Former Reuters journalist Dean Yates’s career has taken him around the world and up-close-and-personal with some of the century’s worst tragedies and atrocities. From the 2002 Bali bombings and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, to the frontlines of war in Lebanon and Iraq—Yates’s experiences have taken a deeply personal toll. The killing of two Iraqi journalist colleagues by a US Apache gunship finally pushed him over the edge. After years of dealing with PTSD, substance abuse, and psychiatric hospitalization, Yates has written a new memoir about his journey, Line in the Sand. Dean Yates joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his new book, his career, and his healing journey.
Studio: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley
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Still in the heat of emotion from Chris' extraordinary conversation with Dean, I feel grateful to have seen and heard this. It is encouraging to hear from distant brothers that it is possible to "pack the closet" to survive the daily struggle, which for some of us is so hard, and the subsequent traumas. Normally I don't comment on videos I watch, but I was deeply touched by this conversation! Thank you so much Chris and Dean! Fraternal hug from Brazil
They were ordinary people who were white, and Christian on holiday from the very developed world. That’s why I went around the world and so many people were interested in the developed world.
Thank you so much, Chris!! God knows we need stories of healing and recovery of spirit.❤
I ran a ministry for many years called The Healing Center. (Im now in a country hostile to the gospel of grace in Christ.) Sadly, ive found few christians willing to pay the price for the anointing that Jesus describes in Luke 4 – the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He has anointed me to make whole the shattered personality (mind, intellect, will, emotions), and set free those who have been splintered to pieces…" A very apt description and solution to many disorders. As an example, years ago i prayed for a pastor's wife who had been so traumatized by a church split, that she told me that she didnt leave her house for a year. As i laid hands on her, the anointing hit me like a lightning bolt and threw her backwards in the air. I sae her a year later. She said, i have the memories, but the Lord took away the pain. Intellectual assent is not enough "having a form godliness, but denying its power." And in america, sugar loaded diets truly harm mental health.
Solidarity forever.
The Bali bombing was an attempt to install military bases in Malaysia and Indonesia region. Good thing those countries people are not easily agitated. Their intelligence service cleared the influence without the western military intervention.
What a clown.
I saw the man who took the burning girl photo in Vietnam in 1996. He was jabbering away in Thai with my supervisor & the owner of the restaurant. He had put up a shrine to war photographers in the restaurant which remained there until 10 years ago when the restaurant was remodeled. That tribute to his comrades who had died photographing our wars was part of how he dealt with the trauma he had.
Does anyone know what happened or Richard Wolff? There has been no new activity from DAW in over a month.
Thank you I suffer from PTSD you are lucky to have your wife by your side –my husband left me. I was told people with PTSD end up alone. Stay strong
Amazing interview. Thank you to you both for your honesty and humanity.
WE ARE NOT MADE FOR WAR. We are Loving Souls with mental and emotional energy fields interpenetration a vulnerable, sensitive body… NOT fing robots.
Wow
great episode
Thanks to both of you for being brave enough to go to those places and see things that no one really wants to see and no can ever prepare themselves to see!
I got PTSD from a motorcycle accident and I think the reason it got me was both that I had no time to be afraid during the accident because I was scrambling to save my life (bike ended up under a truck but I ended up just in front of it because I scrambled when I got thrown off of it). I've had PTSD from other things before but the incidents were when I was a kid or a teenager and this accident happened when I was around 30. The adrenalin definitely blocked me from experiencing the trauma and it really didn't set in until I was force to come to terms with the fact that I had ripped every ligament holding my shoulder joint and blade to the rest of my skeleton and that it was never going to heal that I started to freak out about it. I became SO angry and then I couldn't drive or be in the car without feeling panic every time I saw brake lights and I hadn't seen any brake lights on that night but it was that fear of not being able to stop, which also really didn't make sense in the context of my accident. It also just the sheer reality that I went from coming home from yoga and meditation in an incredibly relaxed state to the adrenalin pumping out at full volume because I just so happened to take the road I took and just so happened to end up there with the drunk driver who took me down and totaled the truck that my motorcycle ended up sliding under. It was the fact that at any time and at any place and, importantly for the trauma, in what seems to be utterly random misfortune, one can have a part of one's body and even one's life completely destroyed.
I already struggled with depression and so this PTSD didn't help, especially because it was different than the depression I have basically felt my entire life and it brought anxiety with it, which I was not used to dealing with at all. Also, sometimes I just got irrationally angry and, while I didn't physically do anything to anyone, I once yelled at someone who just asked me how I was and really hurt her. She in no way deserved that and, to my knowledge, she never forgave me for it either but, like with that cupboard analogy, yeah, it just all fell out and there was nothing I could do about it.
I went to therapy too but I was never able to get out or process what I needed to process by just talking about it. Since I had rescued myself from suicide because of my regular depressed earlier in my life by taking LSD, I decided I'd take a lot of it on the seventh anniversary of the accident. So I took three tabs and meditated for 9.5 hours in 25 minute sessions with five minute walking meditations for a little relief for my legs since I was seated on the floor crosslegged for the seated meditation. I remember everything being colorful and even the margins of the shapes of things warping because I had taken that much acid. The only thing that didn't do that was just the face of my Buddha and I remember looking at his calm face in the midst of all the other things that were changing color and shape around him. I realized that the very essence of life is change and all change is uncomfortable and feels at least a little chaotic and traumatic but that there was no way to avoid it. The best thing to do was to be like the face of my Buddha and simply experience it for what it is as it comes without wanting to push it away or draw it to me but to just let it pass by.
