Emotional Impacts
Veterans described the different ways their firearm injuries affected their mental health and emotional well-being. Some Veterans whose injuries were unintentional talked about experiencing lingering feelings of shame and embarrassment. While some found they were able to move on with few issues, others discussed enduring stress and anxiety stemming from their incidents.
Minimal emotional impact
Tom recalls “getting ribbed by all my Army buddies” after accidentally shooting himself in the foot.
Tom recalls “getting ribbed by all my Army buddies” after accidentally shooting himself in the foot.
Interviewer: What about the emotional aspect of it? Did – was the – kind of emotional component to having had a – you know, firearm injury or…?
Respondent: No.
Interviewer: Okay.
Respondent: No, no. I’ve been shot before. So, it wasn’t – it was just stupidity. I just felt stupid for a while. Now I’m over it.
Interviewer: Did you – I’m curious. Did you tell others, say your friends, other, you know, extended family members what happened?
Respondent: Oh, yeah.
Interviewer: What was their reaction?
Respondent: “You’re an idiot.” Especially my Army buddies. “You know better than that.” So, but yeah. No big deal. And it’s funny because this is the first time somebody’s mentioned it in probably two or three years. Like – it’s like forgotten now you know. But with all the other stuff, it’s just – oh, that’s just Tom. That’s another thing happened to Tom, you know. No big deal so.
It was just something, you know, completely random and minimum complacency on my part, not even thinking about it. You know okay, let’s clear everything and, you know, squeeze the trigger. But it was that one in one thousand or one in a million that happened so. But it was a complete accident. Doesn’t affect me at all except for feeling stupid and getting ribbed by all my Army buddies so. But that about covers it.
Jack remembers feeling “a little bit embarrassed” after experiencing a bullet wound to his leg.
Jack remembers feeling “a little bit embarrassed” after experiencing a bullet wound to his leg.
Well emotionally I guess the only emotion, the only thing I felt maybe was everybody in my family, everything, considers me somewhat of a – they know I’m a good marksman. And they consider me somewhat of an aficionado of weaponry and guns and things, and I ended up shooting myself. It’s a little bit embarrassing to be really frank about it. I was a little bit embarrassed. Of course, I was with family and all that loved me and everything. But still, I thought this really does not look good on me. I’m supposed to be this gun guy. And I ended up buying – it was a new gun. I never even fired it before. I just got it just the day before we went on vacation. So, I didn’t have any practice.
But anyway, we – that was emotionally I guess the thing most – I felt most was a little bit of embarrassment. I did not feel any regret. Like I’m going to miss the cruise or anything. Because I knew it was a flesh wound. And I knew me, I have a high tolerance for pain. And I knew that I would not let that hinder me from getting up the next morning and continuing on with our vacation. So, I wasn’t concerned about that.
For William A, the emotional impact was minor since his injury was “purely a weird, freak accident.”
For William A, the emotional impact was minor since his injury was “purely a weird, freak accident.”
The only emotional impact is all of the crap I had to listen to from the guys at work once they found out that my… And, of course, nobody believes that I didn't, I wasn't doing some kind of silly, quick draw stuff. And I wasn't, because that goes along with the gun safety thing.
Mine was purely a weird, freak accident. But there are people that shoot themselves by being silly and playing with guns. I don't play with guns. So, I didn't really have an emotional thing. I just, I didn't feel stupid because it was nothing I did. And the way to prevent it is, make sure all of your guns are in perfect working order.
Tony talks about finding the irony in his experience.
Tony talks about finding the irony in his experience.
What helped me get through is, one thing is, I knew I was a fool for letting it happen. I had to laugh along with it. It’s not saying that it was funny, but after I thought about it, like I had told you before, I did 25 years and four months in the military. I never had a misfired weapon. The irony of it, I think that’s the right word. The irony of it is I did that time. Then I got out in 2013. June 30th was my last day in the military. Anyway, I shot my freaking toe off. That is not too far out. Do you know what I mean? If it was ’13, it happened a little bit less than two years later, you know? I mean, I am supposed to know how to use a weapon. My friends talked about me. It made me feel bad at first. You know? Then I had to listen to it because you cannot stop anybody from saying what they want to say. You cannot beat anybody up because they are going to tease you.
Lasting emotional impact
Bill reflects on how his “life just changed because of something stupid that should not have happened.”
Bill reflects on how his “life just changed because of something stupid that should not have happened.”
