PTSD is a broken circle. You haven't completed the journey yet. You were abandoned in hell. We must find ways for you to complete the journey and the circle. One of the most essential and effective ways to help a warrior return is the application of empathy and love. This is a universal prescription for the return journey.
I am going to describe to you an example of an ideal model which comes from the Papago people of Arizona. The first prescription of a returning warrior was to put them in isolation because they were tainted. This wasn't done as a punishment; it was done for purification. There was no sex; no food served by the families; no going straight home; both visible and invisible wounds were tended to. The warrior was surrounded by medicine people (our modern day psychologists, healers, life coaches, doctors, therapists, shamans, etc.) and elder warriors who would come to feed them. In this space, they were allowed to have an acute time to feel and heal - cry, rage, express the pain - and he was surrounded by all those who understood and who'd been there. Who 'got it'. Who were able to listen to their stories. Then, when the tending was done, they would ask the warrior, "Did you not wish to be a warrior? Can you not accept the hardships of the journey?" If the emotions were unbalanced, he was not ready to go. He was not ready to come out. But when he got to the point where he was calm and affirming, he would make an affirmation of his warrior destiny - "I affirm my warrior's destiny." He could then move onto the next stage of purification.
During this stage, in the American Indian tradition, sweat lodges were used. I've had the great fortune and honor of being able to attend a lodge out here in Los Angeles on my healing journey. It is incredibly powerful. Fire is transformative. In this sacred space you "burn off" all that is impure within you. You come out different. Something profound occurs in these rituals and ceremonies.
There are many different types of purification rituals for this stage, not just the lodge, and it can be created to fit your needs and beliefs. It must be public. All religions have purification rituals written in them for returning warriors. It's a universal necessity. The deeper in the zone you've been, the deeper the wound called PTSD you've suffered - the trauma, the horrors you've seen - the longer, generally, for the purification.
Many of us are walking around feeling polluted, feeling unworthy. Think how differently our society would be if we followed these simple steps and took the time to heal our wounds before going back into our communities? What a different world we would have.
After the purification stage is storytelling. This stimulates healing for the veteran as he re-contextualizes the experience and purges himself of the pain. Those who listen to the stories serve as a sacred witness to it. First the stories are told to just one person - your life coach, therapist, trusted friend, or fellow warrior. You have to empty your story. Eventually your story gets shared with the community. The whole community needs to participate. This is an essential component for re-integration. Why? Because you must empty your story so you will be free of the toxic and polluted emotions from the experience. By sharing your story with others, it becomes a part of them. They carry it with you.
There are many ways to tell your story, especially using the arts. You can write about it, dance, sing, paint, perform a work of theater - anything that is creative. You want to balance the destructive arts with the creative arts. These are tools of the soul. And tools of the soul are the most essential tools to provide.
Once you've completed this stage of the return, what follows is restitution into the community. The community takes these stories, accepts these stories, and carries them as their own. You no longer have to carry the burden by yourself; we are going to carry it together. What this does is the community transfers responsibility from the warriors to the whole community. What you are saying as the community is "I am responsible for having put you there. Regardless of what my political stance might be, I put you there. You are part of this community and I am responsible for that. You did this for me." Then, the burden is no longer on one person's shoulders; it is shared. When we share our burdens, we make better choices. When we see what happens when we put people in harms way, we'll make better decisions next time war becomes an option and the reasons why we are going to war, so that we don't do this to our men and women when motivated by corporate or self-interest.
Then, there are atonement practices, which help the warrior to be restored to the community. If you have destroyed, as an antidote, you want to create. How can you do this? Donate your time, effort, and money to a worthy cause; help re-build schools; get involved in groups that help disadvantaged youths; restore water supplies in war-torn countries; get actively engaged in community restoration activities - whatever it is, this activity must enable you to connect back to the warrior ethos of being a provider, protector, and a restorer of the natural order.
Last part of the initiation is the initiation of yourself as a warrior. You carry both the light and the darkness. When both are finally brought together, assimilated and integrated, you carry a new identity. You continue to give service without any sense of traumatic breakdown. Your identity gets bigger and bigger while the traumas get smaller and smaller until finally they disappear. You carry this new identity with honor, dignity, respect, and wisdom.
