A Cronkite News Service Weekend Special
WITH RITUALS, EXERCISES, RETREAT HELPS VETERANS WITH COMBAT STRESS
NOTE: This story moved Wednesday, April 2. We recommend it for weekend use.
With BC-CNS-Merritt Center-Box
Photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 (thumbnails, captions below)
By JEREMY THOMAS
Cronkite News Service
STAR VALLEY _ Ken Moorin lies on his back, knees bent, hands behind his head. His body trembles and shakes involuntarily, releasing tension.
As an Army reserve sergeant stationed an hour from Baghdad, Moorin and his supply convoy were under a constant threat of mortar attacks.
The memories stayed buried deep inside long after he returned in 2004. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, Moorin suffered from anxiety attacks and depression, making it difficult to work and eventually forcing him to quit his teaching career.
On this day, he is starting a long process of pulling himself out of the abyss. His new routine of exercises, he says, is beginning to allow him to let go.
“It works,” says Moorin, who came here from Phoenix. “You have to be able to release on a physical level.”
The regimen is known as TRE _ trauma releasing exercises_ which he learned during his first weekend at the Merritt Center, a nonprofit retreat funded by private donations and provided free to combat veterans.
The retreat’s namesake, Betty Merritt, started the center after leaving her job as an executive with an East Coast data services corporation in 1986. It started with a vision she had during a massage, Merritt says.
“An hour and a half into the massage, I saw a white light in my belly that moved up in my body,” she says. “Then I heard a voice behind me say, ‘Let go.’”
After that, she would see fields of purple and yellow pansies as she closed her eyes, and she crisscrossed the southern part of the U.S. for the next year searching for what she had envisioned.
She found the flowers behind a lodge nestled in the woods here. It was owned by a doctor who used it as a recovery retreat for cancer patients. She bought it.
Her retreat brings veterans here for four weekends over five months. Between six and 10 people participate in each retreat.
“We’re offering veterans from war zones education, renewal and basic training for life,” Merritt says. “We provide a way for feelings to come up that are buried.”
The first two weekends usually are devoted to bonding. Veterans talk in a circle and walk with mentors who’ve been through the program. They take part in rituals designed to give form to feelings that they wish to discard, such as focusing ill feelings on an object such as a rock and tossing it away.
They also receive massages and undergo a process called guided visualization, a form of hypnosis in which subjects place themselves mentally into the incident that triggered PTSD. The technique, also known as exposure therapy, teaches veterans to overcome the feelings associated with that incident.
“I’ve learned about walking through fear,” Moorin says. “When you face your fear, you can see another new beginning on the other side.”
On the third weekend, veterans participate in a Native American sweat lodge ceremony. Inside the shelter, a symbol of the womb, they meditate and pray for hours in the swelter of hot coals. When it’s over, Merritt says, the veterans feel reborn and renewed.
Loved ones and counselors are invited to the fourth and final weekend to participate in the veterans’ graduation. Merritt says it’s important that family members understand PTSD because veterans need to feel the same camaraderie at home that they experienced in combat.
PTSD affects an estimated 20-30 percent of all combat veterans, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Farris Tuma, chief of the Traumatic Stress Disorders Research Program at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Md., said exposure therapy typically is the most effective treatment for PTSD. Visualizing the traumatic experience in a safe environment under clinical supervision can provide a person tools to regulate the anxiety, Tuma says.
“Practicing or rehearsing gradually replaces or drowns out those memories so the person realizes that it’s not happening again,” Tuma says.
Tuma says that those with milder forms of PTSD can be relieved or even cured by simply discussing trauma with peers who have been through similar experiences.
The talking process is an integral part of Merritt Center retreats.
Mike Brewer, a former Marine Corps sergeant from Tucson, is one of more than 20 graduates who return to counsel others. Once a nurse to Vietnam veterans, Brewer calls himself a “wounded healer.” While conventional clinical treatments may open the doors to recovery, he says, they lack a necessary spiritual component.
“PTSD is a violation of the soul,” Brewer says. “If you don’t address that, you’re only going to be half-healed.”
Ken Moorin says he also wants to return someday to help other veterans.
“We all deal with the same issues,” Moorin says. “We understand each other.”
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PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download
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PHOTOS: Click thumbnails to see full-resolution images and download
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-MERRITT CENTER: Ken Moorin, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, stands in front of a gathering place at the Merritt Center in Star Valley. Sleeping quarters for veterans are behind him. The nonprofit center, which offers its services free of charge, uses trauma-releasing exercises to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jeremy Thomas)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-MERRITT CENTER: Ken Moorin, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, demonstrates a trauma-releasing exercise at the Merritt Center in Star Valley. The nonprofit center, which offers its services free of charge, uses the exercises to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jeremy Thomas)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-MERRITT CENTER: Ken Moorin, an Army reservist who served in Iraq, talks with Betty Merritt, who runs the Merritt Center in Star Valley. The nonprofit center, which offers its services free of charge, uses trauma-releasing exercises to help veterans cope with post-traumatic stress disorder. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jeremy Thomas)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-MERRITT CENTER: Betty Merritt is shown in her home at the Merritt Center, nonprofit center in Star Valley that serves veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. The center uses trauma-releasing exercises to help veterans cope with PTSD. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jeremy Thomas)
CAPTION FOR BC-CNS-MERRITT CENTER: The entrance to the Merritt Center in Star Valley. The nonprofit center offers free services to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. (Cronkite News Service Photo/Jeremy Thomas)