As i stated before in a recent post
I suffer from severe up and down depression.
Deer are my life and i doubt i could do without it and would be lost if i could not do deer related things.
I used to golf, fish, and now I even taken a job as a cabinet maker’s helper.
These activities are ok but nothing seems to put me at peace as deer hunting and everything that has to do with it.
The last few months for some reason have been super hard for me.
Actually its been a emotional roller coaster ride for me since 2017.
The year i retired.
I just can not find my place or my purpose.
i also suffer from ptsd from my former 20 year career which was Law enforcement.
Nightmare’s, anxiety, distrustful feelings towards anyone Or most things.
Does anyone else use hunting as a comfort or a way of calming your mental health?
Also as i stated in another post that im pretty over weight and im really thinking that ive hit rock bottom.
Being super out of shape both physically and emotionally or (mentally).
I have think i just need to take it almost hour by hour day to day until hunting season.
Before i moved back to NJ I was in the woods almost every day mostly scouting.
I moved to Delaware in 2017 and love the deer hunting there, but now that i am back in South Jersey and know that the deer I want to go after are just not here or are very rare so i have lost almost all interest in doing what i am used to doing here in Jersey.
i hunted Jersey my whole life and its just ehhh lol.
Killed a ton of deer of all ages snd sizes and i am really good at it but, for some reason i have Almost no interest or motivation here to get out
I would love to hear thoughts or simmilar feelings on what im going through.
Normally I would prefer to put this all in a PM, but seeing as it could help someone else, public it is. I’ll start by saying, I don’t have all the answers. And yes I use hunting for therapy and fishing too. I’m a current LEO of about eight years. I used to work for a bustling jurisdiction where I was a detective (crime scene) in a top five murder capital per capita of the US. I have seen a lot in that time, buried several of my friends/colleagues, countless bodies in every manner of death and/or mutilation. I say this to say, this is not normal. Normal humans don’t see tons of dead people, or make life and death decisions on the regular, or run to gun fire, or any of a million other things the LE does routinely.
It’s crazy that departments to just expect their people to carry on normally when they are constantly exposed to things that are not normal. LE has a long history of shooting itself in the foot and the suck it up buttercup routine unfortunately has resulted in many people in our line of work sticking their service pistol in their mouth. Sorry mods if I get to graphic here feel free to remove.
About a year ago, I came to a smaller agency that is very progressive. It was the first time in hundreds of bodies, autopsies, or other critical incidents, that I was mandated to go to counseling. They called it debriefing. Apparently thanks to a lot of wars in the past hundred years, psychologists have learned a lot about how the human mind deals with critical incidents and we happen to have a psychiatrist on staff. At first it was called shell shock in the WW1 and WW2 Days. Now a days we call it PTSD, and more recently research has determined that PTSI leads to PTSD. What they found according to our on staff shrink is that when the body goes through intense stress the mind struggles to process the incident. Thus creating a post traumatic stress injury ptsi. When left untreated or rather avoided, the injuries build up like any other injury that hasn’t been treated. It for lack of a better term gets infected. The ptsi adds up and that’s how we get ptsd.
The remedy was to talk to the psychiatrist about the specific incidents. She found over her career of specifically helping LE that these incidents link to each other. And talking about one of them can help with another. You don’t go to war alone, you don’t deal with war alone. Talking helps to process the event and lessens it’s blow. Over time this heals. Think about it your brain is like any other part of your body and it can be injured. If you broke your leg you go get it set and casted. Brain is no different. She basically had me tell her about an incident (1 per session) and after I told her everything about that incident. She did some weird tap therapy exercises while having me try and think about the incident. I’ll be honest I found it goofy at first, but the results were amazing. At the end of the session I would have to retell the incident again. The crazy part is my memory of the incident didn’t change but my emotional baggage related to it did. I’ll tell you more when we talk.
As for purpose in retirement, I get it. Once you run with the wolves everything else seems so dull. Even then I’m considering getting out. I have started to learn it’s not so much what you do but who you do it for. Case and point, in college I met a lunch lady who sat by her cash register with her Gideon Bible and changed more lives at that lowly job then I will ever change. They even named a film festival at the college after her.
Here are some tangible things I do and I have found helpful.
Church
Talk to someone (professional) who deals with LE
Talk to someone (not professional)
Get off social medial except this forum
No news (I’m like over a year free of watching any news and it’s the best I’ve felt). I think no news is particularly helpful to LE. There is no end to the war on crime and watching the news is particularly depressing.
Bible study group
Hunting
Fishing
Saddle hunter forum
Have an actual sabbath
Etc.
Maybe this is all stuff you’ve tried. Maybe not. You can call me anytime.
D
), the new climbing methods, gear (I know new gear doesn't kill deer but it can refresh the experience) and elevated access to areas I couldn't hunt with a climber really helped rejuvenate my hunting experiences and I find myself approaching the hunt with a renewed sense of anticipation. Add to that some advice from a member here who made a comment in a post that really struck home with me. Essentially he said "Enjoy your season. Don't let the things that are outside of your control (weather, pressure, activity, time, etc.) get you down when they don't go your way. Remember you're doing the activity you enjoy the most and feel blessed by that. Treat the challenges exactly as they are, challenges to make you a better hunter and person." I took those words to heart and am now find myself in a much better state of mind during the season. 
