You've got to do it.

The reason that you may be scared to come in, right,

is that, number one, you're not sure that you have PTSD.

Number two, you're not sure that you want

to open up those wounds.

You're not sure you wanna, you know,

the hardest thing you're ever gonna do in your life,

if you decide to do this, is go through PTSD,

because you built a wall around all the hurts,

all the aches, all the pains.

You've learned to deal with it one way or another, you know,

however, we all take different ways to do it.

We build walls somehow around all this pain.

So what you're gonna have to do is, just like an onion,

layer by layer you're gonna have to peel that back.

You're gonna have to peel it all back and open

up all those wounds, all those nightmares,

all those flashbacks you used to have.

All the stuff you came home with that scared you in the middle

of the night, that made you reach for a gun.

I can remember when I came home, my wife got up

and her hair brushed across my face and I slugged her.

It was just a reaction.

You're always on the defensive.

You've learned to cope with it or you think you have, OK,

but now we're going to go revisit all those things

and that's gonna hurt.

And that's gonna scare you.

But you've got to do it because the example I use is,

say you've got a fester on your arm, right,

it's all scabbed over, OK, so it doesn't really bother anymore.

But it's festering all the time, OK?

The only way to cure that is to take that scab off and clean

that wound and you're still gonna have a scar.

It's never gonna go away, but it won't be festering anymore.