Notes: The following excerpt is a revised and updated version of Chapter 6 from Paula J.
Caplan's book, When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home: How All of Us Can Help
Veterans (MIT Press, 2011). It was written and is made public with the kind consent of MIT
Press.
This excerpt is not to be cited, quoted, or reproduced in any way without specific written
permission of the author, which can be obtained by writing to
welcomejohnnyandjanehome@gmail.com .
This chapter is for both veterans and nonveterans, with some sections primarily for
members of one group or the other. Many references are to war veterans, but it is
important to keep in mind that it can be helpful to veterans who have never been in combat
to have a nonveteran listen to them, and this is why: Military experiences other than war
can be traumatizing, and at the very least, going from civilian to military life and back
again can create major culture shock as well as major practical problems, such as
interruption of one’s work history and relationships with family and friends. Even those
veterans who say that their military experiences were mostly or entirely positive have
reported benefiting from having a nonveteran listen to them, because then the veteran lives
in a community where at least one nonveteran has learned a great deal about how life has
been for the veteran. And a huge variety of nonveterans report describe being listeners in
the sessions described here as extremely positive.
1
Table of Contents for this chapter
The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project
How Listening Can Help
Why Listening Matters
Can Nontherapists Really Help?
Stereotypes about Veterans and Nonveterans
What Veterans Say When They Hear About the WJJH Project
Getting Started with the Listening Sessions
How Veterans and Nonveterans Connect for the Sessions
Finding a Space for the Listening Session
The Listening Session: The Guide for Veterans and Listeners
Orientation, Purpose, and Five Steps for the Veteran and the Listener
Wrapping Up
More Details about the Sessions’ Guidelines for Listeners
Silence
Physical movement and expression
Patience
Concern about saying the wrong thing
Survivor guilt and other strong feelings
If the listener feels upset
When the veteran gets upset
If the veteran mentions suicide
Concerns about violence
The importance of pacing
The two possible exceptions to Your Silence
Table: Summary of General Guidelines
Opening Hearts
A Note about the Military and the VA
A Note about Resources for Further Reading, Viewing, and Assistance
3
7
9
14
19
20
22
24
25
25
28
31
32
33
34
35
36
36
37
38
39
41
42
45
47
47
49
49
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6 What Every Citizen Can Do to Help
I thought the point was we were all in this together.
--Wendy Wasserstein, “The Heidi Chronicles”1
Only connect.
E.M. Forster, Howard’s End2
You’d think for me my War has passed
Pay attention! It has not.
What troubles me now is a blood-soaked dream,
Can’t stop the flow at will.
As thousands of Vets, we fear the worst.
Mirrored in The Wall for us still.
--David E. Jones, “War Drums” (from A Soldier’s Story: The Power of Words)3
The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project
The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project is helpful to veterans and to nonveterans –
and reduces what journalist Bob Woodward and Col. (Ret.) David Sutherland call the
“epidemic of disconnection between veterans and nonveterans”4 – by having one
nonveteran at a time simply listen to a veteran from any era.
Listening is “the art and practice of putting someone else’s speaking, thinking feeling
needs ahead of our own,” wrote Marc Wong in Thank You For Listening.5
Everyone reading this – both veterans and nonveterans -- can become involved by doing
one or more sessions (veterans as the speakers, nonveterans as the listeners), by helping
organize others to get involved, or both. Later in this chapter, you will find the very
1
W. Wasserstein. The Heidi Chronicles. New York: Dramatists Play Service, 1998.
E.M Forster. Howard’s End. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2002.
3
David E. Jones. “War Drums,” in A Soldier’s Story: The Power of Words. Bloomington, IN: Authorhouse,
2006, p. 61.
4 Woodward was quoted as using it at
http://m.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/jonathan_gurwitz/article/U-S-societydisconnected-from-its-warriors-1081269.php Col. Sutherland used the term at
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=67373 and does so frequently.
5
Marc Wong. Thank You For Listening. 2013.
2
3
simple, brief, step-by-step guidelines for the listening session.
Every vet deserves help in grappling with the shock of the loss of innocence that comes
with the recognition of evil, as well as with the grief, guilt, and shame; sense of betrayal
and mistrust; rage; isolation, alienation, and numbing; and moral, spiritual, and existential
crises that are often parts of the trauma of war. And every vet deserves help in grappling
what they went through if they were sexually abused or exposed to dangerous chemicals
or injured in noncombat locations while in the military or if they were mistreated or even
abused because of their sex, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, or other characteristics.
Nonveterans helping veterans is about love of humankind, of those who suffer because
we as a nation looked the other way as they were sent to risk their lives and forfeit peace
of mind, or because we have not truly known them when they returned. It is about the
human need to be seen not (or not only) by a professional but by someone with no theory,
no framework, no agenda but to see them and bear witness to what they, the vets, have
been through. Gary Jacobson, a Viet Nam veteran with a website about Viet Nam, says
that until he began to talk about his war trauma, thinking about the memories on his own
“didn’t work well…was too painful…too confusing. I didn’t understand it, and could not
get a handle on it.”6 But he found that “It is healing to talk about the traumas of war, and
to get the demons of combat that we warriors who have stood in battle have buried so
deep, out in front of us, out on our terms where we can easier deal with them.” The same
is true of those who have suffered in other ways.
What Jacobson wrote illustrates the general principle, borne out by high-quality research,
that social connection and social support ease people’s pain.7 One’s social environment
matters greatly for one’s identity, status, role, well-being, thinking, and emotional
functioning. Thus, this chapter is about transforming the social context for veterans, and
so it is about community, about the importance of listening to a vet as a step toward
helping that person come back into connection with an earlier community or a new one.8
Although in this chapter and this book I have wanted to speak primarily to the many
National Public Radio, “PTSD: A Marine’s Story,” November 17, 2010, http://
onpointradio.org/2009/11/ptsd-a-marines-story. Jacobson’s website is
http://pzzzz.tripod.com/namtour.html
7
D. Summerfield, “A Critique of Seven Assumptions behind Psychological Trauma Programmes in WarAffected Areas” (Social Science & Medicine 48 [1999]: 1449–1462), notes, “Death rates are two or three
times higher in those with poor social connections” (1461), and also that during times of trauma, 95
percent of people in Bosnia and Croatia emphasized the need to be with other people and said that what
helped the most were “nonspecific human warmth and acceptance” (1458).
8
E. Watters, “The Americanization of Mental Illness,” New York Times Magazine, January 8, 2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html
?pagewanted=all), writes that many traditional cultures consider the person inseparable from the
community, and this can help with healing when the focus is on helping the person get back into that
community.
6
4
laypeople who would like to be supportive, everything in this chapter could also be
implemented by the military, the VA, and therapists outside the military system. Most of
the chapter is about nonveteran citizens asking veterans if they would like to speak; how
to locate a vet; how to listen; and how to deal with some matters that sometimes come up
as veterans speak. But in considering what interested individuals, groups, and
organizations throughout the United States (and indeed elsewhere) can do to help, the
fundamental matters to keep in mind are (1) we should do all we can to keep from
jumping to label vets mentally ill and treating them as though they were, and (2) the most
important first step is to offer them the time and space to speak to us.
Before proceeding with the main part of this chapter, I’d like to explain something about
its context. Since I began writing books and articles for the general public, some of my
professional colleagues have made to me what they intend to be the demeaning statement,
“You do pop psychology.” It’s fine with me if they want to call it that, as long as it is
clear that I detest jargon and cant, and I detest when what is presented as “science” most
definitely is not good science. In my decades as a psychologist and professor, I have
never encountered a worthwhile concept in my field that cannot be fairly easily and
accurately explained to a twelve-year-old child. There is no need or justification for
mystification about psychology and psychiatry. Nevertheless, I have seen enormous harm
done because people – patients, their families, even other therapists – have fallen for that
mystification and believed they should not question what the authorities asserted to be
true. In tandem with this observation, since I graduated from my Ph.D. program in 1973,
I have watched society become increasingly shaped by psychiatry, from the ways people
raise their children, to the ways they interpret their own feelings, to the nature of
friendship and the very limited uses to which friendship is put (such as friends assuming
they cannot help each other because they are not therapists). I have seen a society filled
with people who have increasingly come to pathologize everyone and everything –
themselves, their parents, their children, the problems of their friends, characters in books
and movies. And I have seen that same society turn increasingly to labels and solutions
that sound scientific, that have fancy or obscuring terms. But as Robert Whitaker
documents in exquisite and painful detail in his classic book, Anatomy of an Epidemic,9
these recent decades of “new and better treatment,” especially through chemistry, not
only have not helped reduce the amount of suffering and “mental illness” (however one
defines the latter) for most people but have actually increased it geometrically. The
numbers of cases in which the former has actually been helpful are disturbingly small.
There is nothing wrong with applying sound science where it is relevant and helpful. The
problem lies with much of what is currently passed off as science and as scientifically9
R. Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the
Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America. New York: Crown, 2010.
5
based (the latest catch phrase is “evidence-based practice”) in the traditional mental
health world. Furthermore, the overemphasis on science has made many tried-and-true
methods for reducing people’s suffering sound downright silly. This pattern carries over
into the political realm, where legislators adopt the simplistic and often harmful view that
the most important thing they can do for servicemembers and veterans is to provide more
“funding for mental health services” through the military and the VA. Nearly every
legislator who adopts that view neglects to examine what those “mental health services”
consist of and what harm they often cause, and nearly every legislator ignores the fact
that servicemembers and veterans are often loathe to avail themselves of mental health
services. Were legislators to consider that, they would be more likely to propose bills
directing the military and the VA to provide on a massive scale the many
nonpathologizing, low-risk approaches, and that, of course, would be a very good thing.
Legislators almost universally also fail to consider that the high rates of military and
veterans’ suicides and other serious problems constitute compelling evidence that even if
every military and VA therapist were terrifically effective, and even if every
psychiatric pill they prescribe had only positive effects, clearly more is needed.
Fasten your seatbelts, because in this chapter you will not find anything more than your
grandmother or your best friend could have told you. I hope that the dissonance of
knowing that I am a psychologist, then reading in ordinary language my statements about
what I (and of course not only I!) have learned matters most in life – connection, respect,
support, and understanding – will not be too unsettling. At three different times in my
life, I have gone to therapists with problems I was having, and although all three
therapists were kind and intelligent, the best, most useful advice I received came from my
parents, several key friends, and my now-grown children. In my four years of graduate
school, after being indoctrinated into all kinds of theories, techniques, and approaches
that my trainers said were the best, most professional ones for helping people who were
suffering, I have consistently been surprised that the simplest, most strength- and healthoriented kinds of action are what end up helping most. That is not to say they always help
everybody but rather that they should be the first approaches tried. Even the helpful
things that the three therapists said to me were all things that any layperson could have
said, such as, “I can see that you’re upset, but it’s not crazy to be upset, given what just
happened to you.”
When I used to have therapy patients myself, it was clear to me that nothing they found
helpful was anything I had learned in my training; some was what I had always known,
and some I had learned from living my own life, listening to other people, and reading.
My mother was a stay-at-home mother while raising my brother and me, and not only
was she good for me to talk with when I had problems, but she was also the person to
whom other people’s children would come when they were upset and needed help. After
I left home, she began and completed a master’s degree in guidance and counseling and
6
began to counsel people in an office. Recently, as I watched her listen to a vet who was
feeling terribly sad and anguished, I saw both that she was more helpful than any other
therapist I had ever seen and that nothing she did that helped him was anything she had
learned in her training.
Increasingly over the years, I have been alarmed to hear – even overhear in restaurants –
people describe the way they flee from talking with friends about personal problems:
“She was upset when her boyfriend dumped her, but I told her to go see a therapist,
because I haven’t been trained to help,” or “I was so sad when my father died, but I didn’t
think I should impose on my friends like that. I mean, how often can you expect your
friends to listen to you say that now, six months after your father died, you still feel
overcome by grief?” What does the professionalizing of the handling of all human
problems do to the nature of friendship in our society? This is not to say that there are
never reasons to talk with someone other than a friend about one’s troubles. For instance,
if you are in a new place and have no close friends yet, or if you are being abused by a
family member and don’t feel ready yet to cope with the way that relatives and friends
may react when you tell them, you might want to talk with a therapist or spiritual adviser.
Of course, friends and relatives also vary greatly in their abilities to help, and they, too,
can do harm. The point is simply that wherever one turns for help, it is just not the case
that a professional is more likely to help than is a layperson, and professionals are as
varied in their ability to help as are members of any other group.
As you read this chapter, I hope you will put out of your mind the self-doubts that,
because you are not a trained therapist, there is nothing you can do by listening to vets.
Listening does not mean you will make no mistakes. We all make mistakes; they are part
of life. Later in the chapter, however, I describe some potential pitfalls and bumps in the
road and make some suggestions about what to do about them.
How Listening Can Help
When you want to talk and release the load
When you need someone to “hear”
Not only the hill that shadows the Soldier
But I as well…am near.
--David E. Jones, “A Fight Within” (from A Soldier’s Story: The Power of Words)10
10
Jones, from “A Fight Within,” in A Soldier’s Story, 41.
7
It might seem obvious that relationships with others are helpful to people who are
suffering, but it is important to know that both solid research and numerous experiences
bear this out. For instance, in a recent British Medical Journal article, the authors
reported that a review of a large number of studies showed that social connectedness and
social support lead to happiness.11 Indeed, there is a great deal of research about this
subject, including, for instance, work by Edward Diener12 and J. Coyne and G.
