# The Dirty Pain of the Modern Soldier.



## Roo2503 (Aug 6, 2018)

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a third wave cognitive and behavioural therapy that addresses head on that life is difficult, and it is often our attempts to avoid life’s difficulties that causes us to suffer. One way that human beings can find themselves struggling is when they try to avoid what ACT refers to as ‘clean pain.’ In ACT there are two types of pain that human’s experience: clean pain and dirty pain. Clean pain can be described as the normal pain that people feel in life from bereavement to relationship break ups to feeling down because we did not get that pay rise we wanted. Every human being will experience clean pain throughout their lives. According to ACT, clean pain is an inevitable part of being human.


Dirty pain on the other hand is the pain that humans experience when they try to avoid or get rid of the clean pain that life serves up. Dirty pain can be summed up as _pain piled on top of pain through our attempts to avoid or get rid of pain. _Someone may experience a clean pain like bereavement and may not be able to cope. Six-months down the line the person has fallen to pieces and now resorts to drinking a bottle of wine ever day. While this strategy works in the short term to numb the pain it causes bigger problems long term. One year after the bereavement the person may find themselves drinking more and more which may lead to them losing their job. They may have become isolated from friends and family members. Everything that was once important to them has fallen by the wayside including their own sense of self-worth. Their life has deteriorated due to their attempts to avoid the clean pain of bereavement by layering dirty pain upon dirty pain through alcohol misuse. The Buddhist’s have a formula that sums up dirty pain. It goes, ‘suffering = pain x resistance.’ In other words, the struggle we have to avoid or get rid of pain will lead us to suffer more than the original pain we experienced.


Recently I came across a Facebook group for ex-servicemen and women who are struggling with PTSD, depression, anxiety, anger management, and a whole heap of other psychological issues. I read posts on a daily basis and while some are clearly related to trauma from people’s experiences at war, I can’t help feel that some of the pain people are experiencing is from a resistance to accept that their life in the forces has now ended. Yesterday I read a post that read, _‘Since I have left the Army I am getting increasingly annoyed and angry. I hate civvies and wish I was still back in. My mind is full of negative thoughts all the time and every night I drink seven or eight cans just to get to sleep. I am always arguing with my missus and my kids are on egg shells all the time. I have gone from job to job but can’t stick at anything because I can’t keep my mouth shut because civvies just don’t get it and I don’t get them. I did fifteen years and feel it was all so long ago. Truth is I’m scared shitless about the future and can’t stop longing for the past. Think I have PTSD…’_ Then came the barrage of messages telling the man that he needs to get help. The man was told he might have PTSD and he was told to talk more and get in touch with people who had experienced the same thing as he had. The man responded a number of times and I got the sense that no matter what people said to him he would not shift from his position that in order for him to be happy again he needed to be back in the army where his life made sense. As I read I could not help but feel that the man was not in pain because of PTSD, (I could be very wrong though) but because he was unable to accept his newfound situation having left the Army. The clean pain of his army career ending was being buried under piles of dirty pain caused by the refusal to accept his new circumstances. 


This was not a one off. Every day I read posts from men and women about how no one understands them, and how they long for the good old days, and how they can’t cope in civilian life. The strange thing for me is that I know from my own time in the Army that soldiers are incredibly adaptable. The old adage of ‘overcome, adapt, and improvise,’ is known throughout the forces. Soldiers are taught to always look for solutions and to face adversity with a cheerful and optimistic attitude. But it seems this mindset is forgotten by some when they leave the forces.


I can’t say that this man did not have PTSD and I hope he gets the help he needs. I also hope he learns to accept his new life out of the forces. I don’t want to sound like I am discounting his experiences because I am not. But I do wonder if PTSD has become a label that is too easily worn by some veterans because they have the history to suggest the cap fits. _In the army + went to war + feeling anxious and depressed + struggling with civilian life = PTSD. _But does every soldier with mental health issues have PTSD? How much of the problems that veterans’ experience is down to a refusal to adapt to civilian life combined with the anxiety and depression of facing up to a new life mixed in with the anxiety and depression that all humans’ experience on occasion? How much of a veteran’s suffering comes from the dirty pain caused by the refusal to accept the clean pain that will naturally arise when they leave the forces?


A soldier leaves the warmth and familiarity of a life he has known for most of his adult life and is now in a new environment surrounded by people who he thinks are different to him. He no longer has the support structure he once had and now has to deal with life and people in a completely different way. Not seeing his army mates on a day to day basis leads him to feel lonely, anxious, and depressed so he starts to drink more and more to cope with this pain. A year later he’s lost his job, his marriage has collapsed and his kids are scared stiff of him because of the mood swings caused by his drinking and the subsequent anxiety and depression that goes hand in hand with substance misuse. To combat his chronic worry and depression he drinks more and becomes alcohol dependant leading to him losing his home, friends, family, and any semblance of self-respect he once had. Not long after he is living on the streets and contemplates suicide on a daily basis.


Soldiers in recent times have been forced to deal with loss on a regular basis. And in horrific ways. And because of this there are men and women who are suffering the effects of PTSD, struggling to cope on a daily basis. But not every soldier’s mental health issues are a result of combat stress. But without proper mental health awareness and education soldiers are left with their own minds, drink, drugs, and Doctor Google who are only too happy to diagnose them with PTSD. Combine that a new found lack of direction and a refusal to deal with the clean pain of leaving the forces and you have a guaranteed recipe that can take a once proud serviceperson into the dark depths of mental health problems very quickly.


I don’t know what mental health training our forces get when they leave or how long they get it for, but if this Facebook page is anything to go by then it does not seem long or thorough enough.


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## Ralph Rotten (Aug 6, 2018)

This passage makes me glad there were no wars for the 4 years I was in. I served right between Grenada and the first Persian Gulf War. 

Perhaps you should study the equation more and become a mod in one of these forums.  You sound like you have a clear idea how to help the process.


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## Roo2503 (Aug 6, 2018)

Hi Ralph...Yeah I served seven years and although I served in Bosnia and Kosovo it was peacekeeping and not war fighting.... I think our soldiers need more help than they are getting for sure.


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