Peace after Combat

Healing the Spiritual and Psychological Wounds of War

Tiffany Tajiri

• Publisher: David C Cook
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780830781959
• eBook ISBN: 9780830781966
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology

It could be your neighbor, your coworker, your son, or the woman sitting next to you in church. When combat veterans return from war, they're often confused. They struggle to reconnect with their families; the cheering crowds and smothering hugs make them want to jump out of their skin; and sometimes they even long to return to the hell of deployment. What they've experienced in combat can radically change how they view themselves, others, and the world at large. They may have never seen so much hurt, suffering, death, and destruction, which leaves them questioning, "Where is God?" Dr. Tiffany Tajiri, a veteran USAF officer and board-certified clinical psychologist, has been in countless sessions with combat veterans and their loved ones and now shares powerful first-hand accounts, lessons, proven exercises, and biblical truth. Whether experiencing combat directly as a veteran or wanting to help bring healing as a family member, pastor, chaplain, or counselor, this book is essential. The emotional, psychological, and spiritual healing encountered applies to anyone facing harsh realities and uncomfortable questions and hoping to find peace again.

Part I

Understanding Combat Experiences

Why we feel this way and where God is in the midst of our suffering

Chapter 1

POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS

Welcome Home, Hero!

James’s Story (US Marine)

It’s been two weeks since I’ve returned from Afghanistan. I don’t know what to f***in’ do with myself. I’m wound so tight that I’d rather be back there. It doesn’t make sense to feel the way I do right now—in my own home, no less. Is everyone else living it up on leave but me? What the f***?

My sweaty a** is stuck to this old, worn-out couch. I’m irritated at everything. My wife sits with her arms crossed and a scowl across her face. She’s pissed at me—at everything I do and don’t do. She’s been waiting for me to be extra lovey-dovey to make up for my absence. F*** that! I’ll jump out of my skin if I do that. I want to smother all of them in my love, but I have none to give. I’m f***in’ empty.

The kids are playing on the floor—between us and the television. The baby is in the bouncer, and the two tots are preoccupied on iPads. I’ll give them anything to shut up right now, but then Cole sees something on Tia’s screen and yanks the iPad from her. Tia pitches a bloody fit, and Cole follows suit.

My body reflexively flies off the couch and into a yelling rage. “You either need to shut up or go to your rooms.” I walk briskly out onto the back porch. From the corner of my eye, I see my wife swoop down to scoop up the two tots. She glares at me through the sliding glass doors. Even from outside I hear the kids sniffling, and that’s even more f***in’ irritating. I open my third and final pack of smokes for the evening. Back and forth, I pace the patio’s perimeter.

“Hey, Marine! Who the f*** do you think you are coming home and disrupting everything I had in order?” my wife shouts out as she steps onto the patio.

“You call this f***in’ order?” I kick the dog sh** lying at the edge of the patio.

She slams the door shut and returns to soothing the baby’s hellacious screams. Even from the distance of the backyard, with the screams muted, the sound of that child makes my skin crawl.

A thin film of sweat instantly appears on my body. My feet refuse to keep pacing. I close my eyes and—flashback—I’m right back in a f***in’ house raid. Screaming babies, children, and mothers—all running chaotically through the home. I can’t pull myself from that moment. In the middle of the raid, this woman handed me her screaming baby and ran away. I don’t f***in’ understand what possessed her to do that. I’ll never forget the distress on the tiny creature’s face. I reached to hand his wailing body off to some boy, and he ripped the baby from my arms in terror and anger. He stared at me for an instant with a look of absolute disgust. At that moment, I realized I was a real-life monster.

I walk to the edge of the backyard and slam my fist into the rock wall. Pain is the only distraction from this moment. I welcome the sensation as it courses through my arm and down my back. I smash my fist into the wall—again and again. There’s relief in watching the cement stone burst into a gray cloud and crumble to the ground. The blood from my knuckles drips onto the earth, a combination of sparse grass and sand.

Instantly, my mind shifts to the memory of Mark’s last breath. Like a projector, my brain casts the image of his blood spreading through the white sand and me shoveling fresh sand to cover it. We never left evidence of our defeat; the enemy would never gain that satisfaction. It’s my fault he died; I should’ve seen that IED. I throw my fist into the wall again.

My face burns from the salty tears that break free. I wipe my face with the bottom of my shirt. As I make my way back to the house, I kick another portion of the constellation of dried dog sh** in my path.

