Ability or Disability – A Blessing ... - Time Line Therapy · NLP Trainer, Coach of NLP, TLT™,...

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Ability or Disability – A Blessing or a Curse?My up close & personal…

I was 23 when I had my first child, Roy. He was a premature baby and in a way so was I. Roy was kept on a ventilator for the first week of his life and was diagnosed later as a miracle baby. The doctors, who at first gave him very few chances to live, and us very little hope, released him from the hospital almost 3 months later as a perfectly healthy baby who will catch up with babies his age no more than in 9 months of time.

Today Roy is 15 years old and is diagnosed with quadriplegic Cerebral Palsy. Cerebral Palsy is a pretty wide, general umbrella like diagnosis for a chronic condition mostly affecting muscle tone to various degrees caused by lack of oxygen to the brain generally before, during or after birth. My Roy has a severe form of CP. He is completely dependent on others for every basic care and needs, his speech is heavy and he has to use about the triple or more energy that we are using for every breath he takes. These examples are just few of my Roy’s “disabilities” and if we had time or if needed, I could go on and bombard you with so many challenges he faces in every moment of his life…even when he sleeps.

Was it easy for me to accept my baby’s “forever” condition being only 23? Did I even know how to deal with it, let alone be in peace with it? Everybody said that

Cerebral Palsy was a forever condition, everywhere I read I read this is it! The best I could get was 10 years, after that everybody knows that changes in the brain are few, rare, if any.

And since everybody knew, I believed that, and I believed them, and all I could feel was deep sadness, loss, and horrible pain that didn’t go away. On the outside it looked like I was dealing, like I learned to live with it, but on the inside I was crushed. I dedicated every moment of my life to care for my son with laughter, songs, and tons of make belief happiness. But at night I cried, I couldn’t breath, I was “realistic”, and my “reality” was hopeless. I mean, according to medicine, CP is a chronic condition, one that can’t change or improve.

As long as I adopted this “realistic” belief I also adopted deep sadness, and negative emotions such as anger, fear, hurt and guilt that usually accompany us in times of “no way out.” As long as I adopted this belief and imagined a hopeless future I couldn’t see a way out. I felt stuck.

I created happy moments for the sake of my children, but I was broken from the inside with my “realistic” approach or so I convinced myself to be. I gradually was slipping down from life itself, my pain affected my relationships, my health, my family relations, my mental and emotional ability to connect or to function. I was a runaway in disguise, until I couldn’t do it anymore.

My lowest point was the darkest and the most blessed. It was the moment in which I chose to live knowing that if I won’t I’d die young. At that moment in time there was no need to converse, no need to consult, no need for external support. It was me, with myself, and a choice.

I chose to live, and get up… a week later I signed up for the practitioner level of NLP and Time Line Therapy® knowing only one fact about the method. My mom got rid of severe anxiety after few sessions with a practitioner of NLP and Time Line Therapy™.

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Through NLP and Time Line Therapy™ I changed my life. I literally changed my “mind,” changed my thoughts, changed my language, changed my reality. The person that I am today is no longer the person that I was then. Neurologically I created new neurological connections that created a new way of behavior that created totally different outcome in my reality.

Now that I have changed my mind I was able to see the incredible journey I was fortunate to take, I was able to linguistically define a different “reality,” one that served me and my family and to invite this reality into my life.

No, I couldn’t magically erase my son’s condition or CP, but I created another magic in my life. I made a choice, took action and got the tools that allowed me to perceive a reality that I not only could learn to live with, but one that excites me and constantly fills me with awe. I appreciated my reality and created successes and accomplishments from this reality, and I would never ever trade places with anyone else.

You are holding the power to choose how to feel about your lives and through this choice to be able to create a reality within the uncontrollable events entering our lives. The events would feel uncontrolled if we define them as such, and yet they would appear as a magical journey of opportunities to grow if we would define them that.

You have the power to create the journey, to create the outcome, to magically create your dreams. We are the only creatures on this planet (yet known…) that were given an incredible gift no other creature been given, and how often we tend to forget. We have the power to want, to dream, to choose. A lion cannot choose to stop being a lion and change his nature,

patterns, ways, or feelings. We have the gift of choice, the ability to choose how we would live the rest of our lives, how we would feel about the events in our lives, and through that to evolve the understanding that we have the power to create new events in our lives as we dream them to be.