In order to get to that point, you have to go through a catharsis. You have to go through a moment where you are allowed to purge all those feelings that have been welling up, that you have been keeping contained and locked up inside of you. The program that I have created and established which incorporates and includes all of Dr. Tick's decades of dedicated, selfless work for the healing of our veterans, and is the very program that I healed myself from the crushing, devastating effects of PTSD, does this. It creates the conditions for you to do this in a safe and sacred environment. Catharsis is the goal. It is critical for the liberation of the pain and suffering you endure.
The culture of Guatemala has a description for this which I think is very appropriate. It's called 'dasaigo' - which means 'un-drowning'. You are 'un-drowning' yourself from the toxic emotions that pull you down. Catharsis achieves what most therapies fail to achieve - liberation of the soul. This ultimately leads to forgiveness, not only of yourself, but of others. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. What follows is complete restitution and re-integration. Finally coming back home.
One more story from the retreat I want to share with you. A Vietnam vet came up to me on the last night, looked at me in the eyes for a long while, and gave me a gift. He gave me a Soldier's Cross. He put it around my neck and said, "You now bear the Soldier's Cross. It's a heavy burden to bear, but you are the right man to bear it." I am honored to carry it.
As I've stated many times in these blog posts, to successfully heal and recover from this disorder you must learn to master yourself. You have got to learn the tools and the process of return which enable you to become your own master. I have brought only the best into my work. It is my goal to give you the most comprehensive and complete programs for truly healing and recovering from PTSD, and reclaiming the life you were meant to live. I am so grateful for the many blessings Dr. Tick has given me. All of us who serve the veteran population and their families are indebted to him for providing the pathway of return for all of our warriors across all the generations so that no one is left behind. Thank you Dr. Tick.
Let's transform your wounds into gifts. I want to remind all of you who read this blog that no matter how you got PTSD - whether in war, rape, abuse, disaster, or some other way - you will continue to re-live your traumas over and over again until you transform them. Transforming the part of your old self into the new self that wants to emerge is critical and essential to your full recovery. There is a way of doing it without medications, that helps make meaning of the experiences. Through spirituality, we are restored to our true selves. And when you learn from those experiences the values and gifts they gave you, unique to you, you will be able to contribute more to your families, communities, and to the world.
Blessings
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
Friday, June 26, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 4 of 5
This hero's journey I've been writing about is an initiation. To dismember oneself, you must enter the darkness, and in the darkness, at the very bottom of it, you encounter the Beast. The Beast is your animal nature; it's the animal within you. It's the part of you that has a will to survive that is so strong, it will do anything to get what it wants. It has the power over life and death. You've got to be honest about it. You've got to be honest about experiencing it. Anyone who has ever experienced it, fully experienced it, knows how powerful it is. It can be consuming.
To gain control of the Beast though, you have to unite the head with the heart. You can get control of the Beast without allowing it to dominate and control you.
When we were in council at the retreat in 2013, we were talking about the nature of killing. What causes PTSD in soldiers is 2 things:
It was at this point, after the exhortation that I made and a momentary break to allow some time to process, we re-convened the council with the reading of a poem. While the poem was being read, a Vietnam veteran who was sitting two chairs away from me broke down into tears. He wept. Dr. Tick and the rest of the group gave him space to release what needed to be released. He told us he'd been holding onto so much pain that he hadn't wept in 40 years. He'd felt so safe in this environment that he was finally able to surrender all that he'd been holding up inside of him. Then, he looked over at me and said, "You are my son. We need you." It was a defining moment on the retreat for me on so many levels.
The point is - these warriors, these soldiers, these men and women, they all deserve to come home. They do not need to be treated as victims. You've got to look at the Beast with them; you've got to meet it; you've got to walk with it. You have to walk it with them. No judgment. No flinching. Because you are meeting the inhumanity of humanity with them. It's part of the collective human shadow.
