A War Within James Arthur Allen

Living with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder)

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“PTSD can develop in people of any age following a stressful event or situation of an exceptionally threatening or catastrophic nature.”

NHS reference guide for PTSD.

Shell shock and battered wife syndrome are just two of the names that have been used to describe the damage done when an individual is subjected to severe mental or physical trauma. More recently this stress induced condition has become known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

With the unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan spanning over a decade, PTSD has been thrust into the public consciousness by the media. Thousands of soldiers have returned from the front line damaged. More British veterans of the Falklands War and First Gulf War committed suicide than were killed inaction. This experience points towards a future catastrophic gap in a National Health Service that is stretched and underfunded. So much so that subjects in this booklet have set up their own alternative therapies, enabling the opportunity to heal together.

It is not only soldiers that suffer from the consequences of exposure to trauma. A large demographic are women overlooked and under reported. Unlike veterans haunted by actions during exposure to war, their trauma is of a far more intimate nature. Rape and sexual and physical abuse whether played out once or over decades creates deep scars.

It is important to note that you or I could one day suffer from PTSD, people involved in tragic life changing accidents can also display symptoms and lead lives haunted by an invisible affliction.

Although the experiences that trigger PTSD in people may be very different the symptoms are the same. Sufferers experience flashbacks, avoidance, hyper arousal, depression, suicidal thoughts, drug/alcohol abuse and anger. With diagnosis sometimes taking years sufferers can often experience all these symptoms. As a result some lose everything before they realise the root cause of their behaviour.

This booklet aims to empower my subjects, giving them a voice and educating the viewer, thereby reducing the stigma associated with this mental health issue. The images are captioned by text extracted from my interviews so as to allow the viewer to hear their voices, to sense their anger and despair, but also feel hope and new life. I want you to spend a few moments to listen to the people in these pictures.

“Normal people,” as one of my subjects put it, “experiencing a normal reaction to an abnormal situation.” You may very well pass someone similar any day on the street with out realising the path that person has walked.

Listen and try to understand that they are victims of circumstance, wanting to heal, share and carry on.

James Arthur Allen, 2012

A War Within

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“The imagery of Iraq that bombarded my mind was so detailed that I could paint scenes from my mind. I knew the colour of cars, the height of buildings. I could smell the dead people we had shot. I could see the bodies and the thick congealed blood on the floor. It was like a fish had been gutted. I could see the dead Iraqi soldiers, their eyes staring at me, and I was powerless in my dreams to fight back any threat. I was in such a helpless state.”

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(Above) “So if straightjackets, padded cells, prescription drugs and electric shock treatment are still in use today I believe the Mental Health Act is an abomination. How we can call ourselves a civilised society when we lock up mentally ill human beings and pump them full of chemicals. We do this to our so-called heroes after returning from conflicts where we have encouraged our soldiers to kill in the name of freedom. We lock them away and throw away the key to an alternative solution.”

(Right)“I can’t begin to tell you how many soldiers I’ve worked with that have lost everything - wives, partners and even the rights to see their children. Without a doubt, the hardest part of my journey was losing my family. It wasn’t until I lost them I realised I had a serious problem and had to ask for help.”

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“I attempted to commit suicide. My wife found me with a 9mm Glock in my mouth. I was paranoid - I kept arms and ammunition at home and built up a big Arsenal. It wasn’t a fun place to be really, but the culmination of it was that I tried to kill me self. My wife walked through the door as I was about to do the honours. Her face basically stopped me.”

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(Above) “So I thought: “what am I doing?”… So I went to find some alternative help. I’d already been to see doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists all the normal forms. I was on thirty-two tablets a day. I was self-medicating with alcohol - so really my life was over, as far as I was concerned”

(Right)“For me, the hardest thing about PTSD was the thoughts that would keep coming into my mind. It was worse late at night without the distractions of work. In the darkness and silence, it was horrific. I never felt more isolated in all my life.”

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“I came out the army in 1988. In ’98 - ten years later - I fell off the planet. They diagnosed me initially with depression, which I wasn’t happy with, but at the end of the day that was the way it was, and I wasn’t diagnosed with PTSD till later on. I had twelve years of living with PTSD.”

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(Above) Martin Webster.

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“I remember what triggered my PTSD, it was the feeling of killing someone and then hearing the sounds that the person made as he bled to death in front of my eyes.”

Martin Webster, Op Telic 3 Al Amara pink palace IRAQ 2004.

As a society are we aware that soldiers are programmed to kill? Unconsciously taught to look for targets to resolve negative situations, to close in on the enemy and destroy the target using extreme violence by any means possible?

Having experienced conflict it is of my opinion that the nature of war in this day and age is barbaric from the start. To have moral rules in an immoral situation, by definition is in itself a testament to the lack of combat experience our misguided world leaders actually have.

How do we reprogram a Soldier that has had the military install fear and hatred within them to survive a war?

There is simply no need to suffer in silence, eradicating the stigma of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder through acceptance and investigation. Having worked with over 200 cases ranging from bipolar, PTSD, suicidal thoughts, depression, OCD, I have a learned a great deal within this area of the community. I’ve seen and helped many people turn their lives around in days.