My wife tries to make eye contact through the kitchen window, but I don’t give her the time of day. I know she cares, but after two weeks she’s already too f***in’ fed up with me. I walk into the kitchen and a loud sigh escapes from her. “Shut up,” I reply. Another guttural sigh erupts from her. F*** it. It’s not worth my breath.

I open the fridge and reach to pull out my third six-pack for the day. Everything in threes (my lucky number that kept me alive). As I’m leaning for the beer bottle at the bottom of the fridge—F***! My body instinctively collapses into a fetal position on the ground, hands tucked behind my head.

“Get up!” she yells at me. “It’s just the damn garbage disposal.”

My heart races, and all of a sudden, I’m nothing. I’m weak. I’m a coward. I hate myself. The fact that she saw me crumble like a leaf sends a flood of embarrassment and vulnerability straight through me. F*** that feeling. The weakness turns to anger, and I direct a slew of curse words that rip through her, causing her to drop the plate she’s washing onto the floor. The sound of the crashing causes me to flinch—again. She looks down at the mess and up at me with a look of pure disgust. I’m that f***in’ monster again. Perhaps I’ve always been a monster—and always will be.

I put three beers in my oversized shirt, grab a fourth as I zip past the kids, and head straight for the garage. I fling the door wide open and stumble over the air mattress, losing a beer in the process. It hits and explodes all over the floor, the sound sending another shockwave through me. F*** it! After I recover my balance, I reach for the bottle opener on the workbench. The pop and fizz sounds send excitement through my body, signaling that relief will follow.

The beer burns going down, but I don’t stop chugging. I pause for a moment to let the carbonation settle before I open the second bottle. I feel like a guilty drunk, but I don’t care enough to stop. F*** it! The elation from opening the third bottle isn’t quite as strong, but it’s still a rush. I can use any rush I can get. Chug, chug, chug, chug … I repeat the word in my mind like a frat boy at a college party. Did I miss out by not going to college? Did I make a mistake joining the military? Who gives a sh**. At this point, it doesn’t f***in’ matter.

I fall backward onto my air mattress. The acid from the beer rises into my esophagus and burns. Everything f***ing burns. Welcome home, hero! Blood rushes to my brain and the buzz starts to catch. The broken bottle is just feet from the mattress. Broken. I’m broken. Just like that beer, there’s nothing left of me to salvage.

I close my eyes and open them immediately. Closing them is like watching a movie reel of every deployment experience gone wrong. It’s torture—my own personal hell. Perhaps I deserve it. I can’t sleep and I feel like I’m going crazy. No—I’ve already gone crazy.

I’m a burden to my family. It was easier for them when I was gone. I turn in the direction of the safe on the wall where I keep my gun. It would be so much easier for all of us if I did it. Jake did it; I can too. My family would get hundreds of thousands of dollars of life insurance. Veronica can remarry a nice man who can be the good type of father my kids need and deserve. Almost any guy is better than me.

My body feels like a deadweight as I roll off the mattress to my knees. I take a knee. F*** that! I’ve taken one too many knees. I don’t want to feel that emotional pain. I’ve taken a knee over six dead bodies on this deployment. I stand too quickly and sway to catch my balance.

I walk across the garage and reach for the safe. I still remember the code. It’s a sign! Inside the safe lies my freedom—the only way out of my torment. I breathe a sigh of relief. My handgun is locked and loaded, ready to go—another sign! I rush back to the mattress and climb under a blanket. I’m not going to make a mess all over the garage. I’ll keep it contained for Veronica’s sake, though she might enjoy the sight of me dead—a relief for her as well. The alcohol and cigarette buzz swarms through my body in a pleasant tingle. For about a minute, I stop to enjoy this last sensation of being alive.

God, if I was fighting for Your good cause, why do I feel like this? Why do You allow me to feel like this? Why haven’t You stopped it? I don’t understand. You don’t understand. But if I’m meant to die like this, I will. God, forgive me, if You even exist.

God, if I was fighting for Your good cause, why do I feel like this?

I open my mouth and quickly slip the gun in—not mindful of the process. To do this, there is no room for hesitation. My hands adjust around the trigger and pistol as I wiggle myself into the center of the mattress to ensure that my body cannot be seen. Veronica will hear the gunshot, run into the garage, and walk in on a small stream of blood dripping from the mattress—clean and neat—not like the sh** I saw in Afghanistan. Let’s do this. I close my eyes and slowly draw in my last breath.

