The sight of a trash bag on a suburban street in Colorado Springs would send Army Spec. Paul Thurman back to Iraq – at least in his mind.
His breathing would become shallow.
“I would start to wonder, ‘How far away from that bag do I need to start walking around it?”‘ Thurman said. “I wouldn’t walk close to walls in case of RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades). I was always looking on top of rooftops. I was still in war mode, killing mode.”
Thurman, 24, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury and has seizures. He was struck in the head with a 500-pound log while training with Special Forces at Fort Bragg, N.C., and by an improvised explosive device while serving in Iraq in the fall of 2006. Now at Fort Carson, he is undergoing the process to be medically released.
For help with stress issues, Thurman has turned to a newly formed, Boulder-based nonprofit. One Freedom says it helps combat veterans who have experienced battlefield stress learn to use body and mind control.
“We train up for war, and we need to train down to come home,” said Elizabeth Hawkins, executive director of One Freedom.
While the military encourages veterans who may experience panic attacks to call a health-care provider, many vets will not do it. They fear their careers will be ruined.
One Freedom doesn’t claim to provide therapy for individuals but wants to provide veterans with on-the-spot tools to help overcome stress.
“We are not approaching it in terms of a mental-health, behavioral issue. We are approaching it from a biophysical standpoint,” Hawkins said.
Calming strategy
During free workshops, veterans are taught about the relationship between the body and the brain and why human beings respond to intense or traumatic situations the way they do.
They are taught five core skill sets: breath control, attention control, simulation, energy management, and rest and recovery. The sessions are taught by stress-management experts, many of whom have served in the military.
Soldiers are taught to take slow, controlled breaths, and while it sounds simplistic, oxygenating the body stimulates the part of the central nervous system that brings rest and calm. That stops the “fight/flight” part of the central nervous system from kicking into overload, said Steve Robinson, a trainer for One Freedom whose background is in international affairs and sports physiology.
Dan Taslitz, a trainer and Marine who served in Iraq, said soldiers are taught to recognize the changes in their body, for instance, when they see a trash bag on the street.
“I’m getting this feeling in my stomach. I’m getting tight here. I’m getting tight in my chest,” Taslitz said. “I’m trained to respond this way because it is going to support my survival.”
Taslitz tells service members that what served them in Iraq – an arousal response to a potentially dangerous object – does not serve them in the U.S.
Attention control, Hawkins said, is tied to invasive thoughts, like a soldier repeatedly visualizing a child being killed.
“Being able to be aware that I am having this happen to me is attention control,” she said.
“Simulation is a way to help shift that, so you are simulating a more positive, helpful mental state,” Hawkins said.
For instance, One Freedom teaches spouses of deployed soldiers to visualize a happy homecoming – walking in the front door to hugs, balloons and a home-cooked meal – instead of negatively visualizing a chaplain delivering news of a death.
Dr. Robert Scaer, a Boulder neurologist and author of “The Body Bears the Burden,” has helped design the program.
The nonprofit has trained 200 veterans and family members in Colorado, most of them from the National Guard and Fort Carson.
Getting in tune
The training was given three weeks ago to the 2nd Battalion, 135th Aviation Regiment of the Colorado Army National Guard, which spent a year in Iraq.
“I saw (the training as) a complement to what we already received upon return,” said Capt. Troy Brown. “If there are any underlying issues that could be brought to the surface through this training, it never hurts.”
Supported by donations and a grant from an anonymous California donor, One Freedom officials met last week at the Pentagon to talk about incorporating the training into Veterans Affairs programs in Colorado and Idaho. Two workshops are planned Saturday and Aug. 26 for Fort Carson soldiers.
Brown said his soldiers liked the training.
“The big organ up on top – our noggin – controls all the functions,” he said. “If you can be more in tune to how it controls, instead of being a recipient of its instinctive actions, you can be more cognizant of it. You can’t necessarily control it, but you can be more in tune to your own body.”
Ed Cable, a licensed psychologist in Denver who is chairman of Support Our Family in Arms group, a pro bono effort by the Colorado Psychological Association, said he believes the training should be provided by someone who is a licensed social worker or psychologist.
“You really need somebody who is aware of all the other disorders that can come along as well as PTSD,” Cable said. “Some are going to be very depressed, and they need available to them treatments for depression. … If the volunteers in this group are not trained, they could very well miss that.”
But Taslitz, a former Marine who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, says One Freedom is not “doing therapy.”
“This is not a therapeutic model,” he said. “This is a training model for empowering an individual.”
Thurman said the tools he learned in a workshop have helped him. He no longer alters his route to avoid a trash bag.
Sometimes, he said, he will sit on his couch and take long, deep breaths.
“I sit there for as long as it takes,” Thurman said. “It relaxes me. It puts me in a workable mood.”
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
