Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD – The Brutally Honest New York Times Bestseller About Depression, Suicidal Crisis, and Choosing Healing

by Jason Kander

I realized then what made me so mad about this and just about every conversation I’d had since deciding to join: the assumption that the military was for “other people,” those who weren’t special, who weren’t white, moneyed college kids, who weren’t like us.

It was great advice, and I planned to completely ignore it.

pain. I fell in love with mixed martial arts because it’s impossible to be sad while you’re trying not to get punched in the face.

She defined trauma as “anything that is too much, too fast, too soon, or not enough for too long.”

“If you feel shitty, let yourself feel shitty. Don’t fight it,” he said. “And if you feel good, feel good; don’t shame yourself for feeling good. Just feel the feelings.”

I used to be miserable, and now I’m not. It doesn’t matter why.

PTSD is an injury. That’s all it is.

Thinking “other people have it worse” doesn’t actually diminish your own trauma, it just diminishes your power to heal.

One guy I was working with said the situation had helped him understand how drone pilots could develop PTSD without ever leaving the United States.

This implies that Grandpa didn’t like talking about it; in reality, Grandpa didn’t like talking about it with you. He didn’t think you’d understand.

Basically, the army wires every soldier to think “What I did was no big deal.” It’s an absolutely necessary form of brainwashing that helps you keep going.

There is no institutional mechanism—none—for helping service members learn how to flip off that switch before they leave the military. No one sits you down and says, “Okay, now that it’s over, you should know that what you went through was actually some crazy shit, and you’re probably going to need some help.”