Near the end of my meditation sessions, I inadvertently set a meditation timer that was going to go off at exactly the minute I crashed and I realized it just after I had started the timer so that session was intense and included a lot of serious crying. I had known for the whole time that this was the kind of thing I needed to let out but it seemed so immense and so terrifying that my mind refused to let it out while I was in my usual state of mind. Sometimes some would come out when I smoked weed but, even then, my own mind refused to let this stuff out so I could heal. The LSD somehow made the exact horror of it less scary and also made me feel braver somehow so that I literally felt like I was standing toe to toe with the reality of the event that was trying to kill me but instead of trying to kill it, I faced it and accepted it. Sounds easy to say and the words don't do what I had to do justice but I don't know how else to describe it even though I know it sounds like one of those petty just pretend you're happy until you are bits of advice that people who don't understand sometimes give people who are depressed. That's why I think it takes either being able to let it out in therapy or getting oneself into a mindset where one's own mind will let it out so that you even can face it. I know this sounds like kind of a crazy way to deal with PTSD, but this one day of meditation while frying my ass off basically took away 99% of the PTSD. I will still sometimes feel anxious if I have to drive in traffic but I always hated that so I do try to avoid having to do it. If I have no choice, I inform myself about where the traffic is and about anything that might be on the road from an accident or something by looking at a traffic app I have so that I'm prepared for at least what is known about the conditions before I even leave. Then, I make sure to leave extra distance between me and the car in front of me and make it a point to take meditative breaths as I'm driving. If I feel anxious when I get home, I have a beer because even just one beer does wonders for mitigating the jittery anxious feeling you get when your adrenalin kicks because it has to run its course in your body no matter what your brain is telling your body so might as well use something that helps with that feeling once it's safe to do so (obviously wouldn't have the beer while I was still driving even though I know it would make me less anxious).
Thank you.
It’s war. Find another job if you can’t handle thrill seeking and it’s consequences.
that delayed trauma reaction also happens when you've lived in yrs of domestic violence, like real violence.
I got an email from The Real News Network thanking me for my monthly support, and I just wanted to say that it’s my absolute honor to support such a worthy show, and especially because of a true American hero, Chris Hedges, for his honesty and expertise where he always asks great and hard questions from many amazing people with knowledge in all spectrum.
🙏❤️🙏
May your wellness, Dean, further the wellbeing of mankind. CH too! A thousand thanks to both of you and all war correspondents dying to tell the story.
Mr Hedges it’s fucking annoying the way your voice goes to a dam whisper at times, even though yur nearly swallowing the mic WTF is up with that, can u please stop, thanx
His pain is palpable.
Free Julian Assange and Leonard Peltier. Don't allow the crimes they exposed to go unanswered.
I remember the Bali bombings because in the time I grew up read L A Times religiously since I was 1962 at 11. My curiosity of the human activity around the world that newspaper gave me a great education until I moved to Fort Worth, TX in 1989 voted always for Nader, Perot did vote for Carter but was raised by a Goldwater Conservative. Helicopter sound brings back my teenage years because every night the nightly news has scene of Vietnam War.
Older I get the more I fear my fellow humans. It's beyond total madness!
That's as good as it gets, folks. Really, great interview — thanks to both of you gentlemen for sharing.
This is a story the mainstream corporate media will never deal with because to do so would be to acknowledge and bring light to the structural cruelty of American military and foreign policy and the role we all play in the ongoing daily trauma this country visits on people around the world. Thank you Mr. Yates for your courage and thanks Chris and Real News staff for bringing this interview to light.
Yeah because pedophile sexpats were in Bali and they were sick Australians.
911 was let to happen and plan by the Corrupt ignorance of greed and they will all be killed
Excellent programme. /Thumbs up/
Fine (& very pertinent) reporting.
[7:07 — the word the subtitler did not get was “vulture”]
Always excelent!👏👏💯💥
I am so glad to hear that this man worked hard on his trauma. IT's not easy, and you have to open up to all the things you dont want to. BOY do I wanna know about that infidelity part!!!!!!!!!
Here is a free workbook for your feeling- THe Book of You- https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhN7QGzfgupgsISo1MUI_0eiyDHdG0_cRCEpsaSHNMs/edit
you dont 'heal' from these experiences, they cant help but change you fundamentally, unfortunately most people dont embark on the journey understanding that
these things should be witnessed the atrocity's of war should be shown not just to those brave few who seek the truth but to all, but not because it wont change you, but because it will, because sometimes the truth hurts, because it should because without that hurt(on a truly global level like after ww2, which net today could theoretically bring with little violence to any issue & dose at times, usually to the most banal issues) it WILL KEEP HAPPENING AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN
Remarkable story. My heart breaks while thinking of the many many participants in war who experienced great trauma but not the support to recover. Thanks to you both.
Thanks Chris. I have been trying to find out if the boy in the van of the good samaritan father actually got car bombed a few years ago in Baghdad. Interested because he may have been targetted by the US as he was outspoken as a teenager calling for reparations by the US and of course, he was a surviving witness to the events. No doubt they are holding Assange as a witness/exposer of war crimes so he can't give evidence on them too.