I would say the first time, really, with depressive
symptoms, I was deployed on a ship.
And my roommate basically said, you need to see someone.
This problem of depression and the anxiety that went with it,
and the other issues that evolved from military life,
and the transitioning into civilian life, showed up in
very strange ways.
I just wished I could just stay in bed for the entire day
and just block out the rest of the world.
You can't do anything right.
Nothing in your life is working right.
Everybody keeps saying, oh, just snap out of it.
But it's not just snap out of it because you don't see that
light at the end of the tunnel.
I wasn't sleeping well, or I was sleeping too much.
Sometimes so much was on my mind I
wouldn't be able to sleep.
Or I was just totally drained, and I just went
to sleep all day.
Didn't really want to be around people.
I'd try to isolate myself and stay away from others just
because I wasn't really comfortable speaking with them
and talking about what was going on in my life.
And it felt empty.
I would wake up.
It was hard for me to want to go to work.
I realized that I have some anger.
I have some depression issues.
I feel badly about myself.
I'm having trouble getting myself out of the house.
I'm having trouble doing things.
Most of the issues that I was feeling at that time were
related to depression.
I had to refocus my direction.
Civilian life just didn't seem as structured as I
would like it to be.
I didn't want to feel anything.
I was incapable of feeling anything.
I just wanted to be numb.
I got out in '93.
I didn't seek help until 1997.
And that was through a friend of mine who was going to the
VA, and she said, you're not getting out of bed.
You're not doing anything.
You're not taking a shower, and you really need to get
some help besides medication and
besides just laying around.
All of the sudden, I wasn't surrounded by
people who got it.
My wife, my kids didn't
understand why I was different.
And I didn't understand them anymore.
So I pulled away when I first got out.
I thought it was everyone else's fault that
they didn't get me.
My wife said very plainly-- and I completely get why she
said it, I don't blame her for it--
she said, look, either you get help, or I get out.
I finally went to the VA in 2003.
And it was because I had been working with veterans and saw
the other veterans that were having problems
were getting help.
And it was working.
VA was working.
These veterans that would get into the system, and get their
health benefits, and move on with their lives.
I went to the cognitive thinking therapy.
I think it's called CBT.
And that was very beneficial to me.
It was a one-on-one, where I sat down with the counselor
and told him about some of the situations that I was in.
Once I got there, it was like an immediate effect, talking
about all these things that I never had the opportunity to
discuss with anybody, or the why's of what happened to me,
and how I feel now.
When I released that self defense, and allowed those
walls to come down, I began to interact with my counselor.
And it seemed like on a personal level, where you have
somebody you can trust.
They can give you advice, suggestions, and I can either
take them or leave them.
But it's coming from a third party, a neutral observer.
So I talked to some more doctors and tried a couple of
things, like antidepressants.
At first, it didn't work really well.
I went back, and we talked about it more.
We kind of changed some things.
And then it started to help a lot, surprisingly, because I
kind of never really believed in them.
I always thought that it was all in your
head kind of thing.
Like, oh you're not really depressed.
You just need to smile more, or something like that.
But, I mean, it's a real thing.
It was the trauma counselor that really, really helped me.
She did a cognitive behavior therapy with me.
She began to show me ways that--
thinking more positively and even just changing words a
little bit.
It's not the rest of my life is going to be bad.
It was just, in the past, this part of my life didn't go
exactly the way I wanted it to.
But I have the whole future ahead.
It made it a lot easier because then, once I could
recognize what was making me feel that way, then I could
like talk myself down off that ledge to where, when I start
having those feelings, I can reach back into reality and
say, OK, no, this is what's really going on.
So it's made life easier.
If it wasn't for the VA, I don't know if I'd be sitting
here talking to you.
Probably not.
But I went, and I got the treatment
and the help I needed.
And now my life is completely different.
I'm able to face tomorrow.
Now that I understand why I was feeling the way I felt, I
was able to deal with it better.
So life is getting better.
And just choosing one thing each day to improve on, and
just one step at a time, getting better.
It's important that people do understand that you can be an
average, everyday citizen and have a problem that needs
outreach, that needs
correction, that needs therapy.
And you can continue on with your life.
You can improve your life.
Life will get better.
You can still live.
You can get past it.
You're not by yourself.
You're not, like I said, I always feel like that man out
on the island.
And that's just not so.
There's so many different people who are going through
the exact same thing.
You know, you need to take that first step and get on the
right path.
But the first thing you need to do is talk to someone so
you can get on that path.