Downey.13 Every time a person asks a vet if they wish to speak, that is an important form
of reaching out, connecting, expressing interest and support, and showing respect for the
vet’s experiences. There is healing power in not only listening but also remembering
what the speaker says.
In a New York Times Magazine article, Ethan Watters described the ways that people in
different cultures help each other cope with trauma differently.14 More communallyoriented cultures regard it as the community’s role to help the traumatized person to feel
better and reintegrate. Considering what Watters wrote makes it clear not just how wrong
but how very simplistic – and thus disrespectful to the vets – it is for us to decide that
what they are experiencing is unequivocally Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or
another mental illness and that therefore we know what they need. Watters notes the
dangers of imposing assumptions about trauma and healing on others, and he reports that
the World Health Organization has begun recommending “psychosocial support” for
disaster areas. There used to be something in the United States called friendship, before
therapy took over every situation other than those that inspire only happiness. And in
many cultures around the world, and even in some subcultures within the United States,
friends help each other through terrible times. These are things we ought to do for each
other, to help each other through this life.
Many years ago I learned something about the power of respectful listening after a
woman, without provocation, physically attacked me. I had never been physically
attacked, and the episode was not only violent but also bizarre. Never until then had I had
flashbacks, and that was when I learned that flashbacks feel so different from memories,
because during a flashback one has no sense that the events are not happening now; one
is completely immersed in the horror of the original trauma. When I told Rabbi Debra
Brin that I could not seem to break free of the upset and that some of those closest to me
A. Steptoe and A. V. Diez Roux, “Happiness, Social Networks, and Health,” British
Medical Journal 338, no. 7685, 2009.
12
E. Diener, “Subjective Well-Being: The Science of Happiness and a Proposal for a National Index,”
American Psychology 55, no. 1 ,2000, 34–43.
13
J. C. Coyne and G. Downey, “Social Factors and Psychopathology: Stress, Social
Support, and Coping Processes,” Annual Review of Psychology 42, 1991, : 401–425.
14
E. Watters, “The Way We Live Now: Idea Lab; Suffering Differently,” New York
Times Magazine, August 12, 2007, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res
=9A05EEDD113BF931A2575BC0A9619C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1.
11
8
expressed skepticism about how the attack had come about and whether I was describing
it accurately, she asked me to invite three very close friends to my house. The first thing
she did was have them sit around me and listen, just listen, as I described every detail of
the attack. Suddenly I was going through the trauma not alone but with people who cared,
and suddenly I was speaking to people who respected me and believed what I said. I felt
the healing start, and I never had another flashback to the attack.
This story also illustrates that no one is an island. Each of us is embedded in a social
context, and each of us is in contact with others who may or may not help us feel good
about our identity, our feelings and interpretations of what happens in our lives, our
status, our roles, and our functioning. What Rabbi Brin achieved was to change my social
context at a crucial time by bringing very close to me the people who would provide
respect and support.
David Oaks, founder of MindFreedom International, has worked for decades with people
who have been harmed in the mental health system. In a recent article about military
veterans, Oaks pointed out that when there are problems or scandals in the mental health
system, for 200 years “the usual position of caring people” has been, “The system needs
more money.” Oaks urged readers to “go deeper” than that and understand that
real alternatives that work often go very deep indeed. For instance, consider “peer
support.” We all intuitively know that good peer support can help. “It takes a village to
heal a mind,” doesn’t it? But WHY? Well, one reason is that we are forming really deep
and complex mutual connections between one another, and that can help with recovery
and healing.
It’s really difficult for the current market system to supply that. You can’t “buy a village”
off the shelf. Real healing may take really deep connections between people, real
COMMUNITY CHANGE.15
Why Listening Matters
To learn these [veterans’] stories is both civilian duty and commemoration.
--Caroline Alexander, journalist16
It is healing to talk about the traumas of war, and to get the demons of combat that we warriors
who have stood in battle have buried so deep, out in front of us, on our terms where we an easier
deal with them.
David Oaks. “On military veterans and mental health: Go deeper.” October 23, 2009,
http://www.veteransforjustice.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=20.
16
C. Alexander. “Back from war but not really home.” New York Times, 2009, p. 9.
15
9
--Viet Nam veteran Gary Jacobson17
Henri J.M. Nouwen says, "To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior
stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, or
declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known.
They are free to receive, welcome, to accept."18
He says that listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a
chance to respond, listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into
our very beings. “The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling
accepted, start taking their own words more seriously and discovering their true selves.
Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become
friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with
you.”19
The "astonishing power of listening"20 is clear from the Harvard Kennedy School study
we did of The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home listening sessions.21 Each veteran who
participated in one of the sessions was asked immediately afterward, “What, if anything,
was good about this for you? What, if anything, was bad or negative?” Every veteran –
ranging from World War II to the present era -- said something to the effect that they've
never been given a chance to just say whatever they wanted to say, without being
interviewed or having anybody making comments. They knew the listener was not a
therapist and not sitting there thinking, "How am I going to diagnose them
psychiatrically?" or fitting them into some theory. That person who was listening was just
a member of the community.
Everyone has the story of their life, as William Randall writes eloquently in The Stories
We Are: An Essay on Self-Creation.22 This is the story we tell ourselves about who we
are and how our life has been. Whether we are conscious or unconscious of our story, it
helps determine the things we remember and the things we try to forget, as well as how
we interpret them. For instance, do we selectively remember the aspects of our childhood
that were happy or difficult? Which aspects do we consider part of our main story and
which tangential? If we think of our childhood as having pretty much been happy, then
“Gary Jacobson” message posted in response to “PTSD: A Marine’s story.” NPR. November 17, 2010.
http://onpointradio.org/11/ptsd-a-marines-story
18
H.J.M. Nouwen. Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith. San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.
19
Ibid.
20
P.J. Caplan. The astonishing power of listening. Psychology Today, 2011.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/science-isnt-golden/201104/the-astonishing-power-listening
21
P.J. Caplan & H. Milkiewicz. Listening to veterans: The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project.
Harvard University: Unpublished paper, 2012.
http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/5/1/5951178/listening_to_veterans_the_welcome_johnny_and_jane_home_project-3-1.pdf
22
William Randall. The Stories We Are: An Essay on Self-Creation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1995.
17
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the painful or embarrassing times that we recall we regard as exceptions, and vice versa.
However we choose or otherwise end up with a particular story, that story is a major part
of who we feel we are. If we feel that we are not seen and respected for who we are, in
some way we feel we don’t exist. Since so much of life is about connection, about how
we relate to other people, if no one sees who we are or understands our experience fully,
or if others want to know only a bit of it, then in some important ways we disappear.
The assignment of psychiatric diagnoses to veterans distances the person making the
diagnosis from the vet and tends to limit what the diagnostician learns other than how
well the vet fits the various lists of symptoms in the psychiatric categories. David Jacobs
and David Cohen object to this practice, pointing out how important it is to capture
information beyond what is in the diagnosis: “[A] personal problem involves someone’s
story, a first-person drama-like narrative in which the narrator is the protagonist.”23 In
other words, listening to life experiences helps far more than assigning diagnoses when
we want to understand the sources and nature of a person’s distress. As Athar Yawar
wrote in a 2009 article in the British medical journal Lancet,
We would, as a society, achieve a great deal by listening to patients’ demands for good
food, companionship, respect, practical support, and gainful activity. As doctors, being
with the patient is one of the most powerful healing tools we have. It can sound trite, but
the phrase describes receiving the patient’s humanity, allowing it to come through crisis
intact and enriched, without the loss of dignity and self almost inherent in labeling.24
The combination of most Americans’ aversion to facing the realities of war, assault, or
other trauma and the reluctance of many vets to bring up their experiences has led to the
veiling of so much pain. In turn, the hidden nature of many Americans’ war and military
experiences has constrained the stories veterans can construct about their lives and
whether or not they even feel they can tell anyone about an event, a memory, a feeling, or
an image. Secrecy, in and of itself, can intensify upsetting experiences, making them
seem as though they ought to be concealed, as though they are too shameful or otherwise
horrific to be mentioned. Opening secrets up to daylight in cases like those often takes
away at least some of the shame and tends to decrease the isolation of individuals who
have kept their experiences under wraps. The fact that secrecy itself can exacerbate
problems was brought home to me when I worked in a clinic for children with learning
disabilities. We would begin each assessment by calling the parents and child into the
room and asking, “What brings you here today?” Often, at least one parent would look
shocked and become agitated, casting their eyes in the direction of the child and looking
at us as if to say, “Can’t you see that the child is right here?! Surely you don’t want to
talk about the problem with the child in the room!” By the time most children have been
David Jacobs & David Cohen. “Hidden in plain sight: DSM-IV’s rejection of the categorical approach to
diagnosis.” Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry 26, 2001, 81-96.
24
Athar Yawar. “The Fool on the Hill.” Lancet 373, 2009,, 621-22, quotation at 622.
23
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identified as having learning problems, they are old enough to realize that they are
struggling more than other children in their class. For the parents not to speak of that
struggle in front of the child implies that it is profoundly shameful. In our clinic, then,
when parents responded that way, we wanted to remove some of that shame and fear
right away, so we immediately turned to the child and said, “Reading is hard for you,
right?” In this way, we conveyed the message, “No matter how anyone else acts about
your problem, we do not think it is so terrible that we have to shroud it in secrecy.”
Simply asking someone – virtually anyone – if they wish to speak about their lives can
convey another powerful message: “Your experiences matter. You are important. I want
to spend some time listening to you.” My colleague, Karen Glasser Howe, for decades
included as a requirement in one of her courses that her students listen to their mothers
talk about their lives.25 Often, the mother’s immediate response was, “Oh, well, there’s
not much to tell.” But once they got under way, the stories and the emotions that went
with them came pouring out. When students in my courses do this kind of listening, they
often tell me that a major turning point in their relationships with their mother was the
moment they asked to hear about her life. This is especially the case for mothers with
histories of having lived through terrible times. Veterans tend to have many intensely
disturbing feelings and experiences, but this constellation is too often ignored. As one vet
after another has told me, “The only question people ask when they hear you’ve been to
war is, ‘Did you kill anybody?’ and people do not want to hear more once they know the
answer to that question. To have someone offer to hear them speak is a unique experience
for many vets.
Sadly common in vets’ experiences are atrocities they saw or even committed
themselves, sometimes unknowingly, such as killing an innocent civilian after being
misinformed that the person was an insurgent. A different kind of atrocity haunted the vet
who told me that as he ended a mission that was legitimate within the parameters defined
by his war and involved an attack on people who were clearly about to attack his men, he
noticed that a child had been watching the slaughter. The look in her eyes has never left
him. Trauma expert Judith Herman has written, “The ordinary response to atrocities is to
banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible
to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.”26 But the fact that something
is considered too terrible to divulge tends to compound the shame, guilt, and fear. The act
of telling a person who will listen and not judge but try to understand what it was like for
the vet is a way to begin to reduce the load of what one Viet Nam veteran described to
me as the heavy rucksack filled with the jagged rocks of unvoiced memories. Burdens
shared are often burdens lightened.
Karen Glasser Howe. “Telling our mother’s story.” In Representations: Social Constructions of Gender,
R. Unger (Ed.), New York: Baywood, 1989.
26
Judith Herman. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
25
12
Before hearing someone who has been to war describe an atrocious act that they
witnessed or even committed, many people assume that they could not possibly listen to
such a thing without bursting out with a judgmental or even accusatory statement. But in
a private session in which the veteran describes either why they were unable to stop an
atrocity from happening or why they committed it, the speaker’s pain is usually palpable,
and seeing that someone remains tormented makes the listener less likely to feel they
need to jump in and judge. Furthermore, often veterans make it clear that they are about
to divulge something for the first time, and that fact makes clear both their moral anguish
and the isolation in which they have lived with that anguish. The importance of such
moments is clear to the listener, as is the importance of their bearing of silent witness. As
a result, even listeners’ body language is primarily likely at those times to convey the
fullness of their attention and their sense of the veteran’s misery.
Beyond a certain point, isolation can be dangerous for almost anyone. It deprives people
of chances to connect, give and receive support, and check out whether their perceptions,
interpretations of events, and feelings match those of anyone else. For veterans to be
locked in alone with nightmare memories is all the more difficult. It leads some to
question whether their memories are even accurate and many to believe they are crazy.
The wholesale pathologizing of war trauma and other kinds of trauma by assigning its
sufferers one or more psychiatric labels, along with the fact that so many vets know this
happens and may even hear it from family and friends, makes it even worse. Speaking
often helps vets feel more assured that what they remember is real, not imagined, and the
reactions (even respectful silence and a slight nod) of a caring listener can make them
feel less crazy. The power of storytelling became clear to a top military psychiatrist, who
reported that in the twelve hours after some actors presented a dramatic reading about
war experiences, two soldiers and three Marines asked if they could tell what they had
been through.27
Transmitting one’s experience to someone else means that person, too, can tell it, and
someone who hears it from that teller can tell it forward. Within our Welcome Johnny
and Jane Home Project, the listener is asked not to divulge any details that would reveal
the veteran’s identity but can convey enough about what military and coming-home
experiences are like to ensure that important information is conveyed. Listening, if done
enough, can change the culture in ways that are favorable to helping vets by creating a
more receptive context, a sense of shared responsibility, a heightened awareness of the
horrors of war and other military-related trauma and their impact. We can hope that this
social transmission might even change public perceptions and attitudes toward vets and
wars. In these ways, and in the same way as does any creation, listening carries whispers
of immortality.
