Counterintuitive Spring 2023

1. Is PTSD Contagious? From this article that is what is seems like.

2. Brannan Vines has never been to war. This is a casual claim.

3. Brannan has a warrior’s skills: “hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers”. This is a categorical claim because it categories these traits that Brannan has. How can she have these type of skills? Can it be from being with her husband who has gone to war and has PTSD…

4. “Her nose starts running she’s so pissed” Brannan must easily get mad for every little thing considering the fact she is getting so pissed because an elderly woman needs an extra minute to pay for stuff. It can be very well her PTSD that is making her very inpatient.

5. Brannan Vines husband, Caleb was sent to Iraq twice and served as a designated marksman. This is a categorical claim categorizing Caleb’s position in the military.

6. “Like Brannan’s symptoms. Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but it is in fact exhaustingly distressing, a conditioned response to life-threatening situations.” This is a definition claim because it’s defining hypervigilance as exhaustingly distressing and a conditioned response to life-threatening situations.

7. “Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.” This is a definition claim because it provides us the time it takes for a person to catch PTSD.

8. “When a sound erupts—Caleb screaming at Brannan because she’s just woken him up from a nightmare, after making sure she’s at least an arm’s length away in case he wakes up swinging” This is a casual claim, showing one of the symptoms of PTSD.

9. “Even when everyone’s in the family room watching TV, it’s only connected to Netflix and not to cable, since news is often a trigger.” Definition claim because the news is a trigger to PTSD.

10. “Their German shepherd, a service dog trained to help veterans with PTSD” Categorical claim because the dog is categorized as a service dog.