Now, the purpose of initiation is, ironically, to lose our innocence. It is to understand both good and evil, to take this wisdom, and then, become one of the leaders and elders of the community in order to bring about the greatest good for all. Initiation can take many forms. It doesn't necessarily have to be going to war. It could be boot camp or going off to college that is a traumatic experience. When people enter boot camp, it's very traumatic - it's a dismembering; a taking apart of one's individuality and building you back up again for the military model. You start accessing parts you didn't know you had.
The military is trying to create a unified machine where individuality is stripped away and conformity is of the essence. It dehumanizes you. It dehumanizes the individual, the enemy, and civilians. That's just part of the process. In order for you to heal from your PTSD experience, you must learn to master yourself by transforming and integrating these wounds to make yourself whole once again.
The homecoming can be very traumatic in itself. First you have grief attached to it. There's a culture shock. There's a loss of adrenaline rush. The loss of your buddies. There's a feeling of displacement and anger at the trivialities of life, and a disorientation. What can you do? You must find a healthy way of returning home that makes meaning of the experience. With a study of universal spiritual principles and a realignment with the archetype of the warrior in its fullness, you are able to gain gifts from your experiences; you learn what it is you needed to learn which gives value to your life so that you can contribute more to the world. You must restore meaning through spirituality. Included in this is community restoration, which basically means you come to the community and tell them what you have learned.
Having the experience of war doesn't necessarily make you a spiritual warrior. There is an initiation into being a spiritual warrior once you have been restored to the community. The true values of a spiritual warrior are protecting, restoring, and preserving all of life.
The Beast, as I wrote about earlier, is a propellant. If its not related to you, it will come after you. So, you must embrace it. You must make him your friend. Find someone who can embrace it with you. If it's not me, if it's not Dr. Tick, if it's not someone in the Soldier's Heart community, find someone you trust who can embrace it with you; who can go all the way with you to meet you where you need it; to help you restore your soul to its rightful place.
Part 5 tomorrow.
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Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
To gain control of the Beast though, you have to unite the head with the heart. You can get control of the Beast without allowing it to dominate and control you.
When we were in council at the retreat in 2013, we were talking about the nature of killing. What causes PTSD in soldiers is 2 things:
- The pain of loss. You lose somebody, your best friend, a guy or gal you went to boot camp with, who you trained with, who was always by your side. You lose them. So you have this loss - what could I have done to save him or her, and the guilt attached to that.
- Being put in a situation where you have to kill or be killed. That's the encounter with the Beast. Ask yourself, what would you do in that situation?
It was at this point, after the exhortation that I made and a momentary break to allow some time to process, we re-convened the council with the reading of a poem. While the poem was being read, a Vietnam veteran who was sitting two chairs away from me broke down into tears. He wept. Dr. Tick and the rest of the group gave him space to release what needed to be released. He told us he'd been holding onto so much pain that he hadn't wept in 40 years. He'd felt so safe in this environment that he was finally able to surrender all that he'd been holding up inside of him. Then, he looked over at me and said, "You are my son. We need you." It was a defining moment on the retreat for me on so many levels.
The point is - these warriors, these soldiers, these men and women, they all deserve to come home. They do not need to be treated as victims. You've got to look at the Beast with them; you've got to meet it; you've got to walk with it. You have to walk it with them. No judgment. No flinching. Because you are meeting the inhumanity of humanity with them. It's part of the collective human shadow.
Now, the purpose of initiation is, ironically, to lose our innocence. It is to understand both good and evil, to take this wisdom, and then, become one of the leaders and elders of the community in order to bring about the greatest good for all. Initiation can take many forms. It doesn't necessarily have to be going to war. It could be boot camp or going off to college that is a traumatic experience. When people enter boot camp, it's very traumatic - it's a dismembering; a taking apart of one's individuality and building you back up again for the military model. You start accessing parts you didn't know you had.
The military is trying to create a unified machine where individuality is stripped away and conformity is of the essence. It dehumanizes you. It dehumanizes the individual, the enemy, and civilians. That's just part of the process. In order for you to heal from your PTSD experience, you must learn to master yourself by transforming and integrating these wounds to make yourself whole once again.