My Roy has the most innocent, honest approach towards life. The way he trusts his father when he’s being carried knowing that he won’t get hurt reminds me to trust on a raw human level with no pretend.

When he laughs with all his heart and soul and sometimes drool while laughing he teaches me how not to be embarrassed by who I really am

And what does it really mean to laugh.When he compliments someone or thanks someone for helping him, he teaches me true gratitude with no pretend nor make belief. And if you are feeling down, his caring sensitivity, and sense of humor will make you feel warm, loved and special immediately.Roy has always been included with kids his age, he’s on grade level, and a genius when it comes to languages, and music, practices that he’s passionately in love with.As part of who he is within his “disability,” Roy will never hurt anyone. And that was an awakening understanding for me. In my journey of growth, and excellence towards becoming a better human being I realized that all I ever want to become is Roy. To have the gift of making people feel special, to care, to make them laugh. To never hurt neither physically nor emotionally any human being, to always be content and happy as he is with whom he is. To make a difference, to know you are touching someone’s mind, heart, and soul. To me nothing is for granted and all is a magical journey, for I was blessed to have Roy as my model image.

I chose to share my story with you as an advocacy for those who have an apparent disability, and for those of us who have an unapparent one. Choose to create ability out of a disability, find the blessings in yourself and others.

Surround yourself with teachers, guides, and tools you need, to make sure you create the life you dream to live. Be the magnificent that you are. These are exciting times, these are the times of evolution. Greater times and triumphs are finally available to the human race from a place of humble, a place of respect, of sharing, of caring, of pure potentiality to infinite prosperity.

Live, love and forever grow.Denny Ashkenazi’NLP Trainer, Coach of NLP, TLT™, Hypnosis and Founder of NOW

Member of the American Board of NLP

Member of the American Board of Time Line Therapy™

Member of the American Board of Hypnotherapy

Denny Ashkenazi, happily married and mother of three, believes in the magnificence of people and the study of excellence through NLP. She is a trainer of Neuro Linguistic Programming, Time Line Therapy®, Hypnosis, and NLP coaching. She is also a Reiki 1 Reiki 2 Healer. In her personal journey towards excellence and success she encountered several techniques that transformed her life and allowed her to fulfill her potential and to become a successful woman in all areas of life.

For information and support for Cerebral Palsy see listing of organizations on page 11.

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My journey through PTSD began some years ago and with hindsight first became noticeable whilst I was serving in the military. I joined the army in my late twenties and rapidly became bored with the whole setup and decided to go for SAS selection. I managed to pass first time and spent several years working in high pressure hostile environments in 9 Troop B Squadron 22 SAS.

After a period of time and several injuries later I finally decided to move on and do something where I had more choice and freedom. Within several months I had left the military and was working as a Non Governmental Military Advisor in Africa. This is where my PTSD started to evolve into an uncontrollable beast.

My first marriage fell apart; I walked out of the relationship and disappeared into the African Bush for several years leaving loved ones thinking that I had been killed or worse.

Although my behavior and mental state was deteriorating I found a partner who could see that there was a reason for my aggressive exterior and that there was a gentler human being underneath struggling to get out. After several years of managing my state my new partner managed to get me to realize that there was something

quite wrong with my behaviors and that there may well be an underlying problem. By this time I was working in Iraq as a Security Adviser in a senior management role. In around 2004 I approached the NHS for help and was passed from pillar to post as there was little knowledge of existing treatments or providers. I met many like minded sufferers along the way and eventually was taken into a well known UK charity that provides respite for former military sufferers of stress related disorders.

It quickly became apparent that there is little or no treatment that is designed for PTSD or severe stress related disorders. There are lots of very caring people and organizations offering help with the highest of intentions as well as the sharks who want to prey on the weak for their own personal gain.

I completely lost the proverbial ‘plot’ after spending 2 weeks in the care of a specialist stress charity in UK. When they told me I would have to ‘face up to facts and take the drugs’ I decided to change tack and carry out my own research to save my mind.

Along my journey I looked into many kinds of therapy and suggestions of how to manage my state. All well and good for someone to tell you what to do when they haven’t experienced the living hell and the pits of madness themselves.

