Why do Veterans find it difficult to adjust to daily life when they return home from war?
Probably beacuse of a combination of the routine and discipline in the army, the constant life-threatening danger and the resulting close comradeship which creates a very different kind of life from the one most of us lead. Everyone finds change difficult and I suspect that having lived in something of an alternative reality in the army it is almost impossible to readjust in their minds - especially if they are living around people who have no idea what they have been through.
I think when a person is trained to kill, and is on edge daily for years sometimes, it is as hard for them to de-program their brains to know they may not be in danger of being killed any moment. But then, there are people living in ghetto war zones in America who live with the chances of being killed daily too. I'm not sure how I'd react seeing people killed with regularity.
It really depends on what you experienced. In the cases where a veteran has experienced a lot of killing and death on a frequent basis, he or she adapts to a world with a different set of rules...kill or be killed. They live with the adrenalin flow of avoiding death, the stress of confronting it...all of which eventually reside in the subconscious mind as there is little time to dwell on it. By the time they return home, they want to forget much of what they have seen but people keep asking and wanting to know...making them relive it at times. They also have to regear their mind and wash their subsconscious mind of the idea that they need to kill or be kill, to be alert for danger at every moment...to stop living on the edge. All that decompression of those instinctive emotions takes a lot of time and effort to manage back into place. If life takes a bad turn in the interim, it become overwhelming for many of them. WB
This is a huge deal. Almost EVERY soldier coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan is having some kind of a problem. My son's unit returned from their second deployment (one year in Afghanistan, just before Christmas. Many of the guys are still having difficulties...and it is not just psychological. Many soldiers have problems with their benefits, red tape issues with medical matters, etc.
One of the soldiers in my son's outfit posted this on facebook...
"THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT BETTER START TAKING CARE OF ITS VETERANS - OR STOP MAKING THEM.
It depends on which war? The Nam Vets did. Mostly because their fellow Americans treated them terrible when they returned!
During my service, my standard of performance was to make no excuses and just get the job done by almost any means necessary. The consequences could vary from being withheld from promotion, being formally charges like 'dereliction of duty', or perhaps a physical beat down and certainly an excess of psychological manipulation, again 'by any means necessary.' The stakes are very high, your ability to get results is literally a matter of life and death. By the end of the first enlistment, it all becomes very normal. In a combat zone it's more intense, yet also more rewarding. Seeing the fruits of your labor, both good and bad rather quickly feels gratifying in ways the civilian world can never offer.
The gap between standards of military and civilian can really mess with a person in many ways.
1. Many of us join up to escape a bad family situation or poor hometown. Do you suppose they were any better support system when I 'came home'? I was actually told "you really put your family through hell."
2. Civilian employment is fickle and doesn't automatically recognize the quality of work and personal responsibility the service person has demonstrated. I have actually had to dissect each of my deployments and duty stations as if each were a new employer and job description. You really have to explain yourself well.
3. On the ground, we live and die for the sake of the American to his left and right, but when the game is over, and the adrenaline wears off, there is nothing to take the place of that job except perhaps a "security contractor" position. It's not the same, not even close.
4. The soldier may get blamed for war but he's the guy taking orders. When we see our civilian leadership for the isolated ivory tower dwellers they really are, it's more than a little demoralizing. It's schizophrenic! Iraqis were only my enemy because someone ordered me to make them my enemy. Remember, you cannot take back a bullet once it's been fired.
5. Speaking for myself, I cannot believe I put my life on the line for the defense of people who live for reality TV and a family who wouldn't welcome me home from war, nor will they even help me search for a job to support myself. They're too busy watching NCIS marathons over and over again like some brain dead zombies. God bless America.
by ngureco 13 years ago
Why Do Women Find It Difficult To Ask A Guy Point Blank If He Is Attracted To Her?
by Hui (蕙) 10 years ago
Do you wear perfume in daily life, work, occasions, and leisure time? Why and why not?
by Amanda Littlejohn 10 years ago
Why do so many older people find it difficult to chew?Is this just because they have bad teeth, dentures or is it also related to muscular weakness - or something else? Are there precautions you could take or exercises you could do to prevent this problem?
by NiaG 11 years ago
How many find it difficult to do your research without the use of a library?Do you rely only on the facts found from Google or do you go to the library to research your hubs?
by Goodpal 13 years ago
Why we create comfort zones and then find it difficult to come out of it?It is well known that living in the comfort zone for too long limits growth and sets in boredom and dissatisfaction. I wonder why living comfort zone is hard for many people.
by Elayne 8 years ago
Seriously, how do you treat your spouse/partner when they return home from work?
Copyright © 2024 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2024 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |