[cromsworld]

So I am a veteran with a degree in psychology and I am dealing with another veteran at work who is a real problem. My friend has defended him by saying he has PTSD but I am not sure.

He is obsessed with watching violent videos of people getting blown up which to me is the opposite of avoiding anything related to an original trama characteristic of PTSD. He is very abrasive with other people but I have gotten the impression that he was that way long before he joined the marines. He talks about his experiences in the military with enthusiasm and has openly stated that he would rather be in Iraq killing people because he enjoyed it. He is a hard line political conservative and will rant endlessly against democrats and conspiracy ideas if you let him. e.g. Obama born in Kenya and global warming not existing. He doesn't get along with a lot of people at work and even hates one guy he barely sees for no apparent reason. He is also obsessed with pedophiles and memorizes the faces of guys on the sex offender list in case he sees them on the street. He has a family but says he wont go on a family vacation without his gun. Everything in his life seems to revolve around either football, politics, or the marines but he has been out for about 5 years now. He just got passed up for a promotion by someone he doesn't get along with and has stopped talking to everyone socially except for what is required to do the job.

What is up with this guy? He is giving people the impression of the stereotypical "ticking time bomb". All opinions, advice and comments are welcome.

[Erti]

Reminds me of my ex boyfriends cousin. He's in the military and talks about going back to Afghanistan because of the "hunting" was good. Though he always seems to be adrift like something is on his mind so I don't know. I think he's still in the military and also always carries a gun around him. I also think has conservative views but from when I met him he wasn't spitting out politics like the other veteran seems like he does.

Not sure on what to say. Maybe something deeper is involved or maybe it's just his personality... or both? Do you talk to him? Does he see a therapist? It sounds like it could be anything.

[Teacake]

The man has PTSD. The signs you describe are consistent with PTSD. You and your coworkers need to take your concerns to human resources and avoid discriminating against this man based on his disability and his military service.

If you wish to advise him, advise him to contact a good employment lawyer. You have knowledge that he was not promoted because someone disliked him. This bias may be discrimination based on disability and pr military history. Do the right thing.

The man as you describe him has ptsd. He does what he does (keeping war imagery before him, enraging himself with images of child predators and the histrionic ranting of television news commentary) to keep his catecholamine levels up and his opiate receptors filled.

He needs help. He needs expert help. Do not muddle in his situation. Adequate help is hard to come by.

[Teacake]

Of course the world is full of make believe Marines. Oddly, people with personality disorders like to claim to have PTSD. They think it is more prestigious than whatever they have. The ones who make up or embellish military service are more eggregious. The bullies among them like to scare people with the implied threat that they are very crazy and very violent and youd better be very submissive and very afraid. But If this guy was doing that you would have checked his story.

[Open Eyes]

cromsworld,

Welcome to PC. Keep in mind we are not professionals here, we struggle with PTSD ourselves and many of us read a lot about PTSD and have worked on it through therapy.

I had a conversation with my T this week that kind of touched on what you are asking. People will react to trauma by either avoiding anything that reminds them of the trauma, or actually pursuing things that are related to the trauma.

My question was about sexual abuse and hiding or avoiding. My T told me some women react that way while others go the opposite way, pursue it to a point where they use sex to empower themselves.

So IMHO, what you are seeing is a man who is pursuing whatever traumatized him. He wants to go back and fight to gain a sense of "power" over the very thing that traumatized him. He also may have been sexually abused or just abused as a child too, so he has developed an obsession with going after pedophiles.

His hard line conservative rants are just another way of him expressing "extreme" anger and unfortunately it is people like him that give conservatives a bad reputation.

He does sound like he has PTSD, and he sure has a lot of anger. And he may have seen many of his comrades killed and wants "justice" for them. The way he talks about "hunting" and killing other human beings IMHO, he has a lot of anger.

Don't get into a political debate with him or IMHO don't do anything that will trigger his anger to get even worse.

OE

[cromsworld]

Teakake:
I'm not sure why you jump to the assumption that people are ganging up on him or discriminating against him. The job was given to another veteran who was more qualified. Other people who applied congratulated him while this guy chose to stop talking to everyone. I don't understand why you would be so dismissive of the other workers concerns by calling them ninnies either. While they do have the option of finding employment elsewhere, being around an abrasive person who rants and watches videos of people dying is something that any reasonable person would be concerned about, and that includes the other veterans working there. No one is causing him problems. He is causing problems for himself.

We know the guy needs help, but he is not the kind of guy to voluntarily get professional help. He is the kind of guy to call psychology a quack science.

In regards to people claiming to have PTSD, that is why I asked about him here. I wanted to hear other opinions as to whether or not he is just scaring people to get his way. I did not want to comply with a faker anymore than I wanted to dislike a guy for having PTSD. The unfortunate scenario here is that this is a person who has spent most of his life as an a-hole but now can potentially get away with acting like an a-hole to people because he now also has PTSD. It would be nice if the two could be separated.

