Saving Our Troops From Themselves

June 12, 2012 - PRLog -- News was released earlier this month that 2012 has been a year of tremendous loss in the United States Military.  As reported in the New York Times, 124 troops have died in Afghanistan as of June 1.  In the same period, 154 active-duty troops have committed suicide.  That’s an 18% increase over suicides in the same period last year.  (“Suicides Outpacing War Deaths for Troops,” Timothy Williams, June 8, 2012, New York Times.)

What’s the answer?  It’s tempting to say that the solution is to increase the number of mental health professionals available for troops.  But there is a stigma attached to seeking counseling among troops.  Doubling or tripling the number of counselors makes no difference if the troops do not avail themselves of the resource.  

Consider knowing someone is going in for counseling (and you may even suspect it is for suicidal thoughts).  Then you need to go in the heart of danger with that person.  Can you count on them?  Will they break? It is enough to worry us.  For troops, this is not an abstract hypothetical.  It is a day-to-day reality.  The stigma is functional for their survival.  

For the loved ones of troops, imagine knowing that someone on our son’s team or daughter’s team is potentially suicidal, potentially “on the edge,” and our child’s life could depend on that person.  Are we more comfortable or less comfortable?  Whether or not there is behavior that belittles or ostracizes, the stigma itself is likely here to stay.

In my decades of experience this is what I’ve seen: Suicide is rarely about killing oneself.  It is about putting a stop to pain.  Yes, some people really do want to die, and some even try to kill themselves out of revenge.  Almost everyone I’ve personally worked with was in pain, and they did not see a clear way out.  

When someone is in pain, suicide has a certain emotional logic to it.  “If I’m dead, it won’t hurt anymore.”  It’s a more extreme version of people using drugs and alcohol to escape pain temporarily.  If they do reach out, their feelings are often attacked as invalid.  They are told to think about other things.  People will even argue with them about their own lives!

There is a better way.  I’ve written other articles on how to work with a suicidal person, and I’ve posted some of my best material in a blog on my own website (www.scotconway.com). Get them to professional help whenever possible.  When it isn’t possible, have a good strategy.

We still need an answer, though.  We can provide more mental health professionals, but we can’t make troops use them.  We can have a better strategy for working with people having suicidal thoughts.  That will help at that moment of truth when someone is already there.  Or we can do something even better than that.

We can solve the suicide problem proactively.  How?  By giving our troops the tools that have the immediate, intended, powerful purpose to help them be more successful, period.  

There is a technique called the Triple-E Freedom Technique.  It is a powerful technique with three steps: Embrace, Elevate, Expand.  It’s a success system that has a side-effect of providing personal, individual tools to prevent suicide.  It becomes an internal solution to the problem – without someone ever having to even admit they have a problem.  No stigma.

What Embrace, Elevate, Expand is really for is to live “Above It All.”  It is a way to be in the middle of the day-to-day junk the world throws at us and stay apart from it.  It is a system to use the junk to build.  It is a system of being better, period.  One side effect is that when someone just wants to stop the pain, rather than suicide being “logical,” there is an even more logical way to handle it.  It eliminates significant amount of the "no way out" feeling by providing a way out of the feelings.

The Five Step Forgiveness Technique is a system to nuke pain from the past.  For troops who are lost in nightmares about the past, this is a technique that will help them stop that pain.  Again, a side effect would be a reduction in suicide by equipping them with an actual step-by-step to deal with pain from the past.  It has an additional effect of helping with post-trauma stress.

Emotional IQ is an important skill, too.  For troops, it helps them do their job better.  It helps them understand civilian reactions to their important work.  It helps them connect more effectively with their family and friends who are not in the military. It helps them understand their own emotions and those of their compatriots.

Again, a side-effect is a reduction in suicide.  They will see how their emotions make perfect sense.  They will see the message in their emotions.  They can, in effect, become their own counselor.  No stigma.

Where is all this material found?  Three books: Above It All, Freedom Found and Emotional IQ.  Originally available only to private clients, all this material was recently compiled into books and made available through Amazon.com for the Kindle very inexpensively.  If the military or a sponsoring organization wished to, actual printed versions could be made available to troops, those recently discharged, or, at least, for all military libraries.

Please contact me for more information.  Scot@MasterRevelation.com.  I work hard to make my material accessible for as many people as I can.  A great deal of my work is done at no charge.  If you wish to support this, please contribute at AgathosMinistries.org.  Help me help others.  Thank you.