Contact
Welcome to the PTSD Spirituality Contact Page.
You can e-mail me at DrZ insert the AT SIGN PTSDspirituality.com
Please place “PTSD” and anything else you like in the subject line.
I usually check the contact submissions once in the morning and then again in the early evening. I will reply as soon as I can.
I wish I could just give you the normal e-mail format, but then I’d get swamped by spam robots.
I have quit using the previous Contact Form widget on this site as it has not proven compatible for all web browsers. I did some searching and discovered the problem is not the result of my low techno-wizard skills, but it is a problem across the board. Oddly enough, while PCs are usually able to handle many widgetized applications, the Mac and Firefox worlds are less tolerant of them. Since I desire Mac and Firefox users to be able to read this website, I have gone to a manual set of contact information.
No matter what, there is always hope. PTSD is a hard journey, but it does not have to ruin our lives forever. Every life has value, including your own and the lives of people who care about you.
Thank You for Visiting and Semper Pax, Dr. Z
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I am so glad that God had this Dr. put this on a website. I have suffered from PTSD for some years now. I went to Iraq in 2003 for the invasion. I am still in the Marine Corps and they are going to medically retire me. But I just woke up about 35 mins ago, FREAKING out from nightmares and I googled PTSD and the Bible. And the website came up. I feel like a million bucks now. I love Jesus so much, He is my Father. It’s just nice to read that people with PTSD have a place in Heaven. May God Bless whoever started this website, Thanks again, Sgt. McReynolds,
Semper Fi.
Hello SGT McReynolds, Welcome Home!
Iraq in 2003 was a hell hole and many good people lost their lives and many good people had their lives forever changed.
You are a smart man to know that you arwe hit with PTSD. Looking for help is the right thing to do when you broke out of your nightmares last night. After nightmares I would feel so scared and ashamed and not know why I was going through all of this.
God loves us and God loves YOU. I hope the website will be able to provide some helpful information. Never give up. God loves you. Knowing that is always something that has helped me in my own PTSD journey.
Semper Pax and Semper Fi, Dr. Z
Hi Dr. Z:
Just sharing the grim news I heard yesterday that suicides are up in our troops to record highs last month; 32. Thirty two lives lost because they despaired–and for all the military is trying to do, too many of its messages are working on a parallel track which segregates suffering veterans from the rest of us who need to be included in the debate.
It’s my belief that PTSD will never ebb in our society as long as Society makes it an us-them disorder and turns away from the confusion and stress that accompanies natural impulses tied to aggression and war. Until we can collectively take the burden and ugliness of war off our soldiers when they return home and make it our collective burden, our collective mourning, I fear our soldiers will always feel isolated in their pain and not heard enough. We need not be witness to their individual stories (that is for them and their professional helpers to work through), but we can all be silent, nonjudgmental escorts to their communal struggle over the long term, visible presences who do not fear or turn in discomfort or boredom from troop narratives, who do not make them feel alone or of low priority in their reconnection to “peacetime” Society–which for too many vets is just another kind of hell on earth.
There’s tremendous pressure and expectation laid upon soldiers coming home and no “boot camp” for readjustment provided to teach not only marketable job skills, family readjustment skills, but also how to protect themselves from the emotional rollercoaster “ignorance” they will face from civilians–hearty handshakes and thank yous, then quick dismissal. Many of these people need to tell their stories over and over–every time a memory or nightmare hits–and still the hoped-for exorcism of these thoughts will not come quick enough or easily enough. Soldiers with PTSD suffer from an inability to tell it “right” , so that “the rest of us get it” and they are too often “sorry this doesn’t make sense” . They end up frustrated and feeling more alone.
What the rest of us civilians don’t do enough of is make these sufferers understand the burden should be on US, not them, for not being willing or able to listen. That is our communal shortcoming, our weakness, and they need to forgive us.
I would like any troops reading this to please forgive the rest of us for not being available enough to you–in being uninformed and unnecessarily scared, we fail you.
Dr. Z, thank you for being someone out there not failing these troops by providing this blog.
I hope you are well Dr. Z. Thanks for letting me vent–once again–here.
Hi Michelle,
Thank you for writing. The suicide news from the Army is abysmal. I try to find silver linings and the only one is that they are starting to recognize the problem. I’ve been told by Army mental health specialists that some commanding generals simply state that their soldiers don’t commit suicide and leave it at that. Talk about magical thinking!
The Washington Post, as you probably know, has been covering this story for some time. They were the ones who broke the scandals at Walter Reed and how wounded soldiers were neglected there.
Part of the “work” I have been up to is to try and help women and men find continual reasons to live. Sometimes that is only by not giving PTSD and those who are invested in indifference the satisfaction (and convenience) of seeing us all dead and finally silent. All of our lives contain so much value and it is so plainly wrong to encourage us all to die through indifference.
You are absolutely right about PTSD and the collective nature of the disorder and our collective responsibility to heal it. Your insight is powerful and parallels some of the poetry I was trying to write this morning. Our society encourages us to isolation and silence, whether are PTSD comes from civilian or military trauma. One hopes and prays that we may rise to help one another carry our burdens and heal.
The year 2010 has been physically hard on me and I have not been writing as much as I should for this website. Indeed, I am remiss in writing you back from several months ago. I am afraid I have not been able to keep up with my correspondence as well as I should. Know that it has everything to do with my own battle with chronic pain and fatigue and nothing to do with you. When I have been able to write I have been working on some poetry, my students, and meeting with trauma survivors.
I hope you are well. Semper Pax, Dr. Z
Please don’t ever apologize for conserving your strength for the people whom it can best benefit. I am only sorry to hear the struggle is so constant and draining. Thank you for the affirmation of past contacts and current concerns, and if it is no imposition, I will continue to check in with thoughts and prose? It is sufficient for me to feel I have an eye and ear out for those who are trying to do good for the rest of us and if my correspondence binds us in this way, that is sufficient. Warm Regards, Michele