So, it was during peace time and things weren't really chaotic or sporadic. After 911, that changed everything. The impact that it had on our mental health was that we were getting prepared to go to war. I don't think we really had that realization settle in.
My name is Thomas. I served in the US Navy from 2001 to 2022. My rate in the Navy was IT and I was on the telecommunication specialist side, and my retiring rank was chief petty officer. I joined because I wanted to go see the world. I wanted something a little different. Throughout the course of my military career, I served during the Banda Aceh tsunami relief effort of 2005 on the USS Abraham Lincoln. We saw a lot of devastation. We saw dead babies. We saw floating houses. We saw over 200,000 people get displaced. And it was a very harrowing but very humbling experience. While I didn't experience any direct combat or even barely any indirect combat, the actual environment was very caustic. We did take mortar fire a few times, and it does still impact my mental health today. I still sometimes have flashbacks from those eras.
I really felt a great sigh of relief when I retired in October of 2022. When you're drilling in the reserves or whether you're active duty, you have a certain time and cut space of regimen. That void in my life had to be fulfilled. So, for me, I noticed, like, my physical symptoms were lack of sleep, higher blood sugar, I was irritable, and I realized that I needed to seek treatment. Post-traumatic stress disorder, you had a tragic event that happened to you. Where mine, you know, it's a culmination of events, but it's created to the anxiety that I suffer from, but I think a lot of that was from the service and having a level of expectation. And that's just not with the life, it's also with job expectation, working with society, you know, having certain expectations of how people should act. And so, when that doesn't happen, I get anxious, and then that can trigger depression.
Some of the things that I like to find effective with as far as mental health is concerned, I mean, counseling, I think, is first and foremost. As far as for personal, taking care of yourself, go on walks, get fresh air. Fishing is also a nice retreat for mental health. The important part of connecting outside and doing outdoor activities is because it makes you realize why we should never take these liberties for granted, with how beautiful our country really is.
So, looking back on some of the moments in my mental health journey that I'm really proud of is that first, you recognizing the problem, noticing that there's a change in your personality that might require you to seek mental health and counseling. I can understand why I went through the experiences that I did, and now I can help somebody else with my journey and help to show them that they don't have to go down the same roads that I went and make them kinda see a better path.
Not every trauma that comes out of the military has to be with firearms, explosions, or combat deliverable. It could come from humanitarian relief efforts. It could come from sexual assaults. It could come from harassment. It could come from having bad leadership. Seek mentorship, seek counsel. Find a counselor, find an advocate for you, and get through those difficult times because it's gonna make your life much more fruitful in the end, and especially when you're reflecting back on your military service.
A lot of American Veterans are afraid to take the next step to try and reach out to somebody. They get frustrated with the process, they get frustrated with the VA, they get frustrated with the government, they feel that they're not heard, and so this is why I wanted to come here today and just share that part of it is, don't give up.
