About Me

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I'm the author of four books: Warrior SOS, The Work of Death, Together Forever, and Leaders Wanted. I'm in the doc film Please Remove Your Shoes. I've blogged for The Washington Times, and I write for Guns.com. I've worked for the high-profile U.S.-led Roadmap to Mideast Peace in Israel and Palestine. I've also worked as a SWAT team leader, a Federal Air Marshal and a sole-source training instructor on a classified contract with a U.S. government customer. My master's degree is in Military Studies and terrorism. I'm a former noncommissioned and commissioned Army officer, with service in Iraq. I've been Scuba diving and skydiving; I have trained with members of the U.S. Olympic Ski Team, and I'm an FBI-trained crisis negotiator. My interests lie in helping others and in strengthening America through inspiring moral courage, government fiscal responsibility and accountability, and maintaining principles that have made--and will continue to make--the United States of America a blessed and prosperous country. I'm a father of six, a husband, and a police officer. I reside in Utah, and I'm a Mormon. See also https://jeffreydenning.wordpress.com.

November 25, 2014

Nez Perce Elder's thoughts on PTSD


Thanks to Tom Spooner and ElderHeart.org for sharing this. 

Below are the thoughts of Nez Perce Elder on PTSD: 

They said I would be changed in my body. I would move through the physical world in a different manner. I would hold myself in a different posture. I would have pains where there was no blood. I would react to sights, sounds, movements and touch in a crazy way, as though I were back in the war.

They said I would be wounded in my thoughts. I would forget how to trust and think that others were trying to harm me. I would see dangers in the kindness and concern of my relatives and others. Most of all, I would not be able to think in a reasonable manner, and it would seem that everyone else was crazy. They told me that it would appear to me that I was alone and lost even in the midst of the people, that there was no one else like me.

They warned me that it would be as though my emotions were locked up, and that I would be cold in my heart and not remember the ways of caring for others. While I might give soft meat or blankets to the elders or food to the children, I would be unable to feel the goodness of these actions. I would do these things out of habit and not from caring. They predicted that I would be ruled by dark anger and that I might do harm to others without plan or intention.

They knew that my spirit would be wounded.  They said I would be lonely and that I would find no comfort in family, friends, elders or spirits.  I would be cut off from both beauty and pain.  My dreams and visions would be dark and frightening.  My days and nights would be filled with searching and not finding.  I would be unable to find the connections between myself and the rest of creation.  I would look forward to an early death.  And, I would need cleansing and healing in all these things. 

Poem delivered at Gettysburg in 1869

Her once war-wasted arm,
Put forth to shield a sister land from harm,
Ere the last blood on her own blade had dried,
Shall still be stretched to succor and to guide,
Beyond our borers, answering each need,
With counsel and with deed ---
Along our Easter and our Western wave,
Still strong to smite, still beautiful to save.

-- American poet, Bayard Taylor

The link to my Guns.com posts

http://www.guns.com/author/jd/