It wasn’t our weak hand. There was nothing weak about a Marine. My left hand was my support hand. It wasn’t as strong as my right hand, but it could still accomplish tasks.

It seems like semantics, but it truly changed the way I thought about my left hand. I no longer avoided using it during certain tasks, but instead I became selective with how I used it. My right hand still reached for my firearm, my baton, and my pepper spray, but my left grabbed my handcuffs and assisted me in detaining a subject.

My first job out of the Marine Corps was Loss Prevention at Macy’s. I was not thrilled with it, but I remember in my interview my employer asked me about my “opportunities.” I was confused. He followed up with a brief explanation. He considered the flaws, downfalls, and weaknesses of a person’s character to be “opportunities.” To him, these opportunities were areas of our lives that had the most opportunity to improve.

At first, I thought it was cheesy, and I occasionally scoffed at the idea, but he made a good point.  I tend to focus on the strengths in my life. I’m not one to really improve my weaknesses, but I do see them differently after that interview.

Now, it would be a bit far-fetched to make a case for PTSD, depression, stress, anxiety, and suicide to be considered support elements in our lives. Maybe it’s even a stretch to say they’re “opportunities.”

My point with this short essay is you should think about the way you label yourself. Reconsider the words you use to describe your issues. I would even go as far as to recommend we stop calling it PTSD or depression, and say they’re emotional challenges following our service. You may find yourself dropping the stigma.

Stop calling yourself weak, broken, or a f*** up. You’re a person with greater challenges and deeper opportunities. You have parts of you that can’t handle everything but can still be assigned certain tasks and accomplish simple things.

It’s a hard, dark road. I know. The way you treat yourself and label your problems will affect your ability to overcome. One of the best pieces of advice I received regarding self worth:

Never treat yourself in a way you wouldn’t let others treat you. We’ve heard of gold & platinum rules. Let this be the iron rule. Iron isn’t complicated, it isn’t fancy, but it’s essential to life. Iron is what holds the oxygen to our blood, and iron deficiency can lead to fatigue and weakness in the body, which is also a symptom of poor self respect. Treat yourself the way you’d have others treat you.

Timothy Lawson
Founder