by Jason Fox
Over the next few months, Alex asked me to practise a new habit of attention, a method that aimed to bring my thoughts to the present, making me active in the moment and shutting out the stresses of the past and my fears for my future. ‘You feel irritation because you’re over-stimulated,’ she said as we prepared to walk in silence for thirty minutes, noticing the sights and sounds of the woodland around us. ‘Bringing a mindfulness approach for a period of time is where you calm your nervous system and put your conscious attention towards the things close to you. If you’re in a hyper-alert state, you’re scanning for threat. Mindfulness is different. You’re looking at things as they are; you’re asking yourself to notice the environment and everything that’s happening now. Not five minutes earlier, or five minutes into the future.’
As we walked, I definitely felt calmer; I became immersed in a sense of stillness. I heard the rustling leaves and branches above, the tweeting birds perched in the treetops. A dog barked somewhere along the trail, and every now and then my thoughts were punctuated by the sound of quickening footsteps somewhere behind us, a runner panting their apologies for disturbing our tranquil mood as they swept past – but the interruptions didn’t matter. It felt good to live in the now. I felt good. A brief sense of peace descended upon me for the first time in ages.
‘I feel connected to myself here, in the woods,’ I said after our session had ended.
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Alex, smiling. ‘We’ll try mindfulness more often. It really helps to quieten a lot of the chatter in our heads.’
From the very beginning of our work together, there were certain images from the past that I couldn’t push from the ‘now’ so easily. Some of the horrors I’d seen were eating away at me constantly, as did intrusive, painful thoughts about the people affected by my actions, or the consequences of war. The kids and families whose innocence had been stolen by conflict still tore me up inside, and nothing could shift my remorse. ‘I’ve been involved in some grim stuff, Alex,’ I said, once I’d come to trust her implicitly. ‘Stuff that young children have seen me do, or mums and wives. When the shooting started, we often hadn’t realized they’d been there in the first place. They’d got caught up in it, and I’d see them afterwards, cowering in a corner and crying, screaming. It didn’t really do my head in at the time, but the thought of what might have happened to them afterwards … now it’s breaking me up.
‘I remember the worst one. We’d snuck into the building, when suddenly a door sprang open directly in front of us and a bloke lurched towards me. He must have been alerted by a noise because he had an automatic weapon in one hand. With my NVGs on, I could see him, but he couldn’t see me, and in a split second I had to assess whether he posed an immediate threat to my life. Was I able to take him down without shooting? Then a quick movement forced me to act. He’d raised his gun in my direction and I couldn’t hesitate. The room lit up, there was all this noise, and our target was down, dead. It was only once I’d turned around that I noticed the blowback. A woman and three kids were ducking down behind me, huddled up. I saw them in my NVGs, all of them wearing the same deadpan expression of shock. I can’t forget it.’
I tried to recall how I’d felt in the immediate aftermath, to experience the emotions again. I remembered that at first the incident hadn’t bothered me. I’d chalked the encounter down as being something that happened in my line of work. I imagined what the enemy gunman might have thought had he killed me. Would he have shown a moment of remorse for the mental wellbeing of those witnesses? No chance. But later, as I’d found myself with too much time in which to reflect upon my war experiences, the grim memories of those children upset me. And there were others too, like the kids we’d once discovered in a compound, chained up and abused by a mob of feral gangsters.
‘I feel so guilty, I just want it to stop,’ I said. ‘They’re the thoughts that made me think about killing myself … I’m haunted by them.’
Alex nodded sympathetically as we spoke, but I’d come to understand that the issue might not be resolvable – not immediately, anyway. She also had pre-conceived notions about those situations. Prior to my approaching her for therapy, Alex had helped the survivors of torture as they came to terms with their painful war experiences, people seeking asylum from some of the countries I’d been fighting in. She was honest about her past work, and I realized it would be down to me to manage the complexities of my feelings.
‘I’ve brought quite a lot of judgement and the pain of witnessing others’ misery to our therapy relationship because of that,’ she admitted one afternoon. ‘Jason, I don’t buy this narrative that the enemy are bad and you’re the hero. I don’t.’ I understood why. Alex had been witness to the survival stories of so many innocent victims that it had affected her, too. Suddenly I’d presented a vivid reminder of those damaged lives and their cries for help. Their distress and pain had been directly caused by the conflicts I was involved in. Now I was asking for assistance in salving my own wounds.
