Everyone with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, has a “moment of clarity”.  A moment when they realize they are not the same person they used to be and the world has changed forever from their perspective.  For some, like it was for me, this “moment of clarity” comes much later, many years after a psychiatrist presented an actual PTSD diagnosis.   For those like me, the diagnosis for many years was simply an acronym which meant I had to attend counseling sessions, medical appointments, and take medications. 

PTSD Diagnosis Had Little Meaning

The diagnosis had little meaning to me as I was still active duty for many years following the diagnosis and in fact I would have to deploy four additional times before I retired.  You see, in the Army during a time of war if you have a highly specialized job in short supply they give you counseling, some “coping skills”, some medication, and then certify you to deploy.  Therefore, my PTSD diagnosis simply became one more step in my deployment medical screening I had to pass before I deployed again.   

My “moment of clarity” didn’t occur until I had retired from active duty and was sitting in one of the most unlikely of places for such a revelation, drinking coffee in the corner of a Star Bucks coffee shop.  I had sat in that very seat several years prior happily talking to my daughters about school and going swimming.  However, at that moment I found myself sitting in the same place alone and thinking about very different things.  I wasn’t sitting in the corner because it was the single open seat in a busy coffee shop but instead I had picked it because I could watch the entire shop and see who was coming through the door.  I wasn’t thinking about the fun I was going to have with my daughter.  Instead, I was alone, my children were with their mother, several states away and we were divorced.  I was actually watching everyone in the shop and quietly sizing them up as threats.  During this “moment of clarity”, the glaring differences in my thinking became apparent to me.

I Was Unprepared For What Was To Come

The first time I had been in the coffee shop with my daughters was in June 2001.  I had been part of the active duty US Army since September 1988 and though I had deployed several times nothing traumatic had happened to that point in my career beyond seeing the occasional dead body and starving child.  My deployments included the 1991 Gulf War, Kosovo, and a few deployments conducting direct support to Special Forces operations.  Though they were eye opening and exciting at times, none were particularly traumatic.  Being a truck driver during the Gulf War and a simple intelligence analyst in Kosovo writing reports and recommending targets for bombing from a safe tent were too impersonal to have an impact on me.  Things became a lot more personal and intimate after September 2001. 

That lack of preparation seemed extreme and glaring to me as I sat alone in the corner of the Star Bucks that day in Nov 2009.  Nothing appeared to be the same even though the same people frequented the place, the furniture was the same color and design, the coffee was still expensive, and everyone crazily ordered whipped cream on perfectly good coffee or espresso.  The same people were even still working there because one of them recognized me even though I no longer had hair and my face was a lot older.  Yet everything was conspicuously different to me.  I ended up sitting in the coffee shop for three hours watching people come and go. 

A Moment of Clarity

That was when my “moment of clarity” came to me.  As the hours went by, I realized that the changes I was noticing were a matter of perspective and that I was the only thing that had substantially changed in those years.  The rest of the people who come into the coffee shop hadn’t changed mush.  They had went about their lives and got educated, got married, advanced in their career, had children, and bought a house.  They had continued on with their lives even though two wars and nine deployments had changed me beyond my ability to recognize it until that moment.  A moment of clarity!

I spent the next hour realizing two things.  I was the one who had changed and that I was angry about that change.  The topic of my anger is an article for another day.  I also realized that not only had I changed but that I had changed forever.  I ended up realizing that it was how I had come to see the world since 2001 which had changed. 

I went to see a psychologist for the first time since my retirement.  He had been treating PTSD in patients for many years, most of them military personnel.  He was the one who labeled it as my “moment of clarity” and said that it was a significant breakthrough in my recovery. 

I still see him regularly and hope that if you have been diagnosed with PTSD that you have had your “moment of clarity”.  It was truly the start of my recovery and hopefully it will be for you.