After several months of research and admitting to friends that I wasn’t well I came across a friend of a friend who was a life coach and was also helping people with PTSD and stress related disorders. During all of this time I continued to work in Iraq where I was

a Senior Security Adviser in the red zone.

The friend of a friend, Mick Stott, was also ex military. The release to be counseled by someone who spoke the same language was unimaginable! Regardless of the curative effect of his treatment I felt so much better for just being amongst ‘my own’. Desperate, and slightly doubting, I met with Mick. After the first session I lost my nightmares and flashbacks in one day. Two more sessions were enough to see me waving goodbye to my PTSD demons. Like George Foreman, I was so impressed by the results that I got trained up and together Mick and I now run Talking2Minds a charity with the sole aim of treating people with PTSD.

Mick had been a Senior Physical Training Instructor in the British Military Academy at Sandhurst. He had come up through the ranks to become a Captain in the PT Corps and had been tasked by the MOD to investigate civilian performance enhancing courses in order to increase pass rates within the military for various courses. During Mick’s years in the military he had studied many disciplines and philosophies and has picked the bones out of those that work and added them to some of the more modern approaches. Mick has his own school of personal development and therapy (www.quantumnlp.com) that is linked very closely with talking2minds (www.talking2minds.com) which conducts the training and validation of all those that work with talking2minds to ensure

PTSD Survivors Speak:

PTSD, What A Nightmare

BY BOB PAXMAN


Source: http://healmyptsd.com/ Bob Paxman is the founder of talking2minds, a charity established to help people – especially vets – heal from PTSDReproduced with permission

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efficacy. Mick has been recognized in UK as being the leader in the field of therapeutic intervention.

How to make change

The talking2minds Synergy programme uses a combination of 4 main disciplines NLP, Reiki, Hypnosis and Time Line Therapy that are cemented together with performance related coaching norms. Having looked at NLP and the way that it has been bastardized over the years to fit financial and marketing models we have taken it back to its therapeutic beginnings and started again; together with the coaching norms and our own R&D interventions this has produced the mother of systems.

We have many clients that have had been through the complete range of treatments that are available in our health service, which include some badly delivered NLP and Hypno from people that have had the highest of intentions but woefully miss the point with what they do.

The following is a very brief explanation of the discoveries that we have made when we compared and contrasted our Synergy programme with the other systems available:

CBTCBT was designed for anxiety and depression not severe stress related disorders. Change the way you do things and you change the way that you think about that thing, it can take years to desensitize a traumatic memory. CBT is based on Pavlov’s dog 1960’s stimulus response system.

EMDR Designed by an NLP Practitioner and initially only taught to medical Doctors. Not designed for PTSD. It utilizes a gentle exposure to a trauma. Similar to CBT and can re traumatize the client as they connect with their memories. Not

for those that are AD. It can work with very visual people over time.

EFT / TFTUses acupressure on certain areas allowing certain energy movement around the chakras.

The key to this discipline is Meta Modeling and identifying the correct Gestalt /what memories.Counseling - Non directive, i.e. no interventionsPsychotherapy - Non Directive, i.e. no interventions

With these therapies and others they use an extrospective approach that encourages the change to happen on the outside. Our Synergy programme uses an introspective approach that has the client search for the changes to be made on the inside and this is achieved by connecting with the client’s model of the world. Many existing systems are deployed over long periods of time and may even form dependencies as they don’t completely remove or reframe the trauma. This in a financial context leaves the client suffering for years or for life which equates to vast sums of money and ties up therapeutic resources. In UK the NHS is struggling to cope, as time goes on the problem will worsen to astronomical proportions unless it is checked. Since the Falklands conflict we now have in the region of 100,000 former military that are suffering from severe stress related disorders. This only takes into account those who have been identified and diagnosed. There are thousands that suffer in silence until things go terribly wrong for them. The civilian population suffering from severe stress related disorders is in the 100’s of thousands. The problem in the United States is reported to be even bigger.

We know from experience that the root cause of a trauma is not the memory of the trauma itself, instead it is the emotions that are connected to that trauma that makes it disturbing.

Unhook the emotions and all that is left is a memory. We go back to root cause with the client, identify the first time that they experienced an emotion and assist them quickly to understand and neutralize that emotion. The key to this phase is identifying the correct Gestalt with Meta Modeling and using the correct intervention to facilitate change.

