Comment of the day: Gourley on PTSD

Discussing
a new memoir of coming home from Iraq, he speaks much truth:

The problem is that if I just painted the broad strokes I'd
just look like a bastard. And that's what everyone with PTSD looks like.
They're just whiny, or surly, or can't get their stuff together, or a bastard.
And it's easy to dismiss someone and not help them when they're just a bastard.
But if you take a minute to sit down and start going through things with them,
then you realize that in reality they HAVE bastard. It's a disease. You really can
get it. The only thing worse than bastard is the rash everyone around you
breaks out in. It's called stigma, and it's an SOB. 

If you have to be a bastard, at least try to be
witty about it.

Peeling off those layers of stigma is no easy
job, though. That's why most guys don't even talk about it to the shrinks. A
lab coat and words like 'confidentiality' are to trust what a good OER is to
merit. Just because you've got one doesn't mean you actually have the other.
Our best therapists are not people with PhD's. They're the ones who've done the
same "study abroad" program we have. I can talk about those things
with other people who need to talk. I can tell those guys how I feel today
without pulling any punches or getting all choked up the way I would punching
it into a keyboard, because when I say it to them I know I'm telling them how
they're likely going to feel in a few years.