#37 | The Holistic Warrior: Dr. Ed Tick on Healing PTSD through Dreamwork, Rituals & Pilgrimage
Healing Soul-Wounded Veterans
While preparing his conscientious objector application at the height of the Viet Nam war, the acceptance of which would grant a service alternative to fighting, Ed Tick received an unexpected gift—a high lottery number that meant he wouldn’t be drafted. The news came as an enormous relief: Ed would avoid military service, continue his studies, and move forward on his quest to become a psychotherapist. Only later would he realize the “get out of jail free” number caused a wound of its own, especially as soldiers began returning from their deployment seeking mental health guidance from him.
As a novice therapist who had yet to earn his doctorate, Ed was at a loss of how to treat the wounded warriors. PTSD - or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—would not be identified as a behavioral disorder for another two years. But Ed already knew from hearing their stories, that no matter how the presenting issue would be identified, the men were suffering from soul-wounding.
“Stress disorder indicates what now psychology and psychiatry call the broken brain and that the PTSD is all in our brain functioning and our damaged central nervous system. That's part of it, but that's not the whole thing. It really is everything, the body, the mind, the heart.” - Ed Tick.
Since that shaky beginning, Ed Tick has become a world-wide expert on holistically, and successfully, treating warriors for the injury to their moral code. Often soldiers in a war zone have either done something that stood in contrast to what their morals dictated; or they witnessed such action. The remedy to such wounding cannot simply be a pill. Medicine can help symptoms, but true healing takes much more—and Ed Tick has spent a lifetime uncovering and discovering solutions. His latest book, “Soul Medicine: Healing through Dream Incubation, Visions, Oracles, and Pilgrimage,” gives clues to his robust offering of healing modalities that include more traditional talk therapy, medication, and psychoanalysis.
As a prolific writer and poet, Dr. Tick makes himself available to non-military individuals as well. Through workshops, pilgrimages, and special events, civilians who seek out his counsel will find many ways to approach. As a scholar of Ancient Greece, Ed incorporates experiential medicine and knowledge from a variety of sources in efforts to heal soul wounds.
“[Ancient Greek sanctuaries] were the perfect holistic healing sanctuaries. We would envy them today. So they had nutrition and gymnastics and acupressure and massage and hydrotherapy and psychotherapy and dream work and theater and every form of holistic healing we could imagine. And that was not even the main healing.” - Ed Tick
Ed Tick leading spiritual healing journey in Greece. Click the photo to contact Ed & learn more.
In this episode, we discuss:
• Ed's protest of the Viet Nam war at age fifteen and his work treating Viet Nam vets.
• How Viet Nam veterans, sexual & assault victims and Holocaust survivors led to recognition of PTSD syndrome.
• Ed's belief that instead of a unified effort where science and spirit guide us together, we've lost spirituality.
• Ed’s 23 healing pilgrimages to Greece and 19 to Viet Nam.
• The notable lack of PTSD among the Vietnamese.
• The critical role of society and community in the healing of veterans and warriors.
• How soul healing enlargers souls to be bigger than the wound.
• How to use one’s own spiritual tradition to begin healing.