Talking2minds also has an internet based product that assists us to lead those into therapy that have severe aversion problems and oppressively low esteem that can be deployed by telephone, email, Skype and face to face. Our 3 and 5 day courses not only reframe the client’s model of the world, they allow the client’s self esteem to be re-built and for goal setting which installs direction and purpose that has invariably been lost due to the illness.

Bob is the Founder of Talking2Minds and has spent that last 2 years studying and developing the Talking2Minds product and ethos in order to provide the correct help and support for those that need it. He is former Royal Engineers and B Sqn SAS who has served in many hostile environments worldwide, both as a serving member of the armed forces and as a private security management professional. He has spent over 20 years in hostile and high pressure environments. Bob is currently studying for the Synergy Trainers qualification in order to further the Talking2Minds intervention research and development programme.


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The creation of anything in our lives begins in us. Creativity is one of our main purposes in life, whether it is art or personal relationships etc. It is up to us whether or not we fulfill anything that we aspire to. The creativity has a unique quality: when we let it lead us forward, we feel full of passion to live and full of vitality. We find in our selves the power that we didn’t know we had. Using Time Line Therapy™ we can reconnect to this power source that is within us, and use our abilities at best capacity in order to create what we really desire.

One of my clients, a successful man in his 50’s that went through the Time Line Therapy™ session felt that even though he had a supporting and loving family and a good job, something yet was missing in his life because he didn’t enjoy anything. Is seemed for him that he achieved every goal he had, climbed every mountain, and still it didn’t give him the sense of satisfaction and joy.

During the session, he dealt with feelings of loneliness from his childhood, and we worked on his limiting belief ’s about intimacy and being loved. After letting it go, his face

changed and it seemed to be like something was lighting up in him. While he created his outcome, he was full of vitality and seemed to look and feel younger even the way he talked – as if 20 years dropped from him in a few hours. He reconnected to his personal power source, what he didn’t do for a very long period of time. He knew exactly what his next mission is. It was an amazing feel of joy just thinking about starting it, and felt the passion to get it started.

What we create may depend on the emotions that we have, and the more positive they will be – the more positive our outcome and creation will be. After the cleaning of negative emotions during Time Line Therapy™ process, it may look or feel like a little door was opened in our heart that enables us to reconnect to our abilities and to our power source. It seems then that nothing can stop us from creating anything we want and after dealing with limiting decisions – we return to ourselves the power to choose what we really want to create in our lives and just do it. The freedom of negative emotions and limiting believes makes

us lighter, and then only the sky is the limit for what we can achieve, if there is any limit at all….

Liz Sova Damin

Certified Trainer of NLP & TIME LINE THERAPY™ & NLP COACHING

www.leshed.co.il

BY LIZ SOVA DAMIN

Time Line Therapy™ As A Process of Creation

What our Graduates are Saying About Time Line Therapy™“Counseling patients was like taking random shots in the dark before. With Time Line Therapy™ techniques, my patients can now achieve more consistent and long-lasting emotional resolution, and significant improvement in their physical well being.”

– Dr. Susan Chu, Family Physician & NLP Trainer

“Time Line Therapy™ techniques are the foundation of quantum healing. They empower the patient to release uncomfortable emotions, change limiting beliefs, and create the future they want and deserve. Because of their effectiveness and time efficiency, they’re the key to working with managed care.” – Dr. Bill Martin, Ph.D.

“Time Line Therapy™¨ techniques are a giant leap forward for the psychological community. By quickly getting to the heart of one’s issues, Tad’s work significantly cuts down long-term psychotherapy.”

– Dr. Joe Kovach, Psy.D., Calumet College of St. Joseph

“I’ve been a physician for 30 years, and I’d investigated many psychological programs. Time Line Therapy™¨ techniques are the very best that I have ever seen. It’s incredible what it can do.”

