Phil's Story
“I owe a debt of gratitude to Combat Stress.”
Phil* joined the Army aged 16 to find more opportunities than were offered where he grew up. However, brutal attacks as a young soldier left him with Complex PTSD (C-PTSD). After first turning to alcohol to help him forget, almost 40 years later he received our expert treatment for military trauma.
“I’d been in the cadets as a teenager which I’d really enjoyed, but joining the Army in 1986 was a massive shock to the system.” Phil says. “I tried to get out twice and we weren’t allowed home for the first four months. I was homesick and hated it. Looking back I was just a baby really.”
Phil served for nine years, with postings to Northern Ireland, Kenya and the Falklands. He enjoyed the company of other soldiers and the drinking culture, but the actions of one instructor during his first year left a lasting mark on him. The instructor had been picking on Phil since he joined, but things came to a head when he physically assaulted him for three hours after Phil couldn’t complete a long run due to having the flu.
“He made my life hell for a year, but that incident is the one that stands out,” Phil says. “He beat me up for three hours. I hated that place because of that experience - I was only 16. I remember going back there for a section commander’s course when I was 24 and I was physically sick with anxiety before we went out on runs. It was the only place that ever happened, and everyone was asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t work it out.
"Turns out I was being triggered by going on a run there because of what happened when I was 16, but I didn’t know that at the time.”
When some of the older soldiers also started being physically aggressive, Phil began to drink more. “I always felt like a failure, which came from what the instructor had been telling me for 10 months,” he says. “I was just scared. Not of the job, but I was being beasted by other soldiers too – I’d literally wait in my bed to get a kicking. The way I coped with it was to drink and that went on for years. It wasn’t until I came to Combat Stress that it all came out, as I didn’t realise it had affected me. I thought I had dealt with that years ago”.
Phil was discharged from the Army in 1995 and struggled to get a good job. He didn’t know it, but C-PTSD was starting to show. “My main symptoms were bad dreams and screaming and shouting at night,” he says. “I couldn’t control my outbursts of anger, especially when I was drinking.”
Phil’s ex-wife gave him an ultimatum about his drinking, so he joined Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and has now been sober for 20 years. “When I stopped drinking, I did consider maybe it was a mental health issue, but it was another 18 years before PTSD was even mentioned,” he says.
With the mask that drinking had provided gone, Phil’s PTSD started to affect him in different ways. “When I was drinking, I’d lose my temper and get rid of the anger,” he says. “Now that I wasn’t drinking anymore, I couldn’t do that and so I would internalise the anger. I’d lock myself in my flat for three days and stay in bed because I couldn’t control my emotions.
“I was angry with everyone – my ex-wife, the Army, the world. I was being triggered every day, numerous times. It was horrific. I felt suicidal for years, it was only because of my daughter that I didn’t do it.”
After losing his temper at the doctor’s surgery, Phil’s partner told him to call Combat Stress or she would throw him out. “I called the Helpline and went on to have an assessment,” he says. “A letter came through diagnosing C-PTSD, but I didn’t even know what that was.” He went on to take part in our intensive treatment programme, VICTOR in January 2024.
“I learned so much with Combat Stress,” he says. “I didn’t think I could have PTSD as I never went to Iraq or Afghanistan. Even during my first week of treatment I was still questioning it, and really I was just going through treatment for my partner. It wasn’t until the second week that I finally accepted that I had C-PTSD. Accepting it made it easier because I wasn’t fighting it anymore.”
During treatment Phil worked with his therapist to help him make sense of his past. “The therapy put a lot of things together for me and suddenly it all made sense,” he says. “I just didn’t know before.”
Phil is out of treatment now and is living a calmer life. “Now when I’m triggered it doesn’t last three days, it’s hours,” he says. “Before, I was avoiding everything but I’ve introduced boundaries now - I didn’t even know what that meant before.
“I owe a debt of gratitude to Combat Stress.”
July 2025
*Phil provided his story on an anonymous basis, so this is not his real name