An amazing military blogger you should read

I met Lt. Kristen Rouse as she was preparing to deploy to Afghanistan once more. Her blog is amazing and everyone should read it.

In a post titled, “Mental Health, Multiple Deployments, and Media Rejection,” Rouse outlines how she was rejected by a production assistant for a spot on PTSD.

Rouse details the leading questions that the media asked her prior to being booked on the show, and after poking holes in the assumptions each question had, she realized she had been axed.

“I’m not sure whether it was because I didn’t support the reductive line of thinking that troops who’ve had traumatic experiences shouldn’t return to combat, or whether this production assistant was just all the more ignorant of the complexities and realities of how traumatic stress factors into the experience of combat …”

She then lists some common misconceptions:

1. Troops are not victims
2. 2. PTSD is not a disease–it is a normal response to an abnormal situation
3. Traumatic experiences can be stressful, but toxic leadership in the wake of trauma can be even worse
4. Redeploy does not mean what you think it means.

Read the whole thing, and read her other work. She’s a very astute commentator and one who realizes what color the sand beneath her is.