This might be a helpful site for some, especially for those who have family members who have served in this or any war and are having recurring nightmares, or chronic problems due to combat experience, or for those who have suffered other trauma/abuse in their lives.
About Edward Tick, Ph.D. -
He has an upcoming BBC special on Healing and War
featuring Ed's work this winter. (Check back for broadcast information)
Since their first journey in 2000 for the 25th anniversary of the end of the Viet Nam War, Drs. Edward Tick and Steven Leibo have been leading annual trips to Viet Nam for reconciliation and education. Their four journeys together took veterans, family members, professors, students, and anti-war activists throughout Viet Nam to heal the wounds of war for both Americans and Vietnamese.
Our fourth journey in May-June 2004 was, like those before it, very successful and will be featured this winter on an upcoming BBC special about healing and war. In order to accommodate the diverse needs of different groups who seek travel to Viet Nam, we are expanding our Reconciliation Program with Viet Nam to include two different tours to Southeast Asia for 2005 & 2006.
In October of 2005 Dr. Tick will lead a healing journey that will emphasize the needs of returning Viet Nam vets and others traumatized by war and violence, as well as those who love or work with these survivors. Dr. Tick's journeys focus on psychospiritual healing from war and reconciliation and peacemaking for the planet.
http://www.mentorthesoul.com/_____
Since early childhood Ed has mysteriously known that soul is the center of all human experience. All his work is toward exploring, discovering, strengthening and recovering the human soul, in all its grandeur, nobility, beauty, and sensitivity, from the wounds it receives from this world drenched in violence and ignorance.
Ed is a transformational healer, mythologist, a psychotherapist, writer, poet, editor and educator. He received a Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and is a clinical member of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, as well as various other professional organizations. He is also ordained as a Pastoral Psychotherapist by the Association for the Integration of the Whole Person.
He has been in private psychotherapy practice since 1975. His general practice of psychotherapy includes extensive and innovative work with survivors of severe trauma, especially war, sexual and substance abuse, severe mental and emotional disorders, men's issues, and psychospiritual healing.
Ed is also an expert in both the classical Greek and Native American traditions. He has studied their healing practices and their applications to modern clinical work. He has published extensively on these two traditions, lead psycho-educational journeys to Greece, and has studied with traditional Native healers as well
Besides providing therapy workshops at his Sanctuary Retreat for both professionals and those seeking healing, he has also authored several books on healing, including his upcoming book:
WAR AND THE SOULIntroduction
The mortars have stopped falling. The napalm has stopped burning. The tracers have stopped screaming through the terrifying nights. But in nightmares and flashbacks, old battles still rage.
Trapped in a combat mentality, the mind is forever vigilant, poised for danger, on the lookout for threats. Still living in an interior war zone, the heart responds to everyday situations as though they were vicious attacks, to ordinary relationships as though they were the friends and enemies from the battlefield.
Thus, while our nation and others around the world continue their war-making, while many citizens living in safety and affluence remain ignorant of war's true cost, countless veterans and survivors remain trapped for life in that landscape of hell we call war.
Under such conditions, what of the soul? How does war invade, wound, and transform our psychospiritual core? After such brutal and complete penetration, how can healing occur? And how can we, our nation and world come to grips with the truth of war?
WAR AND THE SOUL examines warfare as the soul experiences it and offers a path to healing from war as the soul and nations need it.
In ancient Greece, warriors were known as attendants or servants of the war god Ares, who was sometimes called "whirlwind," "crusted in blood," "bane of humanity," "the god who delights in slaughter." The souls of those who have served the war god, in any time or place, experienced the whirlwind of chaos and destruction with an intensity, brutality and totality unimaginable in ordinary life.
Over time they too inevitably become "crusted," drenched in the imagery and emotion of slaughter, trapped in their service to the archetype of war even as they and their loved ones yearned for their homecoming and healing.
For those exposed to war's horrors, every vital human characteristic that we attribute to the soul -- how we perceive, how our minds organize life, how we experience relationships, what we believe, expect, and value, what we feel and refuse to feel, what we judge as good or evil, right or wrong -- is fundamentally reshaped according to the dark laws of warfare.
WAR AND THE SOUL exposes this characteristic devastation of soul that occurs as a result of participation in any warfare, ancient or modern, moral or immoral. It shows how to comprehend the war and violence survivor's world from within, from the vantage not of psychological disability but of the characteristic distortion, wounding or loss of soul.
It helps all of us navigate the nightmarish landscapes in which war and violence survivors are trapped. It demonstrates how to therapeutically revisit the combat zone. It surveys worldwide sacred and mythological traditions to cull their key spiritual teachings about war and warriorhood.
It applies these teachings to individuals and culture, showing how for individuals we can evoke a healthy and healed warrior spirit through ritual and education, and for cultures the proper perspective on war, violence and their related values and behaviors so that we are not possessed by the brutal shadow.
It traces a path to transformation of identity from wounded or disabled veteran to honorable returned warrior. By its unique concentration on soul wounding and healing from war and violence, it shows how to regrow the war-wounded soul, for both individuals and cultures, in order to rebuild a positive and affirming identity that surrounds and embraces the war experience with love, compassion, meaning and forgiveness.
When the survivor can accomplish this, post-traumatic stress disorder as a soul wound evaporates and the survivor can truly come home and serve the causes of peace and healing. And when a nation can accomplish this, in the words of the gospel song, "we ain't gonna study war no more."
WAR AND THE SOUL offers a complete vision for understanding, reaching and healing the war-wounded soul, whether of individual or nation.
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