The homecoming can be very traumatic in itself. First you have grief attached to it. There's a culture shock. There's a loss of adrenaline rush. The loss of your buddies. There's a feeling of displacement and anger at the trivialities of life, and a disorientation. What can you do? You must find a healthy way of returning home that makes meaning of the experience. With a study of universal spiritual principles and a realignment with the archetype of the warrior in its fullness, you are able to gain gifts from your experiences; you learn what it is you needed to learn which gives value to your life so that you can contribute more to the world. You must restore meaning through spirituality. Included in this is community restoration, which basically means you come to the community and tell them what you have learned.
Having the experience of war doesn't necessarily make you a spiritual warrior. There is an initiation into being a spiritual warrior once you have been restored to the community. The true values of a spiritual warrior are protecting, restoring, and preserving all of life.
The Beast, as I wrote about earlier, is a propellant. If its not related to you, it will come after you. So, you must embrace it. You must make him your friend. Find someone who can embrace it with you. If it's not me, if it's not Dr. Tick, if it's not someone in the Soldier's Heart community, find someone you trust who can embrace it with you; who can go all the way with you to meet you where you need it; to help you restore your soul to its rightful place.
Part 5 tomorrow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 3 of 5
There are 3 key elements in nations with PTSD:
When you see these elements in nations who have epidemics of PTSD, you really have to wonder how and why we are using force. How and why we use force is very critical. It appears from the studies done that the more aggressive nations, those who actually cross boarders into other nations, are more likely to have cases of PTSD in their soldiers, airmen, and seamen.
Another thing that contributes to this is modern weaponry. Modern weaponry is absolutely devastating. It's carnage on a massive scale. In order to counteract this, we've had to dehumanize the enemy, which hurts our souls even more.
When a soldier chooses to serve, when they hear the call to adventure, this is the beginning of the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero's journey in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell uncovered the same mythological re-telling of the hero's tale in many different cultures, societies, and traditions of the world. These stories were told and passed down through the generations of those societies. The stories connected them to their ancestral past, the origination of their civilizations. It was a record of the psycho-spiritual journey all must go through who are called to the path. These stories are stories of initiation. Initiation from one stage of life to another. And, this initiation is circular.
Basically, the process is this: you have the initiation, the call to adventure; then you have the crossing of the 1st threshold and the plunge into darkness, which is the death and dismemberment stage; this is followed by the upswing which is re-birth and re-memberment. The death and dismemberment on a psycho-spiritual level is a letting go of the old self. Re-birth and re-memberment is the adoption of the new self.
One of the important aspects about this for men is that men have to be taught how to be responsible for life. It's not something that we are born with. Women have a menstrual cycle. They are already connected to the responsibility for life. For women, the changes are already built in. For men, it has to be provoked. So, going to war, for thousands of years, has been part of that initiation process, part of the dismemberment - being torn apart - and, in an initiation, this is what occurs, you are symbolically torn apart. What is actually happening is when you are being torn apart, you are actually being re-made.
Think about a person who gets sick. They have an illness, and when they finally get over their illness, they're a different person. They're ready for the next stage of life. This works the same way on the psycho-spiritual and emotional level. Part of this re-memberment, this putting back together, is if we don't tell our stories, if we don't own our stories, we are not fully re-born.
Contemporary psychological therapies only teach people how to survive, not to be fully re-born. We are seeking initiation in a culture which doesn't value full initiation; and thus, we get caught, stuck, trapped, and left with the pain of PTSD and trauma.
In the hero's journey, the most difficult part of the journey is the return. Why? Because you've changed and the culture you're returning to has not. Most soldiers say, and I think you will find this interesting, their most severe traumas occurred not when they were still in the shit, but when they were trying to come back home. The purpose of the journey, your journey, is to enlighten, deepen, and enrich the community.
Part 4 tomorrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
- There is an epidemic of PTSD in its warriors.
- The public is not really being involved. And you can see this in your daily lives. People just went about their business without recognizing there was a war going on. Not recognizing that the soldiers they sent out on behalf of the society are also a part of them.
- Governments denial of it and not giving it support. That's why you see so many people working to address this issue - psychologists, healers, holistic practitioners, life coaches, therapists, etc., - who are raising their voices to bring attention to this neglected group of our veterans and active duty members because the government is not doing enough.
