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I was able to basically work through the situation myself

Eddie Hoffman (US Marine Corps, 2001 - 2010) talks about what PTSD treatment was like.

Transcript

- An example of how CPT
taught me how to

manage my symptoms

and how to manage
events in my life

are really the news that I
was gonna have a daughter,

or the news that my
wife was pregnant.

And this was actually
quite recently.

It was about three
years ago.

And I was pretty solid
in my recovery.

I'd learned a lot of things
through therapy

and all that.

I was in recovery, I
was doing well,

and all of a sudden
for some reason

there was a lot of
anger afterwards,

or I was feeling a
lot of anxiety.

I was feeling some anger,
I was feeling some guilt,

and really couldn't put a
pinpoint on it.

But when I started
thinking about it

and I really started
analyzing what was

going on in my life

and how my trauma
might be impacting

what's happening in
my life now,

I started realizing that I
still felt a lot of guilt

about one of my friends
who was killed.

I knew his family well.

I knew his children well.

And I still felt a little
bit of guilt about

that situation.

I was realizing that I
wasn't allowing myself

to feel those emotions
like I should,

and I wasn't allowing
myself to feel guilty.

And it allowed me, through
what I learned with CPT,

I was able to really
analyze and sit

down with myself

and say, "Hey, you should
not feel guilty

"about having your own
child, even though

you felt guilty

"about what happened
with your friend."

We'd worked through
that already,

and it was totally okay
to feel that way.

It was understandable
in that, again,

I was covering up those
feelings with anger,

as I had done in the past.

So I was able to basically
work through the

situation myself

as I would have in a
therapy session

and felt better in the end

and felt okay about
having a child.

And it's helped me
throughout the

last few years,

just really analyzing
situations like that.

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