– James Taylor, M.D., Redondo Beach, California

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The Benefits of Time Line Therapy™

BY SCOTT WHITE

The concept of Time Line Therapy™ is an ancillary form of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Ericksonian Hypnosis. This concept was first developed in 1985, by Tad James. His ideas were then produced through his first book, “Time Line Therapy and the Basics of Personality” which was published in 1988. The basic concept followed in Tad James’ theories on therapy is that it helps describe the human experience with time. This therapy has the potential to make sense of your temporal (pertaining to time) experiences. It also proves to change your perception of negative experiences that you have endured during your lifetime. With this information, you can create a more meaningful future by understanding human temporal experience. Everyone has their own time lines, which is basically the method your unconscious mind tends to encode and store your past memories. With your time line, you learn to differentiate between a past memory and a future dream; with the time line being an unconscious process, that you will seldom be aware of its functioning. This form of therapy keeps working throughout your life, recording and storing whatever events and memories you come across.

The benefits of Tad James’ therapeutic techniques that have been discovered are that it is finally possible for one to resolve any and all significant events that occur in a person’s life. Along with this, it is possible to release whatever negative thoughts or emotions a person may have associated with those memories. These negative emotions

can be erased from one’s memory both quickly and easily within a short period of time. The main reason one employs temporal therapy is to release negative thoughts. If a person keeps negative thoughts pent up within them, a time will come when these feelings of anger can no longer be contained and they will release the anger from their past memories, perhaps on others or themselves. This anger proves to be destructive to the person and may only bring about problems throughout their life. With the help of this form of therapy, it is possible to eliminate limiting decisions.

These limiting decisions may include thoughts that one is not smart enough or that they will never be successful. These attitudes are developed because of a wrong decision made at some point in a person’s life. Everyone is sure to have gone through some incident in the past, where a different decision made then would have lead them to a different position or situation today. So with the help of Tad James’ therapy, one reevaluates their past to change decisions they are limited with as one’s present behavior is usually dependant on the decisions made in the past. All the decisions one makes are stored in the time line, with which it is possible for one to access. Finally, the most important benefit of time line therapy is helping you create your future just the way you want or picture it and then actually helping you create that experience so that it will happen in the future. It should be known that the process of creating one’s future is as powerful as the process involved

in the releasing of negative emotions and clearing all limiting decisions. These three techniques are collectively considered to be the major techniques of temporal therapy. It can be said that this form of therapy is a concept in which the therapist employs the knowledge he has on the storage of memories. Consequently, the therapists use this knowledge to find out the effect these stored memories produce on the individual personalities of the person.

People involved in Time Line Therapy know that the thoughts that are stored in a person tend to mould and shape one’s personality and that with therapy our thoughts can help us build a better, more positive future for ourselves.

Scott White is a Personal trainerCelebrity Personal Trainerhttp://freesubmitarticles.com/links/?u=the-benefits-of-time-line-therapy&pid=30030

www.WorkoutExercisseVideos.com

02.12.2007 | Author: pptwhite | Posted in PsychologySOURCE: http://psychologyarticle-scollections.blogspot.com/2010/02/benefits-of-time-line-therapy.html

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From my experience, life is full of choices and opportunities that are often not paid enough attention to, due to our negative emotions and limiting belief ’s. Time line therapy™ is a excellent way of working with Theta Waves of the brain in order to make a better inner climate from the emotional point of view, so that our intuition about events and people can be more clear to us.

One of my students, a 25 years young man, couldn’t find the right job, the right girl, the right house… so for a long period of time he changed jobs rapidly and didn’t move from his parents house even though he didn’t like living there. During the Time Line Therapy™ session, he neutralized his negative emotions and limiting decisions, as we specialized worked on feeling worthy to have a better life for him.

During the Time Line Therapy™ session, he dealt with his issues of running away from challenges instead of dealing with them, focusing on the guilt he had about this issue in his life.

After releasing the negative emotion of guilt, he could deal with the limiting decision that he can’t handle any challenge in his life. Releasing this decision enabled him to see all the times that he tries to satisfy his father unsuccessfully, and was the main reason for the lack of motivation in his life.

Using the TIME LINE THERAPY ™ technique, he could take the control over his life; deal with his past in a new empowered way, while keeping a safe

distance from the events that took place in his past.

When his emotional climate became positive, he understood what he really wanted to have in his life, and what job he really wants. After the session, he found a job that he is very happy to do and that allows him to live apart of his parents.

Now he is one of my best students, he already finished the NLP and TIME LINE THERAPY™ courses on the practitioner level, and has registered for the Master Level course.

The way Time Line Therapy™ “cleans” the inner negative experience and makes it possible to respond to the environment better, as intuition is a very important tool in order to know what is the best for us, and having the ability to choose better from all the opportunities that surround us.