When you see these elements in nations who have epidemics of PTSD, you really have to wonder how and why we are using force. How and why we use force is very critical. It appears from the studies done that the more aggressive nations, those who actually cross boarders into other nations, are more likely to have cases of PTSD in their soldiers, airmen, and seamen.
Another thing that contributes to this is modern weaponry. Modern weaponry is absolutely devastating. It's carnage on a massive scale. In order to counteract this, we've had to dehumanize the enemy, which hurts our souls even more.
When a soldier chooses to serve, when they hear the call to adventure, this is the beginning of the hero's journey. Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero's journey in his book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Campbell uncovered the same mythological re-telling of the hero's tale in many different cultures, societies, and traditions of the world. These stories were told and passed down through the generations of those societies. The stories connected them to their ancestral past, the origination of their civilizations. It was a record of the psycho-spiritual journey all must go through who are called to the path. These stories are stories of initiation. Initiation from one stage of life to another. And, this initiation is circular.
Basically, the process is this: you have the initiation, the call to adventure; then you have the crossing of the 1st threshold and the plunge into darkness, which is the death and dismemberment stage; this is followed by the upswing which is re-birth and re-memberment. The death and dismemberment on a psycho-spiritual level is a letting go of the old self. Re-birth and re-memberment is the adoption of the new self.
One of the important aspects about this for men is that men have to be taught how to be responsible for life. It's not something that we are born with. Women have a menstrual cycle. They are already connected to the responsibility for life. For women, the changes are already built in. For men, it has to be provoked. So, going to war, for thousands of years, has been part of that initiation process, part of the dismemberment - being torn apart - and, in an initiation, this is what occurs, you are symbolically torn apart. What is actually happening is when you are being torn apart, you are actually being re-made.
Think about a person who gets sick. They have an illness, and when they finally get over their illness, they're a different person. They're ready for the next stage of life. This works the same way on the psycho-spiritual and emotional level. Part of this re-memberment, this putting back together, is if we don't tell our stories, if we don't own our stories, we are not fully re-born.
Contemporary psychological therapies only teach people how to survive, not to be fully re-born. We are seeking initiation in a culture which doesn't value full initiation; and thus, we get caught, stuck, trapped, and left with the pain of PTSD and trauma.
In the hero's journey, the most difficult part of the journey is the return. Why? Because you've changed and the culture you're returning to has not. Most soldiers say, and I think you will find this interesting, their most severe traumas occurred not when they were still in the shit, but when they were trying to come back home. The purpose of the journey, your journey, is to enlighten, deepen, and enrich the community.
Part 4 tomorrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - Part 2 of 5
The hardest part of the hero's journey is the return. I want you to know that it is possible to heal and come home. I recognize I'm speaking in this series of blog posts to the veterans, active duty personnel, and their families, but the process of healing soul distress applies to most everyone who suffers from PTSD. Why? The war you are fighting is the one within. Whether you got PTSD from war, child abuse, accidents, rape, emotionally or physically abusive relationships, disasters of any kind, whatever it may have been, apply these ideas to your own personal situation. As the Buddha says, "It is better to conquer yourself than to win a thousand battles. Then the victory is yours. It cannot be taken from you, not by angels or by demons, heaven or hell." When you win this victory, you come home.
Now, the current medical and psychological belief is that this is a life-long disorder. The best you can do is deal with it and make re-adjustments. Everyone else around you also has to make re-adjustments. And yet, you are labeled as someone who is sick. What's to be done? What can be done is you get on the healing path for the restoration of your soul and spirit. Dr. Tick's work and the amazing people at Soldier's Heart, my work, the Mindful Warrior Project, and others, enable you to do just that.
Trauma is a wound, a moral wound. It comes from an ancient Greek word. It means "a piercing wound". And the warrior's wound is a moral wound. Because we've done something, been a part of something, experienced something that went against our hearts. We had to learn to kill; we had to learn to destroy; we had to learn to accept and unleash the total destructive power contained in the nuclear bomb - this is not something we were born with. This goes against our hearts. It is anathema - against the right way. In order to heal from this, we must place our trauma in a higher power than ourselves. It places it in a different domain, in the spiritual domain. Then we can access healing powers that we wouldn't be able to access otherwise.