The article first claims that Brannan Vines, despite never being to war, has many qualities that a “warrior” might have. Most of these are traits that belong to someone with PTSD. Dubbed the “warrior’s skills”: “hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers.”. The following claim seems related, being that she will act rash in situations that do not call for it. She will suffer a break down of sorts, all because “…a tiny elderly woman needs an extra minute to pay for her dish soap or whatever.”
These claims lay out sympathy for the subject through what appears to be a paradox of sorts. She hasn’t been to war, nor are any traumatizing experience in her past explained (so it is best to assume there were not any), yet she still behaves in moments as if she had PTSD. Her freak out’s are compared to the trivialities they are thrown over in a language that makes it seem absurd (the use of “…dish soap or whatever”)
The article then claims that Brannan may not have been to war, yet her husband Caleb has been to Iraq twice, where he returned with a traumatic brain injury. The article attempts the define the number of American veterans from Iraq/Afghanistan with PTSD, yet “He’s one of 103,200, or 228,875, or 336,000 Americans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan and came back with PTSD, depending on whom you ask…” is the answer we get.
These claims attempt to layout the lack of agreement and confusion over the case of PTSD in veterans. With so many different statistics on those suffering from the disorder, it makes the phenomenon seem even more discouraging for those with it. Onward, it tries to explain how it is these experiences that have negative effects on those around these veterans.
The next claim, “Hypervigilance sounds innocuous, but it is in fact exhaustively distressing…” almost tries to make account for someones ignorance on the issue of PTSD, explaining how it’s easy to assume that many symptoms are mild, yet that the truth of these symptoms is far more disturbing. The effect makes, at least me, think more about the effects of PTSD.
The following claim “Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.”, tries to make it appear almost impossible for Brannan to not have “caught” Calebs PTSD. Claims further into this paragraph use examples to explain how Brannan’s situation is not nearly as bad as other military wives with husbands suffering from PTSD. “She has not, unlike military wives she advises, ever been beat up. Nor jumped out of her own bed when she got touched in the middle of the night for fear of being raped, again. Still.”. Though even after being aquantied with the better than average conditions for a PTSD wife, that lone “Still.” leaves a notion of negativity in the air.
Another claim demonstrates some conditions in making up for Calebs PTSD, the interviewer writes “We raise the blinds in the afternoons, but only if we are alone. When we hear Caleb pulling back in the driveway, we jump up and grab their strings, plunging the living room back into its usual necessary darkness.”. Sympathy for Brannan, as she must have drastically changed her life for her husband.
The following paragraph tries to define a picture of the Viness’ before the PTSD, by explaining their wedding album. Gives a eerie feeling once “And there’s Caleb, slim, in a tux, three years older than Brannan at 22, in every single picture just about the smilingest motherfucker you’ve ever seen, in a shy kind of way.”, is followed by “Now, he’s rounder, heavier, bearded, and long-haired, obviously tough even if he weren’t prone to wearing a COMBAT INFANTRYMAN cap, but still not the guy you picture when you see his “Disabled Veteran” license plates. Not the old ‘Nam guy with a limp, or maybe the young legless Iraq survivor, that you’d expect.” Shows that these kind of things drastically change people.
“It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s injuries.” is a very clearly stated claim. Followed by explanations, such as doctors lack of ideas on why he suffers from flashbacks or other odd behaviors. Onward, there are snipits of horrors Caleb faced during wartime. “They don’t know exactly why it comes to him in dreams, and why especially that time he picked up the pieces of Baghdad bombing victims and that lady who appeared to have thrown herself on top of her child to save him only to find the child dead underneath torments him when he’s sleeping, and sometimes awake.” The sarcasm here is painful, as they are clearly explaining why he has these behaviors.
The next paragraph makes the claim that these conditions are nothing new, and have been an effect of war for all of history. “Whatever is happening to Caleb, it’s as old as war itself.”, puts Caleb in an historical context. War creates this. “It wasn’t an official diagnosis until 1980, when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made its debut in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, uniting a flood of Vietnam vets suffering persistent psych issues with traumatized civilians—previously assigned labels like “accident neurosis” and “post-rape syndrome”—onto the same page of the DSM-III.” explains how little we’ve really known about the subject until some of the most horrific cases of it arose from the Vietnam war. “But whatever people have called it, they haven’t been likely to grasp or respect it.”, is a claim that even further invalidates anyones supposed knowledge on the issue. It’s still largely a mystery to us. “Granted, diagnosing PTSD is a tricky thing.” only further pushes the notion.
“Even if something is certainly wrong—even if a couple of times he has inadvisably downed his medication with a lot of booze, admitting to Brannan that he doesn’t care if he dies; even if he once came closer to striking her than she ever, ever, ever could have imagined before he went to war­—Caleb knows that a person whose problem is essentially that he can’t adapt to peacetime Alabama sounds, to many, like a pussy.” This whole article is in a way making a claim about the view of cognitive disorders by the general public, that no matter how horrific his experiences are, that he may be any weaker of a person. “You can’t see Caleb’s other wound, either. It’s called traumatic brain injury, or TBI, from multiple concussions. In two tours, he was in at least 20 explosions—IEDs, vehicle-borne IEDs, RPGs.” this is making a claim that Caleb is in fact a very brave person who has went through incredible feats of courage.
“The Army has rules about that sort of thing now. Now if you’re knocked unconscious, or have double vision, or exhibit other signs of a brain injury, you have to rest for a certain period of time, but that rule didn’t go into effect in theater until 2010, after Caleb was already out of the service.” this passage almost makes a claim that conditions for soldiers have been quite deplorable for some time, and are only recently seeing any improvement. “He wasn’t diagnosed for years after he got back, despite Brannan’s frantic phone calls to the VA begging for tests, since her husband, formerly a high-scoring civil-engineering major at Auburn University, was asking her to help him do simple division.” further pushes the reluctance of the government or military to do anything for someone who gave so much for them.
“Katie* Vines, the first time I meet her, is in trouble. Not that you’d know it to look at her, bounding up to the car, blondish bob flying as she sprints from her kindergarten class, nice round face like her daddy’s.” makes the claim that the child of Caleb and Brannan, appears to be a quite normal girl, though quite quickly and even before we learn that she appears so, we learn that she is in some sort of trouble, likely in relation somehow to what’s been discussed thus far. We learn that Katie spat on a classmate. “Her eyebrows are heavily creased when she shakes her head and says quietly again, “I was so mad.””, why was she so mad? Probably has something to do with the subject matter of this article. “She is not, according to Brannan, “a normal, carefree six-year-old.””, pushing the point closer to her father, Caleb.
“Different studies of the children of American World War II, Korea, and Vietnam vets with PTSD have turned up different results…” enforces a claim made earlier that these disorders still largely remain uncovered, and are not fully understood. “But then in 2003, a team of Dutch and Israeli researchers meta-analyzed 31 of the papers on Holocaust survivors’ families, and concluded—to the fury of some clinicians—that when more rigorous controls were applied, there was no evidence for the intergenerational transmission of trauma.” And there it is! Apparently at least, evidence that PTSD cannot be transmitted biologically! “They were not, in other words, expected to man up and get over it.”, explains why those tested did not reveal any transmission of PTSD, perhaps because of social aspects.
“When I asked the VA if the organization would treat kids for secondary trauma, its spokespeople stressed that it has made great strides in family services in recent years, rolling out its own program for couples’ counseling and parenting training.”, this appeared to be to be a claim that their initial requests are denied and in place giving alternate remedies that have virtually nothing to do with the initial request of having children screened. “…since the Vineses aren’t poor enough for subsidized health care and the Blue Cross gap insurance maxes out at six months a year. She’s never been diagnosed with anything, and Brannan prefers it that way.” This a very odd statement, somewhere between difficulty in them getting proper help, and their inability to accept what that help may yield.
“Brannan is a force of keeping her family together. She sleeps a maximum of five hours a night, keeps herself going with fast food and energy drinks, gets Katie to and from school and to tap dance and art, where Katie produces some startlingly impressive canvases, bright swirling shapes bisected by and intersected with other swaths of color, bold, intricate.” is a claim that despite the negativity in her life stemming from her husbands PTSD, she still does what’s expected of her as a wife and mother. “That’s typical parent stuff, but Brannan also keeps Caleb on his regimen of 12 pills—antidepressants, anti-anxiety, sleep aids, pain meds, nerve meds, stomach meds—plus weekly therapy, and sometimes weekly physical therapy for a cartilage-lacking knee and the several disintegrating disks in his spine, products of the degenerative joint disease lots of guys are coming back with maybe from enduring all the bomb blasts, and speech therapy for the TBI, and continuing tests for a cyst in his chest and his 48-percent-functional lungs.” further claims that she really goes above and beyond the normal mother routine even with a disability in her way.

