ARMY 2007-2014 — Vet Center group therapy, after I had given up on the VA

I had been to two VA Medical Centers and three community providers between 2014 and 2021 and concluded that mental health care was not going to work for me. The bureaucracy at the VAMCs and the lack of military fluency at the community providers had each been frustrating in different ways. A buddy told me about the Vet Center. He said it was different. He said the records did not mix with the VA medical system and the staff were almost all combat veterans themselves. I went in to the Vet Center in my city for an intake in 2021. The counselor was a former 11B who had been a Vet Center counselor for fifteen years. He listened for forty minutes. He did not ask me to fill out a PTSD checklist. He did not push for a diagnosis. He asked what I wanted to work on. I joined a Tuesday night group for OIF/OEF combat veterans. Six guys, all infantry or cavalry, all post-9/11. The group had been running with rotating membership for nine years. I was the eighth member to cycle through that specific group. The group did not fix anything. The group also did not need to fix anything. Once a week for ninety minutes I was in a room with five other guys who had been somewhere similar and who did not ask me to translate. That has been more useful for me than anything else I have tried.