invicta2408

[invicta2408]

Look out for each other, military or not

I just wanted to share this story because it has really fucked me up, and I’m hoping that someone will read this and see things in another perspective that might be able to help themselves, somebody else, or both. There’s no names, locations, or specific information in this.

This story starts around two months ago, with a staff sergeant making a mistake. He drank a little, hit a car while driving, panicked, and drove away. He got caught and charged with a DUI. If you don’t know, getting charged with a DUI is an automatic chapter which separates you from the Army. Also if you don’t know, as part of this chapter process you have to do a mental health evaluation, basically it is to check of there could have been a behavioral health reason that might have caused a certain behavior to cause the indecent. However, specifically for DUIs and failed UAs, it doesn’t matter if there were BH issues or not, to the Army those are non excusable so there’s almost no way to get it excused unless your command wants to retain you. So at that point we do this evaluation to see if there are any BH issues that they might want treatment for. Anyway, I was the one doing this staff sergeants evaluation. I was pretty nervous, because it was one of the first few that I had done on my own, meaning my supervisor wasn’t in there with me to make sure I was doing it right, at that point I had learned what I needed to do and how to do it. But me being a PV2 talking to a staff sergeant especially in this setting and under these circumstances was a little daunting.

You could tell right off the bat that this guy wasn’t really ok, his face was just completely flat, and so was his tone. I asked the questions I needed to ask, and in doing that he told me that he’s never really gotten seen for any of his physical things. So he has multiple suspected TBIs (concussions or other head injuries) that were untreated, and other things going on physically that were untreated. He has also never seen BH before coming in that day. He told me that he was kind of stuck in that stigma of BH that being seen ruins your career and that if you have issues you need to deal with them youself and not let anyone else see. He didn’t say that exactly outright, but that was pretty much the message. I had to really convince him to at least try the MFLC, where there’s no documentation or anything like that. Whether or not he went I don’t actually know. He had been attending SUDDC appointments, substance abuse counselors. I already figured from the evaluation that substance use was not the actual problem, but for DUIs and UAs, people are required by command to attend SUDDC, and I saw him at the clinic here and there whenever he came for those appointments.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. That Friday I had gone with my supervisor to the BHU (inpatient hospital) to watch her do another chapter evaluation. I wanted to go because I had never been to the BHU before, and she also offered. While I was there, I saw this same staff sergeant, who at this point had been demoted to sergeant, who was sitting in a tiny waiting room with his wife and his young daughter. I was surprised, because at that point I had no idea what had happened that had gotten him admitted to the BHU, but in that moment he looked happy, he was smiling and holding his daughter. He had recognized me and he said hello and I said hello back. Fast forward to this week, three days ago. The sergeant came in for a triage, telling me he wanted to talk to a provider. I gave him the forms he needed to sign and I told him I would take him back to talk after he was done. I figured I would do the triage since I have at least a small bit of rapport with him since I have sat down with him before, and I figured he would be more comfortable to open up about what was going on. Here comes the part that screwed me.

I didn’t even get out the limits of confidentiality before he had started speaking, I got to say them before he went further but just from that alone I knew this was going to be a bit of a bumpy ride. He started with telling me how things were not really going that great for him mentally, and right off the bat his voice was shaking as if he was going to burst into tears at any moment. So I knew that he would start crying eventually. He told me how he wouldn’t really be truthful whenever someone asked him about his mental health, or whenever he filled out the screenings on the computer (like the 0 to 4 stuff that you usually see). He said it was difficult to put a number on things, and I understood that. To me, putting a number on things like that is admitting that whatever is going on is, or isn’t, as bad as you think it is and it’s hard to think about it in that way in general. He told me that he had a reality check when he got his separation packet and realized that he really is getting out of something that has essentially been his life for 9 years. He told me that he has often been having anxiety attacks, bad enough to where he would have to go lay down for an hour or two until he felt well enough to get back in the game. He was telling me that with everything that has happened, the separation, an incident at the field the week before (I’ll explain more but it’s what got him admitted), he realized that he wanted, and needed, help. He told me how he was looking to get seen at the TBI clinic for those untreated concussions and other injuries, and how he eventually worked up the courage to go to the clinic that day. He told me about how for his entire career he always put the army, the mission, his soldiers, everything, before his mental and physical health. This is where he started to cry, it was pretty immediate, and man, the only other male I’ve seen cry that hard and that much was my boyfriend. That’s when things kind of just broke for him and all of the floodgates opened. What I got from it is that he basically sacrificed himself for doing what he believed in and doing what he thought was right for his country and others around him. I had to actively try to not tear up in front of him. He apologized, for crying, that always happens, but I told him it was ok.

He kept going with what happen in the field. In the field he had accidentally intoxicated himself with caffeine because he took some caffeine pills, which is something I’ve heard is common in the field. He told me how he was so stressed with the safety of everyone there because they were in a live range and they were not being as safe as they should have been. He told me how he was so stressed because everyone looked to him for answers because he was the most experienced there, he wondered what would happen if he wasn’t there to tell them what to do and to keep them safe. He talked to the Chaplain out there, and it had helped. Then he described to me what sounded like a hypomanic episode. He felt euphoric, better than he has in his life, felt like he was making all of the good and right decisions, and he couldn’t remember much of those days. He told me about how he got so angry that no one was listening to him him about the safety concerns that he punched something. His command took him out of the field and took him to the hospital, which is where they found out about the caffeine intoxication. He had asked them how much longer he had to be there, and they told him that he just had to answer a few more questions and he could go. What need up happening was that he got admitted to the BHU, which made him more angry and upset. I think it helped initially, because I saw him at the clinic after he got discharged and he told me he was doing so much better (that was early last week).