J. Schogol. “Pentagon hopes stories help troops with PTSD,” Stars and Stripes, February 9, 2009,
http://www.stripescom/article.asp?section=104&article=60587
27
13
Can Nontherapists Really Help?
At the level of our daily lives, one man or woman meeting with another man or woman is finally
the central arena of history.
--Athol Fugard, Georgetown University commencement address28
In our Scripture, it is written that when you do not have hope, you look for it in the face of your
friend.
--James Gordon, Gaza psychologist29
In considering the suggestion for nontherapists to connect with veterans who are
suffering emotionally, it is important to look at the practicalities. As reported in chapter
4, the Army acknowledges being “overwhelmed” by the problems of soldiers returning
from war, despite its continual announcements that it is trying to hire still more military
therapists.30 In chapter 5 we saw a similar pattern for the VA. Furthermore, a 2008
RAND study showed that about half of the veterans of current wars who were suffering
from emotional trauma had not even sought treatment.31 We have already discussed some
of the reasons for their reluctance to seek treatment, including their fear of breach of
confidentiality, fear that seeking treatment will make them appear weak or cowardly or
will interfere with their military careers, and fear that they will be considered mentally ill.
Many have heard of such things happening to others who went to military or VA
therapists. Some of these concerns also apply to seeing a therapist outside the military or
the VA. Furthermore, with the heavy use in recent wars of National Guard and Reserve
troops,32 many recent vets originally came from small towns, where they are far from
therapists if they return. At a purely practical level, even if there were plenty of military
or VA therapists available to see all of the suffering vets who seek help, and even if every
one of those therapists were 100 percent effective in providing help, many vets simply
will not see a professional. This fact alone should make it clear that, as a nation, we need
28
A. Fugard, Georgetown University commencement address, June 1984.
J. S. Gordon, “Cases without Borders: For Gaza Psychologist, Hope amid Despair,” New York Times,
January 13, 2009, http://tinyurl.com/94vf85.
29
P. Jeninek, “Army Plans to Hire More Psychiatrists,” Associated Press, June 15, 2007.
M. Elias, “Post-traumatic Stress Is a War within the Body, for the Military and for Civilians,” USA
Today, October 27, 2008, http://www.usatoday.com/news/ health/2008-10-26-PTSD-main_N.htm.
32
J. Kimberlin, “Out of the Darkness: Suicide and the Military,” Virginia Pilot, July 8, 2007.
30
31
14
to draw on the resources of nontherapists and certainly of people outside the military.
In chapter 5 we heard about Michelle Dillow, who, after her return from active duty in
Iraq, was so haunted by the constant danger in which she had lived and the losses of
people she cared about there that she could not sleep. She had felt so anguished and
enraged that, for fear of lashing out at or burdening her loved ones, she did not speak to
them of her troubles and instead just held everything in. This made her feel increasingly
isolated and increasingly ashamed of herself for what she saw as her failure to adjust and
stop “being crazy.” Visits with a therapist whom she described as very nice but not
helpful got her nowhere. Dillow was asked to give a lecture in a college class about war,
and during her talk, a student she had never met made a comment about the soldier
seeming to be too hard on herself. Taken totally by surprise by this outreach, which came
not from a therapist who spoke in jargon or was paid to talk to her, Dillow slept
peacefully that night for the first time in the months since she returned from Iraq. I tell
this story about Michelle because it is the kind of story I so often hear from veterans who
have spoken to sympathetic listeners from the community. When I spend time with vets
as “just a person,” not in my role as a psychologist, and certainly not doing anything I
was trained to do, not doing anything beyond listening, I often hear from them later that
the night of our first meeting, they begin to be able to sleep. I have also heard a great
many such comments from vets who spoke with people who have had no training as
therapists.
In his classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, concentration camp survivor Viktor
Frankl33 describes how inmates of the camp often stopped believing that liberation would
come, so that when it did come, they could hardly register its reality. What helped these
victims of extreme torture?
[W]hen one of the prisoners was invited out by a friendly farmer in the neighborhood, he
ate and ate and then drank coffee, which loosened his tongue, and he then began to talk,
often for hours. The pressure which had been on his mind for years was released at last.
Hearing him talk, one got the impression that he had to talk, that his desire to speak was
irresistible. I have known people who have been under heavy pressure only for a short
time…to have similar reactions.34
Related to this, psychiatrist Sally Satel describes her discovery that the treatment of vets
at a VA Medical Center was misguided because it took them too much out of their
communities.35 Speaking of his own life, Marine Nathaniel Fick has written, “The main
lesson of my experience is that the recovery process takes time, and healing only happens
33
V. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning: An Introduction to Logotherapy. New York: Washington Square
Press, 1959.
34
Ibid. (lines 966–974 on Kindle).
35
S. Satel, “Measuring the Psychic Pain of War,” Slate.com, http://www.slate.com/
id/2148541/.
15
in community” (my italics).36 Numerous experts stress the paramount importance of help
from nonprofessionals. In an article in the journal Clinical Psychology, the authors point
out that there is no evidence that any particular traditional approach to dealing with
trauma is actually helpful (and that there is evidence it may even be harmful), then say,
There is consensus…that providing comfort, information, support, and meeting people’s
immediate practical and emotional needs play useful roles in one’s immediate coping….
[T]he most appropriate early intervention…should be…supportive and noninterventionist but definitely not as therapy or treatment.37
Some of the authors of The Iraq War Clinician Guide say simply that “the most
important initial needs of returning veterans are to be heard, understood, validated, and
comforted in a way that matches their personal style…. There is much to be learned by
listening carefully and intently.”38 Veteran and psychologist David Collier believes that
nonmilitary people who are not therapists can “absolutely” be helpful to vets by listening
without judging. World War II war correspondent Ernie Pyle understood this, believing
that “the experience of the combat soldier is so terrible that you, the civilian, can never
redeem it, but you must at least try to see it and know it.”39
It is not surprising that the psychiatrized nature of our culture makes so many
nontherapists feel they are out of their league when they consider connecting with people
who have been through as much horror as war veterans and other veterans have. It is true
that not every nontherapist, like not every therapist, can help every vet, and some
nontherapists, like some therapists, will make mistakes (though The Welcome Johnny
and Jane Home Project’s emphasis on just listening helps avoid most of the common
mistakes). No approach is free from risk, because all involve interactions between two
flawed (because human) beings. But if we consider the pros and cons of outreach from
the community compared to those of psychotherapy with someone who is regarded as an
expert and with psychotropic drug treatment, perhaps the risks of the first seem not quite
so serious. And of course, any vet who speaks to a layperson can always go to a therapist
N. Fick, “Coming Home—to What?,” Boston Globe, August 28, 2005, http://
www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/08/28/coming
_home
to_what. See also L. S. Brown, “From Alienation to Connection: Feminist Therapy with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder” (Women & Therapy 5 [1986]: 13–26), about the important role the community
plays in helping people move past trauma.
37
B. T. Litz, M. J. Gray, R. A. Bryant, and A. B. Adler, “Early Intervention for Trauma: Current Status
and Future Directions,” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 9, Summer 2002,: 112–130, quotation
at 128.
38
B. L. Litz and S. M. Orsillo, “The Returning Veteran of the Iraq War,” in The Iraq
War Clinician Guide, 2nd ed., ed. R. G. Lande, B. A. Marin, J. I. Ruzek, et al. (Washington, DC:
National Center for PTSD and the Department of Veterans Affairs,
2004), 21–32, quotation at 21. See also A. Glantz, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle against
America’s Veterans. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009, who reports that
veterans groups say that supporting service members “means listening to them when they get home”
(153).
39
J. Tobin, Ernie Pyle’s War, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1997, 179.
36
16
and give that a try as well. In principle, there is a huge array of things that might help a
veteran, but a concern in this book is why the pool of potential helpers has been largely
regarded as restricted to psychiatrists and psychologists. Everyone knows people whose
conversations with friends or family members have been helpful, even transformative.
The same can be true of vets. Even reading a book, article, or poem can have a major
impact. Many adult women in the middle of the twentieth century who were unhappy
staying home with their children had been isolated by their silence, each believing herself
to be the only unhappy housewife, each considering herself inadequately feminine,
insufficiently womanly. Often, those women who read Betty Friedan’s 1963 book, The
Feminine Mystique,40 were transformed by learning thereby that huge numbers of women
felt the same way. The reason Alcoholics Anonymous and similar twelve-step programs
have more beneficial effects than virtually any other approach, whether delivered by
mental health professionals or others, is that they rely on the combination of
nontherapists helping each other and storytelling, empathic listening, and nonjudgmental
support.41
There are several ways in which a nontherapist can convey messages that make a
difference to vets in a way that therapists cannot. First, some therapists might try to erase
the power differential that exists between themselves and their veteran patients because
the former are therapists and thus assumed to know more about patients than the patients
know about themselves, to have all the answers. But between a layperson and a vet, this
particular power differential does not even rear its head. Laypeople are not being paid to
listen to the vet, do not come from a training program in which they learned certain
interpretations of people’s experiences, and are not expected to have all the answers. This
can create a more comfortable setting for the listener and veteran. When a nontherapist
listener clearly respects and simply listens to what a veteran says, the vet does not have to
wonder what professional framework of interpretation might be getting in the way. (This
is not to say that all therapists are dogmatic, of course.) Related to this, it is widely
known that a major activity of therapists is to assign psychiatric labels to people and to
treat as illness anything other than serenity and happiness. Although vets might be
concerned that laypeople have absorbed these activities from the broader psychiatrized
culture, they at least know that nontherapists do not have a professional stake in
pathologizing them. Laypeople who listen and respond to vets in a nonpathologizing
framework reduce the isolation of vets that comes from their belief that they are crazy or
at the very least have reacted weirdly to war or other kinds of trauma, mistreatment, or
40
B. Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, New York: W. W. Norton, 1963.
Alcoholics Anonymous, “Pass It On”: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the
World. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services,
1984. A dramatization of the development of Alcoholics Anonymous and its dependence on human
connection is the play, BILL W. AND DR. BOB, by S. Bergman and J. Surrey. Samuel French: New
York, 2007.
41
17
disorientation.
Still another helpful function that nontherapists can serve is related to the phobia about
death that pervades our culture. Most people believe there are things one talks about in a
therapist’s office that one would probably not discuss in the “real world.” Thus, when a
layperson is willing to listen to vets talk about their encounters with death, it helps break
through a taboo that keeps vets terribly isolated. As Marcia Hill has written, some healing
takes place when a person can speak what was not supposed to be spoken, because this
helps make the previously unspoken memories real (instead of feeling to the sufferer as
though they are figments of their imagination or “overreactions”).42 Further, Hill
suggests, the powerlessness so many people feel when at war can be compounded if they
feel powerless to speak up in order to help themselves or anyone else. Speaking of the
forbidden, then, can be a way to regain some sense of one’s power and effectiveness.
Something similar is true of the phobia in our culture about facing the truth that many
forms of violence are alarmingly common, including sexual and other kinds of assault
and including emotional violence.
Nontherapist civilians can play another important role precisely because they are not
veterans themselves. Although veterans, beginning most notably after the Viet Nam War,
have often found it helpful to talk with other vets, and such connections are in many ways
extremely positive, there is a danger involved in limiting one’s close relationships to
other vets only. It is the same kind of danger that one sees in other groups, such as those
composed of survivors of child sexual abuse. The identity of group members comes to be,
or remains, wholly associated with the trauma.43 Although sharing common or similar
experiences and feelings about those experiences can help make vets feel understood and
supported by other vets, if their identity does not eventually expand into other realms,
serious problems can result. One problem is that associating only with other traumatized
vets solidifies their sense of being nothing but a traumatized person, to the extent that
they lost sight of their capacities for enjoyment, growth, change, developing connections
with others and engaging with the rest of the world. Their feeling of being irretrievably
different from those who did not go to war or serve in the military becomes entrenched.
They find it harder to break out of the military’s attack-defend mode and its strict
hierarchies. Interacting with people who are neither therapists nor vets can help
servicemembers experience other perspectives and bring out other parts of themselves,
since we discover who we are partly by noticing what various people elicit from us.
Another problem that sometimes arises when veterans speak only with other veterans is
that they expect complete understanding from each other. Thus, when one veteran tells
about an experience they had, it can be a disturbing surprise if the listening veteran says,
M. Hill, “Reflections of an Experiential Feminist Therapist,” Women & Therapy 5, no. 1, 1986: 27–32.
C. Cole and E. E. Barney, “Safeguards and the Therapeutic Window: A GroupTreatment Strategy for
Adult Incest Survivors,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 57, 1987,: 601–609.
42
43
18
“No, that’s not how it was.” And veterans who were in the same place at the same time
but had divergent reactions or feelings can feel terribly let down if they fail to find
common ground with each other.