‘I don’t think my task is to help you to resolve your guilt,’ she eventually reasoned. ‘But I’ll sit with you in those feelings. My task is to help you stay in the complexity of the reality, and the reality of the complexities – because it is complex, isn’t it, Jason? You get sold a story that everything is black and white: “Here’s the enemy; this is your job; you’re the good guy. Your job is to do this and the reason you’re doing it is because we’re going to save people.” And when you get there, the reality reveals the complexity of the situation. So you’re telling me you’ve shot someone and then seen the guy’s family? Well, in my opinion what you’ve been faced with is the stark reality that, in life, not everything is as simple as the narrative you’ve been sold …’
Alex was right; it had been complex. And throughout our work we’d decided that my tendency to continually relive certain incidents from my past – alone or during our sessions – hadn’t been helping either. Alex was always happy to bear witness to my moments of regret and shame when we walked. Opening up had certainly helped to quicken the healing process, but only for a while, and if it became obvious that replaying those awful experiences wasn’t delivering any positive, progressive movement, she would change tack, knowing the past was pitching me backwards. Talk about my kryptonite, the vulnerability and guilt at seeing innocent lives in distress was re-traumatizing me again and again, on and on. I had to anchor myself to the here and now instead. From there it was my job to work alongside the past because there was nothing I could do to change it. My time in war was done, gone, and analyzing my actions to the nth degree wasn’t going to move me forward.
And then the breakthrough arrived.
26
It had happened one afternoon. The pair of us were following a new path, a route I’d never explored before, when we stumbled across a little girl playing with her mum in a clearing ahead. She could only have been two or three years old, and as she kicked her way through the leaves and puddles, laughing as her mum became grumpy because of the mess she was making of her clothes, Alex was struck by an idea.
‘Look at her,’ she said. ‘Children don’t care about what’s happened previously, or what’s happening in the future. Children just care about now. They follow their own feelings. I want you to look at her playing. She’s not governed by anything. Why can’t we all be like that? Well, we can … Jason, you can be like that. You are like that.’
I looked back at the little girl again, observing her in the now. Her coat was muddy, her hair tangled up with leaves. I slowly began to grasp at what Alex was saying – kind of. Previously my psych nurses had told me that, ‘Yeah, you’re screwed up – and that’s because you’ve done a lot of crazy shit.’ But Alex was giving me a new way of viewing the dark life I’d inhabited for so long. I wasn’t broken. And now a window was opening that hadn’t been there before. I could see that I had to live in the moment because there was really no other choice. And from that point I should make the decisions that felt right to me �
�� not someone else. I’d come to understand that where I went in the future was undecided, an exciting mission ahead.
Was I finally seeing progress?
‘Met Jason and he described how he’s been thinking about big things, big questions such as who he is and what he wants to do. We talked about all the things that he enjoys. He talked about being outside and also about helping people. He talked about how he’s begun to do personal development plans for people at work and he’s realized he likes helping people.’
Patient report: Jason Fox.
She gets me.
She understands.
The thoughts crossed my mind every time we walked through the woods together, Alex asking me the same questions over and over. What is it that brings you aliveness? What is it you like doing? She might have changed the wording on a weekly basis, but her enquiries usually carried the same thrust; they pricked at my psyche and stimulated a new way of thinking because there was a plan in place. Or so I thought. All along, my belief was that she knew that I’d needed to feel whole again and was gently coaxing me towards a stable future. In actuality, it was me that knew what had to be done. I just hadn’t relocated my truth yet, though it wouldn’t take for ever. And when it landed, the penny-drop realization of what I had to do was both powerful and life-changing. The idea of that little girl playing in the woods, splashing around in the mud without a care for what had gone before or what was coming next, had pushed me there.
‘Have I just been thinking about things in completely the wrong way?’ I said one afternoon. ‘The way I should be thinking about life was the way I used to think when I was younger, before PTSD had set in: “Don’t stress too much about stuff because when you do, life gets problematic. Don’t overthink things because life gets in the way.” I’ve lost that sense of doing that, haven’t I? I joined the military without worry, I pushed myself towards dangerous challenges in the job, and I didn’t stress. I even moved in with a girl in America that I barely knew and didn’t flap! When I eventually had my dramas, and then afterwards, I’d ignored my youthful attitude to risk and danger, so I’d got scared. But I’m good with risk and danger. It was always good for me not to be worried. So I’ve basically painted myself into a corner where I’m not being me, through fear, and it’s caused some proper damage. Now I’m angry at the world because I’ve been angry with myself all this time … for not being myself.’
‘What would feel like an authentic next step for you?’ said Alex. ‘What would feel more aligned with what you really want?’
‘Maybe run adventure courses that help people?’ I said tentatively, tugging at an idea that had been with me for a while.
‘Just do it!’ she laughed. ‘You can do that, Jason! You can choose, you don’t have to live and work in the corporate world for ever. You could do something that combines what you loved about the military – the camaraderie, being outdoors – and this notion of men struggling with not having a brotherhood …’
The thought had certainly been formulating for a while. I’d wanted to work in a role that was more suited to my personality than simply driving around the country for Sodexo. It needed to be something with excitement and risk – maybe an outdoor course for people who wanted a taste of military life so they could discover something about themselves.fn1 At times I felt that a project where I helped people in a similar situation to me would prove inspirational, too. I’d recently completed a number of personal-growth plans for some of the staff at Sodexo and the experience had been rewarding. I’d discovered a sense of purpose in listening to their aspirations while figuring out a way to help them achieve those goals. The sense of satisfaction surprised me.
