What is VA therapy actually like?

Somebody handed Randall Parkes two small paddles and told him to close his eyes. Parkes is a Marine Corps Veteran, a drill instructor and a founding MARSOC Raider. He had been yelled at by professionals. This was a quiet room at two in the afternoon, and the paddles buzzed a little in his hands.

“The first time I did EMDR, I don’t even remember driving home.”

Hear it at 1:01:14

He got home around three, he says, went to sleep, and woke up the next morning.

Everybody tells you to go talk to someone. Your wife. Your old first sergeant. A poster in a hallway. Hardly anybody tells you what happens once the door shuts. So we went back through interviews filmed by Vegas Veteran Voices, a Las Vegas nonprofit, and pulled out the Veterans who described the room itself. There are thirteen. They do not agree, and we have left it that way.

Two things before we start. We say “VA therapy” because that is what people type, but not everyone here went through VA: one found a therapist through Military OneSource, one went through a nonprofit program, one was sent by the Marine Corps while still in. We say which. And only four of the thirteen use the word PTSD about themselves. The rest say counseling, therapy, trauma, or just that something was off. We are not handing anyone a diagnosis they did not claim.

The holdouts

Almost nobody here went early. Parkes says his trouble showed up around his 17th or 18th year in uniform, and that it was his wife and family who noticed.

Travis Jewell, a Marine Corps Veteran, 1/6 mortarman and comedy creator, says he was too stubborn. He did not want anyone talking to him. When he finally gave in, it was closer to a shrug than a decision. Fine. He would talk to them.

AJ Kehl, a U.S. Air Force Veteran with more than 22 years of service and a career firefighter, was two months from his official retirement date when he was interviewed. He had spent a career on calls where, afterward, the whole debrief was “you’re good.” He had never seen a mental health therapist in his life. Then he went through a program run by the nonprofit Shields & Stripes, where he saw one daily.

“Seeing a mental health therapist every single day when you’ve never seen one in your life and you’ve done 20-something years in the fire service is not easy, man.”

Hear it at 8:45

The exception is Emilio Mackie, a U.S. Navy Veteran and surface warfare officer, who went before anything broke. He treated getting out like a deployment workup.

“I actually went through Military OneSource to find a therapist who was specifically trained in transitioning service members.”

Hear it at 4:29

The first time the door closes

Kehl expected to be sized up. That is not what he says happened.

“I think the biggest revelation of it all was that it really was a safe environment.”

Hear it at 9:11

Once the door was shut, he says, it was just him and her, and he found he could say what he needed to say. Then they made a list of everything that had left a mark.

“I listed them all out and it was the first time in my life that I saw all these things on paper and we just started attacking them.”

Hear it at 9:42

Jewell, the stubborn one, describes his first real conversation like this:

“It was like one of the most surreal feeling, like bliss, dude. Just being able to talk to someone that understood where I was coming from.”

Hear it at 47:20

As for getting in the door: Parkes says he put in a request at VA and was sitting across from someone within about 48 hours. VA’s own mental health page says you can call or walk in to any VA medical center, day or night, and that some services do not require being enrolled in VA health care. Whether that matches your experience is the question the rest of this article is about.

What EMDR looked like

Three of our guests did EMDR, and no two describe the same thing. VA’s National Center for PTSD describes it as calling up the memory while following a back-and-forth movement or sound, and says a course runs about three months of weekly sessions.

For Kehl it was a light his eyes tracked from side to side.

“If I could see something right here, after I did EMDR, it was like way off in the distance.”

Hear it at 10:05

For Parkes it was the paddles. His first sessions went to his childhood, not to combat, and they flattened him. He calls it taxing. He also says he is glad he did it.

Alfred Brenner, a Purple Heart recipient, retired USMC K9 handler and author, was wounded by an IED. After he could walk again, the Marine Corps sent him to a therapist at Camp Pendleton. He tells it like a man describing a parts cannon.

“They tried everything, man. They did the lights, the EMDR, they shocked my fingers.”

Hear it at 40:52

What stuck was the least technical item on the list. They told him to write in a journal. He wrote the whole incident, seven or eight pages, and the pages turned into a book.

“I wrote the book only because of therapy.”

Hear it at 40:13

Same VA, opposite stories

This is where they split the hardest. Parkes first:

“I know the VA gets a bad rap and rightly so. They’ve earned that reputation. But my experience with the VA on the mental health side was phenomenal.”

Hear it at 59:34

“I’ve heard the horror stories about going to the VA and they just pump you full of pills, and that wasn’t my experience for the mental health stuff.”