Moshe Gerstner Certified Trainer of NLP Certified Time Line Therapy™ Master Practitioner “BEGISHA AHERET” ISRAEL www.thetanlp.com

Time Line Therapy™ And Intuition

BY MOSHE GERSTNER

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Can Art Save the Life of a Veteran Battling PTSD?

DIARY OF A DISGRACED SOLDIER

Martin Webster was arrested after he filmed fellow soldiers beating up Iraqis. A new film reveals how he went from being “designed to kill” to saving his humanity.

March 10, 2010 Photo Credit: YouTube

Cpl. Martin Webster hadn’t slept in more than two days.

The night before, he had killed an insurgent during a fire fight. With the sun up, thousands of Iraqis were rioting in the streets and taking out their anger on Webster and the other 100 some British soldiers in his unit, the 1st Battalion, Light Infantry, which was charged with maintaining order in Al Amara, Iraq. They were mere days from the end of their deployment.

The heat was unbearable -- over 90 degrees from dawn to dusk. Each soldier got a bottle or two of water a day and had just about 150 rounds of ammunition each. Their rules of engagement were drafted nearly 10 years early, in 1995, and were intended for Northern Ireland.

But the soldiers had their mission, Operation Telic 3. On this day in March 2004, it meant holding a government palace in the city. They had been under siege for several days by Iraqis frustrated with deteriorating conditions. Some Iraqis threw stones at the troops. Others fired rocket propelled grenades (RPGs). Several youth even threw grenades.

Webster was sent to overlook the rioting from a rooftop. He took out his personal video camera, which he bought on a military base, and started filming. The camera rolled as a group of his fellow military men chased after some young Iraqis and returned with four of them as prisoners. The Iraqi youth were then beaten with batons, punched and kicked. A soldier walked

up to one of the prisoners and kicked him between the legs.

During the filming, Webster laughed menacingly and taunted the “naughty little boys.” It could have been just another day of the occupation of Iraq but two years later, in 2006, the video was leaked to the British tabloid press and was broadcast around the world.

Webster was arrested by military police but all charges against him were dropped; he left the Army shortly after the media storm. A new documentary, titled Diary of a Disgraced Soldier,

follows Webster after his military separation and subsequent struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

In the film, Webster talks about how that two-minute video clip “destroyed” his life, but he doesn’t regret filming his tour in Iraq.

“I thought at times it was ruining my life,” Webster, 34, told AlterNet. “But actually it was making me wake up and realize who I was, what I was and basically made me realize the horrors of war and what people turn into in war, including myself.”

The veteran said the video did have one positive aspect: it woke people up to the reality of war.

“I’m a soldier and I was designed to kill,” said Webster, who also served

two tours in Northern Ireland and another in Sierra Leone. “The British government spent 12 years turning me into an angry killer and when I acted like an angry killer and when it was portrayed on TV, nobody liked it or could handle it. That’s what a soldier is designed to do.”

According to Webster, the mainstream media today hide the reality of war on another front.

“I believe that with the media blackout that we’ve got now in Afghanistan, it means the general public can’t see

what’s actually going on. Anything that does get out is scripted and vetted,” he explained.

Webster wanted to share his side of what happened in Iraq. In 2007, he approached filmmakers Richard Atkinson, Neil Cole and Chris Rowe to make Diary of a Disgraced Soldier. The documentary started off seeking to explain and explore the beating incident and subsequent scandal, Atkinson said, but the story “evolved” into focusing on how

Webster coped with his PTSD.

“There seems to be an awful lot of opinion from media commentators but not so much from the soldiers themselves who are, after all, the ones in the firing line,” Atkinson told AlterNet. “Our aim was to give a voice to a soldier who had been to war and had been dramatically affected by his experiences out there.”

After following Webster for 18 months, Atkinson said the film gets “to the essence of what going through PTSD does to a person” from a soldier’s perspective.

PTSD was recognized as a medical condition in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association but, according to Atkinson, is “vastly underestimated


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by the authorities and misunderstood by the public.”

“War is very messy and rarely goes according to plan,” Chris Rowe told AlterNet. “The costs in every sense of the word are high and, if we are going to get involved [in a war], we should be very sure the price is worth paying.”