But she’s got a warrior’s skills: hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers.

• Caleb’s wife has never been to war but has acquired the skills.
• Warriors are hyperaware, hypervigilant, danger scanners.

They don’t know why some other guys in his unit who did and saw the same stuff that Caleb did and saw are fine but Caleb is so sensitive to light, why he can’t just watch the news like a regular person without feeling as if he might catch fire.

• by saying that other people went through the same experience but don’t show signs of PTSD, means that PTSD doesn’t happen to every veteran after they come back from war.
• Claim that Caleb Vines is not a normal person.

Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala.

• researchers blame biology and genetics for PTSD.
• could be claiming that PTSD can happen to people without the genetic aspect.

“I guess we’re just used to dealing with people with more severe injuries,” a VA nurse once told Brannan upon seeing Caleb.

• claims that other injuries are worse than brain injuries that can result in PTSD.

Basically your spouse’s behavior becomes the “T” in your own PTSD.

• people can make the other people close to them suffer from PSTD.
• The traumatic encounter they have is the person that originally suffered from PTSD.

Is PTSD Contagious?

• Comparing a stress disorder to a common illness that people can spread around.
• PTSD can come from somebody else who has PTSD.

Brannan Vines has never been to war, but her husband, Caleb, was sent to Iraq twice, where he served in the infantry as a designated marksman.

• Claims for the second time that she has never been to war.
• Indicates that somebody close to her has went to war twice.

Caleb has been home since 2006, way more than enough time for Brannan to catch his symptoms.

• Claims that time plays a factor in developing PTSD.
• by saying catch symptoms the author could have meant “develop symptoms”
• claims that PTSD happens while the person is home from where they were.

The house, in a subdivision a little removed from one of many shopping centers in a small town in the southwest corner of Alabama, is often quiet as a morgue

• claims that small towns away from stores are quiet like a morgue
• author claims that morgues are quiet.

Even when everyone’s in the family room watching TV, it’s only connected to Netflix and not to cable, since news is often a trigger.

• claims that watching the news triggers PTSD related reactions
• claims that cable cannot be used at all when watching TV

She has not, unlike military wives she advises, ever been beat up.

• claims that other military wives get beaten up by a family member that has been to war.
• beating other people is effect of PTSD.

The Vineses’ wedding album is gorgeous, leather-bound, older and dustier than you might expect given their youth.

• claims that because the couple is young still that their wedding album cant be old and dusty
• wedding album is gorgeous

Now, he’s rounder, heavier, bearded, and long-haired, obviously tough even if he weren’t prone to wearing a COMBAT INFANTRYMAN cap, but still not the guy you picture when you see his “Disabled Veteran” license plates.

