How those who have served can heal the rest of us

I read with great interest two recent stories about veterans in the newspaper. The first, by Brian Zahn, “Professor Helping American Veterans Heal,” was about Sebastian Perumbilly, a Southern Connecticut State University professor who works with veterans suffering from what he calls “moral injury,” psychological trauma that happens when “soldiers see or commit acts conflicting with their moral code.”

The second, “Soldier’s Soul – an Unrecognized Aspect of PTSD,” was an opinion piece by author John White. He described war as an “invisible assault on the soldier’s very soul” when the war fought in was “not a justified war, not a necessary war, not a matter of national security, not a good war.”

The perspectives of Perumbilly and White are important; however, I think it is also important that we are careful to see veterans not simply as victims who need our help, but as people who are actively shaping our social world in positive ways. I am a sociologist who researched a book on re-entry issues of people returning to the ordinary world after war, prison, and other life-transforming, extraordinary experiences. I learned from my research that although returnees often struggle to fit in and live happy lives, they also find strategies to use their marginality in ways that have helped make the rest of us better human beings.

I researched such diverse cases as the following: journalists and humanitarian aid workers who had been in conflict zones; former prisoners including survivors of concentration camps and the Soviet Gulag; ex-slaves; refugees; disaster survivors; former undercover agents; people who left unusual religious groups; and people who had participated in revolutions and great social movements such as the Civil Rights Movement. I found that although many people in all these categories find it difficult to reenter the ordinary world, many also develop effective personal strategies for re-entry that ultimately result in benefits to humanity as a whole.

One strategy is taking action to teach fellow citizens about horrible events so that we can avoid repeating them. The survivors of the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki; the veterans of the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq; and World War II Holocaust survivors have inspired and led movements for peace and social justice, and while we still have wars and injustice, surely there would be more if such people had not taught us that we can do better.

Another strategy is recognizing that one has a continuity of self before, during and after the extraordinary experience, a core of the self that fuels a person’s passion to live life to the fullest, which can motivate others to do the same. People who joined the Civil Rights Movement because they wanted to live in a country free of racism and hatred went on to carry these human values into other social movements, such as the environmental movement, or careers of service to fellow citizens, such as teaching or medicine. People who joined unusual religious groups in a quest to understand the spiritual realm went on to become active participants in more mainstream religious activities or writers on spiritual issues.

I also learned in my research that our culture influences us to be spellbound by heroic adventures and uncurious about what happens to heroes after the adventures are over. Heroic adventures abound in our bestselling books and blockbuster movies; even memoirs of heroes tend to focus on their adventures and neglect their lives afterward. This is unfortunate, because there are millions of people living among us who have returned from war and other extraordinary experiences, and their lives as a whole should be of more concern to us.

It is welcome to see Perumbilly and White drawing attention to the re-entry issues of veterans. As we turn our attention to their re-entry into the ordinary world, we will have a more balanced and realistic picture of the human condition if we pay attention not only to helping them heal their troubles but also to celebrating how they are so often helping heal the rest of us.