This is how a lot of vets feel. Yet, this is how people feel in general when they participate in something structured and become a part of whatever that structure is. Even individuals who work as coal miners for example who lose their jobs for some reason face that feeling of wanting to go back to that kind of work because it was where they "fit".

When someone joins the service they are young and they go through vigorous training to perform. Not only do they receive training but they "do" what the training has taught them to do. With this particular function there is also a lot of respect and it becomes a very strong "group" of individuals that respect this particular structure.

You are spot on with how being a part of this structured "service" can produce a sense of self respect. Civilians have a hard time understanding how a vet would want to go back and serve when they are put in such dangerous situations. Civilians get upset if they run out of toothpaste or get stuck in traffic, well, a vet is trained on a level that they don't get upset over these Civilian trivia's.

The average person/civilian would suggest putting vets together in therapy. The vet I met did not like that advice and vets don't normally open up and talk about what the average person would "think" they would talk about and benefit from. I did not really understand that at the time the way this vet deserved me to, and I so wanted to help him. Now that I think about it more, they don't like to talk because talking probably brings on what they are "missing" that for whatever reason was taken from them. What you posted helped me see that part.

A lot of vets become police officers after they leave the service. I had not known that until last year. I can see that it's something that a lot of vets adjust well to because of how it is similar to what they were initially trained to do.

I met a vet a few years back at a job I was doing and I opened up and told him that I was struggling with PTSD, he told me confidentially that he struggled with it too but he did not reach out for therapy because he said that once the diagnoses of PTSD happens with a vet it's harder for the vet to progress. He told me that even though he was struggling he was training to do something else that was service related and if I remember correctly it had something to do with fixing airplanes. He said that even though he struggled, having the ability to learn how to get involved with a new kind of structure was helping.

I have noticed how different individuals who struggle with PTSD tend to say that they should not be struggling the way they are because others have way worse traumas compared to theirs. Well, it doesn't matter who survived something that seems to be more traumatic, the struggle itself is what matters and what that means is a "disruption in one's personal structure" that is profound enough that it completely disturbed their sense of personal structure.

I think what will help you is finding a therapist, or even group therapy that can help you slowly see your way to learning about what you had in your sense of structure that you would like to reconnect with and see how you might find something you can get involved in that can utilize what you have and develop that into something that compliments that kind of structure that you miss.