With 8,500 ex-soldiers in UK prisons and 20,000 in the judicial system that is more than the UK deployment to Afghanistan. I believe something is going seriously wrong. What would happen if the best treatment for PTSD was developed by those that had suffered by it?

My PTSD healing came through love, gentleness, kindness, relaxation, peace and a helping hand that had empathy; it never came from a jar of pills or from someone who studied mental health for 20 years at university. The help came from an ex-soldier someone who totally saw me as an equal. To the NHS I was just another PTSD statistic.

With thousands of ex service men and women that are living on the streets in the UK and the USA suffering the effects of PTSD. Isolation, violent behaviour, feeling helpless and alone is very common.

In my opinion if the mental health system was a business I would have sacked the management a long time ago. It is held back by it’s own inability to be flexible and trial other therapies. PTSD is not a logical thinking problem yet it’s being treated with logical thinking therapies that only work for some people the rest suffer or commit suicide.

To quote the NHS veterans support group psychiatric nurse in Cornwall when she came to visit our programme in Manchester I asked her what her opinion was on those who commit suicide? She said to me “Suicide it’s an option at the end of the day” from that day on I vowed to dedicate my life to changing this cold heartless system that I believe needs radical improvements.

I have set up a programme that uses Spectrum Therapy to treat those that are from all walks of life from the fortunate to the unfortunate.

Martin Webster Director of the New Leaf Programme.

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“It’s PTSD; you live with something that happened twenty years ago - you still cry about it. You can’t stop, because you’re still not over it. You’re not allowed the space to, because you’re not allowed to talk about it. Even with therapists you start talking about the gory details and they cover their mouths with shock. They’re anxious because they don’t want to hear the really horrid bits. I was seventeen when I went to the doctors to tell him that I’d been raped. He just patted me on the head. It’s shocking.”

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(Above) “You go to the doctors and they say: “you have depression”; they give you tablets. And I keep saying: “but I’m not depressed?!”… I’ve got a diagnosis now of Complex PTSD, but I have been like this since I was ten when I initially went to the doctors, where he just said I was a hypochondriac - but I was just hoping to get help! You’re made to feel like you’re a liar.”

(Right) “If the phone rings I jump; I jump at noises - which can be funny - but I’m tired; I’m tired all the time. So you’re alert all the time; fearful all the time. So if the phone rings and I don’t know who it is I won’t pick it up because when my perpetrator was after me, I told the police that I kept having silent phone calls - but the police said they could do noth-ing about it, and I was scared. I’m still scared of the telephone and that’s years later.”

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(Above) “In my circumstances the London bombings went off, all the police I was dealing with where displaced. The people I was dealing with then didn’t know me. They made mistakes. They where supposed to phone me up as soon as he was let out of prison. They phoned me two weeks after he was released saying: “sorry about that!”… My world shrank, as I didn’t feel able to go anywhere without bumping into this man. So I didn’t go out anymore.”

(Right) “Have coordination with the mental health services and victim support. If you have PTSD you should be able to access a trauma specialist. It shouldn’t take me years and years to get help. It’s neglectful. Sometimes I think the police are more psychopathic than my perpetra-tor. And it’s not acceptable. It’s a dereliction of duty.”

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(Above) Elizabeth.

(Right) Extract from an email from Elizabeth.

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“Trepidation quickly caught up with me: would I manage to discuss my Complex PTSD with a stranger, let alone a male stranger? Was I expecting too much asking to remain anonymous?

I am so pleased I stuck with it. This valuable project creates a space for forbidden narratives.

Abusers flourish by shrouding their behaviour in coerced silence and our social structures work to maintain the status quo.

I like to think my participation goes some way to break this silence. It is only by doing so that we can hope to establish social policy that combats child and partner abuse. This surely would be much better than treating the PTSD that one in two rape victims suffer. And sexualized violence is commonplace. A 2009 NSPCC research paper reports 12 % of teenage males and 3% of teenage females have used violence against their partner. 1 in 4 women in the UK have suffered rape or attempted rape.

But I won’t hold my breath. Funding of Women’s Refuges and Rape Crisis Centres have been cut from inadequate to tragic levels.

Women’s Aid presently state 308 women are being turned away from refuges every week. In 2009 it was 7 a week.

When I saw the finished series of pictures I was very emotional and thankful for the sensitive approach as well as obvious artistry. I feel the vulnerability, bewilderment and pain people feel everyday with Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has been captured.

I always appreciate art which works on many levels, satisfying the emotional and intellectual needs as well as technically excelling. I believe this work achieves in all these criteria.

Which gives me hope to believe the work will connect with a wide audience, breaking down our reluctance to talk about embarrassing topics, combating prejudice and stigma against people with mental health disorders. I would like to live without having to hide such an impact making part of my life, to live openly as the person I really am.

Of course my biggest hope is that someone comes up with a cure. I honestly cannot imagine how it might be to live without C-PTSD.”

Extract from an email from Elizabeth,

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(Above) “There needs to be a feedback system with the police; their victim support is inadequate, they’re insufficiently trained to cope with sexualised violence. It’s ridiculous - you can’t let volunteers with a noddy kind of course loose; it’s insulting.”

