The Jason Klinkenberg case has brought up the issues of anger in PTSD. Las Vegas police responded to a domestic violence call at Klinkenberg’s apartment after a friend of his wife, Crystal, said Crystal told her they had argued and Jason had held a gun to her head. Veterans suffering from PTSD often struggle with anger, and post traumatic stress research has found that their levels of anger and hostility are significantly higher than non-sufferers. Even PTSD sufferers who survived 9-11 had greater levels of severe anger, and researchers surmised that the popular notion that anger may sustain PTSD is backed up by that finding. Progression View 1 by Irum Shahid of Islamabad, Pakistan courtesy stock.Xchng 

The National Center for PTSD states that anger is 

usually a central feature of a survivor’s response to trauma because it is a core component of the survival response in humans. Anger helps people cope with life’s adversities by providing us with increased energy to persist in the face of obstacles. 

It’s been hypothesized that anger is such an issue with veterans because soldiers are specifically conditioned to hone the increased energy of anger. Soldiers are often wired to be pissed off; a lack of adequate resources and personal suffering in their lives contributes to their heightened state of arousal. Being “wired tight” keeps them on the edge they need to be on to be soldiers. But the arousal-relaxation cycle gets whacked out in cases of post traumatic stress. Sufferers cannot adequately regulate their response to stressors in their environment. Essentially, we have no low boil setting, no simmer, no second or third gear. 

We go from 0 to 60. We run hot until we run out. The only thing we can do to stop this cycle, I have come to believe, is learn anti-stress techniques like meditation. Freeing the mind by releasing its emotional connection to thoughts is the first step. Once the mind is free, “the ass will follow,” but it needs help—physical help—getting there, too. Self-medication techniques like alcohol and drugs focus on setting ourselves on 0 for as long as possible,  but they are doomed to failure. We have to learn how to develop simmer, low boil, and slow burn settings. For myself, I have found meditation, peaceful music and energy tapping for trauma techniques to be of enormous significance in my own growth. 

But I grieve for the Jason Klinkenbergs of the world. Who only burned.

From Las Vegas comes news of another tragedy that may be due to a soldier’s PTSD. Although unconfirmed by the Air Force at press time, sources who knew the couple say that Airman Jason Matthew Klinkenberg was the soldier who held what was described as “about 100” SWAT and police officers at bay outside of his apartment before he shot and killed his wife and then himself yesterday morning.

A friend who said he served with Klinkenberg in Iraq said that Klinkenberg battled post-traumatic stress disorder and had back problems that required him to have several surgeries.

The friend, who declined to give his name, said Klinkenberg was traumatized by an incident with a rocket propelled grenade and, later, when a man set himself on fire in front of him.

This information could not be independently confirmed Friday.

Klinkenberg was just 25 years old; his wife, 23. The authors of the report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Maggie Lillis and Lawrence Mower, wrote that a Nellis Air Force Base psychologist said last year that the base “doesn’t have a specific program to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder among active duty troops.” The base apparently relies on troops’ voluntarily reporting their illnesses and seeking help.

I guess that’s working out for them.