Stereotypes About Veterans and Nonveterans
It is common for veterans and nonveterans to have stereotypic beliefs about each other,
and these create a divide that is painful for vets but also deprives nonveterans of
important information and perspective in their lives. Many veterans believe that
nonveterans don’t care about veterans and won’t understand them. Many nonveterans
believe that all veterans are mentally ill and violent and that they enlisted because they
wanted to go kill people. An important and little-recognized stereotype is reflected in the
way that some people speak as though there is a dichotomy of veterans vs. civilians,
asking, “Are you a veteran or a civilian?” when in fact veterans are civilians! By
definition, if you are currently a servicemember, you are not a veteran; you become a
veteran when you leave the armed forces and become a civilian. To use that false
dichotomy is to perpetuate the hurtful notion that “You veterans are not part of this
community of us civilians.”
Stereotypes create and perpetuate disconnection. To a great extent, veterans and
nonveterans each seem to have reasons to keep their distance from each other. As
discussed at length earlier in this book, few nonveteran Americans want to think about
veterans, partly because veterans remind us of war, an unpleasant subject, and given the
small percentages of veterans, most Americans do not have a loved one who has served,
so they don’t have to think about them. Furthermore, many nonveterans tell me, “I know
vets are suffering, and I want to help, but they are all mentally ill, and I am not a
therapist, so there is nothing I can do to help, and I would probably say the wrong thing.”
They are so mistaken. When I wrote that most nonveterans don’t want to think about
vets, I hoped against hope that I would be wrong. Around the time the book was
published, in 2011, I began to write a blog for Psychology Today, sometimes writing
about various topics related to veterans but more often writing about a wide variety of
topics, ranging from personal stories to Supreme Court decisions to women’s issues to
psychiatric diagnosis to good and bad science. Psychology Today displays for its writers
the numbers of readers who have looked at each of our essays, and what I saw there I
found devastating: With one exception, every time I write about anything connected with
veterans, those essays get only between 30% and 3% (yes, only three percent) the
numbers of readers of any other subject I write about. Right there in black and white is
reflected the tragic disconnection between veterans and nonveterans. After I realized that,
I decided to do a little experiment the next time I wrote about veterans. Rather than
referring to vets in the headline, I called it "Healing without harming," and within two or
three days, as many people had looked at that essay as at my essays that are not about
19
veterans.
Veterans often tell me that they sense this lack of interest from many nonveterans, and
that is one reason they so often keep their distance. Furthermore, they often do not talk
about their experiences because they fear burdening or hurting nonveterans; because they
worry that if they try to talk, we might not understand; or they fear that we will think they
are crazy. Many have been told outright hat they are mentally ill, and many believe they
are crazy because they are home and safe but still suffering, so they think they are to
blame for not getting over it by now.
What Veterans Say When They Hear About the WJJH Project
The initial response of some veterans upon hearing about The Welcome Johnny and Jane
Home Project is that they feel they shouldn't "need" to have a listening session, and they
ask why we are asking if they would like one. But this is not therapy. It is about every
person deserving the chance to speak in safety about an important part of their lives.
Conveying that goal to them is also what we say in response to their expression of
concern that a listener might consider them to be “crazy.” We make it clear that these are
nontherapist citizens who do the listening and that there is a millennia-long tradition of
people returning from the military and speaking about their experiences to their home
communities.
Some vets have asked for listening sessions because they want to speak but want to do so
without adding to the pressures that are so often already on their loved ones. Often, the
vets want to keep reports of their troubling memories and thoughts out of their
relationships with those closest to them.
Still other veterans consider doing a session to be another way to serve, because every
one of us nonveterans ought to know what it is like to serve in our country's military and,
for combat veterans, what war is really like. It is not vets' responsibility to educate us, but
if they want to, that does provide a significant service. It is the civic responsibility of
every nonveteran to overcome their illiteracy about the military and/or war and/or
military sexual assault, and veterans are the best possible people to help reduce that
illiteracy.
Before doing a session, some vets have worried it would be too upsetting to them if they
chose to open up. But what they have reported is that this did not happen. In fact, many
have used the image of a rucksack, saying something like, “I have felt like I’ve been
carrying a rucksack filled with heavy boulders, but now I feel like someone lifted some of
those boulders from my pack.” A burden shared is often a burden lightened.
20
To be human is to run the gamut of emotions. This is all the more the case when one has
been through terribly painful experiences. That does not make it wrong or sick or a
mental disorder. It is deeply human. And keep if you try to restrict yourself to a narrow
band of emotions, that makes the world less safe for the rest of us humans to have
changes in feelings and to have intense feelings.
As for veterans who express concern about “losing it,” the reply is: “You are neither
expected nor obligated to ‘lose it’ or not, to cry, not to cry, to stuff your feelings or not to
stuff them. You may cry at one moment and not at the next, stuff at one point and not at
another. If you were going to be the listener for someone who had had a difficult time,
would you think it would make sense to expect them to express or suppress according to
preordained rules or to do so consistently? Your only job in the session is to use it as you
wish, to be as human as you feel comfortable being. You do not get a grade for the
course. You will not be evaluated or judged, not in the least. The time and space are gifts
for you to use however you are comfortable from moment to moment. And we hope you
will try to refrain from judging yourself during and after the session -- i.e., do not think
you should be doing or should have done anything differently.”
Some veterans ask what they are expected to do during the session. The answer is: “There
are no requirements at all placed on the veteran for the listening session. You are not
obligated to be in any particular mood or state of mind or to stick to one in the course of
the session. A major aim of the sessions is to allow the veteran the time and space to say
and not say whatever they choose, to be silent, to have or express one feeling, then
another, then another, or then none, then yet another. There are no rules for you!”
Most of the rest of this chapter, from pages 22-47, are specifically for any veteran or
nonveteran who wants to know more of the details about how the listening sessions are
conducted and who is perhaps considering doing a session. Other readers may wish to
skip to the section called “Opening Hearts” on p. 47.
21
Getting Started with the Listening Sessions44
Directions I do not provide with this, you only need a heart.
And if you understand a Vet, you’ve made a small…small start.
--David E. Jones, “Needless to Say”45
It takes some time to heal the wounds but a good place here to start.
Compassion in a trusting voice, that holds an open heart.
No one can tell me what I must feel, or when to forget the past.
No one can say it’s over now, the memories will last.
--David E. Jones, “Endings”46
Anyone who has seen the worst of humankind’s horrors needs and deserves tenderness
and understanding. So many veterans have been trained to believe that they do not and
should not need either tenderness or understanding and that it is not soldierly, not
masculine to accept them when they are offered. And women veterans often feel, as
women generally are encouraged to do, that they have no right to ask for anyone’s time
or attention, that it is unwomanly and selfish to do so. Before nonveterans ask veterans if
they want to speak to us, then, it is good for the prospective listener to take some time
alone to focus quietly on this:



that listening means that you value their speaking, their feelings, and their
struggles at least as much as you value your own time;
that even if the vet does not feel they ought to need to speak, you believe it is
legitimate and indeed important to give them the opportunity to do this, should
they choose to do so; and
that you do not consider it weak or inappropriate for them to let you know what
plagues them.
Be aware every moment of the potential that your listening has to matter to the vet.
Recall the point noted above from the VA’s The Iraq War Clinician Guide, that the most
important initial needs of returning veterans are to be heard and understood.47
Many servicemembers do not believe that someone who has not been through what they
44
This section, from pages 18-26, is also found at listen2veterans.org
David E. Jones, “Needless to Say,” http://webspace.webring.com/people/l1/11bravovet/thoughts.html.
46
Jones, from “Endings,” in A Soldier’s Story, 68.
47
R. G. Lande, B. A. Marin, J. I. Ruzek, et al., eds., The Iraq War Clinician Guide, 2nd ed. (Washington,
DC: National Center for PTSD and the Department of Veterans Affairs, 2004),
http://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/manuals/iraq-war-clinician-guide
.asp
45
22
went through could possibly understand, and they may try to shut them out.48 But Dr.
David Collier, a war veteran and psychologist who has a long history of working with
veterans, believes that veterans can often sense which nonveterans they can trust enough
to open up to them in a listening session: “You know when you meet somebody the first
time and are evaluating, ‘What do I think about the person across from me? Do I think
this person is respectful and has qualities of compassion?’”49 Graham Berman, a decadeslong practitioner of healing through listening, notes the power of feeling understood:
“When we are being understood, we know we are, and when we are being slightly
misunderstood, we know that, too,” and “We learn to trust our own feelings and what is
real or not real by having an understanding person react in a way that confirms or
disconfirms what we’re feeling.”50
In corresponding with one vet who was speaking to me partly in person and partly by
email, the fact that I have never been at war and the question of whether I could fully
understand what he told me came up. I responded,
When you tell me what war was like, I listen carefully and absolutely believe what you
say, and when you are describing tragic or terrifying events, I do think I get that they are
tragic or terrifying. Are there details and dimensions and certainly nuances I probably fail
to understand? Undoubtedly so. But the same, I think, is true of any two people who
have, for instance, each lost their father, because the fathers would not have been
identical, nor would their children, nor would the father-offspring relationships. I know
that the pain of not being fully understood can be great, but I think that being partly
understood by someone who cares can be healing, at least partially so.
In this connection, it can be helpful to mention to vets the principle Gloria Steinem has
elucidated, that people with different histories can trade abilities, and this “makes our
differences into sources of learning from each other.”51
Our Harvard Kennedy School study52 has shown that veterans describe this as helpful,
and the listeners say it is wonderfully transformative for them. Most of the listeners said
that they started out doing this to do a good deed, to try to help veterans, and many had
been apprehensive that they would be upset, but that, to their surprise, it ended up being
transformative for them in the most positive ways. Here's why: they talk about that
feeling that this was sacred time because of the integrity and honesty of the veterans. It
helps them understand more about humanity and more about our common humanity. It
S. Danish and B. Antonides, “What Counseling Psychologists Can Do to Help Returning Veterans,”
Counseling Psychologist 37, no. 8 (2009): 1076–1089.
49
David Collier, telephone conversation, April 13, 2010.
50
Graham Berman, telephone conversation, March 22, 2010.
51
G. Steinem, “Birthday Wishes,” Ms., Fall 2009, 42.
52
.J. Caplan & H. Milkiewicz. Listening to veterans: The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project.
Harvard University: Unpublished paper, 2012.
http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/uploads/5/9/5/1/5951178/listening_to_veterans_the_welcome_johnny_and_jane_home_project-3-1.pdf
48
23
gives them the chance to form that connection that they otherwise would not have had,
and that is very precious. And they hear about matters of tremendous importance, matters
of moral anguish, matters sometimes literally of life and death, which results in a feeling
of having shared something profound.
How Veterans and Nonveterans Connect for the Sessions
Any veteran or nonveteran contacting us at welcomejohnnyandjanehome@gmail.com
will be connected with someone else with whom to do a session. Or anyone organizing
this Project in their area can do the matching up. It is then up to the veteran and
nonveteran to schedule a time to meet and do the session.
For listeners who wish to locate and contact veterans in your community, you may work
in partnership with local veterans’ groups and shelters, civic and community agencies,
foundations, clubs, or social, political, or faith-based organizations. Often, word-ofmouth is helpful, just letting friends and neighbors, and clergy know about the Project
and asking if they know veterans who might be interested.
If you wish, you can start with an email message or bulletin board notice or newsletter
item such as the following – but feel free to alter it to suit particular circumstances in
your area:
If you are a veteran of any era and are interested in talking to a nonjudgmental
listener who is not a therapist about your experiences in the military and/or since
returning home, please get in touch with us. The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home
Project provides veterans the chance to have a nonveteran who is NOT a therapist
just listen silently and without judgment to whatever the veteran wishes to say. You
may speak as you wish and be silent when you wish, and there is no need to feel you
have pulled it all together before or during the session. You may wish to set aside
between one and one-half and three hours for this session, because that is the
amount of time most veterans have found they wanted to spend at the time of their
session. If you have questions or would like to participate, please contact
_____________.
The very best way to locate veterans is to go where they are – veterans’ organizations and
groups, local and state veterans’ service offices, and other places you hear about in the
community – and spend time there letting them get to know you and feel comfortable
with you. Then let them know about The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project.
Veterans may be living in the listener’s neighborhood, may be seen in restaurants
wearing hats or jackets that identify them as vets, or may be located through community
24
groups, religious organizations, or friends of friends. Some write letters to the editors of
print or online media. The VA has a program of foster homes for veterans who do not
want to live in institutions.53 Listeners can consider contacting the groups or
organizations for vets or their families that are listed at the end of this chapter. Go to the
gathering places that many veterans’ organizations provide, and spend time there,
allowing people to get to know and trust you. Perhaps more urgently than anything else,
go the veterans’ nursing homes or healthcare facilities and hospices, because the suicide
rates are even higher among veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Viet
Nam War than among younger veterans. I cannot count the numbers of adult daughters
and sons of veterans from earlier eras who have told me, clearly in great pain, that their
veteran parent either never spoke about what they had been through or only began to
speak when they knew they were dying.
Finding a Space for the Listening Session
You will need to find a safe, quiet space where the listening session may be conducted
without others coming in and out of the room. Often local community organizations,
schools, public libraries, or places of worship will donate space. We recommend such
public spaces rather than private homes. As noted, listeners may go to Veterans’ Homes,
other nursing homes, hospice facilities, or homeless shelters and ask for permission to
visit veterans and offer to do listening sessions right there.
The Listening Session: The Guide for Veterans and Listeners
Both veterans who are considering asking for a listening session and nonveterans who are
considering volunteering to be listeners should read the rest of this chapter carefully.