There was also an idea for a community interest company called Rock2Recovery that I’d been working on with a former Royal Marine commando sniper called Jamie Sanderson, who was discharged from the military with PTSD around the same time as I was. I had previously seen Jamie at the base while I was still in service. I later learned that, at his lowest point, the poor sod had attempted to hang himself.
Linked together through mutual acquaintances, Jamie and I got in touch, moaning about our respective treatment programmes within the military healthcare programme over a few pints – This was crap. That was crap. Why didn’t they do that for us? Where were they when we’d needed help? – until eventually it was decided we should begin a project of our own making. The plan: a programme helping other military personnel to face the problems brought on by a life in war, and without the stigma associated with mental health care. With PTSD, Jamie had temporarily lost his memory, but playing music had helped to pull him through. (This was where the name for our venture came from.) He was undoubtedly set to be the engine of the project, later climbing Kilimanjaro to raise money for its expanding work. Even though I was still in therapy, I’d decided to take on an ambassadorial role within the organization, watching as it slowly grew in scale and former soldiers began to speak up, encouraged by our efforts. Upon introduction, they could chat freely about what was bothering them; it was our role to help them get their lives back on track. We might suggest therapists or help centres for assistance, while encouraging them to realize a life beyond the military with charity expeditions and exciting challenges, or even a new career path. Jamie and I were both blokes of experience. Our aim was to avert the disasters before they happened, and when it came to understanding the psychological roadblocks that could appear when seeking professional help, we were better equipped than most.
My only concern was our respective CVs: at Rock2Recovery we hadn’t a scratch of clinical training between us, which made us incredibly well-meaning but totally under-qualified. My first thought was that maybe Alex would want to help, but when I’d hinted at the idea – without blurting it out fully – during one of our sessions, she sensed my intentions and declined (though she’d understood why I’d asked in the first place). The knockback surprised me initially, but it didn’t take long to realize it had been an inappropriate idea.fn2 Somewhere towards the beginning of our patient–therapist relationship, Alex had mentioned that a time might arrive where I’d mistake what had been a chapter of assisted self-discovery for something else; that I might view her work as a crutch to lean on for all my decisions.
‘You’ll think I’m the bee’s knees at one point,’ she said afterwards. ‘You’ll think my support will be important for everything you do … But it won’t.’
I’d laughed it off at the time, but the inevitable had happened. After a year and a bit, I’d attributed the lightening of my emotional burdens solely to her wisdom, rather than the two-way process we were actually working through. And Alex was right. I didn’t need her help in everything I did. Taking risks without support was now a reward for all the hard work I’d put in on my thinking. The fact that I was happy just to take bold and unsettling choices again, without assistance, was something I couldn’t have imagined a year previously. I’d recently broken up with my other half, too, and was now in the process of rebuilding a whole new life from scratch. The time had come to go it alone.
Often we worked through an hour of cognitive behavourial therapy – we always conducted these sessions outside – and I was trying other methods elsewhere, as well. Alex wasn’t the only one I was visiting for help. Around the time of our very first meeting, I’d also been introduced to Malcolm Williams, best described as a ‘life coach’. Malcolm had built up several years of experience working with military veterans and his website spoke of how issues such as PTSD, habit-breaking and overthinking were fixable within his care. Elsewhere, the techniques he’d used included mind-programming, and he was known for working on body language and interpersonal skills. In short, these methods often helped a client to reboot themselves. Overall his modus operandi was one of rewiring. Malcolm wanted me to recognize that my brain was a tool I could use to help, rather than hinder, myself. He was also able to bring me the toolkit needed to achieve this aim, something I’d hoped would happen upon first entering the military’s psychi
atric care programme. With his assistance I was able to come to terms with the darker images that were forever lurking in the peripheries of my thinking.
Malcolm had been recommended to me by a mate in the military, and I clicked with him almost immediately. Our first session was a little clunky and awkward, mainly because I was clunky and awkward back then, but I really liked the bloke. He was mega-engaging. His face reminded me of the Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood, though Jamie Sanderson and I would later joke that he was more reminiscent of the Star Wars character Yoda, given the pearls of wisdom he would often impart to his clients. Malcolm was key in helping Jamie to dig himself out of a scary place, too. Like Alex, he helped to shift my focus away from the bad memories of the past, treating them as things that were simply there, being; thoughts I was unable to change, so I shouldn’t try. And like Alex, Malcolm understood that I needed to be more juvenile, that I shouldn’t dwell too much on what had happened in my military life – it had gone. Instead, both Malcolm and Alex encouraged me to determine how I experienced my life in the future. My past was the military’s for sure, and it was welcome to the horrific memories it had created, but what happened next was all about me, my choices, and my ideas.
Alex and I had never made it as far as the river before, but there it was, opening up to us as we walked the trails in the spring sunshine. The water twinkled in the daylight, rippling into small rock pools at the edges. A dog splashed about in the cold water, its owner throwing sticks from the bank.