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I realized that what I was feeling wasn't sadness that my friend died. It was guilt.

Laurent G. Taillefer II (US Army, 2003 - 2006) talks about what PTSD treatment was like.

Transcript

One example of my homework assignments

making a breakthrough for me was I realized I was sad

when I thought about my old friend.

My old friend's name was Karl Soto.

He was my Gunner in Iraq, and he was shot by a sniper.

It made me sad to no end, and I understood that much of myself

before I started Cognitive Processing Therapy.

After I had started doing it,

they wanted me to talk more about him.

They had me do a whole homework assignment on him.

And they wanted to know how he died,

and I went through that with him, and that was

different for me because I had never thought about it.

You know, I understood that he was dead, but I hadn't really

thought about what upset me so much about it.

After a while, I realized that what I was feeling

wasn't sadness that my friend died, it was guilt.

I felt guilty that I wasn't there for him,

that I wasn't there to protect him from a sniper's bullet.

Or that if I had been there, I'd probably be dead, too.

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