Saturday, October 28, 2023

Writing can be healing

 With PTSD so rampant in the world now with the wars in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, writing can be very helpful and healing to help make sense of things inside each of us in dealing with all of this. PTSD mostly is about fragmentation of people's subconscious minds. We are trained as children "Not to kill other human beings" and so when confronted with kill or be killed situations whether in the military or just in life we fragment when we must kill or we are killed. There are no winners when people have to be killed. Everyone loses in a major way. Though some people can "Put off" the PTSD agony, all civilized people will eventually suffer with it when put into kill or be killed situations. The same happens to all police officers and firemen around the world. Everyone who deals with disasters must face this fragmentation whether they are doctors or nurses or firemen who are EMTs or whoever. So, whoever has to deal with mayhem of any kind is always affected by these experiences.

Often writing can help us deal with the mayhem in our lives. I was very lucky because I wasn't drafted for Viet Nam when I was 18 to 26 years old and so I never served in the military. This allowed me to go to college and to live a more "NORMAL" life than many of the young men I knew then. I met friends who deserted the Army in Viet Nam (one was a room mate) in Venice, California when I was 21. However, I didn't know this about him at the time. He eventually spent 5 years in Jail in Minnesota where he was originally from I later found out. I had friends who want to Canada so they wouldn't be drafted. I had a friend who was a Marine Sargent in Viet Nam and was ordered to do something that would have gotten him and his whole platoon killed. He refused to do this and was dishonorably discharged. The next Sargent followed the orders and the whole platoon died. Though he was discharged at least he had a clear conscience and was able to live with himself. Often orders in battle will get everyone killed (especially this was true in the Viet Nam War). Fragging of young officers was very common during VIET Nam too where young gung ho lieutenants would get the line soldiers killed. So, whenver this type of soldier was spotted the line soldiers would "Frag" them by rolling a hand grenade under their tent when they were asleep. This also was very common during the Viet Nam War. This is one reason why we now have an all volunteer Army today because of all these problems during the Viet Nam War.

Writing can be healing whether you are writing only for yourself or whether you are writing for others as well as yourselves. Try writing and see if it helps you and others in your life.

By God's Grace

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