What are you doing with your spare time? We’e not talking about time you have in your day with no demands for your attention. We’re talking about the spare time you have after you survive something that cause you to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After all, that is the only way you can get it. As a survivor, you have been given spare time. It is up to you how you choose to use that time.
No one chooses to have PTSD over living the life they knew before. No one chooses to have the event they survived happen to them. If you have PTSD, it puts you into a place no one ever wants to enter. It means you survived something that was terrifying, and life altering. No one wants to face what you lived through. In other words, it is a club no one wants to belong to.
Facts about How Common PTSD Is
The following statistics are based on the U.S. population:
- About 6 out of every 100 people (or 6% of the population) will have PTSD at some point in their lives.
- About 15 million adults have PTSD during a given year. This is only a small portion of those who have gone through a trauma.
- About 8 of every 100 women (or 8%) develop PTSD sometime in their lives compared with about 4 of every 100 men (or 4%).
While the media has yet to open their eyes and see that PTSD does not just strike veterans, that is the truth. The rest of the survivors of trauma are just as in need of attention as veterans are, but members of this painful club do not get the help they need.
Reporters will cover veterans and more groups pop up across the country getting attention for things that they have no plans to provide meaningful change. What makes all of this clear is the simple fact that the men and women serving the country are not receiving the help they need and have needed since before 2012 when the average numbers of suicides reached 500 and remained that high up until last year when the suicides moved closer to 600.
“Those 580 deaths mark the most the DOD has recorded in at least five years, with the Active-duty component accounting for 384, the Reserve for 77, and the National Guard for 119. In the Air Force, 81 Active-duty members, 12 Reservists, and 16 Air National Guard members committed suicide in calendar year 2020, according to the report.”
Air Force Times
As we think about veterans, we must also remember that active duty forces are not getting what they need to heal, thus creating more veterans not getting what they need after their service has ended, but the price they pay doesn’t end.
No one wants to be in this club, but it is up to us to use our spare time in it so that membership includes healing!
When you think of the word “needy” who comes to your mind? The poor? The homeless? Why wouldn’t you think of everyone in need of help, no matter what kind of help they need? What makes us want to help strangers when we have problems of our own? Most of the time it is because we know what it was like to need help, struggle to find it, and then, just as hope was fading away, it finally arrived. That kind of suffering in “neediness” cannot be taught. It must be experienced.
Giving to the Needy
6 “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. 2 So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
Matthew 6
That is what love does! It does it in secret, expecting nothing back other than the feeling they receive knowing that someone was helped by them. Most of the time they do it because they know what that emotional pain feels like. They also know how powerful it was to be on the receiving end of someone else having compassion for them. By their actions, they see what God is like when He creates miracles here on earth. There is no amount of money that can be more powerful than that.
Also in Matthew 6, there is another example of the flip side of this. 24 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” If you are thinking about those groups who are putting their own fame and finances first, that would be correct. Their numbers have been increasing since the first VA report came out about veterans committing suicide, and the numbers of suicides increased as well. It all proved that “suicide awareness” was the easy way out for the people using the heartaches for their own benefit. It requires work to save lives and those who do it, do it for the sake of others, not their own glory.
This is why peer support is vital. Until peer support is as well publicized as “suicide awareness” the numbers of those losing their spare time will increase and those using their spare time to save others will remain hidden. Which group do you want to belong to?
If you want to belong to the group that is doing the work for the sake of the work, you can find out how by simply doing Google search and finding 15 million results. Look up the group and see what they are doing. Check out their charity rating to make sure they are using the money for their cause and not their pockets. The more funds they take in and keep, the less they are using it where it can do the most good.
No matter what “club of survivors” you belong to, there are others in need of your support and guidance as well as your example. You don’t have to have all the answers. You can be an example just by being brave enough to ask questions and show you know there is nothing to be ashamed of as a survivor. You can be an example by listening to someone in need because you were once listened to when you needed to be heard.
What do you want to do with your spare time?
Remember, it’s your life…get in and drive!
#BreakTheSilence and #TakeBackYourLife from #PTSD