“Daddy. Da-da. Ready or not, here we come!” Cole shouts as he and his sister barge through the garage door.

F***. Their time-out is over. I hide the gun under the covers and pop up from the mattress. “Boo!” I shout as I run to chase my children out into the yard.

I need help. God, help me! Please!1

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• • •

If James’s experience sounds all too familiar, then it’s time to understand why you’re feeling the way you do. Your experience is more common than you may think. No one talks about it because no one wants to be perceived as weak. It takes courage to admit that you’re not who you were before you deployed or who you want to be now. The good news is that there are scientific and spiritual reasons to explain what you’re going through now. When you learn the whys behind how you’re feeling, you’ll begin to find peace for the first time in a long time.

Here’s the BLUF (bottom line up front): most people will not use the words spiritual and psychological in the same sentence, as many believe that God and science cannot coexist. Yet the subtitle of this book pairs these words together.

It’s simple: God created mankind in His image (see Gen. 1:27), and He created us using science. We are a series of biochemical reactions, each equipped with a personality and a slew of emotions—many of which are godly emotions. The primary characteristic of God’s very being is love (see 1 John 4:8). Our purpose as created beings is to love and be loved; we are neurobiologically wired to do so. That being said, the love within us is from God, and how it makes us feel is derived by science, the mechanism of action God used to create us. You can’t separate God and science, so stop trying.

Research has proven time and time again that when a person has faith, he or she is significantly more resilient and psychologically capable of overcoming hurtful experiences. Faith provides us with deep meaning and a productive purpose for everything we encounter in our lives. You are a spiritual being in a human body.

There are significant differences in the neurophysiology of the brains of individuals who have strong faith versus no faith. Dr. Lisa Miller describes a cortical thickening in the parietal cortex that is observed in the brains of spiritual persons—contributing to neuro-protective benefits. More specifically, she states that those individuals with a spiritual life are 80 percent less likely to experience depression.2

In this chapter, I will focus primarily on the science of your brain and why you feel the way you feel, only dipping our toes in the waters of spirituality. In later chapters, we will plunge deeper into that water.

Like a Shrapnel Wound

There are all sorts of opinions regarding what defines a traumatic experience. Sometimes psychobabble definitions sound too theoretical, so let’s make it more concrete. For the purpose of this book, a traumatic experience is any event that causes us intense psychological distress, so much so that it jumbles our view of ourselves, the world, and our spiritual belief system. Such a traumatic event keeps us stuck in a pattern of unhealthy thinking, feeling, and behaving.

Imagine that your arm caught shrapnel from an exploded IED. The doc wraps it up for you, and you keep charging on, no time to stop. The wound may eventually become infected, and it may begin to cause you pain when you sleep on it. But finally, it closes. It looks awful and it hurts, but there’s no chance to address it now. You have to stay in the fight at all costs. You reason that it’s best to treat the infected wound upon your return from deployment.

Now that you’re home, it’s time to get that wound looked at. Your doctor tells you that it’s infected and he or she needs to cut it open and drain out all the bacteria. This is the only way to remove the infection and allow it to heal properly. The process is painful, and the healing is uncomfortable, but it’s worth it to be able to someday sleep on it again without pain. Of course, you’ll be left with a scar, but that doesn’t matter because you’ll be healed and pain-free.

Similarly, the psychological processing of trauma causes us to hurt again when we reopen the emotional wound we acquired on the battlefield. Just like the physical wound, the emotional wound takes time to heal. The healing process of the physical wound was interrupted by a bacterial infection, while the healing process of the emotional wound was interrupted by toxic thinking patterns like shame and twisted guilt (to be discussed). Make sense?

If you were physically wounded in combat, don’t be surprised if it takes significantly longer to heal from the emotional side effects of your injury. Of course, the severity and permanence of a physical wound make a difference. If you’ve permanently lost a physical function, such as sight or the ability to move freely due to the loss of a limb, you will have to grieve this loss. Such a loss can be similar to grieving the death of one of your nearest and dearest loved ones. Many survivors of such profound injuries heal more effectively when they find purpose in their losses ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by SEAC (Ret) John Wayne Troxell
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I: Understanding Combat Experiences
• Part II: In Session with Combat Veterans
• Part III: Miracles in Combat
• Part IV: What’s Next for You and Your Family?
• Additional Information
• Glossary