Finding a Better Place:
Drew:
My therapist at the VA Medical Center was focused on giving me the tools to work to make sure that I didn't get overwhelmed by all that stress again. My name is Drew. I was a 13 Alpha Field Artillery officer. I was in the Army and I served from 2009 to 2019. Our company headquarters was right next to the helicopter landing zone on the FOB. Somebody runs up and they're like, "Hey, we need everybody on the landing zone right now." We get there and these two Black Hawk come in. Somebody said, "Hey, yeah. They've got 12 casualties on two Black Hawk." There were so many people on the landing zone working on these 12 guys, and I felt like as an officer, my best job was just to try to coordinate everything. I didn't need to be in there with my hands on everything, but if somebody yelled out for a tourniquet, then I'm finding a tourniquet for them. Everything was so hectic that nobody really knew what was going on. It wasn't until about a month after I'd gotten out in 2019 that it hit me.
Tina:
I'm a marriage and family therapist, and so I studied PTSD. Quite intensively, I did know that the PTSD had control over him.
Dennis:
He had seen a lot of things that he never expected to see in his life. I knew he needed help.
Drew:
I pushed everybody away. I had no family around anymore. I had no friends. I'd pushed my wife away and I had completely numbed myself to everything, and that's when I realized I needed help. So my first visit to the Vet Center, I went in there and meeting with the psychologist, she listened to me talk for about two minutes, and she was just like, "Yeah. You've got all the symptoms, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder."
So when I went to CBT, a lot of it was learning how to deal with the stress that was already in my life. That opened up all kinds of doors for me, and it's allowed me to be more open and honest with people, which I thought previously that the best thing for me to do would just keep things inside and not tell people because I didn't want to burden people with my problems. And I realized that, that actually pushes people away, and that if you are open with people how you feel, then people can learn to relate to you. It all just melted away from me, and it was like I had this huge burden come off my shoulders.
Dennis:
His whole personality has changed since he began receiving help from the VA.
Tina:
It was a blessing. It really was a blessing. I had my son back.
Drew:
The one thing you can't control that you can always have a positive impact on is your mental health. Don't give up. Keep fighting. If you fight hard enough, you'll find somebody out there that will take your hand and help guide you to where you need to be. There's plenty of people who have been in your shoes that want to help you get to a better place.