And this plays into the story pretty interesting because one of my favorite things were the jalapeño poppers at Arby’s. And they have the Bronco berry sauce which his awesome for a commercial sauce. I’d rather make my own. But hey, when you're just getting out of the hospital for a couple days and your hand is completely useless and wrapped up, you take what you can get.
But I was so proud I wouldn’t even ask my wife to open… how you gonna do that? Right. And I actually had a complete and utter mental collapse, a meltdown in Arby’s because I couldn’t do something so simple. So stupidly simple. I don’t think I was really in a place in my head where I was thinking ahead going, “Oh my god, am I ever going to be able to work in my woodshop again? Am I ever going to be able to weld again?” No. I was totally focused on the stupid Bronco berry sauce.
As far as where I think the danger to a person can come in is more the emotional and mental aftereffects depending on what that injury was like. And that was something I really wanted to mention and focus on because this was not life-threatening. Not with modern healthcare and I had good healthcare insurance when it happened and even if I didn’t, I would have been well cared for. I wasn’t under VA care at the time. I wasn’t going to die from this. I was probably going to continue on in my job at HP and I was going to have to learn a new way of typing, you know, missing one digit.
The real danger I think is in that realization that your life has just changed because of something stupid that should not have happened. And if I had been in a different situation or different environment or different place in my life when that mental breakdown at Arby’s over the Bronco berry sauce lid that I couldn’t peel off, it could have been a lot more dangerous for me and for somebody else.
The biggest thing not to overlook. Don’t miss the forest for the trees. The physical injury is very easy to focus on. But the mental affect, especially if you put in a little bit of embarrassment, if it was an accident that could have been prevented, it can really send you into a dark place. Now I have to hide this for the rest of my life. Who do I admit this to? Who do I tell … you know just get past that.
A lot of people don’t ever consider the fact that there’s going to be emotional consequences for an injury like that. And that's what you have to be watching for. And I think that’s a… again I’m going to say this lest I repeat myself. That’s a part of this that I think really needs to be focused on. No matter how minor the injury is, there's an emotional aspect to that recovery. And when you look at things in terms of minor injuries, the x-ray I showed you, it’s a pretty damn minor injury. But it had huge consequences, potentially to me and my emotional health, because of how much I rely on my hands.
Justice describes his injury as “one of my life’s greatest shames.”
Justice describes his injury as “one of my life’s greatest shames.”
It bothered me heavily for probably the first year. I would even like if I wasn’t like thinking about a firearm, I would just occasionally like think back, kind of just replay what had happened in my head over and over. And just try to look for anything else I could’ve done differently. I’ve always tried to pride myself on my knowledge of firearms and safety with them. But probably for the first year-year and a half, it really affected me and it’s still one of my life’s greatest shames. I really have difficulty telling people about it. If I trust them I will. So, very sensitive to, like, jokes about it and stuff. I’ll tell people like, “Hey man”, like, “That’s probably the closest thing to PTSD I got, so please, please don’t be too rough on me.”
Now it’s probably been 2-3 years. I can tell people about it without kind of reminiscing too deeply on it. It’s still my greatest shame, but it took probably a year-year and a half to really probably move on without thinking about it probably once a week and kind of internally reflecting on what had happened, I suppose you’d say.
Probably the hardest thing, seeing my fiancée. Like she just looked extremely worried, and I didn’t want her to think any less of me. But she was very supportive and helped me out. She felt terrible because she had gotten called out of work to go see me at the hospital probably 30 minutes after it happened.
Probably my biggest takeaway from all this was even when you are very shameful of what you have done—and this is just my personal experience—having a reminder sometimes is almost a blessing in disguise as it can help other people prevent it for themselves. That sounds kind of silly, but injuring myself has helped me. I will always have the reminder to help other people not to do the same thing. And I think some people may not ever see it that way. But I hope if they can, it will help them move past it.
Robert describes experiencing flashbacks after accidentally shooting himself in the hand.
Robert describes experiencing flashbacks after accidentally shooting himself in the hand.
And what it did for me was, first of all, when it happened, I said, “I can’t believe I’ve done this to myself.” And I was very ashamed of myself for letting it happen. And the second thing was you know, going through the process of healing. And I, initially, I had a little bit of flashback stuff, I mean it was within the first couple of weeks and I kind of remembered you know, the bang and the eventual pain because I was in the process of trying to dial 911 and I was unsuccessful because I could only do it with one hand. So, I went outside, and I got a passerby to help me out. And eventually, the emergency people came, and I am out in front of the house laying down and moaning like a baby. And it was quite an experience on the pain level.
