The nine months that I have spent with the Paradise LRT has changed my life.

   In 2020, I retired from the U.S. Army after serving for 20 years. During my career, I deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan four times. Two of those deployments, I was involved in direct combat on a daily basis, witnessing the casualties of war day and night. The effects of combat on a day-to-day basis has its obvious effects on a human, and so it should. The stresses of operating in a complex environment, the anxiety of ensuring you perform at the highest standard, and the undeniable fact that you are facing death on a constant basis have a toll on your psyche. 

In 2015, I started seeing the effects of constant stress on my behavioral health. Like many others in the military, I took all of the experiences I witnessed and suppressed them. I hid my emotional state from my peers because of the stigma associated with being weak, incompetent, and the possibility of losing my job. I found myself grieving alone without a team. I spent 2 years working with multiple behavioral specialists and medical specialists, trying to help cope with the mental and physical state that I was in. 

     For five years, I struggled to find purpose, happiness, and a sense of validation for life. I found that each behavioral specialist had the same thing in common, I spoke, and they answered. Nobody was listening to what I was saying. So naturally, I stopped seeking counseling because I had lost faith in the system. Fast forward two years. My wife convinced me to talk to someone at Paradise Life Resource Team. It was safe to say that I was skeptical; I would be talking and only receiving answers. That was not the case at all. I finally found a team of specialists that know how to listen. Nobody tried to label my issues and tell me immediately what they thought I needed to do to make life relevant. They listened to what I had to say, encouraged me to listen to myself, and, most importantly, taught me how to talk to myself in a positive way that nobody had taught me before. 

     The nine months that I have spent with the Paradise Life Resource Team has changed my life. I went from having what I thought was no reason to exist to rediscovering who I was and am today. I can’t thank the team of professionals at Paradise Life Resource Team enough for listening to me and helping me return to the husband, father, and man I am.