Wondering if you or someone you love can ever get over those feelings of nightmares, flashbacks, chronic insomnia, irritable/angry, anxiety, hypervigilant, avoiding crowds?
Session one: Joshua 1/27/09
History: Army Sgt. age 27, 10 years in, male, three tours in Iraq - first tour 2003: 18 months, second tour 12 months, 2005-6, third tour 9 months, 2007-08 at which point he was MEDEVACed out for PTSD. He was sent to Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany for one week, then to Ft. Bragg, N.C. At Bragg he was given various drugs including anti-psychotics and anti-depressants, none of which helped. He’s not on any drugs at this date. He went to Army therapy for a year, most of which he described as "visualize about what happened and put a positive ending on it," which didn’t help. Symptoms he described: nightmares, flashbacks of three or four specific scenes, chronic insomnia, irritable/angry, anxiety/can't relax, hypervigilant, avoids crowds. At this date he is non-deployable and is on medical board list to be separated from the Army due to PTSD. He wants to heal and might stay in the Army.
Summary:
Joshua was referred by an Army doctor at Ft. Bragg. Two standard PTSD scales were administered prior to our first 90-minute session on Tues. Jan 27th. PCL-M score 54, SA-45 score 99. The day after our session, Wednesday morning, he reported to the doctor and to me that he slept all night Tuesday without awakening and free of nightmares for the first time in over one year.
He came back for session two, three days later, on Friday... In the second session, we only did one round of tapping on a perception of never feeling safe in Iraq, but all other issues were already a zero. During treatment we addressed, in an indirect, non-retraumatizing way using the EFT Movie Technique, the worst memory of his entire time in Iraq, which occurred during the first tour - an ambush and fierce firefight where three soldiers were killed by RPGs in an unarmored humvee. His affect was nervous, subdued voice, shoulders forward, eyes down, fighting back tears and couldn't maintain eye contact with me.
His job was convoy security which was once a day seven days a week. He estimated the convoy was attacked four or five times per week, ranging from a spray of AK-47 bullets by an insurgent to IEDs (roadside bombs) to RPGs, (rock-propelled grenades) to full on ambushes. The first time he was in an IED attack, the humvee flipped over and he was thrown out of the back, lost his weapon and he had only his 9 mm handgun.
About 45 minutes into the session, we took a break. He reported that the charge on the ambush flashback/memory he titled "HELL" ("if that event was a movie, what would be the title?") was down to about a 4 or 5 from a 10+ on an intensity scale of 0 to 10. We continued treatment, his affect became more animated, he relaxed into the chair, smiled, eye contact began. At the end, when I asked what number on the 1 to 10 scale that HELL memory was now, he shrugged his shoulders, moved his head from side to side said, "I don't know, I feel really calm about it now, I think it's gone. I can remember what happened but I don't feel anything bad about it."
thanks to army.mil for the photo