“It’s like I’m constantly controlling a demon”

A 2008 RAND Corporation study found about one in five U.S. military members who served in Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from PTSD or major depression.

The documentary puts a human face on this statistic. It includes video diaries filmed by Webster himself in which he shows moments of intense rage. In one scene in the documentary, Webster says he feels like he has two personalities. “It’s like I’m constantly controlling a demon,” he says. Later, he wonders aloud, “Perhaps my true character came out there [in Iraq]. Perhaps I am an evil person. I don’t know.”

Part of Webster’s recovery process has involved art. In the documentary, Webster and fellow veteran Lee Kamara are shown at a music concert they held to raise money for homeless veterans, the Royal British Legion and the charitable organization Combat Stress.

But, in the film, Webster realizes that “people aren’t interested.”

“They don’t want to hear about war and depression,” he says in the documentary. “Nobody wants to know.” In the video diaries, Webster also contemplates suicide and is himself homeless for a period. He said his PTSD “completely overwhelmed [his] life.” The former infantryman said he saw hallucinations of an Iraqi he killed.

War, for Webster, is itself “madness.”

“You take somebody’s food away, you take somebody’s water, you take away their sleep, you’re asked to basically

live like an animal. You’re asked to kill. You’re asked to do things above the call of duty of a regular civilian,” said the ex-soldier said.

Further, Webster explained that PTSD “isolates you from society.” During the film, he says, “I’m still trapped within these confines of this palace wall here,” gesturing toward one of his paintings.

With Kamara, Webster formed a non-profit for veterans called Voices of War so soldiers “can hold their heads up and not be ashamed,” according to the organization’s website. The pair paint, write poetry and make music about their time in Iraq.

Kamara, who served in Basrah, Iraq, said he dealt with PTSD through music.

“Music takes me to a different place and helps me relieve stress,” Kamara told AlterNet. “I find that being with the piano on my own helps me have happiness and peace.”

A new father, Kamara recommended other soldiers use art to channel their military experiences. “Anything that relaxes [soldiers],” he said, “is a great way of forgetting.”

Lovella Calica, a multimedia artist, also encourages veterans with post traumatic stress to use art as part of their healing process. She is the founder and director of the Warrior

Writers Project, a creative community for veterans articulating their experiences.

“It’s worth a try,” Calica told AlterNet. “There are points in the process where it might be hard and it might be difficult. But I think you have to really push through that stuff to get further.”

Calica, who has edited two anthologies of veterans’ writing and artwork, recommends that all veterans try writing. “Everybody can write,” she said.

“Pen and paper -- just put it down,” she said. “It’s a way to start and there are a lot of different art forms out there and I think that you should try and see what you feel inspired by.”

For Webster, painting proved helpful. “[My] artwork has softened. At first it was very, very fiery. Very angry. Now if you look at the artwork, it’s smoothed out,” he said.

Calica, who has worked with about 130 veterans and active-duty soldiers in about 20 Warrior Writers workshops, said soldiers like Webster go through a process to change their “activities and actions and beliefs” when they enter the military. But when they leave the military, she said, “there’s not such a process. They just leave.”

“[The soldiers] come back and they’re



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just like, they don’t know what to do with themselves,” said Calica, who has worked with Iraq Veterans Against the War for about five years. “They don’t need how to relate to people sometimes. They don’t want to come out of their house. They don’t want to talk about stuff.”

Changing from “an infantry soldier, from a trained killed into a normal human being” was difficult for Webster.

“I don’t kill anymore. I get up. I go to work. I might mix some cement. I might have dinner at 12 o’clock for half an hour. Boring mundane things,” he explained. “I’m not jumping out of tanks and using grenade rocket launchers.”

Eerily, “Diary of a Disgraced Soldier” intersperses footage that Webster took in Iraq with video from his life in the UK.

Calica says that art can help veterans reintegrate into society, by giving them “something that they can do with their

time and with themselves in their lives that has meaning.”

“It helps them continue on and isn’t something that’s just like normal everyday life,” she explained.

“In my experiences working with veterans, I’ve seen how resilient they can be and how much they can get through and their strength.”

Yet, according to Calica, the Veterans Affairs (VA) department is not doing what it should be to treat PTSD. “They’re highly underfunded and they’re more often than not pushing drugs on people and I don’t think that’s the answer. And a lot of veterans don’t want that. It’s just not working,” she said.

