January 21, 2011

An Afghanistan war veteran will share his experience adjusting to life after combat in a lecture today at the University of Wyoming.

D.C. Faber, a retired major with the Wyoming Army National Guard and former Laramie firefighter, will present “How and Why We Are Different When We Come Back: A Veteran’s Perspective” from 1-3 p.m. in the Wyoming Union Family Room.

The lecture is part of the 2010 Martin Luther King Jr. Days of Dialogue.

Faber, 47, said he would talk about why soldiers are different after returning home from war, what they can do to understand their situation and how family, friends and coworkers can help.

“If they want to understand why we are the way we are and why we react to the things the way we do, please come,” he said.

Faber will describe his overcoming what psychologists call Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) after returning from Afghanistan, where he was deployed to train Afghan police officers from July 2007 to April 2008.

“I knew I was having problems when I got home,” he said. “I was having a difficult time being around other people … and my family.”

Faber said he also would talk about why soldiers — especially citizen soldiers — are committing suicide in record numbers.

The U.S. Army reported Wednesday the suicide rate among soldiers increased for the sixth consecutive year in 2010, going from 242 to 301.

Faber said his lecture is based on a post-trauma model he developed using his and other combat veterans’ experiences with life after war.

“It’s a different view from what’s out there right now with all the talk about PTSD and (Living in the) New Normal,” he said. “I have a totally different approach to why we’re different after war.”

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) defines PTSD as a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event or ordeal in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened.

Some people suffering from PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of the ordeal and feel emotionally numb.

They may also experience hyper-arousal symptoms, which include feeling tense or “on edge.”

Faber said psychologists believe combat veterans who have PTSD are emotionally focused on the past, based on the emotion and attachment theory of psychotherapy.

In contrast, Faber said he believes combat veterans are emotionally present focused because of past traumatic events.

“A lot of veterans don’t even know how present-focused we are emotionally,” he said. “The trauma events over there kind of lock you into a survival mode, which keeps you ‘present.’”

Life in a war zone forces soldiers to live in the moment to an extreme degree because of the constant threat of death, Faber said.

“You’re only living about two hours out. A day over there is like five weeks long (here),” he said. “You’re so present every moment so you’re not the weakest link in a fight.”

Faber described war as like a never-ending car wreck in which a soldier’s heightened perception makes time appear to slow down even though events are happening quickly.

In addition to always being in the moment, soldiers living in a war zone accept the fact there is a good chance they will be killed before they finish their deployment.

Accepting death produces the grief process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, Faber said, which can happen twice if a soldier survives his deployment.

“Once you’ve accepted death … and you live, you’ve got a problem,” he said. “You have to go through that whole cycle again, believe it or not, and accept that you lived. Otherwise, you’re like Lieutenant Dan in ‘Forest Gump,’ who kept saying ‘I should have died over there.’”

When combat veterans return home, many have a hard time re-adjusting to a way of life that is less emotionally charged and more emotionally future focused than in a war zone, Faber said.

“Now you’re back in this world that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “Everybody seems worried about the dumbest stuff, you’re only living about two hours out and you’re all tense because you’re emotionally present and, by the way, you’ve got a gun, you’ve already killed people, you’re supposed to be dead over there anyway. It’s not a real far journey for a guy or gal to go from living to killing themselves.”

Faber said he plans to present his lecture and post-trauma model to military leaders in Washington, D.C.

He also said the Wyoming Veterans Commission has been supportive of his efforts to lower the suicide rate among combat veterans by helping them understand their thoughts and feelings after returning from a deployment.

For more information about the final day of the Martin Luther King Jr. Days of Dialogue, go to its Web site at http://www.mlkdod.org.