives, the fear of dying, all that in 12 weeks???
I am not saying not to try out this kind of therapy, Cognitive Processing Therapy, because I have heard it explained and seen the positive changes it produced in a workshop I went to. What I am saying is that if it helps, and then PTSD rears it's ugly head again, go back and do more.
That's what will help if symptoms come back: More of what helped before. Don't believe for one moment that you are a hopeless case. Get more help. People are always developing new treatments for PTSD. Your job is to find what works for you.

the link for the giveaway at goodreads

http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/27316-recovering-from-the-war-a-guide-for-all-veterans-family-members-frien
I am giving away 5 copies to celebrate the fact that Recovering is now available as a kindle, an ibook, for a Sony reader, on Kobo.
It is available for iPad and iPod too. I used bookbaby.com to turn it into an ebook and they were quite good.
If you could pass this on to your friends who might be interested, I would appreciate it. I can always use reviews on any of the sites or on Goodreads itself.

Kindle!!

Woohooo!  Recovering from the War now has both the book and the kindle showing on the book page! It is $4.99 and I am doing another book giveaway (of actual books, not the kindle) on  Goodreads to celebrate. Please let me know if these links do or don't work.
You can look inside the book on the Amazon page and read my fans blurbs and the two new introductions.

I just managed to get Recovering on Amazon as a kindle for $4.99. So far it is not linked in the bookstore but if you look in the kindle store, it is there. I am going to do another book giveaway on Goodreads.com, too.

'Recovering from the War: A Guide for All Veterans, Family Members, Friends, and Therapists' by Patience H. C. Mason

www.amazon.com

Recovering from the War is a systematic investigation of the costs of war for veterans and their families, including information on how to recover from combat trauma. The examples are from Vietnam, but the experience is universal, so the book is helpful to active duty service members. Part One, Vietnam: What it was, consists of a series of chapters containing interviews with Vietnam veterans: Who Went,...

For Memorial Day

I wrote this poem about my husband and about my entirely human inability to understand what he had been through. I think it illustrates the difficulties wives face when someone comes back from war.
If you pair it with Bruce Weigl's Song of Napalm I think it does a good job of explaining some of the post-war problems couples have and why it does not simply go away with time.
It takes understanding (as opposed to misunderstanding), loving detachment (as opposed to personalizing), and compassion (as opposed to judgment) to make a happy life with a veteran, on both sides.
I always say to vets to remember how they felt about their wounded buddies, how much they wanted to help. We see you bleeding, and we want to help, and quite often everything we do has the reverse effect, so that is our pain.
Bless all vets.


I remember how your voice wept

I remember how your voice wept
when you told me

His balls were gone
His leg too
a bloody stump
The skin flapped and sprayed
blood all down the side of your ship
over the gunner and the gun
You flew as fast as was humanly possible
mechanically possible
He still died.
The wedding ring on his left hand glinted
As they flipped him onto a stretcher
And headed for the body piles.

A horrible story. I wept for you inside
but then I had to go make supper,
sing Jack to sleep
wash the dishes
do my homework
run out to buy the quart of whiskey that let you sleep
for a few hours between 1 or 2 AM and your 8 o’clock class
which you could barely sit through even with two stiff whiskeys
under your belt
And after all,
it was just a story to me—
something awful that happened to you
on the other side of the world—
Not real
BLOOD
running down the side of the helicopter
not real
BALLS
blown away
not real
DEAD HAND
with the wedding ring glinting
Him.
ME.
HIM.
ME.
©1989 Patience H. C. Mason

Vietnam and All Veterans Reunion

Due to a mistake, no one knew I was speaking on Saturday afternoon because it wasn't in the program they were handing out. So I did my usual talk, Recovering from the War, to three people. Kind of disappointing, but I can say that what I said helped those three so it was worth it to me.
Bob got really mad when I called and told him and said I should never go again, that they don't respect or appreciate me. I was really down in the dumps, thinking he was right.
The next day, my talk was in the program, but it usually overlaps with the service by John Steer, so once again I gave the talk, The War at Home, to just a few people. Luckily they got a lot out of it and laughed at all my jokes. When I said it was probably my last visit, one couple who come every year got really upset. I was talking to a Korean War and Vietnam vet and to a really lovely Donut Dolly and a Navy nurse and a Special Forces guy and his wife, when the upset couple disappeared.
As I was packing up the free handouts I'd brought and my books, the treasurer of Vietnam Veterans of Brevard, Ralph, showed up with the upset couple to personally apologize and ask what they could do to get me to keep coming.
I suggested they announce my talks on the main stage and do some PR. He offered to put up posters if I could mail them down so they would be up before I get there next year. He suggested that the talk on Sunday should be at noon so it wouldn't be interfered with by the church service. He also said he'd write Bob and apologize. I hope he does.
I did a talk for VVB a few years ago, just so they would know what I was saying over there at the wall pavilion while they are busy running the reunion, and he remembered it and said it was so helpful. So maybe I will be there next year. I do love giving the talks and talking to vets and their families afterwards and Donut Dollies.
One of my pet peeves is that the Red Cross claims the Donut Dollies weren't employees and weren't in danger (yeah, right! like no one ever rocketed or mortared every place they could in Vietnam) so it denies them help with PTSD treatment.
So it was an interesting lesson in how little control I have over events and how perhaps my speaking up will lead to a better result next year.