It had made me happy, because I had seen him when things were really sucking, and seeing that he was better just made me happy that I was part of the process that ended up helping. Obviously, that wasn’t 100% the case. He had been good when he was discharged, but I think the stress came back to him when he had to come back to reality. He told me that no one was really reaching out to him, even if he tried reaching out to them they didn’t respond back. Eventually he heard from someone that apparently he had threatened soldiers out in the field in the days where he was a little manic. Like I said he doesn’t remember much of it, so I’m sure you can see how this kind of freaked him out. He told me that it made him afraid, since he remembered something happening one way but others were telling him it happened another way. He told me how much he believed in what people were doing in the army and how people were fighting for our country and doing the best they could. He told me how he would never ever hurt his soldiers, or anyone (unless it was in self-defense or to protect his family) because “they’re my brothers, and you’re my sister.” Those were his exact words, and holy hell I don’t think I can describe the gut punch that it gave me.

Here we were, two near complete strangers, a male in his late 20s and an 18 year old female, and he was pouring out his soul to me and calling me his sister while he was in tears because that’s how much he believed in what the army does, that’s how much he believed that the army is family, that’s how much it hurt him to hear from others that he had threatened them (which, again, is something he doesn’t even remember doing), and that’s how huge of a connection you make just by sitting down and talking to someone for a little bit once or twice. It was the first thing I’ve encountered in this job that legitimately, brutally, broke my heart in the way it did, and I’ve encountered a lot of things in the 4-5 months I’ve been doing this job. I think I blanked out a little after that because I don’t really remember how we got to this next part. I just remember him saying “maybe I should have listened to you the first time, when you told me everyone needs a little help sometimes.” And maaaaannnnnnn.

Keep in mind I saw him for that evaluation two months ago, two months. After all of the crap that he’s been going through and experienced, he remembered one little sentence I told him two months ago when I was trying to tell him that it’s ok to need, and ask for, help. It was something I didn’t even remember saying until he said it back to me. It kind of blew my mind a little. He kept going saying how he would never hurt himself because he has a beautiful daughter and because he knows there’s something else out there for him, and how he knows that he wants to figure out what’s going on with him and get better, not just for himself, but his family too.

As it went on I could tell that he was feeling better, and I could actually see that he felt lighter. He even told me as much, how letting it all out felt like a huge weight was lifted. He apologized for going on and on about things, and I said it was ok again, and he thanked me for listening to what he was saying. He was smiling and laughing a little by the end of it, which let me tell you was a complete 180 from how he was when he had come in.

This fucked me up for a lot of different reasons, one of them being that he reminded me of my older brother, who is in the same MOS as this sergeant and has been in the army a similar amount of time and also has same things with BH, another was the fact that, like I said earlier, the only other male I’ve seen cry like that was my boyfriend. But something I learned was that there are sergeants, and staff sergeants, an junior enlisted, whatever, that are dealing with the same thing. They think that either BH will ruin things (I’m not going to lie, depending on how things turn out with your mental health, it might not end how you want it to), or that they shouldn’t show that they need help or ask for help because they should deal with it themselves. Because the mission comes first. And sure, that’s true in a sense, it’s just part of the army culture, but it’s also not how people should be dealing with their issues. It doesn’t matter if you think your the toughest person out there or that your issues might not be that big of a deal, like I told him, everyone needs a little bit of help sometimes, and IT’S OK TO ASK FOR HELP. It doesn’t make you any less of a person or weaker then the person beside you, it just means that you’re struggling, and you don’t know how to get through it. That’s what we’re here for. And it’s ok to be struggling and not know how to deal with it, again, that’s what we’re here for.

I understand that BH sometimes legitimately is a bad experience for some, it could be because of the provider, or that it did end up screwing with your carer. But please please please, those things are not worth your mental or physical health, it’s not worth destroying yourself over because of something that may or may not happen. So if someone looks off, or you have a gut feeling that something is wrong, be there for that person. I’m not saying bring them straight to BH, I’m saying that whether they look like they’re ok or not, it really helps to have people looking out for each other, and being that ear or that shoulder when they’re struggling and need to let it all out. Legit I’ve been crying over this experience for three days. As soon as he was taken care of and left, I went into one of the providers office and cried, like full on sobbed, for about 15 minutes. Seriously, if you think you need help, or that someone else needs help or like I said just someone to talk to, go talk to someone, or let someone talk to you so that you can be that safe space. I don’t think people realize the effect they can have on others when it comes to things like this. Both good and bad. Especially the males. Screw the macho man bullshit, it’s stupid, and in a way it’s degrading that they feel like they can’t share they’re feelings without being judged. Also, where I’m at we get more males needing BH help than females. And honestly I didn’t pay too much attention to that until I saw this sergeant and realized that nearly every day I’m sitting down with a male who is struggling with something or another. So males, it’s ok if you need help, it’s ok if you need to let it all out, not everything is always sunshine and rainbows for you and it’s ok that you feel that way. What’s not ok is that you have to live that way.

But yea, that’s the story, that’s my little rant. I just hope that this made sense, that it got through to someone, and that it helped even in the smallest way.

#mental health #army #army life #male mental health #therapist #sad but true #today i learned #mental heath awareness #mental heath tw #mental heath support #learn from me #please #don’t know what else to tag #let me know #military