Guilt to Gratitude: Army Veteran Shares How Treatment Changed His Life
Working out really sets a tone for my day with my mental health. I can start with some endorphins, get a good endorphin release in the morning, and it keeps me on a high, essentially, throughout the day. It sets the tone really well.
My name is Zack, I'm an Army Veteran. Served from 2016 to 2023, when I got medically retired, and I was an 11 Alpha or also an infantry officer. Yeah, I actually did everything quite backwards. I was a local police officer who did all the fun stuff from SWAT and narcotics, and then wanted to take it to the next step where I wanted to serve on a bigger scale.
I think the biggest thing that impacted me when I was deployed was on a mission I was planning, about six weeks in, is when we had our first really bad situation where we ended up getting ambushed. Then ended up losing, overall, 6 out of 50 of our guys. I watched everything unfold on an ISR feed, so it was actually drone footage, couldn't do anything about it.
Instead of the survivor's guilt a lot of my guys were having trouble with, I also had another piece of, like, leader's guilt. For a long time, I blamed myself for getting the guys killed, for actually killing my guys, and that was a big piece that I struggled with, especially once we got back in the States. One of the guys, Joey, was 24 years old, three months from getting out, left a wife and three kids, and losing him was a really big hit for a lot of us.
I ended up getting injured over there, 'cause I have nerve damage in my left arm, but it wasn't discovered for about a year and a half. My ulnar nerve was compressed in my elbow. I didn't feel anything different, but it started creating atrophy throughout my whole arm. Surgery did not go well, and ended up having to bring a second surgeon in. Eventually, it led to my medical discharge where I was medically retired. Looking back at it, I was angry at everybody, angry at God, angry at family, angry at friends, very mad at the world. Every time I go to see family, it immediately goes back to Joey who isn't there anymore. "His kids don't have a father, his wife doesn't have him, the parents don't have him as a son." I was ready to go, ready to become that next statistic. And I sent one final text message to my ex-wife, told her, she and my goddaughter would be taken care of. But she said, "Don't you dare, the cops are on the way."
I ended up moving in with a friend of mine that was a Navy Veteran. And we were talking one night and he's like, "I truly believe that if you look at it, you probably don't even love yourself anymore." He's like, "You know what? Walk upstairs, look in the mirror, tell yourself you love yourself." Too easy, so I stomp upstairs, go look in the mirror. I got, "I lo..." outta my mouth, and then I collapsed in a panic attack. It was the point that I realized that something was broken. That's an empowering thought to me, 'cause I grew up fixing things. Something's broken, let me fix it, and that first step was seeking therapy.
So I opted for the outpatient. So overall it was kind of normal therapy, right? You get on a weekly call. I got some homework each week. Different things from, you know, start journaling this week, start reading more often, start meditating, which is one of those that, meditation was like so difficult, right? Like, sitting still, 'cause that was the hard part when I was going through all the dark phases. You know, you sit still, you sit quiet, and all of a sudden you hear the skeletons in the closet scratching at the door, right? So finding the guy that left the space for me was huge, because for some reason he did a great job of making me feel comfortable enough to do the thing all men hate, and share feelings. He said, "Don't run from the feelings," right? "Sit in whatever you're feeling so that way you can actually start working through and analyzing what those feelings are coming from, and how to handle those."
I think the biggest benefit for relationships, especially after therapy, one, I'm in a good relationship now with my significant other, that would've never happened, man. Having a partner at home, a battle buddy in a relationship has been awesome. Family's back on the table again. I think one of the biggest shifts is like really recognizing, like, I actually do deserve that and not blame myself for all the families that don't have that because of what we went through.
If you want me to be honest about it, I didn't wanna share my story. This is a very uncomfortable thing for every Veteran. No different than a nonprofit, is I go and I travel, and I do something similar, highlighting local Veterans across the country. It's funny, I had to catch myself, 'cause, initially, I was like, "Oh no, I'm not that guy," and I started stacking a list of recommendations of other local Veterans. And I'm like, "You know what? That's so hypocritical of me. It's the right thing," right? "You gotta get out there and share so everybody else will follow suit." That's the part that's so empowering to me, is like, if you can recognize that broken link, you can fix it. Just don't avoid looking for that piece, no matter how uncomfortable it may be.