Many people feel they don't need to be healed. That they're ok. Well, let me say something about PTSD. PTSD is honorable and inevitable in environments of intense conflict. It's proof of your humanity. The only ones who don't experience any kind of soul distress after intensely traumatic events are those who are sociopaths, who are incapable of feeling, who have no sense of empathy, which is about 2% of the population. Intense environments - wars and conflicts - make sane people go insane. It's evidence of our humanity. We should be wounded from these experiences and we should take the time to heal and tend our wounds. When we take the time to tend and heal our wounds with someone who has earned your trust - you don't tell your story to everybody, you tell it to someone who's earned the right to hear it, who "get's it", and who understands the power of empathy - you can and will transform your wounds. You can digest those experiences, integrate them into yourselves, so that the symptoms shrink and eventually disappear. Your identity will grow large enough, you will expand large enough so that no longer will the traumas and events of those times in your past control you. And your life will be yours again.
These invisible wounds. These piercing wounds to our soul. In traditional cultures, you would not carry these wounds alone. The ancient Greeks, Egyptians, and American Indians understood all life to be interconnected; nothing was separated. Hence, if one part of us was wounded, then all of us are wounded. If one of our men; one of our women; one of our family members is wounded, we are all wounded. With this understanding, it takes a more comprehensive, integrated approach to heal this disorder. It requires holistic healing - the body, heart, mind, and soul connection; it's understanding on a transcendent level what it is that you experienced; it's re-connecting to the earth; it's re-integration within the community and acceptance from the community.
There was something I learned at this retreat which I found fascinating. The Vietnamese vets from the Vietnam war don't have any PTSD. The last recorded case was in the 1970's. And the reason behind this is because they have some major cultural and spiritual differences. The American mindset points to the brain as the center of the problem; whereas the Vietnamese point to the heart. The wound is in the heart.
Now, their spiritual practices are different than ours. It's foundation is Buddhism and the nature of Karma. Karma plays a big part in their understanding of the world. As we watched a video of a healing pilgrimage to Vietnam, the Vietnamese interviewed didn't see the American soldier as the problem; they saw the political leadership as the problem. They have no hatred for the American soldier. The Vietnamese understood the laws of Karma and applied it to the bullet. The bullet was the messenger of Karma. What this allowed them to do in their mindset was to accept tragedies without judgment. They figured out you can't control chaos. The other major difference was the Vietnamese had a community that brought back their warriors. This community gave them permission to process all that needed to be processed; to digest all that needed to be digested, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, and let go of all the toxic emotions that needed to be let go.
We don't do that in this country, or haven't done this for our veterans for a very long time.
Part 3 tomorrow.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
Monday, June 22, 2015
Soldier's Heart - The Path of the Spiritual Warrior - the Inestimable Work of Dr. Edward Tick, Part 1 of 5
Back in the fall of 2013, I spent an incredible weekend at a retreat in Joshua Tree. It was the Soldier's Heart Level 1 Training weekend for veterans, family members of veterans, healers, practitioners, psychologists, and others who are dedicated to healing the invisible moral wounds of PTSD. It was one of the most memorable weekends I had on my path of recovery. I wish I had the ability to describe to you the emotions, feelings, and love expressed in this council. Dr. Edward Tick and his wife Kate Dahlstedt conducted the retreat for the purposes of training those in attendance on their model, the Soldier's Heart model of transformation from war veteran to Spiritual Warrior. We were given a comprehensive understanding of the inner world of those who had experienced combat, war trauma, military culture, and the essential role of community in the re-integration process. Dr. Tick wrote the book, War and the Soul, a must read for all veterans and their loved ones who want to understand the path of the Spiritual Warrior and how it relates to those who choose military service. His most recent book, Warrior's Return: Restoring the Soul after War presents a powerful vision for changing the way we welcome our veterans back home. I was given the great honor to be included in this work, to express my own "soul wounding", how this led to me losing my moral compass, and my journey into the Underworld. These are a must read for you veterans out there who read this blog. I implore you to get them and begin to understand the true nature of what PTSD is. As one Iraqi vet has so succinctly stated in Warrior's Return: "We don't need complicated psychological definitions. PTSD results when your head tells you to do what your heart tells you is wrong."
