It wasn't until 2018 I was effectively diagnosed with Complex PTSD. It came about because I had a panic attack.
My name is Chris Rhyss Edwards. I was a sapper in the Royal Australian Engineers. I wanted to be a soldier since I was a little kid. My dad was a Vietnam vet, so had military in the blood from day one.
I served operationally in Bougainville briefly on the peacekeeping force in the mid-nineties. I went across there to protect a town called Arawa to enable peace talks to come off. Uh, there's a lot of time spent training and training really hard so that when you do deploy, whether it's operationally or as a fighting force, you're ready. And that takes a lot of work. So, the downside really is the challenge is when you've got too much time on your hands between whether you're on exercise or deployment.
So for me, the military service is still probably the most significant thing I've done and I've been out for over 20 years. When I was first diagnosed with PTSD around 2018 by the National Center for Veteran Health, I didn't think too much of it. I'd seen enough of it in movies and enough with mates, and I knew they could be medicated, lifestyle changes and things, and some of the things I'd just taken for granted.
Short temper, hyper alert, not sleeping, depression and anxiety, which is part of my life. I didn't think anything about it. But then you start to see things like where you can't emotionally react the same way other people do. And I'd have arguments with my future girlfriend where she'd just watch me shut down and just not be present sometimes for a couple of days.
Or who would sense check me. Because I would raid their karaoke mini bar to actually have a drink at two o'clock in the morning or a few because I had woken up in a night terror after losing a mate that repeats all the time. I'd been out for a decade before I really recognized that there was some serious stuff that needed to be addressed.
When I started to accept that I needed support, the support when I started reaching out - a lot of it was online. So I could anonymously go and have a bit of a chat and find out - is this fairly normal? Especially in the early days where I didn't realize I was fundamentally damaged, these guys held an intervention for me and I'd seen it in films and you know, what's about to happen the moment you walk into the room and my, one of my mates sitting on the couch staring at me and he was unable to make eye contact.
And she's the biggest heart under the sun, is just basically we need to talk. And I'm like, ah, here it comes. And long overdue. And if they hadn't done that, I mean, I probably could have got there by myself, but I'm so much gladder that I got there with people to the left and right of me.
Now, what I'd say to other veterans who are unsure about seeking support is, um, we're doing it outta pride that we're reticent to actually disclose.
It's a, pride is a massive part of the Anzac spirit. Rehabs have helped, but I, I'm not good with group work. I'm very good at one-on-one, but group work makes me spiral. It's a major trigger. I've had some of the best conversations of my life with therapists and so I’m regarded as severe with complex PTSD, which I was really surprised because I'm the chatty guy.
I'm always mostly upbeat until I'm not. I've got enough people around me now where they can start to see behaviors in me before I notice it in myself is an early warning sign, which is really important. I think the biggest changes in my life since getting support are quality of life. When you live in a haze, a perpetual haze of, whether it's self-doubt or just, shame and guilt, whatever it might be lingering in the back of your head as a lot of those issues surface for soldiers, you getting in your own head is the problem.
You getting to understand what's driving the mechanics in your head through getting support is where everything changes. And one of the tools that I really did enjoy using was getting into forums and discussion groups online. Those environments being there for us where they're low risk. They're always on, 24/7, people speaking my language.
If somebody asks me for help and I can help, if it means pointing them towards someone like Anita or to SANE or to another organization, that's what I'll do. I'd say for me that outside of seeing structured therapy and support, finding purpose again has been a big part of me becoming sane and safe in making better choices.
So I committed to going back to university. I'm doing a PhD focused on artificial intelligence and veteran mental health. There's gonna be good days and bad days, but the goal is to get up and get out the door and get it done for that day. Some days you just fight through the day. But it is so worth it because my life a year and a half ago was not sustainable.
And I think for my veteran mates and the people I've come across over the years, the one thing I would say is talk about it. If it's to a machine online or whether it's to a friend, getting some of this stuff off your chest has really been probably the biggest thing I've actually had to deal with that's actually delivered real benefits.
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