Comments by "Thump Er the Sweaty Fat Guy" (@SweatyFatGuy) on "Navy Seal Trevor Thompson on the Realism of Saving Private Ryan | Joe Rogan" video.
-
I can smell the desert, jet fuel, diesel and dirt, feel the heat, and even sand blowing on my face when I watch some movies about my wars... while sitting in an air conditioned theater. Welcome to the world of PTSD. I did both Desert Storm and OIF/OEF and watching Pvt Ryan sucked me in and made me feel like I was there. When the guy holding the sticky bomb explodes, I checked myself to see if I caught any bone fragments in the theater, and it didn't even pull me out of the movie. It was like coming home again for the next few weeks after I watched it in the theater. Another 4 years passed before I could watch that movie, and I had to sit through 5 minutes of it. Then ten, then fifteen, and so on until I could watch it all and not be fucked up for a week. Then a year after I got to where I could watch it, I was in Kuwait for 9/11, then to Korea coming back to the US only to go to the desert for my 5th deployment.
I didn't do Navy seal shit, I was not infantry. My first three deployments were the 'rough' ones the last two weren't too bad, just boredom after 9/11 and stupid amounts of work in 2004. The first deployment brought it home to me in 1991. Those memories will never fade. Strangely enough most of my nightmares are based on movies, not memories. Black pajamas are not a thing in the desert. No idea why my brain goes to Platoon or something, shit is weird. The flashbacks are all the desert or other places I've been, but the nightmares are movie based. Go figure.
95
-
12
-
4
-
@darkerdaemon7794 you're preaching to the choir here, it became painfully obvious all the way back in 1992 that I was nothing but a number to the government. So when in 2005 they threw me away, despite training, prowess, and massive experience, and then told me to go die in a fire, eat a bag of dicks and fuck myself (in not so many words) back in May, I was unsurprised.
I was fully expecting the military to fuck me over yet again. That is why from 2000-2005 I used them as much as I possibly could, reaped every benefit that was available and my work schedule allowed. Then with the VA I have been getting compensated and working that system as well.
As for the people trying to subvert our way of life, I have no problem handing them their collectivist asses. I would rather stay home and build my cars, but I have nothing holding me back from opening a can of whupass the size of a large tank truck. Its just another day to me, and I will come home and get back to doing my thing when its handled.
If I die in it, who fucking cares, nobody cares right now so whats the difference? Men are expendable, we always have been, its a biological reality. What we can do when we are alive and functioning, well, that can be epic.Nobody will mourn me, well maybe my kid will for a week or so.
1
-
1
-
@nocturnal5eyedmoth151 When you have a stressful situation or trauma, it creates what some call an emotional marker. Your first day of basic training can be one of those markers, or a car accident, physical abuse, just about anything where you are in very real danger or completely unable to effect a change in the outcome of events. It makes you able to (or forces you to) remember minute details and certain smells, sounds or weather conditions will make you remember that event.
With PTSD you can relive the entire day, or the event.
If I watch certain movies, I can be cold in my house with the AC on, but I feel the heat of the desert, the sand blowing into my face, I can smell jet fuel, diesel, and cordite. I can smell the bodies, and all the other things from those times, and its only on a screen, but it 'feels' like I am there. the last time I was in the desert was 16 years ago, but it feels like last week.
He could smell diesel, which meant he was there again, living the event in his subconscious or conscious mind. It is connected to your fight or flight response, and if you can't leave, you will fight. When we are at that point in this sort of thing, our response to the stress is vastly overblown in relation to the stressor.
The reason being that ultra violence will often be required to keep you alive in some of these events, so your mind goes directly to overwhelming force, and that little voice most people have that says "They have had enough" is simply not there or its ignored completely.
Its why a lot of us live alone, or spend as much of our time in nature as we can, because people caused the events and stressors. Its a survival mechanism from hundreds of thousands of years ago or more. If you survived an encounter with a wild predator, it was imprinted in your mind so you would be aware the next time a situation like that presented itself. Those who remembered survived and passed the traits down to their offspring, and now they are mostly dormant in us, but can be activated.
PTSD is a survival mechanism, the reason why it is a problem is that overwhelming force in response from rather mild stimuli. It takes a lot of mental effort to not follow through with what pops in your head when someone does something while driving that triggers it. You fuck with the wrong guy in the right way, you will be severely injured for simply saying or doing something completely innocuous to anyone else.
In crowds we get angry, because we have what is called hyper vigilance, we scan constantly and watch everything. Watching too much wears you down quickly, and when we wear down and get tired, we get angry easier. Anger with us is very different with anger from others, its often a rage that explodes without warning. Most of us control it, but its a shit load of effort and this survival mechanism never shuts off again once its activated.
A scene in the movie "Harsh Times" depicts it relatively well as far as the disproportionate response. He completely flips out at a guy in traffic, and the guy he flips out on has no idea what happened. I stopped watching it after that scene because I saw myself in it, so I don't know how the movie ends. Like I said above, Pvt Ryan really fucked me up. Hurt Locker did as well because of the visuals, not because of the story. I could smell that movie.
I've lived with this for a bit over 40 years, because my trauma predated my military time. I am in much better control of all of it than the guys who just came back from the desert and can remember life before the events that activated it. I barely remember life before, just bits and pieces. How much do you remember from before you were 8? Thats roughly when it started for me.
1