The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home listening sessions are about human connection
through the often overlooked but astonishing power of listening.
(http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/1/post/2011/03/the-astonishing-).
Regardless of the veteran’s politics and the listener’s politics, the sessions are helpful.
The reason is that once you truly focus on the listening, the honesty and integrity of most
veterans are so striking and so moving. Many of us during listening sessions find that the
word “sacred” comes to mind, even for those who are not religious. Why does it feel
sacred?" It is because of that honesty and because of that integrity. So, whether what the
S. Simon, “Happier Vets, Lower Costs,” Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2010,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703909804575124451841717276.html.
53
25
veteran believes about war in general or a particular war is the same thing as what you
believe, it comes not to matter. What matters is that a human being is speaking to you
alone, and you are listening. You connect. You bear witness.
Before the session begins, the listener hands the veteran the flyer that is shown here
below and can be downloaded from listen2veterans.org
26
In most cases, the veteran and volunteer listener will probably meet only once, unless at
the end of the session, they mutually decide to continue. So it is a good idea for the
volunteer to mention that before the session begins. And a listener who definitely will not
be able to do a subsequent session should state that clearly but say that if the veteran
requests another session, another listener will be found. This can be done through the
welcomejohnnyandjanehome@gmail.com email.
The listener assures the veteran that whatever they say will be kept private. Since
nontherapists are not bound by rules of confidentiality, it will be up to the vet to decide
whether to believe this assurance from a layperson. Needless to say, it is essential to be
able to make this promise in good faith.54 Since the listener’s purpose in meeting with the
vet is not to get information to give to other people for any reason but solely to help this
vet, there should be no reason to tell anyone else. In any case, there is never in fact any
airtight guarantee of confidentiality even from professionals, although they are ethically
bound to protect it, but some therapists behave unethically. Listeners who wish to do so
might let veterans know from the outset that they need not give the listener their real
name, though a way of contacting them will be needed in order to set up the session and
then send a reminder to fill out a brief (and anonymous, if they wish) online questionnaire
one month after the session.
Listeners are not therapists, and — except for speaking two very specific sentences
during the session — they truly do nothing but listen. However, they do so with 100% of
their attention and their whole hearts.
54
Occasionally a therapist or other professional who is a mandated reporter with regard to violence asks to
do a listening session. In many states the legal obligation of "mandated reporters" exists only when they are
operating in their professional capacity, not when they are acting as volunteers. Any listener in a profession
to which mandated reporting laws apply should ensure that as volunteers they are able to promise
confidentiality in good faith.
27
Orientation, Purpose, and Five Steps for the Veteran and the Listener
Veterans and nonveteran listeners need to know that the Project was created as a way to
reduce the isolation of veterans from their wider communities and create connections
between veterans and nonveterans. Both need to know that the sessions are not therapy
and are not interviews, as well as that the listener is instructed absolutely not to ask
questions, not request that the veteran define military terms, not make comments, not
even offer compliments, because the listener’s job is to listen with respect and refrain
from interfering with what the veteran would like to say…and to allow the veteran to be
silent when the veteran so chooses. This does not mean that the listener will be stonefaced and not move a muscle, but they will not speak except to say two sentences that are
described later in this section.
The reasons we urge that the sessions be done by someone the veteran does not know, or
not very well are: (1) there is often already so much pressure on close relationships that
veterans have, so we aim to provide them a chance to speak as freely as they wish to
someone with whom they do not have an existing relationship and thus with whom there
is, in effect, much less to lose; and (2) a major purpose of the Project is to reduce
veterans' isolation from their wider community, so part of what we try to do is connect a
veteran with someone they do not know or barely know. We can also provide a separate
listening session for a veteran’s loved one.
Veterans do not need to prepare anything ahead of time unless they choose to jot down
any notes of what they might wish to say. They might also read the report of the Harvard
University research about how veterans say they are affected by doing the listening
session. It is at http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/draft-paper.html
Before and during the session, listeners should do the following five things:
(1) Before you plan a listening session, watch the two brief 9-minute videos on the home
page of the whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com website, read the rest of this
chapter that you are reading now, then look at the answers to Frequently Asked Questions
(these are questions listeners ask) at listen2veterans.org
(2) Also before you schedule your first session, if you wish, read the report about the
Harvard University research about the effects of the listening session at
http://whenjohnnyandjanecomemarching.weebly.com/draft-paper.html
(3) Print the following document, and give it to the veteran. Have them read it, or you
read it to them before the session begins, then ask if they have any questions:
Veterans from the United States military from every era starting with World War II have
told us that it is helpful to them to have nonjudgmental civilians who are not therapists
28
listen silently, confidentially, and with respect to whatever they choose to say. The purpose
of this session is to give you a chance to speak in any way you choose about your
experiences in the military and since coming home. Because that is the purpose, your
listener has been instructed to be almost totally silent the whole time but to listen with
100% of their attention and with their whole heart. This is not an interview, and they are
told not to ask you to define military terms or to ask any other question. They are told not
to give opinions, make interpretations, or even give you what they might consider a
compliment. They are not to interfere with your choice of when to speak and when to be
silent and what to say.
We hope that you will not worry about telling a neat “story” with a beginning and an end or
telling things in chronological order or remembering things exactly. Feel free to report a
memory here and there, a thought, a sound or a smell, a feeling in any order in which you
feel like doing so.
Your session will most likely take between one and three hours. Immediately afterward,
you will be asked to report online and confidentially (with or without your name) briefly
how the session was for you. One month after your interview, you will be contacted and
asked to respond the same questions. This will allow us to evaluate whether such interviews
are helpful and whether your views about that change during that month.
No recording of any kind will be made of anything that you say in the interview, and what
you tell the listener will be kept totally private. Although the listener will listen fully to
what you say, the only information that will be collected and saved will be your feedback at
the two different times.
We hope that, like most veterans who have participated in this kind of session, you will
find that there are benefits to you of getting to say whatever you would like, having
someone who is there specifically to listen carefully and respectfully to everything you say,
and knowing that what you say will be private.
If afterward you wish to speak further, your listener will be available or will locate another
listener and can also put you in touch with someone who has done hundreds of these
listening sessions and will be available to you. If your listener will only be available for this
one session, they will inform you of that before you begin.
Tell the veteran to feel free to keep that sheet. Make sure that they understand that the
listener has been instructed to be silent and to listen with 100% of their attention and their
whole heart, as well as with respect.
Now you are ready to begin the session.
(4) Make a note to be sure to begin the listening session with this sentence:
As an American, I take some responsibility for what you experienced in the
29
military and how it has been for you trying to come home, and if you want to talk,
I will listen for as long as you wish to speak, and I will not judge.
Each element of that introductory statement was purposefully chosen after more than a
dozen years of listening to veterans. The sentence makes it clear that the listener
considers it an important civic duty to do this work, will put no pressure on the veteran to
talk but only provide the opportunity, and will do so in a nonjudgmental way.
About 95% of the time, once you say that first sentence, the vet starts talking.
Occasionally, one asks, “Are you really not going to interview me? I just say what I
want?” and the listener simply nods “Yes” and then waits. That's usually enough.
Sometimes, there is a silence while they register that there isn't anything in particular they
need to do or are expected to do. That silence is fine, and you just wait. At that point, as
throughout the session, the listener’s attention must be totally on the veteran and the fact
that their job for the session is to offer the veteran the gift of the time and space to say
whatever they want to say, whether it is a coherent story or whether it comes in
fragments — as often happens when people talk about painful, traumatic times — and to
be silent when they need to be. This is very different from what most of us are used to,
but listeners find that with the instruction just to listen, with the goal always in mind, it is
remarkably easy to maintain that focus and not to feel the need to fill a silence as we
often do in other settings. The instruction that the listener not ask anything or make
comments of any kind is because any of those interfere with the primary purpose of the
session. The veteran must be unencumbered, freed from the pull to respond to the
listener’s curiosity or impulses to speak, which can derail the veteran from the path they
most need to follow in the session.
Listeners find that when they simply wait quietly yet remain fully attentive at times when
the veteran falls silent, the listener’s silence and attentiveness convey respect and
maintain connection, as well as making clear that the listener does not feel a need for the
veteran to speak nonstop.
It is absolutely true that all the listener does is listen, but this does not mean freezing like
a statue for the entire session. Of course, we do not suggest that the listener get up and
walk around or rock back and forth or tap their foot or fingers. We do not want listeners
to inhibit all body or facial movements that show they are listening, but a little goes a
long way. It is OK very occasionally to nod one’s head a bit. But the reason we suggest
not even nodding your head very often is that we don’t want the veteran to start focusing
on when you nod or how much or if you nod at certain kinds of material. Listeners should
not try to move their heads or eyes or lips in attempts to signal that they are listening. Just
believe — in fact, know — deeply that when you focus completely on the veteran, they
will know it.
Since listeners do not speak except for the two prescribed sentences, the following is
30
probably obvious, but it is important to emphasize not to speak even in order to say
things you might have assumed would be welcomed, such as, “How brave you were!”
There are two reasons for this: (1) Again, the session’s purpose is to allow the speakers to
say what they want, in whatever order they want, without interference and without having
to try to respond to what the listener might say or what they deem to be the listener’s
interests or wishes, and (2) The listener has no way to know how the veteran might feel.
Thus, for instance, a listener might call brave an action that torments the veteran because
they “only” saved two of their buddies rather than five from an Improvised Explosive
Device.
(5) Listeners should make a note ahead of time of the second sentence they will speak,
which should probably be done at least 45 minutes into the session and definitely after –
and only if – the veteran has described some upsetting experience and also said how it
currently affects them. Then the listener says:
If I had experienced what you described, I am sure that, like you, I would be
having nightmares, flashbacks [or whatever they say is the effect on them now],
and I hope you know that that is a deeply human reaction; it is not a mental
illness, and you are not crazy.
So many vets have told me over the years that the best thing anyone has ever done for
them was to say something along the lines of the above. In fact, Dr. Thomas Burke, an
Army psychiatrist, has said that if vets are told they are not crazy, they often get better
rapidly.55 You might want to read that sentence again. Being told that one is crazy, is
having abnormal responses to a devastating situation or event, can cause torment, shame,
fear, and disorientation that lead others to call them crazy.
Furthermore, for a nontherapist listener to speak the second sentence given above can
reach the vet directly without the vet having to wonder, “Is the therapist saying this
because that’s what therapists are supposed to say?”
Wrapping Up
Nearly always, the veteran initiates the ending of the session, most often between about 1
½ and 2 ½ hours after they begin. Ideally, the listener waits for the veteran to do this. The
listener should set aside three hours in case that amount of time is needed, though it never
has been in our experience. But in the unlikely event that the veteran seems to intend to
continue beyond about 2 ½ hours, a listener who has a 2-hour time limit should say
something around the 2 ½-hour mark such as, “I want you to feel free to continue as you
wish but need to let you know that I have to stop after three hours, so that leaves about
55
S. Shane, A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict, New York Times, December 16,
2004).
31
half an hour more.” If you have to be somewhere at a certain time, then after about, say,
2 and 3/4 hours, you can let them know that we have to stop in about 15 minutes.
Immediately following the interview, and then again at least one month later, the
listener asks the veteran to go online to the bottom of the page at listen2veterans.org
and respond to the three very brief feedback questions there about what was
positive, negative, and/or surprising to them about the session. The listener is asked
to respond to the same questions about their own experience at the same site both
immediately after the session and one month later.
The purpose of these questions is to assess the veteran participants’ experiences of the
Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project and simply being listened to without judgment
as they tell their military experiences and coming home. We cannot emphasize strongly
enough how important it is for the listeners to make sure that both veterans and listeners
respond to these questions, so that we can compile information about the effects of the
sessions and try to track how many are being done.
Whether or not you stay in touch with the vet afterward is totally up to you, as in any
other human relationship. If you want to give them your contact information, that's fine.
If you don't feel comfortable, that's okay too.
Both veterans and listeners should feel free to email us at
welcomejohnnyandjanehome@gmail.com with any observations, questions, concerns, or
ideas.
We are happy to provide support and additional guidance to help people through the
process of doing a session themselves or of starting the Project in their area. Please let us
know how we can be of service by contacting us at
welcomejohnnyandjanehome@gmail.com
A backup person, usually a chaplain or counselor, should be available in case volunteers
have questions or concerns. In years of doing these sessions, that has not become
necessary, but some listeners will wish to have such a person available to them. If you do
not have such a person in your area, write to listen2veterans@gmail.com, and we will
connect you with someone or be available for you.
More Details about the Sessions’ Guidelines for Listeners
Dr. Collier talks about the value of loving another person—in the sense of love for
humanity—to help that person get through painful times. He believes it is essential to
think in those terms and not to limit our thinking to concepts like “empathy,” for it is the
broader and deeper feeling for people that he believes leads to recovery. This means, he
says, in what describes The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project, “I am not trying to
32
get anything from you, just here to affirm that you have value because you are also a
human being. It is done genuinely from the heart and makes the other person feel
heard.”56
It has been stunning to see how helpful the sessions are described as having been, even as
one-time events, in breaking down that divide between a vet and their wider community.
Going from no meaningful contact to having had one deeply meaningful one is a huge
leap...and then the vet knows forever that there is someone in their community who has
listened to them and understands). There is absolutely nothing to prevent a vet and
listener from meeting for more than one session, and some have done this, and it has been
fine.