This Soldier's Heart weekend back in 2013 was so powerful, I've felt the need to write about it and share with all of you my experience. The vision, message, purity of intention, nobility, wisdom, and deep conviction of Dr. Tick's work to heal the hearts and souls of our veterans is so important, so vital to the renewing and restoring of our warriors and society, it needs to be spread.
Before I go into detail of my experience at the retreat, I want to share with you how Dr. Tick and Kate describe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They call it Post-Traumatic Soul Distress. Having had first hand experience with this, I know this to be absolutely, unequivocally true. Our souls are in distress. In a moment in time our souls are shattered, broken. These wounds sear our hearts, we become fragments of who we used to be, disconnected from ourselves, disconnected from the world around us, and we wonder if life will ever be filled with joy again. It takes immense courage, compassion for self and others, determination, and a fearless commitment to reclaim and create the life you were meant to live. Believe me, I know. The hardest part of the journey is the return, and to do it requires an understanding of the true nature of the warrior's path.
Sitting Bull said,
We need to help soldier's speak their honorable past. They went there with honor, and they should come back with honor. Now, we've artificially created the non-combatant/combatant veteran and this negatively affects veterans who have PTSD that never experienced combat. War has a very long chain, everyone is exposed; you are a part of that war machine. A person who never sees combat and yet who sees the body bags coming in in order to identify the bodies can suffer just as severely as any combat veteran. We should never judge another person's suffering. Another example. An officer who sends his men on a routine mission and they suddenly find themselves caught in an ambush. He hears their cries and screams, bullets flying and bombs exploding in the background, and he stands there in total helplessness and terror for the welfare of his soldiers for he can't do anything to prevent or stop the tragedy from happening. This man or woman can be crippled by PTSD for life.
War has very long tentacles. It particularly affects family members. Anyone who has ever lived with a veteran know this. The vet comes back from the war with the war still raging inside of them. The family members bear the brunt of having to deal with all the pain, all the toxic emotions, and all the suffering that their veteran is experiencing.
Military service itself can be very traumatizing. We are broken down. It is a breaking down of your own unique individuality. This is necessary in order for the unit to work together as one in times of war. However, in order to bring our warrior's back, we must rejoice in the warrior's healing. In order to rejoice in the warrior's healing, we have to start thinking differently. We have to start thinking differently about warfare, about warriors, and about the invisible wounds of war and start thinking from a holistic, spiritual perspective. What do I mean by this?
The warrior's path is a psycho-spiritual journey. The spiritual warrior is an archetype; it's been with us a very long time. It's been around since man first stepped foot on this planet, in every tribe, in every nation, in every culture. The problem is, in the last 4000 years or so, we've not stayed true to the values and ethos of the spiritual warrior. What it's been about is greed, conquest, and aggression. It's been a perversion of what the warrior ethos is all about. No wonder so many men and women are broken.
Warriorhood is built into us. It's among the archetypes that hold us together in our collective unconscious. What we've forgotten is the path of return. And there are paths of return that have been in all cultures and all religions, but we've forgotten about them. The Bible is loaded with rituals to bring soldier's back home; Native American rituals as well. But because society as a whole doesn't want to deal with these pains and having to accept responsibility for their part in placing these soldiers in harms way, we prevent them from making that return journey. There is a warrior and civilian contract. They are out there serving us. And they are embarking on the hero's journey, everyone is, when we send people to war.
Part 2 tomorrow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This Soldier's Heart weekend back in 2013 was so powerful, I've felt the need to write about it and share with all of you my experience. The vision, message, purity of intention, nobility, wisdom, and deep conviction of Dr. Tick's work to heal the hearts and souls of our veterans is so important, so vital to the renewing and restoring of our warriors and society, it needs to be spread.
