Although I am not a veteran and I have neither suffered
from post-traumatic stress disorder nor completed a long-distance hike, I have
been in extremely stressful situations and have used various mechanisms to aid
in coping with that stress such as listening to music, hanging out with friends
or crafting something. My main method of coping though is playing soccer.
Whenever it is weather permitting, grabbing my cleats and a ball, going to the
soccer park to kick the ball around and take some shots on net is the best form
of therapy that I have at my disposal. It has always been there even when
things in my life are changing and seem to be falling apart. The most impactful
time in my life was moving to Virginia the summer after my freshman year of
high school from Long Island, New York, where I had lived my entire life. This
transition was a very difficult one for me and had it not been for the soccer I
do not think that the transition would have gone as it did.
Enrolling in a week-long
soccer summer camp a few weeks after the move gave me an outlet both physically
and mentally, getting me out of the new house with something to do and
providing something to think about other than the life and friends that I left
behind. These physical and mental outlets are similar to those that hiking
provides to veterans in that thru-hiking physically removes them from being at
home and it mentally removes them from the stressful situations that they must
deal with due to the horrid disease that is PTSD. Being able to focus on
something other than the problems at hand allows me to calm myself down and
think through potential solutions or plans. Soccer provides me with this
opportunity. Just as combat veterans face a hard transition when they return
home from active duty and they no longer know what their role is or how to fit
into that role, I faced a transition in my life that caused me to re-evaluate
all aspects of my life and what I had always held to be true.
I was never told
that sports like soccer could be a way to relieve myself of the stresses that I
faced, I just knew that it made me feel better when I was reflecting on it.
Unfortunately, many veterans are also not made aware of the fact that hiking
may be beneficial to them. Only those who have already hiked the trail are
aware of the things that one can reap from those six months spent out in nature
and those few who have already thru-hiked made the decision to do so on their
own. And more than likely, unless they were a part of a veteran hiking program
such as the Warrior programs, they did not chose to hike for the purpose of
post-combat therapy. While my transition cannot even begin to compare to the
difficulty of the transition that they face, it was the most challenging
transition that I have experienced in my life and it is the only situation that
I could possibly use for comparison. Soccer is the outlet that helped me
through this transition and provides very similar benefits that long-distance
hiking could provide to veterans as they are both outdoor activities that allow
the participants to focus on other things besides their stresses if they wish. If
it had not been for soccer, I likely would have faced problems similar to PTSD
sufferers who can’t find help; I would have been too scared to ask for the help
that I needed and I am very thankful that I had soccer as a resource and I hope
that more veterans utilize hiking as their outlet.
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