Ed Doyon
PHOTO OR ILLUSTRATION CREDIT TK
Harry Nickerson
Mike Page
THE WAR
WITHIN
HUFFINGTON
07.01-08.12
find coping strategies, tolerate
their limitations,” says Kelly.
“The idea of getting better, in
the sense of recovering back to
who you were, is not commonly a reality for them.”
For a lot of veterans, he
adds, “simply pointing out
how they survived this long,
with all the things that have
happened to them — they
have internal resilience they
weren’t even aware of.” In
many cases, he says, veterans
“go on to really succeed in
ways they hadn’t anticipated.”
Talking individually or in
groups with a trained therapist
can help a patient recall traumatic events with less emotion. Advanced techniques,
such as cognitive behavioral
therapy and exposure therapy,
can help patients understand
and cope with the sounds,
smells, sights or memories
that trigger stress reactions.
Through exposure to virtual reality programs, troops
relive combat, a technique
that has been shown to significantly desensitize them to
the trauma they experienced
and to minimize the hyperarousal caused by the release