I never really felt like I didn’t understand, you know, how dangerous firearms can be. And I always knew that. That’s why I was so ashamed of myself when I shot myself because I, you know, I’m saying I know better. I know better. How could I let this happen to me? So, it’s, you know, it’s kind of like when you do something and break the law or something, you feel so ashamed about it later. I mean, for people that care about that sort of thing. Some people just don’t care. Of course, you can’t call a bullet back, right? You can’t, if you shoot your bullet, you can’t say, “Oh, I made a mistake, come back here.” It doesn’t work that way. So, that’s why it’s just a critical thing to know how to handle it properly.
You know, I grew up in a military family. And I think the first couple of weeks after I shot myself, and I had those little, I am not going to call them panic attacks, but I can kind of see how that PTSD stuff starts up. Your mind keeps reviewing what happened to you. And if it’s a very, very traumatic experience, it’s easier for a person to feel really, really uncomfortable, you know, when they have to remember these things. And I can remember the first week or two, I was saying, “Oh, I’ve got to remember what I did and how could I have been so stupid?” And I’m still there with the bandage on my arm and taking pain killers like candy until I figured out the combination so that I didn’t have to take them so much. It can be a mind screw up, you know? You can let your mind get away from you if you allow it.
Jason shares that his injury was “a little hard to accept at first.”
Jason shares that his injury was “a little hard to accept at first.”
Andrew describes feeling emotionally numb from his experience.
Andrew describes feeling emotionally numb from his experience.
Emotionally? It still – I don’t, if I got too emotional about it... I hadn’t even been a year out from when I lost my wife, you know? I was still pretty numb. I think that the more the emotional – it’s more now than probably then. I was more sad because I thought I had great legs, and now it’s not so pretty. I was more like, “Oh my gosh, come on, really?” I mean, I don’t know, emotionally I was pretty numb. I was already pretty numb, so it didn’t really – I was more numb off my wife shooting herself.
I think now more, I have a little more anger now. For a long time, for years it didn’t really bug me, every once in a while. But now as I keep getting older it hurts. And I think that I get more like – it’s just painful. I get kind of angry that it hurts. And it makes me tired. I feel like I aged a little bit. Every time the onset of the pain, I’m like, “Ugh.” I don’t like – there’s other things – I don’t like loud sounds.
I don’t like loud sounds, like bangs. My wife wanted a bird, and I was like no, that chirping and loud – I have more sensitivity to loud banging or sharp sounds. I think I’ve been that way all my life. I don’t think it really affected me emotionally, just more physically. It was too compounded, too close in time, that it just kind of all went together, you know? I was already emotionally destroyed. And so that was just the icing on the cake. It didn’t even make a cool story; it was just stupid.
The only time it messed with me emotionally is, these girls they were walking through. And they were like, “Oh.” I can’t believe they’re walking out, and they were like “Oh look, a handsome gimp.” I was like, “Man.” That made me feel bad. I wish I would see that girl again. And say that wasn’t nice of you to say. But that emotionally kind of hurt. People calling me a gimp. Someone called me a gimp. That was her being honest, being drunk. I couldn’t imagine what other people thought of me when I was walking and limping down the road.
I know that sometimes when I see people walking and limping down the road, I feel bad for them. So, you know, I don’t know. That kind of hurt to think that I was a gimp. I didn’t know how long it was going to last, actually. If I was going to limp forever. That made me sad, actually, that’s one emotion. I was sad that I might, you know, limp the rest of my life. That’s the only emotion, and a little anger, because that guy left me with all these bills and took off. It was so close, not even a year. A little over a year before I lost my wife, and I was already emotionally wrecked.
Emotional impact of violent acts
After being shot by an unknown assailant, Darrell says, “it’s caused me to be leery of everyone.”
After being shot by an unknown assailant, Darrell says, “it’s caused me to be leery of everyone.”
And it was traumatic just getting shot again and not knowing. You know, you’re just kind of terrified. You don’t know if somebody’s going to come around or not come around. This happened in 2015. And for several years it just caused me to have some issues. It has caused me not to trust nobody. It’s caused me to be leery of everyone. And I’m not so open and honest with people as I used to have been. And it took me a long time to get over the fact that I was shot. You know everybody says time heals. It does to a certain degree. I just, I was very angry. I was extremely angry about it happening and, you know, why? Why did something like this have to happen?