Where government fails, alternative medicine steps in

The inability of the VA to adequately deal with PTSD is familiar to many Vietnam veterans.

“Sky” David Pies, a 62-year-old Vietnam combat veteran who lives in Carlsbad,

Calif. told AlterNet that veterans who “got out of line” were given “zombie drugs.”

“The pharmaceutical companies are the biggest drug pushers and the VA is like the addict,” he said. “That government money just keeps up the addiction. All of these anti-depressants shut down the ability to feel. They kill the spirit.”

While some of his fellow veterans encouraged Pies to apply for PTSD disability, he denies he has PTSD. In his experience, “the symptoms like inability to sleep, contact with irrational worlds, etc., are all an advantage to the artist.”

“I had many dream-like experiences and would yell very loud every night, many times a night,” he said. “Inability to sleep is a plus to the artist.”

According to Pies, “The making of art or any creative form of activity that moves a former soldier out of the combat zone and into the self empowerment of a new life is positive.”

Bob Paxman agrees that art can be helpful. The founder and chief executive of the non-profit charity Talking 2 Minds, Paxman served in the British military’s Special Air Services in “many hostile environments around the world” for 10 years and himself suffered from PTSD.

“For somebody that’s very visual, painting would be fantastic,” Paxman told AlterNet. He has helped about 200 active-duty soldiers and veterans who suffer from PTSD.

Like Martin Webster, Paxman sought unorthodox treatment for his combat stress. He found a unique process that uses hypnosis, therapeutic neuro linguistic programming (which is based on solving conditions people feel they have, rather than those they are diagnosed with), and timeline therapy (a form of cognitive behavior therapy that seeks to help people let go of past experiences). According to Paxman, his PTSD symptoms disappeared after one day of treatment.



11


Webster completed the Talking 2 Minds program last month and says he no longer has PTSD. In his opinion, the treatment could “revolutionize mental health systems around the world.”

The search for alternative treatments for PTSD is partly rooted in the fact that governments are falling short in helping veterans deal with their war trauma.

According to Paxman, the British government is providing adequate care to active-duty soldiers or veterans returning from war. “It’s a systematic problem,” he said.

Webster concurs.

“It’s just neglect, pure neglect,” Webster said. “It’s pure criminal negligence the way [the government] treats soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. We’re almost treated like second class citizens.”

Across the Atlantic, Marvin Heskett is dealing with similar problems with the VA.

Heskett, a U.S. Army veteran, told AlterNet the VA is “poorly funded” and “lacks human resources to treat all the veterans from all the wars.” Heskett

was wounded Aug. 1 near Baghdad by an improvised explosive device (IED) that destroyed his vehicle and killed a fellow soldier.

In addition to about six to 12 flashbacks a week, Heskett said he sleeps alone at times with all the lights on and a loaded gun in his hand. While he is seeking mental health care with the VA, he says that art and music have provided an outlet that allows his mind “to be free from the horrors of war.”

Heskett received an art kit from the Wounded Artist Project, a nonprofit organization that creates and provides art kits for veterans. The art kits have been sent to military hospitals around the country and Heskett said it has been “very useful.”

Back in England, Webster said he has learned to forgive himself and now feels in control of his own life.

“A year ago, I would get angry and irate. Now, I feel totally at peace with myself,” he said, adding that he has “totally left Iraq behind” but will always have memories from his six months there.

“For the rest of my life, I’ll never forget it,” he said.

Webster claims the documentary saved his life. But he still has trouble watching the beating video itself, which he describes as “very, very disturbing.”

“I prefer to watch it with the volume down because the voice is so disturbing. It’s not a nice feeling. It’s very hard to put myself back in that position,” he explained. “The way I’m acting on that camera is not me.”

Looking back, the former soldier said his unit was sent into Iraq without a mission. “We were sent up a creek without a paddle and we did the best we could,” he said.

Webster said he hopes the documentary wakes people up. “I think at the end of the film, it says, ‘Question your media. Question your values. Question your government. Question things. Don’t just accept things. Don’t accept the way things are,’” he said.

Diary of a Disgraced Soldier made its world premier Nov. 14 at the Cornish Film Festival where it sold out for two screenings. The filmmakers are looking for distributors to get the documentary shown in the United States.


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