Tonight on 20/20 was a piece about a storm chaser, Jim Reed (you can apparently find his work at UltimateChase.com) who together with his chase partner, actively seeks out crazy weather of all kinds… hurricanes, tornadoes, thunderstorms, flooding, winter storms, etc.

He has, as you might expect, accumulated quite a collection of breathtaking video and still photos.

He has also developed PTSD, and is “receiving treatment” for it. The news piece cited some heart-wrenching circumstances as being difficult for him — hearing people trapped and crying for help when he physically could not help them, for instance. Completely and totally understandable; that’d screw anybody in the head for a while.

What I find odd though, is that he keeps going back.

The first tenet of treating PTSD is to remove yourself from the source. You cannot make headway on it until you have removed yourself from the threat, and are safe.

This man has PTSD and yet he keeps going back. He keeps re-exposing himself to the threat, keeps re-exposing himself to more heartbreak, more risks. It just does not compute in my head. Granted the terminology in the piece was not perfect; I am sure that the choice of words “receiving treatment” is a journalist’s way of putting things. as one does not receive treatment for PTSD, one participates in or gets treatment. It’s not something you can be given, in a receiving sense, like a fine chocolate or a glass of wine. It’s something you have to roll up your sleeves and dig around in the muck bucket to find with your own two hands.

But I am stymied how this fellow can have PTSD, and yet turn right around and get right back in that car, and go out there, and stare down the source of his stress, and function. And presumably (although this may be where I am mistaken) come out the other side a sane and functional human being.

Then again, he did say that every chase changes him… every time he comes back from a chase, he comes back a changed person. Now on one hand, this seems reasonable. But on the other hand (the one that’s laying here tossing & turning in bed, chewing on this at O-dark:30) I am thinking, if he wasn’t screwed up in the head (PTSD) each chase wouldn’t have that profound of an impact on him. Just as each ambulance call left me a bit more appreciative, or sensitive, or compassionate, I would not have said (pre-PTSD) that every call left me a “changed person,” just that every call taught me something new, about life and about myself. But monumentally changed every time? No. I was more stable than that. Now (post-PTSD) does every call leave me a “changed person?” Yes, because I am that much more open to input. I’m operating with a much thinner skin, you could say.

Which leaves me with the conclusion that despite appearances, despite the off-handed way the PTSD was mentioned, addressed and then conveniently dropped, this is a man who is chasing sick. He is not alright. He is not his normal, pre-PTSD self running around out there, chasing untamed beasts. He is out there shooting video with one hand, while straining with all his might to carry a 150 lb. backpack labeled “PTSD.” It never leaves him. He’s not normal and he’s not healthy (not in the pre-PTSD sense). When he steps back out into the eye of a storm, he is dragging a ton of baggage that surely must be threatening to swallow him whole… or in little pieces… it’ll take him however it can get him. ;)

Where I am left quizzical is: Why? and, How?

Why on earth does he keep going back out there to taunt his emotional enemy? Why does he willingly go out, surely knowing that it is going to rip open and scald old wounds?

And how does repeatedly go out and face that source of trauma over and over again? What kind of coping strategies does he use that he is able to do that? — because a lot of PTSDers simply cannot face their trauma again. And especially not in roaring, screaming, living color. It is one thing to revisit a location when it is quiet, benign and safe … but it is another thing entirely to revisit when the threat is right smack dab there in your face.

Personally, you wouldn’t catch me doing it. I can’t do it. Right now, this moment. 18 months post-trauma, I hear LP gas smell calls get paged out, and I’m thinking, no – freakin’ – way. There is not enough rice noodles in all of China to make me go within a 1/2 mile of that crap now. Me and LP gas — not so much. The old LP did not get a Christmas card from me this year…………

Call it survival instinct, whatever. It’s an aversion, plain and simple. Not only do I feel the urge to run as fast and as hard away as I possibly can, but if I stay put for more than about 3-1/2 seconds, it is all I can do to not vomit. As in, actively clamp my esophagus down and not let the puke and bile spew out. A-ver-sion.

I know better than to judge Mr. Reed on the severity or seriousness of his PTSD. I have no doubt that he stuggles with it. Obviously his trauma is of the type that he is still able to function in the general scope of extreme weather conditions without flipping out. And/or, his brain (and therefore emotions) are of such a structure, interpretation and response that he is able to continue to function through whatever triggers and experiences he is going through … otherwise he wouldn’t still be out there doing what he is doing.

Lucky fellow.

Unlucky, perhaps, in that one has to wonder just how badly he is sacrificing himself for the ‘greater good,’ however he defines it. Time will only tell that one … not even he knows, right now, this day, this moment, whether it is an ultimate sacrifice or not. It’s something that has to play out, and no one can really predict it.

What really helped me about this piece was the realization that I am not the only one who is intimidated by, frightened of, and affected by, severe weather. I love a good snowstorm… I adore a downpour… but frankly, tornadoes shake the shit out of me. I didn’t like the first tornado I saw, and yet I continue to chase them out of some freakish obligation. Yet when I picture myself chasing on the plains as many do — or actually coming face-to-face with another tornado? I ask myself, do I really want to see that? The answer is, God No. Why would I subject myself to that? Why?

And I feel ashamed and embarrassed of that answer, because I have friends who think they are just the niftiest thing ever, and I really do want to be like them! I want to measure up to them, I want to have that in common with them.

But I don’t have that in common with them. I think tornadoes are scary, vicious, shitty things that hurt people and destroy beautiful things for no good reason. And they scare the bejeezus out of me.

Not quite as bad as LP, but close.

So yes, I very muchly understand how Jim Reed has PTSD. And I am supremely grateful for his admission of the fact, because it greatly validates what I feel and fear about severe weather. Yes, it is extremely cool, I understand that side of it too … but I have marveled in the past 18 months how chasers can be out there chasing, and not feel the fear and dread and loathing that creeps over my heart like a thick, heavy mat of mud… how are they so positive when there is so much negative? How does the preponderance of negative not smother the positive they seem to thrive on?

Maybe they aren’t thriving on positive. Maybe they are scared out of their wits and they are post-traumatic too … they just don’t talk about it.

It makes me wonder how many chasers have wound up post-traumatic … is it something they just don’t talk about? Do they get bitten and simply slip silently away? Or do they keep chasing and bite their lip, just not tell anyone about it?

At any rate, I am glad it is not “just me.” It is one more frontier where I do not feel quite so f*ed up. Obviously I am not alone on this one. ##

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