Richard Lloyd Jones: This is Healing Through Consciousness.
Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco: Just free associate the accident. One or two words.
Guest (identity protected): Negligence. Negligence. Yeah.
Cláudia: Now, we could say that it's not only by chance or an accident, because nothing happens just by accident in this planet.
Richard: Welcome to another therapy session online. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Our latest podcast initiative is an attempt to create a forum for people to call or write with critical, recent, or long-standing issues they've never been able to adequately resolve and move on from.
Those habits or patterns of response you've never fully understood. You know there's something unresolved moving below the surface that's affecting your health or relationships or professional performance, or sometimes all three, and you just can't get a handle on it. And so they operate invisibly in your life. We're here to help with that, in a safe and anonymous way. Dr. Cláudia Bernhardt Pacheco will lead you through a psychoanalytical process that touches into those roadblocks and helps free you up.
Real therapy that doesn't gloss over or offer pat formulas. So is there anything burning in your experience? Let me know, joneshealing at gmail.com, and I'll set up a session for you. Let's join Dr. Pacheco in her online therapy session today, an important one, treating an issue that needs treatment, PTSD.
Cláudia: So, here we are to speak about another situation and to find out if it can be helpful.
Would you please speak about your life, speak about the reasons you are here today, speak about your troubles, whatever comes to your mind, Spontaneously. Don't need to follow any rational and logical order. You just be spontaneous and speak what comes to your mind freely. And you can start at any moment. Well, I think
Guest: the primary issue that I deal with day to day is based upon post-traumatic stress disorder.
And that was initiated when I was in active duty in the military back in 1980. I was wounded in the chest with a .50 caliber machine gun round that had fragmented after it bounced off of my .50 caliber machine gun. And it, well, the major projectile went in. It went in one centimeter from my heart, deflected as the doctor said. It went down, it collapsed my left lung, went through my diaphragm and stomach and spleen and embedded in muscle tissue in the abdomen.
From that point on I began to realize that I wouldn't allow anybody around me to take risk, even though my job was actually to assign guys to do things. I wouldn't allow my family to take risks. I wouldn't jeopardize anybody else. Now, as far as myself, yeah, I was willing to take risks. But what began to happen is that there were, how can I say it, trying to prove to myself that I still had existence.
I became sexually active outside of my marriage. I recognized that that was defeating people's lives, in essence. But I just seemed to couldn't help myself at the time. I have progressed beyond that. I was very fortunate that I never did drinking or did illicit drugs or anything because with what I had gone through in the U.S. Military, it's found that guys with PTSD, that they are normally committing suicide at a rate of 22 veterans or more per day in the United States.
I say I'm very fortunate because I made choices very young and I think that choices very young have a big influence on one's life. In my current existence I have found that the only joy I have is when I'm singing or directing others as they sing to the Lord. My family is very important but I always find myself seeming to face obstacles.
I'm not always content within my household. I feel that sometimes I'm being blocked in and don't know what to do. I tend to want to rebel, but instead of rebelling, I just kind of go into myself and become depressed. These things are those that, you know, I recognize it for what it is, but I don't seem to be able to effectively change to alleviate that problem.
Right now I'm dealing with some health issues, and unfortunately in my family I'm dealing with health issues as well. In my case, you know, not only with the PTSD, but I've been declared 100% service-connected, permanent and total disabled by the Veterans Administration. So I have my medical coverage, but then that's frustrating, too, because where I live, there are no primary care doctors available for veterans.
And so it's just frustrating in trying to get things accomplished. I have been blessed the fact that I've run into Analytical Trilogy and been able to sit down and listen and and contemplate and read and and learn and be able to identify things that that I'm doing or not doing in order to help myself and maybe help those around me. Um I guess that's like about but a 3,000-foot view of what's going on within my life.
Cláudia: What are your restrictions at the moment, physically, emotionally, or socially?
Guest: Okay, well, physically, I am unable to get out and run and walk like I did years ago because of hip issues and knees and whatever else, and also my lung capacity is diminished. The left lung has got only a 40% capacity. The other thing is that I have apparently a vertebral arterial stenosis.
In other words, I have a blocked artery going up into my brain along my spine, which is creating some issues. That I've been told that I have white brain matter disease, which means that some parts of the brain are actually, the brain cells are dying because they're not getting enough blood into those locations. Another restriction is my, I do have arthritis in the left wrist.
And the right wrist they because of arthritis they've actually removed one bone in the wrist and fused four others together so I'm kind of limited on what I can do with my right wrist as far as you know doing things. I do greatly enjoy umpiring high school baseball but I can't throw the ball out to the pitcher. I always have to hand it off to the catcher so I've learned to adapt.