And I lived in a small town. So, everybody and his brother knew what had happened. And so, you know, you walk around. You see them. They look at you. You know that they got to be thinking about certain things. And it was just – it just took me a while to get back into where I just didn’t care about what people thought, what they might’ve heard, or anything else like that. And it just – it took me several years to just get passed it.
Some people just don’t understand. They don’t understand what you go through. They don’t understand what it did to me mentally at the time. You know what I’m saying? And what I’ve had to – just how long it’s taken me to overcome that and to just let it be. And it’s hard to describe that. And you know, I don’t want to sit in there and get all emotional or anything else like that. I just, I try not to discuss it with a whole lot of folks. Only very, very few people other than my family know about what happened.
It’s just devastating to, not just the person that got shot, but their whole entire family. You know what I’m saying? It affects everyone. It affects your neighbors. It affects their way of thinking and how they feel about all that. You know, a lot of people don’t want to get shot. Everybody just wanted to be armed and you know, what are the repercussions of doing that?
Recalling the incident when he was shot, Joe says the “stress can be overbearing at times.”
Recalling the incident when he was shot, Joe says the “stress can be overbearing at times.”
But I was helping a friend move, like children, toddlers, and someone walked up and shot the house up. I got shot five times. I pushed my friend’s wife through the door with the kid. I got shot five times. I pushed his cousin through the door he got shot two times as well.
So, that was kind of traumatizing for real. People do things, I’m not sure what for, but things happen around me for no reason. When I went to the service, I went through this, I went through that. I had friends killed, mental trauma from the service, and I come home and I'm getting shot up like this. I got people saying, “you're a hero, you saved my life,” and, “you took a bullet for me.” It’s not even like, “okay how you feeling,” or “what went on with you?” or, “you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. What were you doing to make that happen?” Like, all I did was good things, but stuff happens in life, so that’s what I pretty much came to grips with myself.
The stress can be overbearing sometimes. Sometimes I think about it like what I’ve done or what I’ve been through or how I got hurt. I think of myself, it’s not really about what I think and what I feel like. It’s pretty much about other people, like as far as helping them, but that can be a downfall too because I wind up in situations like this where I do get shot and on multiple occasions, like, am I in the wrong place? Am I around the wrong people? Am I doing that? No, that’s just life, we can’t control what our story is going to be and everybody’s story is different. Everybody handles situations differently.
Doug shares that he was deeply affected after witnessing a close friend’s death by suicide and reflects that “working on your mind is a lifelong process.”
Doug shares that he was deeply affected after witnessing a close friend’s death by suicide and reflects that “working on your mind is a lifelong process.”
I think I locked it up pretty much. I know all my close friends at the time that I hung out with, there was maybe a point where I got drunk and freaked out...I don’t remember sitting down and talking to any of them about, "This is something that happened," and everyone kind of whispered about, "Oh, he’s pretty screwed up," whatever. But I was just supposed to get over it. I just locked all my mental problems kind of away in a box and kept them from view for a real long time. But when I was by myself, I would break down and get upset about it.
I really feel like if I would have been able to talk to a professional at the time--a psychologist, a psychiatrist---I would have been much better off mentally later on. I think trying to bury feelings for six or eight years, or whatever it was, caused more damage than what maybe, needed to happen. I definitely had mental illness before the event, but I did have a lot of PTSD after it. It’s not necessarily from his death, but I did have PTSD to the extent that when I was driving down the road, I thought someone would pass me and shoot me in the head. I mean it’s really a bizarre thing and I didn’t--my family, everyone in the South, my parents were conservative, you didn’t go get mental help really back then, and so it wouldn’t be until years later that I understood all that.
I don’t think at the time, and the person I was, I would have sought that kind of help, though. Now, it’s different. Now, I can be like, "Well, obviously, that’s what I needed to do was go try to get help."
Working on your mind, is a lifelong process, and this is the most stable, the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I’m doing really, really well now, but it was pretty touch-and-go for several years. So, I don’t know... I think the trick is to get to this point in life where you can look back and kind of figure things out.
For Jessica, therapy and her friends and family have been important sources of support in helping her cope with the emotional trauma of witnessing two suicides.
For Jessica, therapy and her friends and family have been important sources of support in helping her cope with the emotional trauma of witnessing two suicides.
