Robbing ourselves, & how our obsession with anger will ruin what we hold dear.
One thing that’s almost a near-constant in my work with my Brothers and Sisters is various kinds of negativity. Anger, resentment, hostility, outright hatred. It seems like folks have lots to be angry and hateful about. The loss of a buddy, loss of limb or physical wounding of some sort, emotional wounds, the fact that someone was shot at in some form or fashion. The heat, the smell, the dust, the cold, the traffic…. whatever the hell it is about “over there”.
So many of us talk about “that place” and how much it sucked, how much we hate it, how much we hate the people there, and on and on. But we still talk about it every day. We watch stuff on TV or go to the movies to be reminded (as if it was necessary in the first place) of how much we hate it. We watch those things and then “reminisce” about how fucked up the place and the situation was/is. Why is that?
We watch these things, we talk about these things, and again- “reminisce” about whatever country and it’s inhabitants- That “shithole” inhabited by [insert term here]. Whatever words we use to dehumanize and demonstrate the level of hatred we have for them and where they live. It reminds me of the old joke about one dude seeing another dude hitting himself in the head with a hammer…
Dude #1- “Why are you hitting yourself in the head with that hammer?!”
Dude #2- “Because it feels so damn good when I stop!!”
The only problem is that we don’t stop. We keep doing it- even though we KNOW it hurts, and despite the fact that we hate doing it (thinking of “that place”). The pounding of the hammer on our head, hurting ourselves or getting ourselves whipped up into a frenzy, maintaining that level of anger and hatred… it all requires mental, spiritual and emotional energy. Who’s to blame? “Them”? “That place”? No. WE ARE TO BLAME!!
We’re robbing ourselves of the very thing that we all value about our time in the service and our tours in combat zones, and this is why anger management is important. The thing that keeps us going when things seem at their worst, that we place above all else and tell civilians they don’t understand- the bonds of Brother and Sisterhood we form in the most terrible of places and situations. We almost constantly busy ourselves with being angry about situations and living conditions we survived, about the friends we lost, and everything else painful and unpleasant connected to it that we almost totally lose sight of the value of the single thing we all seem to hold most dear and close in our hearts. Love.
“Oh, Don wants us to forget what happened to us and our buddies!”
“Don, are you a friggin’ idiot?! Am I supposed to love that place/those people??!!”
“Hey, lets skip through the Daisy patch and hold hands with Don- he lives in a perfect world!”
Roll your eyes and say what you want- that’s fine. But seriously- look at what we’re doing to ourselves. It’s tough enough without making things like transitioning to civilian life, a new job, or dealing with emotional baggage even tougher. Can anger management help? Sure it can- and it’s something we can work on at home.
I’m not talking about “loving” loss of friends or traumatic experiences. I’m talking about keeping in touch with what’s going to help us get through the hard things. Focusing on being angry and bitter requires all of your energy. It becomes the priority, the monster under the bed that you keep feeding and that keeps growing and becoming stronger and eventually all-consuming. It’s claws get sunk in, and before you realize what the hell’s happening, that’s ALL there is left. This thing that eats at your soul- I’m talking literally, not figuratively. It’s what pulls you deeper into the depression, anger, and frustration that you feel with friends and family. It encourages and fosters those feelings of anxiety, fear, rage and thoughts of self-harm. It gets so strong that that’s what you’re all about all day, every day. Then, you can’t even remember good times or friends without immediately going to the bad stuff...
“Yeah, I remember that time Mac busted his ass getting out of the vehicle after that mission! Remember that? When we were out in sector and those fucking kids got in front of the vehicles and wouldn’t move! DAMN, I hated those little fuckers! And their friggin’ parents were letting them do it! REALLY??!! How fuckin’ stupid are you to let your kids run in front of a moving vehicle?! I hated that place!!!!!”
Does this sound familiar at all? It might, because I see it all the time. Look at what happened- going from a memory that should make you laugh, or think about a person that meant something to you to BAM!! Instant anger. You end up not even remembering what you originally started off with, which was a good memory or feeling. What happens is that you do this often enough that your brain begins to associate a good memory of an event or person with the anger and rage. You begin to connect the feeling of hatred and rage to the memory of… say… a buddy you lost while on deployment. That causes you to associate the love of a friend with those negative feelings which results in any thought of a buddy getting mixed in with rage, hatred, frustration, etc. You’ve now robbed yourself of “the good”. You’ve now stained the good memory with the ugliness, anger and sadness of the trauma/bad memory.
Step away from the negativity. We have to open up a gap so that there’s no mixing of the two memories and emotions. What many of us do is called a “Negative Reinforcement”- the replacement or introduction of something distasteful or painful to change your perception of something that you like. What happens is that you begin to associate the good thing with a bad emotion. A little at first, but then more and more until you can’t tell the difference between the good memory and the bad emotion. They actually become the same thing. Keep the positive things positive, and the negative, negative (Yes- I would prefer you step away from the negativity and anger altogether, but one thing at a time!). That way, they both stay in their place.
We all have enough to deal with on a daily basis without making it harder on ourselves, especially when dealing with memories. So many of us struggle daily with trying to figure out “why we’re here”. But we’ll never be able to figure that out and get on the right track if we don’t have something positive to help us through the dark times. Brotherhood, Sisterhood, love of our buddies- that's what got us through deployments, and there’s no reason why it can’t get us through the challenges we face now.