In my house, my mother-in-law passed away about six years ago. And since then, we have had a lot of her property, her personal property and such, that my wife inherited. And we have been having to put a lot of that in storage. We have a lot of it here at my house. I have a barn that is about halfway full of earth things, but inside the house, there are boxes of stuff.
It's like I don't have, there's no level place in my house that doesn't have something on it, boxes or material or whatever else. My hallway, just outside my door here, it's supposed to be about 36 inches wide, but I would never be able to get even a 34-inch wheelchair through there if I had to. It's just crammed with boxes and picture frames and just things that seem to cause me to be almost claustrophobic with so much of it there.
That's one of my big restrictions. I think that musically, which has been, music is my second language, but musically I have been somewhat stymied and I've done this to myself, especially since being wounded. I do take opportunities to sing. I take opportunities to sing solo. Things like this, but it's almost as though it's secondary to what I could or should be doing.
I was offered an opportunity to potentially at least audition to be the orchestra or symphony conductor in Phoenix, Arizona. And I backed out of that kind of thing. But I love to direct. I love to help others understand and create beautiful music. But I stymie myself in those capacities. So right now I'm leading music in a small church and doing what God allows me to do and enjoying that as I can.
How old are you? I will turn 67 on Saturday.
Cláudia: Okay. When you went to war, did you belong to the military already or you volunteered? Or you were like compulsorily called?
Guest: I volunteered because I'd gotten married. I was attending college and I got married. We had a child and I was trying to figure out how can I afford the medical coverage and things.
And went to the military because they were offering, you know, pretty much comprehensive health insurance for the family and everything. We weren't at war.
Cláudia: What was your profession before that? Student. Student. And studying what? Music. Okay.
Guest: Sacred voice. Oh, gosh.
Cláudia: How beautiful. Okay, so you volunteered.
Guest: Yes. We weren't at war. We weren't at war. It was a training accident. And it just was one round that was misfired, shall we say.
And I was wounded. There was another young man that was wounded. His situation, he was medically retired instantaneously. I was put in the Lahnstuhl Army Hospital in Germany for seven weeks. And then came out, and I was frustrated because when you get shot at, you kind of tend to want to shoot back, but that was not possible in that situation.
Cláudia: So the accident, how did it happen?
Anyone else shoot you by accident? Well, there
Guest: was the one vehicle that had the .50 caliber machine gun was, It was the only weapon that really fired on the range that day. It was the firing range. And when they came off the range, the weapon wasn't properly cleared. In other words, they didn't make sure that every round was out of the machine gun or everything else.
And so there was a safety noncommissioned officer that was on the vehicle, and he was from another battalion. They were the ones running the range. They got we got a a ceasefire from the german authorities because it was a friday and the germans were notorious for wanting to take the afternoon off and you know spend some time at the club. The um like i said the weapon was never properly cleared and so that particular vehicle was lined up behind my vehicle.
I was in the lead vehicle. I was in the cupola, the command cupola, and I always canted my cupola so that the weapon would be off to my right just at an at an angle so I could see the road in front because I was responsible for basically the entire row of vehicles that would follow me. And so I could see my driver and as I was preparing gave the hand signal to move out and tell my driver let's go I heard this loud boom and I saw this blue smoke in front of me and I saw my shirt rip and I was like huh and I thought okay there's a m60 machine gun that somebody had a blank in that the blank cooked off.
There was no blank adapter on the end of the firearm so I dropped down inside to find out what dumb bunny had let that thing happen that way and that was my literal thought. So I dropped down inside the vehicle from being outside the cupola and turned around and as I turned around everybody was getting out of the vehicle, my vehicle, except one sergeant that was kind of pinned between me and the driver's hatch and one young private first class who was laying on the floor of the vehicle.
He picked himself up and his face was hanging open. Um it was torn open from his right ear all the way halfway up the left side of his face and just hanging out. And he was going, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Blood had blocked his air passage. The other sergeant reached over, grabbed him by the belt, jerked him up. It caused his air to push the blood out of his esophagus area, the airway.
And I was grabbing my equipment so I could take the bandage that we were. When somebody's wounded, the training they have in the military is very, very responsive. And you get to the job, you do what needs to be done very quickly. I grabbed my bandage and was starting to pick up what of his face I could to put it back so it helped stop the bleeding.
And at that time, a medic came sliding into the back of our vehicle, jumped in, saw what I was doing, grabbed the bandage away from me. And you're also trained that when a medic gets in there and he starts doing stuff you get out of the way and so I let him take the bandage and as I was backing up I saw this red kind of like a balloon burst in front of me on my chest and I looked down and I looked back at the wounded soldier and I looked back at myself and I pointed at him and I said "this isn't his blood" and I called out to our platoon sergeant and I called his name and said "I've been hit I've been wounded" and he told me to sit tight and they closed the back door which subconsciously in my mind was like closing a coffin lid.