I knew that the best thing that I could do would be to talk to someone, and whether it was to then pursue any sort of therapy and CBT, or, I just knew--I didn’t know what the right treatment would be, but I know if I didn’t talk to somebody, I was just going to bottle it up and that wouldn’t be healthy.
But I knew, regardless of where I got care, I had to talk to somebody who was trained in how to deal with PTSD. So, my therapist at the time suggested that I take up boxing because I was so angry and I was so, so tired; like I would get out of bed, and I would be tired again. And they said, "Well, you should really go somewhere where you can just punch all of your anger out." And so, that’s what I did; I ended up putting all of my energies into exercising; and then as soon as I got another job opportunity, I left. But then, I carried that with me, whereas exercise was a healthy means to redistributing that frustration and that anger. I would say I still do to this day.
My instincts, when something bad happens to me, is to instantly seek out trusted friends or family and talk to them about it; and then from there, seek out someone trained in helping me deal with that, and I think that just comes from my background of having gone to therapy since I was a child. Maybe my tendency would be to hash it, and rehash it, and relive it too much, but I would say that’s better than the opposite of bottling it up inside, and then it comes out in unhealthy ways later. But I’m a very sensitive person and so those things stayed with me for a very long time.
Financial impact
Paul’s injury made him unable to continue his job as a truck driver.
Paul’s injury made him unable to continue his job as a truck driver.
I had two surgeries -- I’m sorry, three surgeries on my ankle. The first time to remove the bullet, the second time to remove bone fragments, and the third time to remove more bone fragments, and the doctor did some surgery on my ligaments. He cut the ligament, stretched it to take up some of the slack and sewed me up. So, since 2017, they put me on disability.
At that time, I was a professional truck driver. I informed my supervisor that I was not able to use my left ankle to depress the clutch in the truck in a repetitive motion, so I had asked if they had an automatic that they could put me in, and they informed me that they did not, so I was terminated. That happened while I was still in my training period, and I obtained a representative for disability and went on full disability, since 2017.
I did go back and do a follow-up with him and it got to the point where even though my foot had been so swollen due to the injury and everything like that, I literally had to go from wearing a regular size 10 tennis shoe to a size 10-1/2 extra-wide on my left foot. So, I had to buy two different pairs of tennis shoes, one to fit my right foot, the regular 10-1/2, and then I had to go with an extra-wide in my left foot just so I could wear regular tennis shoes or whatever and not wear slippers or something like that wherever I went or stuff like that.
Yeah. It was kind of a financial burden on that there having to buy two different pairs of shoes and you could only use one shoe out of each one.
Daniel describes the emotional and financial toll of his injury and the long rehabilitation period that followed.
Daniel describes the emotional and financial toll of his injury and the long rehabilitation period that followed.
It was so hard on me because, you know, the humerus was completed severed. I mean, they fractured that thing, so you know, it looked like the bones looked like corn chips. And it’s hard for me to deal with the fact that I was no longer able to take care of myself. And what I normally did, which I loved doing, I was no longer able to do that. So, that became very depressing to me. And I mean it’s, I don’t know if I can describe it. it’s like, you know, you get that feeling of being obsolete or inadequate. And you don’t want your family to suffer. You don’t want, I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me. You know, or stuff like that. And I had nobody to turn to who is in my social, you know, who was going to give money to pay my bills. How was I going to do this? It just compiles everything, and the pain.
It was hard. I tell you; it wasn’t just hard on me. It was hard on everyone around me. And I felt like I was doing the right thing when it happened because I was in defense of others. I had to do it because I had seen what was going to happen. And I don’t know. It’s hard. It was very hard. Many nights I’d sit there and hear my mom crying. And she’s crying for me because I’m feeling the way I am. So, it’s like everybody is getting it.
Mickie worries about the legal and financial ramifications of the altercation in which he was shot in the leg.
Mickie worries about the legal and financial ramifications of the altercation in which he was shot in the leg.
But it is stressful, you know, wondering how much time I’m going to get. You know, I’m fifty-four years old and, you know, got a gunshot wound and just thinking about your future when, you know, I guess I didn’t quite retire but, you know, I’m on Disability from Social Security and the VA. And so, I’m thinking now – and I got a couple houses I need to pay for. It’s like; okay, well, I could lose both - if I go to jail for a long time, I could lose my property and I lost Social Security and VA money and all that stuff I done worked for. It’s all going down the drain over just a little small incident and even thinking that you could’ve – I could’ve lost my life in that situation.