Silence. The best thing that you can do is to make it safe for the vet to talk and hear
themselves talk. You do this by not speaking at all, except for the two sentences
described above. (This means that, among other things, you will not give advice, which,
although well-meant, can destroy the listener’s sense of being understood.)57 Most vets
will be quick to recognize a person who is focused on listening respectfully.
Remember that trust develops gradually as one feels understood.58
Some people who are considering volunteering to be listeners express the fear that they
will not be able to keep silent and/or to be nonjudgmental for a long period of time. In
fact, however, what actually tends to happen to them in the session is that they discover it
is extremely easy to do this. To begin with, the listener informs the veteran before the
session that the listener will not be speaking but will be focused totally on listening and
that the purpose of that is to give the veteran the chance to say whatever they wish.
Furthermore, many listeners have used the word “relieved” to describe how they felt once
the session was underway, because it was the simplicity of the instruction just to listen
relieved them of the usual burden in social gatherings of having to decide when to speak
and what to say. It can be helpful for a volunteer listener who remains worried before
doing a session to take even a few minutes to practice silent listening with a friend or
family member. A college instructor told me this story: She had students who were
interested in participating in The Welcome Johnny and Jane Home sessions as listeners
but who were certain they could not be silent for long. She divided the class into pairs
and told them one of each pair would speak for ten minutes, saying whatever they wished
about anything from their lives, and the other would simply listen. Before they began, the
speakers said they did not think they could speak extemporaneously for that long, and the
listeners said they were sure they could not stay silent. She urged them to give it a try and
told them to begin. At the end of the ten minutes, the speakers were reluctant to stop, and
the listeners were surprised by how easy it had been just to listen, because it was such an
unusual and positive experience to be instructed to do nothing more and to know that it
mattered.
Through your silence, you help the vet to feel listened to for a long time without feeling
56
David Collier, telephone interview, May 12, 2010.
Graham Berman, telephone interview, March 21, 2010.
58
Ibid.
57
33
rushed, and what the vet needs to say is the focus of the session. Feeling understood
helps people strengthen their sense of who they are, so it is good to let who they are
emerge in the way it tends to come from the speaker. Related to this, your commitment
to silent listening keeps you from trying to get the vet to speak in a whole story or even
in a coherent form. To push for that can overwhelm the speaker.
Be aware of the value of your silence. Silence from a supportive listener can allow
veterans to find out who they are now. Many have had to flee from or cut off feelings in
order to get through trauma, and your silence now allows them the chance to get back in
touch with those feelings without being pressed to do anything but speak, feel, and
wait. Try to be comfortable with long silences, even very long ones, and fill them with
respect for the veteran’s need for them and the awareness that your silence conveys that
you are there for them and do not need them to hurry to speak again. If initially you
become uneasy when the vet is silent, you might be tempted to jump in and speak just to
break the silence and reduce your own anxiety, but to do so can break the vet’s train of
thought or feeling and limit the directions and depth of the conversation. It can make the
listening session go where you want it to go rather than where the vet needs it to go. It
can convey the wrong messages about the importance of the vet’s perspective and needs
by making them seem secondary to yours, and it can put distance between you and the
vet. When it seems appropriate, you occasionally might simply nod briefly to indicate
that whatever they choose to do is fine, or you could raise your eyebrows in a way that
shows you wonder if they are all right.
Physical movement and expression. It's almost impossible or inhuman to sit stonefaced and
silent, and that is not what we encourage you to do. Although this has not happened so far,
the vet may need to take a break and resume the listening session in a few minutes or
even some days later. Do not feel that it is your failing or your fault if they cannot speak
straight through. Many people who have listened to vets have said that those times of
total withdrawal are the times they (the listeners) felt most powerfully what war or other
trauma does, the extent to which the servicemember experiences their feelings and to
which feelings are sometimes unsayable.
Dr. Collier recommends having at the ready the address of the nearest Vet Center or other
resources where people are used to working closely with vets in nonjudgmental ways in
case the vet is interested in that.
Physical touching. A word about physical contact is important. Because of the very
personal nature of much of what the vets may tell you—including about losses, the
nature of injuries to their bodies, feelings that overwhelm them—and the degree of their
suffering, you may feel inclined to take their hand, hug them, or make some other
physical contact in an attempt to comfort or reassure them. But when people are
suffering, it is a good idea to take your cue from them, letting them indicate whether
even a caring hand on a shoulder or forearm will be helpful or whether it might take
them out of their speaking, be misinterpreted in its intention, or be in a sense “too much
kindness” so that more emotion comes pouring out than they are ready for. If you can
think in terms of not making physical contact or at least deferring it until perhaps there is
34
a warm handshake after the session ends, you will probably discover how powerful and
comforting are simple, attentive silence and waiting. Usually, listening with all your
heart and focusing completely on the speaker, giving silent respect, is the best thing you
can offer. Pat Barker describes a vet who is ambivalent about speaking about his
experiences and the beneficial effect of his listener’s respectful attention:
And so he swayed to and fro: sometimes guarding his knowledge jealously, some- times
sharing it freely, sometimes spitting it out with a bitter, angry pride, sometimes almost
with gratitude to Rivers, whose obvious interest in what he was being told seemed to confirm
its value [my italics].59
Another reason to refrain from physically touching a veteran during the session at a time
of greatly intensified feeling is to avoid interfering with their focusing on what they want,
so for much the same reason that you don't speak, you don't initiate physical contact.
Again, you just listen.
Patience. Although military training and war experiences of course do not eliminate
vets’ capacities to feel love, compassion, fear, grief, or guilt, for many, they may
dramatically reduce the capacity to recognize such feelings in themselves or to allow
others to see them. For this reason, it is especially important, when a vet is having any
of these feelings or seeming to struggle against having them, for the listener to wait
patiently and calmly and to watch for chances to affirm their validity and importance.
Playwright Joshua Casteel has said that vets have to
[find] words to explain [their] experiences…but [they] can’t have those words imposed
on [them]. They have to be self-generated, and I think that means more than anything a
willingness to be quiet until they come and friends who are willing to stay with [them]
but allow [them] to be quiet so they [the words] come on their own.60
Some vets begin talking right away. Of course, some difficulties in b e gi n ni n g may
concern trust, so the vet may start by speaking of relatively easy, neutral subjects. More
difficult material may emerge only after such a preliminary stage is set.
If vets have worries about opening up about war, it may be because they fear appearing
too weak or having been too violent, because they have done things they consider
shameful, because they have never been able to resolve moral conflicts or crises of
meaning, because they believe that you will not understand or will not respect them, or
because they are reluctant to burden or upset you. Just providing a chance for vets to
speak their fears about opening up can help take away some of their force and sting.
But it may take time for the vet to feel ready to talk very much. Be prepared to wait
silently and respectfully and to listen for a long time. Do not feel that you are
failing to do the right thing if they do not open up immediately or even in the medium
term.
59
P. Barker, The Ghost Road .New York: Plume, 1995, p. 235.
Aaron Glantz, The War Comes Home: Washington’s Battle against America’s Veterans, Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2009, pp.14-15.
60
35
Here is another reason the listener’s silence is essential: The speaker cannot possibly
convey to you all of the relevant details and context, and it may take you a long time to
understand how they have handled and labeled these feelings since their time at war; so
if you were to voice a guess about those feelings, you would run a big risk of getting it
wrong. It is not that it would always be disastrous to guess wrong, but the focus should
be on listening rather than jumping in to shape the way the interaction goes or trying to
translate the vet’s language or experience into your own. Best to leave that to the vet.
Concern about saying the wrong thing. Some prospective listeners have expressed
concerns that they will say the wrong thing in a session. You won't say the wrong thing,
because you won't speak. It's amazing to see how people who are doing the listening were
so used to feeling that they must always be ready to say something, find it liberating to
take seriously the instruction that “You are there just to listen, and listening takes
everything you've got.” It is easy if you listen as we say with 100% of your attention and
with your whole heart, and you keeping in mind that the reason you're doing that is
because that is how you give the veteran the gift of this time and space.
Survivor guilt and other strong feelings. It is important for listeners to be aware that
they may especially be tempted to speak — but when they absolutely must not — if the
veteran reports having survivor guilt. Please do not say to a vet, “You shouldn’t feel
guilty that they died, and you lived, because you didn’t make that happen! And look at
all you’ve got to live for!” If knowing it was not their fault has not yet taken away their
guilt, your telling them that will not help and can make them feel you do not understand
or care how devastated they feel. Also, sometimes expressing grief about the deaths of
treasured friends in the form of guilt is a way of introducing some sense of control (even
though the reality of how they died may not warrant it) over losses about which their
powerlessness feels unbearable. And a vet who has not yet found reasons to go on living
after loss will not find those reasons from hearing us say they have much to live for. For
a listener to say to a vet that they have much to live for runs the risk again of making
them feel we do not understand. For those still swamped by survivor guilt or a sense
that life is meaningless, the best that we can do at this moment is through our
compassionate, respectful silence to make it a bit easier for them to grieve and thereby
have at least a chance to move partly through and beyond it over the longer term. Grief,
after all, cannot be sidestepped but must be lived through and worked through. What
helps people grieve is knowing that one of two things is true: (1) “I have enough inner
resources to go into the sorrow and come out at the other end,” or (2) “I have enough
support from one or more other people that I feel I can go into the sorrow and come out
at the other end.” We can help provide that second condition by allowing them to share
their grief.
What applies to grief applies in general to other strong feelings the vet has, in that fear,
rage, alienation, and other emotions are normal responses to harsh realities of one sort or
another, and, as with grief, it may take substantial time for a person to regain some
footing by dealing with these feelings. The process varies among individuals but is likely
to be helped along when we can reduce vets’ isolation and avoid pathologizing labels
36
and other vehicles of avoidance and distancing.
Veterans have lived through much intense feeling, and when they have come back, part
of what isolates them is that too many other people run from the intensity of their pain.
Breaking down that isolation is part of what the Welcome Johnny and Jane Home Project
is about. Just being with them as they talk about or relive their pain, silently bearing
witness, not running from their anguish and not telling them that they should be over it by
now is helpful to them. Far and away the most crucial and powerful thing the listener can
do is just continue to be fully present, 100% attentive, and open with your whole heart to
what the speaker is saying, or what they're feeling if they're not speaking right then. This
is an eloquent sharing of the burden of their pain. To some veterans, it means a great deal.
To some, it means everything.
A vet may tell you of having unknowingly and under orders shot a civilian, then
accuses you of thinking it was intentional. Vets who felt betrayed by their government or
the military during their service or by loved ones since coming home may expect you to
betray them by failing to understand what they are saying, by failing to care, by thinking
ill of them, by mocking or judging or doubting them, by being fed up with listening to
them. Your continued, calm, caring presence will help as much as anything to give them
chance to learn that you are not betraying them in any of these ways. Keep in mind Dr.
Collier’s confident statement about the importance to vets of “anybody who has a
sincere heart and wants to be helpful to someone.”61
If the listener feels upset. Some listeners ask what they should do if they feel
uncomfortable, sad, or otherwise upset by the things they hear during the sessions. Don't
run from those feelings. Notice them, but keep your focus on this: “My job here is to
listen.” And as for those who worry that they might be moved to tears, depending on
what you hear, that is probably a natural reaction. It can be a part of sharing the veteran's
burden, which they may have carried for a long time all alone. There is nothing wrong
with having them see tears come to your eyes. Just focus on the fact that the purpose of
the session is, through your respectful silence, to keep the way clear for the veteran to
speak as they wish and for you to hear them. Even if you cry, if you concentrate on
silently receiving what the veteran says, it will be clear to the veteran that your listening
is the main priority even if you're crying. If the veteran offers to stop speaking, try
smiling and shaking your head, to indicate that you want them to continue. Although
anything might happen, I have not known a listener up to this point to break down
completely and be unable to stop weeping during the session. Often, what you hear will
feel beyond tears.
Some of what a vet tells or shows you may move you deepl y. Extreme conditions
cause intense feelings, and that should be cause for neither surprise nor shame. Keep in
mind that you are there to clear the path for the veteran to continue to say what they
wish, not for them to take care of you. It can be important to the vet to see that you are
61
David Collier, telephone conversation, April 13, 2010.
37
not a stone wall, that their words affect you.
When the veteran gets upset. If the veteran starts to cry, of course you let them cry.
Realize that this is probably helpful for them and that they are able to do that because
you've made them feel safe.
Again, be aware of the power that your respectful silence, your clear willingness to go on
listening, and the absence of expressions of your disapproval or shock will have to
convey the important messages to the vet. This approach is also helpful in counteracting
the part of military training that can make servicemembers feel weak and overly
dependent for needing or wanting to talk and for needing human connection. In fact, even
expressing through speech what you consider to be approval can be counterproductive,
because that can convey the message that you consider yourself in a position to judge the
vet—and if you can judge something to be positive, you can raise the vet’s concern that
you might judge something else to be negative. The better course is simply to keep
listening and pay respectful attention, so that vets can find their own way.
