Transcript
- [Cori] My dad would
always have a baseball bat
near the door.
[Hanson] Nine-millimeter
between my mattress
and the box-spring.
- [Lindy] Locking the doors
and rechecking it.
[Cori] I kinda thought
that was normal.
- [Lindy] He was obsessed
about that sort of thing.
[Hanson] My wife was complaining
about my nightmares.
[Lindy] I could never wake him.
[Cori] Hearing a helicopter
overhead would bring flashbacks.
- [Hanson] They started
getting to be more frequent.
- [Lindy] "It's just 'Nam
again," he would say.
"It's just Vietnam again."
(ominous music)
(gentle somber music)
[Hanson] One night I heard somebody
running through the wood floor
on our entryway to the
house to the kitchen
and I got up, I went
to the stairwell.
I saw two Vietnamese -
what we call zappers -
run across the hallway.
They were naked except
for a diaper-like device
and they wore a lot
of those for fear
of the cloth getting caught in
a wire or something like that.
And I saw them run
across that floor.
It just, it was so real.
I went up to the kitchen and
I sat on the kitchen floor.
I was scared. I was mad.
I was tired of this crap,
and I had this knife in my hand,
and that was about as
close as I could get
to thinking about suicide.
(car engine droning)
[Lindy] Yes, I knew that he had
all this pent-up frustration
and anger and
sadness about Vietnam
but I just had no
idea how bad it was.
- To know that he had
all that inside him
and never said anything,
(sniffs)
- [Interviewer] Do you,
want a tissue or anything?
- No, I just didn't
expect to cry. (laughs)
And so my mom and
my sister and I
essentially just told
him, "We're here for you.
"You just let us know
what you want us to do
or how we can help,"
and he said, "You know,
"this is really something
I have to do for myself."
(gentle somber music)
- I think my first
impression of him was
because he is so
intelligent and articulate,
he was very good at masking
what was probably a lot
of pain below the surface.
I think that's something he
was probably very practiced at.
- You want me to
be honest? (laughs)
My first impression was,
"Wow, she's really young,
"and could she really understand
what I was going through?"
One, two, she was very pretty.
Could she really understand
what I was going through?
- And it took a bit of effort
to ask the right questions
to help him see how
bothered he was,
even after an event as extreme
as the one that
brought him into care.
- Very, very quickly
in our first meeting,
it became evident
that her reasoning
for being there was to help me
and that became very
evident very, very quickly.
- It was such a relief to know
that somebody cared enough to
want to try and do something.
(gentle somber music)
The imaginal exposures are
where a person tells
their trauma narrative.
They tell it several times
within about 45 minutes
of our 90-minute session.
We record those narratives
and then we have the
patient listen to them
at home on a daily basis.
- Listen to it again and
a third and a fourth
and a fifth and a tenth time,
and then the second night
and a third night
and a fourth night.
- We repeat and
repeat and repeat
until the emotion has worn out.
- That was extremely hard.
(gentle somber music)
[Jackie] In vivo exposures are
the in-life exposures
where we identify specific
behavioral avoidance
and we create a hierarchy
from easiest to hardest
and have the veteran
practice going
into usually a situation that
they normally would avoid,
staying in that situation
until their distress peaks,
and then comes down, and then
trying it again the next day.
- He would watch
maybe a war movie
but it was really,
really difficult.
He would be sobbing and crying
and it affected him very deeply.
- The first movie that I watched
was Good Morning, Vietnam .
And that's a pretty docile movie,
except for one explosion point.
My SUDS levels
skyrocketed at that.
(gentle somber music)
But by watching that
specific segment again,
and then again and again
became very easy to do.
My levels went from
80, 90% down to 40, 50%
after the fifth or sixth
time of watching that.
And I thought to
myself, "That's success.
"I can feel that, wow."
- I thought watching
more war movies, I mean,
I just couldn't understand it.
It just sounded crazy to me.
But now I can see
the importance of it
and I can just see what a
difference it really made for him.
- The SUDS levels - my
anxiety levels - came down,
and it felt so good,
it was unbelievable.
[Hanson] Jackie knew that my first
several months in Vietnam
was involved with a night ambush
team actually in the bush,
so we would go out at
nine, ten o'clock at night,
come in at four in the morning.
So I was supposed to go into
my woods and stand there.
(crickets chirping)
I got to the end of
the garage and I froze.
I couldn't go into the
woods. I just couldn't do it.
[Lindy] He said it was
kind of scary
so I was wondering whether
he would do it again
and again and again, but he did.
- The second night, I stood
there for maybe five minutes
and I walked into the woods
at night for the first time
in 25 years that we lived there.
(tense percussive music)
[Hanson] I stood there by a tree
and I looked directly
at the tree trunk so
that I wouldn't notice
any other movement around me.
But I was listening intently
because when you're in
the jungle in Vietnam,
you use whatever you can use.
You gain a leg up on
whoever is out there.
And I didn't really
hear anything.
My anxiety levels after
about a half an hour
came from 70, 80, down
to about 40 or 50
and that was the first success
that I felt that second night.
- I don't know what made him
go with such gusto
over the homework.
He really wanted it
and I think he knew
he couldn't skimp on that,
and I know it was hard,
but I was glad for
us that he did it.
- [Lindy] I saw
him be more relaxed
and each night that he did it,
I could tell it was
getting easier and easier,
and then I didn't
worry about it anymore.
[Hanson] The third night I went out,
anxiety levels were not as high
and they came down more quickly,
and the fourth night and the
fifth night, even more so.
When I went out into the
woods the sixth night,
my anxiety levels were normal,
and again, it felt
like absolute success.
- What's fabulous about these
therapies is that if you do them,
if you do them and you finish
them, you will benefit.
But if you throw yourself
in in the way that Dave did,
the magnitude of your
benefit is so much greater.
- I walked in to our
sixth week meeting.
Jackie asked how that all went
and I told her exactly what
happened and exactly what I did.
My thought was, "I'm gonna
ask her if I'm done,"
and there was a
pause and she said,
"David, do you think you're done?"
And I said, "Yes." (laughs)
"I am," and that was the
last time I saw her.
I'm done.
[Lindy] I'm amazed at how
things have turned out.
We have a different life now.
It's different. We're like
average, normal people
that can go to bed and sleep
and not have to deal with
nightmares every night.
- I feel like I know
my dad a lot better.
We talked a lot but it was
a more superficial talk
and now when we talk,
sometimes it's the
normal everyday chitchat,
and sometimes it's a really
deeper meaningful conservation,
and we would've never
had that five years ago.
- Since that day - that's
a little over four years -
I have not had one flashback.
I've not had any nightmares.
I've not had any bad dreams.
I do hear unusual noises,
but I don't get up
and go hunting for it.
I just go back to sleep.
I don't have any issues walking
through our woods at night.
It's been totally freeing.
(gentle music)
(Jackie speaking faintly)
- Yes.