Before I go into detail of my experience at the retreat, I want to share with you how Dr. Tick and Kate describe Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They call it Post-Traumatic Soul Distress. Having had first hand experience with this, I know this to be absolutely, unequivocally true. Our souls are in distress. In a moment in time our souls are shattered, broken. These wounds sear our hearts, we become fragments of who we used to be, disconnected from ourselves, disconnected from the world around us, and we wonder if life will ever be filled with joy again. It takes immense courage, compassion for self and others, determination, and a fearless commitment to reclaim and create the life you were meant to live. Believe me, I know. The hardest part of the journey is the return, and to do it requires an understanding of the true nature of the warrior's path.
Sitting Bull said,
"You tribes behold me, the Chiefs of old are gone, and myself, I shall take courage."When you're on the warrior's path, you can't change it. You are on that path for life. What is so important is the stories we tell. The stories of our soldiers' are our stories, and yet, as a society and community, we've made this disconnect where they have to bear the brunt of their stories and keep it within them, and hence, they suffer alone.
We need to help soldier's speak their honorable past. They went there with honor, and they should come back with honor. Now, we've artificially created the non-combatant/combatant veteran and this negatively affects veterans who have PTSD that never experienced combat. War has a very long chain, everyone is exposed; you are a part of that war machine. A person who never sees combat and yet who sees the body bags coming in in order to identify the bodies can suffer just as severely as any combat veteran. We should never judge another person's suffering. Another example. An officer who sends his men on a routine mission and they suddenly find themselves caught in an ambush. He hears their cries and screams, bullets flying and bombs exploding in the background, and he stands there in total helplessness and terror for the welfare of his soldiers for he can't do anything to prevent or stop the tragedy from happening. This man or woman can be crippled by PTSD for life.
War has very long tentacles. It particularly affects family members. Anyone who has ever lived with a veteran know this. The vet comes back from the war with the war still raging inside of them. The family members bear the brunt of having to deal with all the pain, all the toxic emotions, and all the suffering that their veteran is experiencing.
Military service itself can be very traumatizing. We are broken down. It is a breaking down of your own unique individuality. This is necessary in order for the unit to work together as one in times of war. However, in order to bring our warrior's back, we must rejoice in the warrior's healing. In order to rejoice in the warrior's healing, we have to start thinking differently. We have to start thinking differently about warfare, about warriors, and about the invisible wounds of war and start thinking from a holistic, spiritual perspective. What do I mean by this?
The warrior's path is a psycho-spiritual journey. The spiritual warrior is an archetype; it's been with us a very long time. It's been around since man first stepped foot on this planet, in every tribe, in every nation, in every culture. The problem is, in the last 4000 years or so, we've not stayed true to the values and ethos of the spiritual warrior. What it's been about is greed, conquest, and aggression. It's been a perversion of what the warrior ethos is all about. No wonder so many men and women are broken.
Warriorhood is built into us. It's among the archetypes that hold us together in our collective unconscious. What we've forgotten is the path of return. And there are paths of return that have been in all cultures and all religions, but we've forgotten about them. The Bible is loaded with rituals to bring soldier's back home; Native American rituals as well. But because society as a whole doesn't want to deal with these pains and having to accept responsibility for their part in placing these soldiers in harms way, we prevent them from making that return journey. There is a warrior and civilian contract. They are out there serving us. And they are embarking on the hero's journey, everyone is, when we send people to war.
Part 2 tomorrow.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please visit Soldier's Heart's website at www.soldiersheart.net to learn more about the work being done to restoring our warriors and communities. If you are inspired, please donate!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charlie Pacello, an Air Force veteran, is a Life Coach and Healing Expert for PTSD, Depression, Addiction, and Trauma. He is a facilitator with the Mindful Warrior Project, an author, inspirational speaker, and a candidate for a Masters in Psychology and Theater at Burlington College. Charlie also works as a trainer with the Soldier's Heart program and with Drs. Ed Tick and Sarah Larsen in trauma release and healing. He is also the creator of the program, 'Lt. Pacello's Life Training Program' based on his work in healing his own PTSD, depression, addiction, and trauma. Charlie graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1996 and was commissioned an officer. He comes from a family of veterans: his grandfather fought in WWII, his father fought in Vietnam, and he was on the front lines of nuclear warfare. All suffered from PTSD. Charlie struggled to make that return journey home and is now committed to helping others succeed as he has. He can be reached by visiting his website at www.charliepacello.com
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