Hear it at 1:01:50

He is not a company man about it. For his shoulder and his back, he says, VA was the DMV, and pills were the first thing offered.

Jason Brooks, a medically retired Marine, Recon and SERE instructor and firearms instructor, lived the horror story Parkes only heard about. He took what the doctors handed him because that is what a good Marine does.

“At one point they had me on seven different medications, for my PTSD, for my anxiety, for my freaking sleep problems.”

Hear it at 36:24

“I literally lost like two years of my life because I can’t remember it.”

Hear it at 36:41

He says he was also drinking heavily then, and that he is scared of those medications now.

Rachel Veronica, a U.S. Army Veteran who now works as a clinical hypnotherapist, spent about seven days in a VA hospital ward in 2015.

“The VA wasn’t helpful. They just wanted to push drugs on me.”

Hear it at 2:59

And Tommy Nutzmann, a retired U.S. Navy Chief and creator of After the Uniform, did not get as far as arguing about the treatment. His fight was with the calendar.

“I had appointments that became in person to now virtual. I need somebody to talk to in person.”

Hear it at 36:38

One system, four people, four reports. Jessica Jay Dee, a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant and combat Veteran who says she is diagnosed with PTSD and military sexual trauma, refuses to pick a side.

“I’ve went through the counseling, I’ve been on the medications, I’ve been through that. You just kind of got to go through it. You got to lean on your resources.”

Hear it at 18:45

A room full of other Veterans

Group or one-on-one is not a small question, and our guests land on both sides of it.

Jennifer Marshall, a U.S. Navy Veteran, actress, firefighter EMT and cancer survivor, went to VA support groups. Some combat Veterans there, she says, told her that PTSD from sexual assault was not the same as theirs. She did not go looking for a ranking and did not enjoy being given one.

“We should try to support each other and support all of us.”

Hear it at 30:37

Nutzmann went the other direction. When the one-on-one appointments moved to a screen, he went and found rooms full of Veterans through Veteran foundations, and that was the part that worked.

“I’m not alone. I actually have people who understand what I’m going through.”

Hear it at 37:01

Same kind of room. One of them walked out. One of them stayed.

When it was not helping

Nobody here quit outright. They went sideways.

Veronica says talk therapy only got her so far, and what she found next became her profession.

“Therapy can give you the awareness, but doing self-hypnosis on myself to really figure out my problems, that dug a little deeper.”

Hear it at 4:09

Marshall says acting did more for her than the groups did, because a film set was the first place her feelings were welcome. She also reports her therapist’s review of that plan.

“My therapist said, ‘Don’t ever tell anybody to deal with their trauma that way. That’s horrible.’”

Hear it at 31:01

JMach, a Marine Corps Veteran, combat engineer and host of the JMach Podcast, puts his in one line.

“I went to therapy first and then content became my therapy.”

Hear it at 30:29

Steve Ulman, a U.S. Army Veteran, actor and off grid solar business owner, describes an ayahuasca ceremony.

“I felt joy for the first time in my life afterwards. It was the most terrifying night of my life.”

Hear it at 3:17

For the evidence-based treatments, see VA’s National Center for PTSD at ptsd.va.gov.

And Jay Dee, who did the counseling and the medication both, says the closest thing to a trick she found was neither.

“The more that I tried to be helpful to others, the more that I healed.”

Hear it at 19:27

Nobody says they are finished

The National Center for PTSD says the talk therapies with the most research behind them usually run about 8 to 16 sessions. None of our guests describes walking out after session sixteen with a certificate.

Joe “Doc” Worley, a U.S. Navy corpsman who holds a Bronze Star with valor and a Purple Heart, does not talk about getting rid of it at all.

“PTSD, it is a survival mechanism. And if you’re in control of PTSD, it reminds you to double check your doors.”

Hear it at 15:22

Nutzmann credits his wife with getting him through the worst of it and does not pretend it is over.

“I have great days and I have dark days.”

Hear it at 37:09

Brooks, who lost two years, went on to be a peer mentor for other Veterans. This is what he tells them:

“There’s people out there that can help you and people out there that can walk you through it.”

Hear it at 37:31

Which leaves Parkes, the man with the paddles, and the most honest sentence anyone has given us about the whole system:

“The help is there. And in fact, there’s almost too many programs. It’s like a full-time job navigating which path you’re going to go.”

Hear it at 58:44

So is it worth trusting? Thirteen people. Most of them needed a second try at it, or a third. Not one says they wish they had kept waiting.