Be aware that it if a veteran is currently anguished, that may not be solely due to some
military-related trauma but rather the interplay with other factors such as problems in
primary relationships (for instance, a spouse’s failure to listen in a caring way), financial
strain, and physical health problems.62 With regard to problems with life partners,
emotions underpinning many fights between returned veterans and their spouses are
usually the needs for more love and reassurance of being loved, and that can be the case
for both partners.63 Many nonveteran spouses are unable to provide this, either because
of their own personal limitations or because they are already having to bear extra
burdens, including dealing with children who are thrown by the other parent’s absence
and return, caring for the physical injuries of the veteran, supporting the family
financially while the vet struggles to find a job. Some partners of male veterans struggle
with trying to figure out how to make the vet feel “like a man” even though he may be
injured, deeply distressed, or unemployed. For partners of female veterans, one
challenge is trying to help the vet avoid feeling guilty or ashamed if she is not able to do
as much “womanly” nurturing of others as she feels she should do. Although this is not,
strictly speaking, within the topic of this book, it could only be helpful to vets’ loved
ones— and thus probably to vets—for communities to focus on creating a supportive
network on a massive scale for those who are vets’ spouses, friends, and helpers, as is
done for caregivers to the ill, the old, or partners of addicts.) And Welcome Johnny and
Jane Home Project listening sessions can certainly be done with a loved one of a veteran
as well as with a veteran – that is, with the loved one meeting alone with and doing the
speaking to a nonveteran.
If the veteran mentions suicide. It is common for people who have suffered to talk
Satel, S. Measuring the Psychic Pain of War”; K. Helliker, “You Might As Well Face It: You’re
Addicted to Success,” Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2009,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123423234983566171.html
63
L. Kaufman, “After War, Love Can Be a Battlefield,” New York Times (Sunday Styles section), April
6, 2008, 1.
62
38
about feeling suicidal, but most do not actually kill themselves. But of course it is
worrying to be a listener who hears a veteran talk about suicidal feelings. If this happens,
first of all, realize that it is a very good thing that they feel they can say that to you.
Second, a huge risk factor for actually committing suicide is isolation, and the very act
of having the listening session goes either a little or a long way toward reducing that
isolation. In fact, we have heard from veterans that having the listening session was at
least one major factor in their no longer feeling suicidal. Third, many people who have
suicidal thoughts never tell anyone else they are having them, because they are so afraid
that instead of the listener hearing that statement as a way of saying, "I am suffering,"
the listener will leap in and try to order them not to kill themselves, say they must be
mentally ill for having such thoughts, or fall apart as though it is just too awful that the
speaker feels despair. So respectful listening is often a welcome surprise to the person
who voices such feelings. Fourth, as in any setting, the listener needs to know that
someone who is intensely determined to kill themselves is not likely to be stopped by
someone trying to prevent them, and in fact those people at greatest risk are often very
likely to deny that they are in imminent danger of killing themselves; thus, the listener
should not expect themselves somehow be able to know what is really going on and be
able to stop it, no matter what. Finally, after the session ends, the listener is free to ask if
the veteran considers themselves to be currently at risk, and if the answer is "yes," you
may give them information about a specific place to call.
I do not suggest giving out the number of just any entity that is described as a suicide
hotline or crisis line. Let me explain why, and then I will suggest a couple of lines that
appear to be good ones to call. The procedures for many such lines consist primarily of
rapidly sending the caller to a mental hospital or emergency room, where they are
extremely likely to be given a psychiatric label and put on one or more psychiatric drugs.
Thoughts of suicide are far more common than some people realize and should not
automatically be considered evidence that a person is mentally ill. Beyond that, giving
someone a psychiatric diagnosis does not help them get the right kind of help and in fact
carries a huge array of risks of harm.64 Furthermore, psychiatric drugs can actually
increase the risk of suicide.65 Anyone who is suffering deserves help but also deserves to
be informed about the whole range of approaches that can be helpful, rather than
automatically being sent down the narrow path of “diagnosis, drugs, and, often,
hospitalization.” Often, the most important thing that anyone can do when answering a
call from someone who is talking about suicide is to listen and connect with them. This is
not to say that the people who answer calls on these hotlines should not find a way to
ensure the safety someone in imminent danger but rather that too often, the very mention
of suicidal thoughts leads too rapidly to hospitalization and drugging. Good crisis lines
train their responders to judge what is needed rather than providing a uniform, knee-jerk
response.
A couple of years ago, I met with the directors of the suicide prevention program of one
of the branches of the military. They informed me that their two major approaches were
Caplan, P.J. They Say You’re Crazy: How the World’s Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who’s
Normal. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995..
65
Whitaker, 2010.
64
39
(1) to try to convey the message that asking for help is a measure of strength, not
weakness, and (2) to run a suicide hotline. The first approach is certainly worthwhile, but
the military intensively trains servicemembers to be tough, so that that first approach
might work with some but does not work with others. I asked the directors what happens
when someone calls their hotline, and they said they are told to get “mental health
services.” Those are nearly always the labeling, drugging, and often the hospitalization
referred to above.
When revising this chapter, I investigated many high-profile hotlines and crisis lines and
some that are not well-known. I want to describe the experiences I had when calling to
check them out. One of the best-known services, the one most often mentioned by
colleagues whom I asked for recommendations, has toll-free numbers and several
numbers with various local area codes that turn up in online searches. Over a period of
several hours one evening, dialing one of those local numbers constantly elicited nothing
but a busy signal. Over those same hours, another of the local numbers in a different
location constantly elicited an automated message instructing the caller to dial 911 if it
was an emergency and otherwise to call back. A third local number in still another state
also rang busy for hours, but a man finally answered. I told him that I was revising this
chapter and was looking for a number that people considering suicide could call, and I
asked him what they do for such callers. I said I hoped to find a line where people would
listen, be supportive, and try to maintain a meaningful and helpful connection with the
caller. He replied that what they do is to send people to get "mental health care." I asked
whether they have been trained at least to offer callers information about alternative,
nonpathologizing, low-risk approaches that have been shown to be helpful -- such as
physical exercise, meditation, volunteer work, involvement in the arts, other kinds of
human connection, and having a service animal66 -- he said that they have not and that he
himself does not suggest them.
When I called the main toll-free number for that same crisis line group, the automated
answering message immediately gave an option to press 2 if you are a veteran. I pressed
2, and a man answered right away. I told him why I was calling with regard to this
chapter. I also told him about a dear friend who is a veteran and who takes three
psychiatric drugs and has attempted suicide several times. I said I wondered what the
people answering their line would say if I persuaded him to phone them. He told me that
he would tell him to go straight to the VA. I expressed dismay, saying that it is well
known that at the VA, veterans are often put on psychiatric drugs, even ranging from
several to a huge number at once, and that even some of the higher-ups in the system
have expressed alarm about the ways the drugs so often lead to deaths.67 I got nowhere.
Around the United States and in other countries people who have themselves been
through difficult times and who do not rush to recommend psychiatric diagnosis, drugs,
66
See http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL51E99E866B9D735E for 28 different nonpathologizing,
low-risk approaches, each described in a five-minute video with contact information for each speaker.
These come from the Harvard Kennedy School website for the “A Better Welcome Home” conference held
at the HKS’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance in November, 2011.
67
See also Whitaker, 2010.
40
and hospitalization are creating “warm lines” for people who are having suicidal thoughts
or other kinds of upset. Many of these lines have small budgets and can only provide
people to respond a few hours a day, usually in the evening, but from what I learned by
contacting some, they are staffed by compassionate people who respond in helpful ways.
These include one in the western part of the U.S. and one in the eastern time zone. But
either of these can be called from anywhere. A warmline based in New Mexico is at
866-425-7030, and one based in New Hampshire is called Stepping Stone Warmline and
is at 603-543-1388.
When providing these numbers to the veteran, it is important to be conscious that
veterans are more likely than non-veterans to avoid places that pathologize them. If they
believe they are being provided a number for a place that is likely to pathologize them as
“crazy” or “mentally ill” they may be unlikely to call. When providing the number, it is
important not to overreact to their having mentioned thoughts of suicide. A simple and
kind, “Here are some numbers for you if you continue to have thoughts about suicide.
They are staffed by warm and caring people who will not rush to recommend psychiatric
care, diagnosis, or hospitalization. I am providing them only as a potential resource
should you decide you would like someone to speak to about these feelings.”
Concerns about violence. The media are filled with stories of veterans being violent
and I know that this may be a listener’s worst fear, and it's true that the military trains
people to attack and kill, so it's understandable to wonder about it. But I can tell you that
we've never had a veteran become violent in one of these sessions, although that doesn't
mean it won't ever happen. I suspect that it hasn't happened so far partly because the
listener does not speak, and partly because this is such a safe and quiet setting. The
listener speaks only two sentences in all, and these are not about war so the speaker has a
huge amount of control over what to say and when to say it and when to be silent. The
veteran isn't in a position in which the other person will say something that brings up a
bad memory, and you're in a quiet room with no distractions, no passersby, not much
like likelihood of sudden loud noises. I think the listener's silence makes them feel safer.
Beyond that, as several people have said when asked this question, people all over the
globe have all through history listened to the stories of those who've returned from war
and it's poignant that even with people who've not been to war, in our society we are
often so frightened of each other. Of course, as you would in any kind of situation with
anyone, if you feel you are in real danger — and again, this has not yet happened in our
sessions, but anything is possible anywhere — you should get away or get help.
Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New
York, has described the experience common to many vets of feeling they are both
perpetrators and victims of violence in different ways.68 Most people before going to
war are decent folk with no experience of killing, maiming, or being killed or maimed,
not to mention with the kinds of confusions about who is right and who is wrong that
characterize current wars in so many ways. Therefore, it is not surprising for vets to be
J. Dao, “Study Suggests Discussion of Killing to Help Veterans Cope with the Stress of War,” New
York Times, February 14, 2010, 21.
68
41
reeling from both having killed other human beings and having been in danger of being
killed. They may also be reeling from the strange combination of feelings of tremendous
power, given that they had actual life-or-death power, and feelings of utter helplessness
when they were the ones under attack. This is an arena in which expectations about
masculinity can exacerbate the confusion. After all, if men are expected to relish their
power, then what is a vet to do if he is shaken by some of the consequences of his power?
And how is a woman who has been in this kind of situation to manage the expectations in
society for women never to be even aggressive, never mind to commit violence? The
impossibility in war of avoiding situations in which one is powerless and helpless may
be little comfort to those men who believe that a real man would have remained
completely unafraid. Women vets, depending on the extent to which traditional
expectations about femininity have shaped them, may have more complicated feelings
about their power but have less trouble dealing with powerlessness and helplessness
because these are consistent with traditional feminine roles. However, women in the
military are under tremendous pressure to prove that they are no different from
traditional men. Naturally, however, the reactions of many women and many men are too
complex and nuanced to be captured by the above description.
The importance of pacing. Be aware that more will be going through the veterans’
minds than they can possibly convey to you. Imagine, for instance: A vet is trying to tell
you about their vehicle hitting an IED. The vet cannot portray in words in as little
time as it took to hit that IED the perceptions of all five senses and the emotions that
went with them at that moment. Furthermore, because trauma is fragmenting, it can be
hard for the teller to speak in a way that feels coherent and that conveys the full horror of
the experience. So be prepared for the vet to proceed slowly. Sometimes it is in silences
that the most important material will come to the speaker’s mind or that the speaker will
gather strength to voice what has been unspoken. The importance of silence was
referred to earlier, but it is worth stressing here: Do not worry about long silences
being uncomfortable. This could not be more different from a cocktail party, since there
is no need to keep up the pace and fill in gaps in conversation. Silences can be
comfortable, indeed can be supportive and even healing, when they are filled with the
listener’s careful attention to what the vet needs to do at the time.
Much of this relates to what Dr. Collier describes as the importance of the concept of
pacing.69 He says, “If people are going to talk about things that are difficult or
traumatic, there is a tendency to think they will open up like you throw up,” that
everything will suddenly come pouring out. But, he says, even if that happens, it may not
be a good thing. It may not change anything except that “you’ve gotten it out of your
system at that moment.” Thus, instead of wondering whether you ought to be doing
anything to encourage the vet to produce an entire story about a terrible experience at
once, know that your respectful silence can help allow the speaker to tell you bits at a
time. Many veterans with whom I have spoken have described the importance of pacing
in the way they speak. Recall Michelle Dillow, whose story about her friend’s death
from an IED appeared in chapter 2. The first time we spoke, she had told me that no one
69
David Collier, telephone conversation, April 13, 2010.
42
in the Army with her in Iraq showed or spoke about their grief about the death from an
IED of a soldier they called “the big guy,” whom they all had loved. Not until our fourth
connection, two years after the first one, did she disclose that in all the times she had
told anyone about “the big guy”, she had never until very recently been able to tell the
most nightmarish fact about his death: The IED had blown his body in half. She had
never forgotten that fact but had been unable to report it until she felt generally stronger
and more secure about the directions her life was going. So if you feel that the vet to
whom you are listening may not be telling you everything, do not regard this as your
failure but rather as just what happens when people begin to speak about pain and grief.
When the speaker is clearly upset, it can be from various feelings the memories bring
back, it can be from frustration about the fragmented nature of the memories or the
difficulty the speaker has in conveying them to the listener, or it can be from being
flooded and overwhelmed as trauma survivors often become when trying to focus on
difficult material. Some vets may become totally silent and go deeply into themselves, so
that you may feel they have become unreachable. At that point, the listener can change
position a bit or lean forward as a way gently to bring the present time and place back to the
vet’s attention.