But then I realized what they were doing, they were dropping the entire ramp to the back of my vehicle so that they could have more access and so they a number of soldiers from my platoon came in they grabbed me they carried me out laid me out on the ground started treating for shock covered me with a poncho all this other stuff and the medics were very surprised they didn't see a lot of bleeding.
It turns out that the round that had that had wounded me was an incendiary round and so when it hit my 50 caliber and blew up which is the blue smoke and the loud bang and my shirt ripping that was the instance I was wounded but it was being in a center around it cauterized as it went in and my motion of trying to bandage the other soldier kind of broke some of that cauterization and that's when I started to bleed externally.
Well I was laying there waiting for the helicopter or the ambulance. And this thought, very rational. I got to admit, Lucifer works from a rational foothold, if you will. Rational thought came into my head and said, you could be bleeding eternally. You could die. Just very, very simple, very straightforward. Forward. And my first thought was, Lord, what about my family? We had been married three years one day.
We had two children. I had seen my youngest one for one week because I was in Germany and they were in the United States. And I had actually fully accepted Christ just simply seven months earlier. I grew up in the church, but never really grasped what all it meant for Christ to be in charge of one's life. And so I'm laying there, and Lord, what about my family?
And this still small voice in my left ear goes, don't worry about them. I'll take care of them. And I turned my head, and I remember I'm laying flat on my back. I turned my head, and I looked and there wasn't anybody within 35 feet of me to my left and I just rotated my head around there was nobody around my feet nobody off to the right pulled my head up as far back as I could go there wasn't anybody around that side of me and I realized "oh that it was the Holy Spirit speaking" and I said "okay Lord if that's the case if it's time to go home let's go" and I just totally relaxed.
Um in fact i relaxed so much my platoon sergeant came over and grabbed me by the collar and was hollering my name and And he was shaking me, and I told him, I called out his name and said, it's okay. It's all right. Everything is exactly the way it should be. Which shook him up even more. But I believe that that moment, that instance, that it prevented me from going into a deep shock that possibly could have killed me.
But I just recognized that I wasn't in charge. I was totally just there. And I remember that. I hold on to that promise whenever something tough comes up that faces me, you know, a tough medical situation, whatever else, that I remember that. Don't worry about them. I'll take care of them. And I hold on to that. So that's a synopsis of what happened.
So, would you
Cláudia: say that unconsciously, Lucifer could be acting in a way that you would not double-check the machinery? Ooh, that's
Guest: a very interesting thought, because I grew up looking at
Cláudia: things. Because I understood that if you would have seen what was like, it was not fully clean, that you would have avoided this?
Guest: I don't know that I could have avoided the actual accident itself.
I might have been able to avoid some of the consequences that I placed myself into following the accident. I was very much at peace and everything, but then following other people, I started to react or respond to other people's, their responses to the accident. You know, some people were very scared for me, all these other things. And so instead of my staying anchored in the moment of being at peace, I started to take on some of their fear.
And that was one of the things, too, that in having started Analytical Trilogy, I actually pinpointed the moment that things began to kind of unravel, if you will. My dad did not know I'd been wounded. I had asked the Red Cross for some stupid reason, not to notify my parents, but to notify my wife. And my rationale was that she would notify my parents, okay?
But that didn't occur the way I thought it would happen. My dad would always call my wife, you know, at least once a week to find out how she was doing all these things while I was overseas. And after the after the accident my dad called her and he couldn't quite grasp some of the things she was talking about and so he asked her flat out and she told him that I'd been wounded and that I'd already gone through surgery I was in intensive care in lawnstool army hospital in Germany, all these things.
Well, that was on a Monday evening here in Texas. That was a Monday evening. My dad spent the next eight hours trying to track down a way to get a phone call into Longstool Army Hospital. That morning, when I was in the hospital, a nurse came to me and said, "sergeant your your father is on the phone we're going to unplug this vacuum tube that we've got stuck into your chest we're going to unplug it from the power source and we're going to put you in a wheelchair and wheel you over to the nurse's station so that you can talk to your dad."
And when they wheeled me over there and i picked up the phone i said hi he said very simply he said you don't know how good it is to hear your voice. And I recognized his fear and recognized his deep concern. And at that moment, I began to actually take on his fear as my own. And from that moment on, everything cascaded, if you will, into being somewhat depressed.
I couldn't sleep. Um I just I just began to succumb to different things I was very angry I was irritable you know you couldn't say anything to me I didn't have some smart aleck response to uh you know the nurses were not scared to come to me but they were just apprehensive of what I might say that was the way it was I just from that point on and and it began to show up with my deal with my family.