• The statement claims that disable veteran’s look a certain way
• rounder, heavier, bearded and long-haired people are tough people.
• claims that disabled veterans look the opposite of what Caleb looks like

But whatever people have called it, they haven’t been likely to grasp or respect it.

• claims that there is many names for PTSD
• People don’t understand what happens if somebody has PTSD
• claims that people don’t respect/ acknowledge that PTSD is real.

1. Is PTSD a contagious disorder? The title seems to suggest that it is.
2. Brannan Vines is not among those who have been to war.
3. Brannan possesses a number of characteristics that are shared with those who have gone to war, including “hyperawareness, hypervigilance, adrenaline-sharp quick-scanning for danger, for triggers,” and being “[s]uper stimuli-sensitive.”
4. Brannan is married to Caleb Vines, who has been to war and has PTSD.
5. Since Caleb returned from Iraq in 2006, Brannan has ‘caught’ his symptoms.
6. Hypervigilance is one of the symptoms of PTSD.
7. Due to Caleb’s PTSD, it is necessary for the living room of the Vines home to be dark most of the time.
8. Most people would expect a person with “Disabled Veteran” license plates to be “[an] old ‘Nam guy with a limp, or maybe [a] young legless Iraq survivor.”
9. An additional symptom of PTSD is sensitivity to light.
10. It is possible that PTSD can be caused by “[f]amily history, or maybe previous trauma.”
11. PTSD has been known by many names, and is not uncommon in those who have been to war.
12. People are unlikely to take PTSD, and those who have it, seriously.
13. Diagnostically, PTSD is “[t]he result of a malfunctioning nervous system that fails to normalize after trauma and instead perpetrates memories and misfires life-or-death stress for no practical reason.”
14. Neither doctors nor civilians fully understand the many facets of brain damage.
15. PTSD is among the disorders and illnesses that have an entry in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Conversely, secondary traumatic stress is not.
16. Depression and alienation are among the symptoms that are cause by secondary traumatic stress, as is “compassion fatigue.” These symptoms are experienced by those who spend great amounts of time with PTSD, such as social workers and trauma counsellors.
17. Some spouses develop their own ‘form’ of PTSD, the “T” of which is caused by the behavior of a PTSD-afflicted spouse.
18. There have been many documented cases in which the spouses of veterans with PTSD develop secondary traumatic stress.
19. “Trauma is a contagious disease; it affects everyone that has close contact with a traumatized person,” including spouses and children.
20. It is possible for children to learn the behavior of shouting and yelling—in fact, this has happened to Katie Vines, who is the daughter of Brannan and Caleb Vines.
21. Many things may indicate that a person has PTSD, including “higher rate of psychiatric treatment,” “more dysfunctional social and emotional behavior,” and “difficulties in establishing and maintaining friendships.”
22. While there have been studies performed on the effects that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had on the families of veterans, none have been as extensive as one that is currently being performed.
23. Army children in and around bases may need help “to identify and treat coping and behavioral problems.”
24. There are many ways of working on PTSD in children, the ‘softer’ ones of which include “lots of talks about coping skills, and an art class where she [Katie] can express her feelings.”
25. Some children of veterans with PTSD “scream and sob and rock back and forth at the sound of a single loud noise, or who try to commit suicide even before they’re out of middle school.” Katie Vines is not among these children.

Following Caleb’s second tour, he “was edgy [and] distant, but he did not forget entire conversations minutes later, [and] did not have to wait for a stable mental-health day and good moment between medication doses to be intimate with his wife.”  This did not happen after his first tour.

26. Kateri Peterson also suffers from “awful overstimulating hypervigilance,” a symptom of PTSD.
27. This symptom is also demonstrated by her eight-year-old son, who “now also counts the exits in new spaces he enters, points them out to his loved ones, keeps a mental map of them at the ready, until war or fire fails to break out, and everyone is safely back home.”
28. PTSD is hard on marriages, as demonstrated by the high numbers of divorces between PSTD-stricken veterans and their spouses that occurred within six months of the veteran’s return home.
29. Many veterans commit suicide—despite the fact that only 7% of Americans are veterans, 20% of that 7% eventually end their own life.
30. Every 80 minutes, a veteran commits suicide. Accordingly, the children of a parent who commits suicide become three times more likely to commit suicide themselves.