(Right) “I think to make some sense of it you have to make things better in the future so when it happens again - and it does happen all the time. We pretend that it doesn’t but fifteen to twenty five percent of women will be abused as a child, and thirty to forty will experience a violent partner at some point, so it’s not rare – it’s massive. I want to make it easier for other people. It’s the only reason why I’m talking.”

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“It was when I was fourteen years old - there was an accident in the back garden involving some petrol near a barbeque. It caught fire and because it was next to my little sister I tried to prevent an accident and threw the bottle away from her ... it ended up hitting a little lad who caught fire from the flames of the petrol. So I chased after him to get him on the ground and roll him around to stop the flames spreading any more ... I jumped on top of him and rolled him around to put out the flames.”

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(Above) “I’d gone to the lad’s parents to tell them what had happened. The lad was clinging to life with serious burns. When I arrived I was arrested straight away by the police for attempted manslaughter, because everyone got their stories in first. If it wasn’t for forensics then I wouldn’t be here - I’d be in prison. Forensics found it to be an accident. That’s where the PTSD comes from.”

(Right) “At first I was depressed because people were blaming me, saying it was my fault - that I’d done it on purpose. I started to experience flashbacks about it - I felt like I was reliving the moment over and over again, seeing certain things. Flames can set me off on a flashback. Just being asleep in the middle of the night I feel like I am reliving it; I can smell the flesh burning and I feel like I’m burning up myself. I see pictures in my mind of what happened.”

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(Overleaf) “I tried different coping mechanisms. I tried drink first - got hooked on alcohol but gave myself alcohol poisoning. So I stopped the drink but then moved onto drugs like cocaine, amphetamine and cannabis. As a result I was getting into trouble with the police - every week I was getting arrested; week in, week out. I tried to talk to people about PTSD but no one understands it. I think they mistake it for something else.”

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(Right) “I felt the need for people to read it to try and understand what people with PTSD go through and how hard the lows can be.”

Account written whilst in the throws of PTSD.

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(Above) “I’m not too keen on what the police do, but I understand they have to do it because they don’t know what mental health problems that person has. They only get told that “so-and- so has mental health problems” so they have to be careful. Maybe they don’t need to cuff you all the time.”

(Right) “There’s been times where I’ve threatened to take my own life and stuff like that -they have cuffed me and stuck me in the back of a van and taken me to the nearest mental hospital to be sectioned for three days. I don’t think that’s the right way - it makes you feel more idiotic and more depressed when they treat you like a criminal.”

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“People think “it happened, so get over it”. They don’t think someone can go through something like that and not get it off their mind. But I have always said to them that when you remember something negative, like breaking up with a partner, that stays on your mind for a while. It’s like that but much much worse. It plays on your mind constantly. You start blaming yourself - think-ing you could have done things differently. It’s complicated to explain to people. I think I hide behind it - people don’t want to listen or hear it.”

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(Above) “Many people believe that only soldiers get it - this is where it’s different because I have not been in the army; I’ve not been out to a war-torn country and seen stuff - and all respect to them, but it is normal people that get it as well. You could be in a car crash tomorrow and you could get PTSD as well as rape victims or being abused as a child. People need to be made aware that its not just soldiers.”

(Right) “We need more awareness and positivity around PTSD - it would help having a bit more in terms of support networks as well. Alcoholics get support networks like Alcoholics Anonymous; they have people to talk to as well as drug addicts. And it would be nice to have something where people with PTSD could meet up talk and help each other. Especially people who have recovered from it as well helping those of us who are struggling.”

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Mind NHS

New Leaf Programme

Quantam NLP

Inner Lite Commited Doxy

PTSD Awareness James Arthur Allen

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Credits.

A “War Within” is the culmination of the third year of my degree course at University College Falmouth.

Martin, Justin, Paul, Mick, Chris, Elizabeth. With out your strength and honesty this project would not have been possible. Being open, understanding and most importantly allowing me into your lives to tell your stories has been a privilege. I hope that we can make a change and make

people aware. Thank you.

For more information on PTSD my subjects and mental health please visit.

Mind, Mental health charity.

http://www.mind.org.uk/

NHS guidelines on PTSD.

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Post-traumatic-stress-disorder/Pages/Introduction.aspx

Martin Webster and the “New Leaf Programme”.

http://newleafprogramme.co.uk/

Mick Stott and “Quantum Performance”.

http://www.quantumnlp.com/

Justin Smith and “Inner Lite”.

http://www.theinnerlite.co.uk/

Liz’s blog “Committed Doxy” on being an artist struggling with PTSD.

http://committeddoxy.blogspot.co.uk/

Chris Waugh and “PTSD awareness UK”.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/PTSD-Awareness-UK/156023961158171

QR codes are over leaf.

For Sophie, Mum and Dad. Thank you for your constant understanding, support and ecouragement.

© 2012 James Arthur Allen. The book author retains sole copyright to his contributions to this book.

www.jamesarthurallen.co.uk

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All Material in this booklet is copyright James Arthur Allen 2012.