When my family arrived in Germany I didn't, I was unsure how I could handle my son who was barely three. By the time he got to Germany I didn't know if I was going to be too oppressive. I didn't know if I was going to be too lenient. I just, you know, couldn't decide what to do. And so all that time I was, you know, from that time forward, I was kind of in a limbo.
Later on, my wife told me, she said, our kids don't know how to approach you. They don't know if you're going to be their best friend or their worst enemy. And that affected my relationship still has an effect on my relationship all these years later and it hurts my heart but I understand their apprehension. I think
Cláudia: we should go for another episode next week because your situation and remembering all the things are very important to be remembered.
And I guess we should come back next week to continue. But for today, I would ask you just one question. When you think about this accident, what is the first association, the first idea that comes to your mind. What is this accident?
Guest: The accident was basically a turning point. Ever since then, you know, the military is still very important to me. And this occurrence was 43 years ago.
But it's still very important in my life. It affects how I view things. It affects how I respond to people. It has, I hate to say this, but it was pointed out one time that I use it to promote my own victimization. Because, you know, I try to use the accident as a leverage point in getting my way sometimes. You know, not like you'd see in television or anything, but just subtle stuff.
Cláudia: But now you gave me an explanation of the consequences, about the consequences. I would ask you not to put any kind of censorship into the accident, into the fact that it happened while you were in the military. Just free associate the accident itself. One or two words maximum.
Guest: Negligence.
Cláudia: Negligence.
Guest: Yeah. And there are so many points of negligence that occurred. I neglected to put on my flak vest.
The NCO that was on the vehicle that failed to properly clear the firearm was through negligence. The the pursuit by the German authorities to entertain themselves as a form of negligence rather than allowing the proper procedures and trainings to go on. It's just it was almost like a comedy of errors due to negligence. Very
Cláudia: good very good now you're free associated. Now, when I told you about unconsciously...
Things happened, and it was like a combination between the spiritual world and the human world. Like Lucifer used your negligence at that time to hit you. We could say that it's not only by chance or an accident, because nothing happens just by accident in this planet. And you heard him speaking into your mind, in your ears, right?
Guest: Correct, yeah.
Cláudia: Now you are about to die.
So you, like he was about to achieve his goal, killing you, destroying you. You were an artist. You were a good father. You were just a good Christian, recently being, like becoming more spiritual. So you were like a big enemy of his. So I'm trying to introduce here that there is nothing that happens in this planet, good or evil, that has not a correspondence in the spiritual level.
And being a Christian, you know that. But you now and we have to go back to your negligence. This is the front door. Or the back door, saying that in the back door you have a weakness that demons can hit you. And this can not, I'm not saying by having large accidents or big accidents or things like this, but in other ways.
So there is so much in you that is spiritual and godly that you need to become more conscious of this. You said you have a beautiful voice. You said you sang beautiful, like, sacred songs. You said you were invited to join an orchestra or things like this that would bring a lot of beauty to many people and spiritual elevation. You are a good father.
You are a good man. But there is this negligence hidden behind your consciousness not to take care properly of your talents. And it might be that there is a small negligence in the way you are dealing with your house and allowing your wife to put all this stuff there to difficult your life. I'm just putting some ideas for you to reflect. There might be some negligence in the way you are allowing your house to be taken care of so it doesn't allow you to feel good in your home.
And we might go back next time to bring again some of the subjects that you brought today but develop them further and deeper if you if you like it. I wouldn't mind you wouldn't mind you've
Guest: kind of already given me
Cláudia: that. What a negligent answer oops. But you've already given me
Guest: you've already given me kind of a little uh if you will a note of encouragement and a note of focus.
I've actually decided okay on my mirror I'm going to write down overcome negligence. Stop being negligent.
Cláudia: No, now it's not stopping. Now it's becoming more conscious of it. Okay? So we need to become more conscious of our problems and pathologies. Not to be worried in correcting, correcting all the time, because this brings weight to the situation, as you mentioned when you were in the hospital.
So this need to correct, to go back, to fix this depressed you. You didn't just go like to flow in god's energy and hands. You started to to want to to resolve things by yourself and you could not so this creates more stress. So don't be worried in fixing things when you talk to me okay. This will uh jeopardize our our work together.
So I think we should go back once more okay. Alrighty
Guest: we will plan that. Thank you. You
Cláudia: are very welcome and you veterans have a very deep part in my heart always. Thank you. I would appreciate if war would stop one day and we will be ah this should be one day stop war. This is an enormous crime against humanity. So
You know what our guest was saying about 22 veterans per day committing suicide in the U.S. Is a staggering reality isn't it my hope is that our podcast offers some hope talk to you next time do write with questions and comments joneshealing at gmail.com bye for now