Openeyes:
The possibility of childhood sexual trauma did cross my mind. One thing that confuses me though is that he is perfectly comfortable making jokes implying other people at work are pedophiles. Enjoys it even. One guy told a funny story about answering his door naked at home because he knew it was a friend of his that he was pranking, but this guy thought it hilarious to suggest it was a girl scout. Odd behavior for a person with child sexual trauma.

[A Red Panda]

PTSD can end up either in avoidance or an obsession, as others have mentioned.

And quite frankly - you've said twice that you think he was like this before he went overseas. How on Earth would you know - you've said you have the impression of it, which says that you didn't know him before. Don't judge. You don't know if he was like that before or not, and you wouldn't know unless you asked his family... which would be very inappropriate as you aren't friends.

If, as you said, he won't go and recieve help, the most you can do is to be supportive and let others know to knock off the judging. It doesn't mean that they need to be subjected to stuff they're not comfortable with - you can all just assert that you aren't engaging in X conversation and then leave.

[cromsworld]

a_red_panda:
My judgement regarding his past is based strictly on stories he has told about himself. They largely involve him laughing about him doing mean or rude things to other people. I would never bash a person for being a veteran or disrespect what they went through in the military. But I refuse to let it be a free pass for some guy to act like a jerk to people. What he did for his country is absolutely respectable but who he is as a person pretty much ends there. If he were under attack for being a veteran, I would completely defend him. I am just in the difficult situation of separating what is PTSD behavior which should be defended and what is loudmouth jerk behavior which should absolutely not be defended since he is not exactly the poster-child for vets everywhere. As a veteran, would it make any sense for me to just tell people he is allowed to act like a jerk because he is a veteran? I think this is maybe why I don't appear to act like a veteran. Comradery is good, I just don't believe in blind comradery. Perhaps you are all assuming that I was on the ground too. I performed several deployments to the Persian gulf in the Navy and put up with a lot of crap in the military, as we all did. I freely admit however that getting shot at just isn't one of them.

This however is not about me. It is about everyone I work with. I should probably clarify why this is a problem and why my focus is more on this guy that everyone else. As I stated, no one is trying to attack his character and we have all mostly already learned to avoid any conversation with him related to either politics or the military. Both vets and non-vets at work understand he has been through a lot and give him a lot of leeway. This is a professional office environment however, and it is problematic when people walk past his desk and see some guy on a motorcycle getting blow to chunks from a mortar round, or for him to repeatedly tell people he would rather be killing "hajis", or for him to single out the nicest guy at work for no reason and spend several months trying to convince people to hate him, or for him to have trouble forming a sentence without the word hate in it, or for him to rant about hating homosexuals and liberals, or for him to just socially cut himself off and not talk to people. This is why I said he is forming problems for himself; he is the source of a hostile work environment for others and is scaring people. No one is out to get him but there is just no ignoring some of these things.

[Open Eyes]

((cromsworld)),
That really sounds like a very challenging scenario, it's not good that others are feeling intimidated by this man. It sounds like he is a bully at work, pushing himself at people. I can see why you are concerned. Do you have anyone you can talk to at work about this problem?

I understand what others here are saying, try to respect that this man is struggling and has PTSD and is a Veteran. But, I would not want to see something bad happen, and people not say anything because they are
trying to respect that he has problems.

[Teacake]

Cromsworld,

Respectfully, it is not the place of a coworker to diagnose or otherwise pass judgement on the psychiatric or medical diagnosis of another coworker. This information is not your business.

You have said the man is now focused on his work, and no longer distressing others with his ill taken attempts at small talk. He is demonstrating a good faith effort to do his work at work and prevent his personality faults from hindering his ability to work. According to this fact pattern, this man is doing what he is supposed to be doing to manage his own condition in the workplace and the people prying into his private business are harassing him.

You can always call the Labor Department or the EEOC. They usually have young interns working the phones, law college graduates who are verbal and eager to explain the law to you. I have always found them chatty and informative.

You can also speak to the person in charge of human resources at your workplace. Employers have policies and procedures for handling employee conflict.

Every employee has specific rights with regard to any disability or disorder he may have. If you violate his rights, by forming a cabal to run him off the job, he will have legal action against the employer who has a duty to prevent you from creating a hostile work environment.

He is not capable of creating a hostile work environment for the rest of you. Consult a law dictionary.

He is behaving correctly. He is keeping his head down, and after you had a problem with the way he tried to be social, you now have a problem with him not being social. The established pattern is one of you having a problem with this man, no matter what he does, because in his current recollection he has been a jerk to people, and you don't want to let him get away with it. The pattern is also being established of you being a supercilious busybody, kibbitzer and meddler, with an urge to aggress a man you claim to believe is unstable and prone to violence.

[A Red Panda]

If he's participating in behaviours that are against any work protocols, then you should be letting your supervisor know. It's their job to ensure that he is working while he is at work, and not yours. He shouldn't be watching videos of any kind while working, so the type of videos they are is rather irrelevant to that issue. Let your supervisors know about what is going on, and then be done with it.