When the vet’s speech comes in fragments, the very consistency of your being there as a
listener can help reduce the fragmenting. You become a person whose mind and heart
contain the bits of the trauma, and your presence and silent listening can provide some
unity, some continuity related to the trauma. Since you were not the one who was
traumatized, even though some fragments may be hard for you to put together with
others, hard even for you to register or imagine experiencing completely, the fact that you
listen to all of the fragments helps the veteran begin to feel less fragmented. As the vet begins to
speak what has been unsayable, just listen, be with the person one moment at a time.
That is the beginning. The sharing of the fragments breaks the horrible isolation that
plagues so many vets, the sense of being locked in a room alone with what has till now
been unspeakable. Realize that it may take a long time for the vet to be able to speak
about the fragments until they begin to form a coherent narrative, and that might not
happen during your session, but that is all right.
To speak about trauma can be terrifying for the speaker, because it makes it real, makes
it harder to go back to suppressing or distancing oneself from one’s feelings. As with
going into feelings of grief, talking about trauma can mean needing to find the strength
to face the reality. There is the fear of not being able to turn off intensely negative
feelings once one starts to let them come out. That the listener does not fall apart will
help, as writing can: Vets can experience in the continuity and wholeness of the listener
something beyond the assault from their memories and the powerlessness and
loneliness that they have often felt.
The combination of the vet speaking in fragments and using words and phrases whose
meaning you do not know—military terms, special languages of particular wars—may
make it impossible for you to grasp every single detail of their experiences. Do not
worry about this, and do continue to listen with full attention. Expect to feel some
43
fragmentation within yourself as in your mind you register a fact here, an intense feeling
there, the shock of the losses or moral crises the speaker is describing to you, as you try
to keep hold of or pull together the various details the vet tells you. But understand
that it will come together bit by bit for you as you cognitively and emotionally integrate
the facts and feelings. In fact, as you listen, chances are the vet will become gradually
able to do some of this integration. In the words of Tony Stanton, “You just can’t
organize yourself without a connection to another human being.”70 Your silence helps
you resist the temptation to rush either the speaker or yourself to put the bits together;
the human mind and heart were not made for this formlessness, this powerlessness, so
it takes time for the trauma’s shape and meaning to become clearer. But above all, have
faith that your listening – whether or not you in your own mind or the vet in speaking
seems able to any extent to pull the fragments together — is likely to be helpful.
You may never be exactly who you were before, in ways that to some degree parallel the
ways that vets’ experiences have altered them. Part of the human condition is to be
changed by what we hear, especially when we have borne witness to someone's pain and
anguish. But also, listeners feel gratitude because of the veteran’s honesty and integrity.
They feel that they have been through something very special, so the upsetting things
they have heard are balanced somewhat by the most wonderful, positive feelings. If you
want to talk after a session with someone who is experienced with this work, we will be
glad to do that. It may be someone in your area, but you can also contact me any time
through the listen2veterans.org website. Remember, too, this perspective: Know that you
have done the great service of bearing witness, of sharing some of the pain, and that the
veteran knows that and is very likely to be grateful.
You will glimpse a world that you have never imagined. You will likely learn that in
ways that never entered your mind, the world is not safe; you will wonder why you
didn’t know, and you will find it painful now to know. Like anyone who loses their innocence,
in a way you may wish you had gone on not knowing. Knowing that what the vet who sits
before you is telling you is what actually happened to them will almost certainly shake
you more than learning about that world in any other way, such as by watching a film.
What can help after the session ends is first, finding someone you can trust, someone
you can expect to be supportive, and telling them what is happening to you. In order to
protect the confidentiality you promised the vet, you do not disclose the vet’s name or
where the vet served or any specifics that are not necessary to convey what you are
finding hard to deal with (and it is hard to think of an instance when such specifics
would be necessary). Also, remind yourself of why you are doing this work with vets
and why it matters to you and to the wider world (maybe review chapters 1, 2, and 7, as
well as this one). Work with only one vet at a time, then take a break for whatever time you
need before contacting the next one if you plan to listen to another. And make sure that
you have sources of enjoyment and strength in your own life.
The Two Possible Exceptions to Your Silence
70
Quoted by R. Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic: Magic Bullets, Psychiatric Drugs, and the
Astonishing Rise of Mental Illness in America, New York: Crown, 2010, p.349.
44
Other than the two prescribed sentences (described above) that the listener is definitely
supposed to speak, there are two situations in which you might consider speaking, as long
as you do so extremely briefly.
(1) If the veteran expresses intense or repeated worry about upsetting the listener. If a
vet seems extremely worried and asks you what you think about their experiences or if
they are upsetting you, say very briefly, “I am here to listen and to concentrate totally on
you, and that is the main thing.” If they say something like, “I don’t want to tell you the
worst things that happened to me, because I don’t want to hurt you,” you may say, “You
will not damage me. You lived through it, and I want to know and understand.”
And know in your heart that hearing another person’s experiences can, instead of
breaking us, make us stronger because of the connection we form with them and the
greater understanding of a part of life we have not known about before.
(2) If the veteran has a flashback or is triggered: “You may have heard the word
"triggering" used with regard to veterans, although it is applied to others as well. It is
sometimes used as though it means something bizarre and dangerous that it must be
prevented or stopped at all costs, but the word can refer to anything from feeling
somewhat upset to deeply upset to having a full-blown flashback, feeling as though you
are reliving a terrible event. And consider this: Our society is so psychiatrized, so
accustomed to putting a psychiatric and distancing interpretation on everything, that
many people, including even some therapists, mistakenly believe that when another
person is deeply upset that there is some technical or magical thing to do that will fix it.
However, the listener need not panic and should understand these as common effects of
trauma, effects that can result from a reminder of the traumatic events. Sometimes, in
the middle of speaking, a vet’s voice suddenly becomes almost unrecognizably rough,
the eyes taking on what is sometimes called the thousand-yard stare. Vets who were
traumatized may have flashbacks, when they feel that the awful events are actually
happening at the moment, reflected in sudden changes of voice, facial expression, or
posture. Often traumatized vets try to keep troublesome feelings from becoming
overwhelming by going emotionally numb, detaching feelings from their memories, or
otherwise managing to block out the trauma. Sometimes, their blocking out goes on
for decades. During a listening session, they may have a flashback or pull away from
connection with you, shut down emotionally, go numb. They may stop speaking, look
away from you, and be silent for a long, long time. Those are times when vets will
especially need quiet, patience, and respect. Understand that these states are ways that
people cope with what they feel they cannot bear, and you are there in part to bear
witness and to make sure that they know they are not alone in their suffering.
A troubling phenomenon has arisen, and that is “triggering” has become a scare word, as
though it is disastrous and unlike any other human experience, and as though there is
nothing that a nontherapist or even a therapist can do about it. This often has kept
nonveterans away from veterans. In fact, what is happening at those times is familiar to
vets and nonvets who have had traumatizing or even intensely upsetting experiences and
who are suddenly reminded of them. At those times, they may feel intense fear or
45
confusion or grief. When this happens without their awareness at the moment that this is
a memory, it is called a flashback. Too often, people mistakenly believe that a triggering,
a flashback, or the thousand-yard stare, or distancing is cause for panic, for rushing into
action.
Just having such feelings in the presence of a caring, respectful listener can help vets
find ways at least to reduce their effects. One vet told me that children spraying each
other with water from a hose triggered his traumatic memory of the spray of tracer
rounds from machine guns. When he sees children at play with a hose, he says, “I don’t
participate. I don’t squirt them with the hose, and it is time then to go inside or find
something or somewhere to go.” Psychiatrist Graham Berman observes that people who
are suffering, given adequate support and compassion, are more likely to come up with
these sorts of solutions than are other people to do it effectively for them.71
Their long silence is a time during which you can wait patiently, but while continuing
to keep some physical distance from the vet, you might consider asking gently,
“How can I help?”
71
Graham Berman, telephone conversation, March 21, 2010.
46
Summary of general guidelines
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Except for the two prescribed sentences, just listen, and bring respect and love of humanity to
the listening session.
Do not ask questions.
Do not give advice.
Do not judge or challenge.
Do not even speak in order to offer what you believe to be a compliment.
Trust the power of pacing: Do not rush the vet even through the timing of your nods or
smiles.
Allow them to come to trust you gradually.
Trust the power of silence.
Trust the power of your genuine respect and compassion to come through.
Assume that in everyone there is some drive toward emotional health.
Be open to hearing about factors other than the war that upset the vet.
Listen for signs that the vet feels like both victim and perpetrator of violence.
Listen for signs of positive, helpful steps the vet took toward others during the war.
Listen for indications the vet could use help with practical matters. If you wish, you can
offer help after the listening session ends and after you and the veteran have filled out the
online feedback form.
Be prepared to take breaks during the session if the vet suggests doing so.
Be patient with yourself if you have trouble grasping information or dealing with
emotions.
Use physical contact not at all or exceedingly sparingly.
If you wish, after the listening session ends and you and the veteran have filled out the
online feedback form, raise the possibility for them to consider that they feel something
other than or in addition to guilt, such as shame or fear.
Opening Hearts
Virtually every listener in The Welcome Johnny and Jane Project has said that the
listening was transformative for them in powerfully positive ways. In the military, the
forward observer goes far ahead of the others to locate the enemy, and I have come to
think of the veterans who speak in our sessions as the forward observers for the rest of
us. Many veterans, having confronted matters of life and death and moral anguish, are
thus the forward observers of these matters for that vast majority of us who have not
confronted them in these ways. The veterans’ generous speaking to us of their
experiences is moving and inspiring. We learn from them. We are moved by them.
Listening, we connect with human beings in a profound way that is today too rare.
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Personally, I have found that – regardless of the veteran’s politics and beliefs and
whether or not they are similar to mine – time and again I am struck by their sincerity
and integrity, as well as the courage they show in speaking to me. For listeners, these
aspects of the experience vastly outweigh the others.
Know, however, that once a person who has been at war describes to you having seen
someone’s head blown off or having watched a friend’s body catch fire, these images
will never leave you. The same is true if the vet describes having been sexually
assaulted or otherwise been a victim of violence or humiliation. Before you contact a
vet and ask to hear them speak, take many deep breaths, and realize that once you start
to listen, you will lose whatever innocence you may have, and your life will never be the
same. I remember driving down a desert road in the sun one day and driving down the
same road the next day—the difference being that on the first, I did not know how
innocent I was, and by the second I did, because I had listened to a veteran. The
difference has brought a sadness that at first seemed hard to bear, and I have asked
myself hundreds of times how I could have known in some general way about war for
sixty-two years but never come close to what those who have been through it have
endured. Yet I know how blessed I am not to know with the immediacy with which they
know. The change in what the listener knows does matter. It reminded me that the poet
Susan Griffin wrote that when she gave birth to a daughter, “my heart opened to myself
and all the suffering of women seemed unreasonable to me.”72 In a somewhat similar
way, the vets who opened their lives and hearts to me have given me the gift of
knowing how much more suffering the world holds than I had ever imagined and how
important it is to try to make the suffering stop.
The word that has repeatedly come to my mind when listening to vets’ experiences is
sacred. Definitions of sacred include words and phrases such as “regarded with great
respect,” “reverently dedicated to some person [or] purpose,” “secured against
violation,” and “properly immune from violence, interference, etc.”73 The intensity of
the original experience the speaker is recounting and of the pain that inhabits the vet
while remembering and describing that experience are part of what make the telling and
listening sacred. So, too, does the frequent combination of the tenderness, vulnerability,
and humanity that underlies the pain and the strengths that have enabled the sufferer to
come this far. And the privacy of many vets’ experiences, their reluctance to tell them
for fear of being thought weak, cruel, or crazy, or for fear of burdening others, makes
their telling all the more sacred when they do begin to speak. Their speaking can also
be private in the sense that the traumatic memories can feel impossible to describe fully,
in part because most of their listeners will not have been there and do not know how it
looked, sounded, smelled, felt, and tasted. This makes the relating of one’s experiences
risky, because there is no way to know how much the listener will be able to grasp and
appreciate. I often feel awe as vets talk, and I want the time of the telling to be
protected from interference, the slightest suggestion of disrespect or distraction, and
certainly the infliction of further pain.
72
73
S. Griffin, “On Wanting to Be the Mother I Wanted,” Ms., January 1977, 100.
See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sacred.
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A Note about the Military and the VA
For the military and the VA, implementing the kinds of suggestions in this chapter would
require changing their own cultures (a tough job, admittedly) to incorporate a more
honest acknowledgment of the emotional effects of war and a wider repertoire of
responses—beyond drugs, pathologizing, and shaming—to those who are suffering.
The military and the VA stand to gain much from such an approach. They would, for
instance, avoid the rage directed against them for failing to listen, failing to understand
the impossible positions in which they put soldiers and vets by setting superhuman
standards and ignoring soldiers’ and vets’ needs. In addition to asking to hear soldiers’
and veterans’, the recommendations for therapists both in and out of the military would
include depathologizing, at least a more judicious use of psychotropic drugs, individual
therapists’ recognition of the limits of what they can do, and encouragement of therapists
to incorporate a more community-based approach to helping vets.
A Note about Resources for Further Reading, Viewing, and Assistance
The original Chapter 6 in When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home included a very
partial list of resources. Rather than delay the distribution and posting of this chapter
now, it will be updated over the next couple of months and added to the chapter at
listen2veterans.org
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