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When Vogel sought medical help for suicidal thoughts, the doctor prescribed anti-depressants that warned they “may cause suicide.” Vogel changed doctors, proving that life may kick him, but he always kicks back. Also, life literally hit the author head-on with a truck one New Year’s Eve with a seventeen-year-old in his car. Significant injuries and guilt resulted in a spiral into post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), “an illness that shows no visible scars.” Counselling ripped off past scabs from a childhood in post–WWII Germany, where he was reared by war-damaged parents who were remote and physically punitive but also fighters for freedom and justice.
Vogel faces his trauma in debilitating swoops (called PTSD “flooding”) and shares his failures and successes, along with the therapies that helped. Conversations with his therapist provide a framework for flashbacks into pivotal moments that shaped (and warped) Vogel’s life. Moves from rural to urban life tore his nature-loving soul; business failures hammered his self-esteem (despite his many successes); and reality tore the blinders from naïve eyes. Once a professional French horn player in Africa and an expert organic farmer, he was disillusioned by apartheid and industrial agriculture and became a builder in America.
Honest writing, keen intelligence, and a philosophical approach link Vogel’s disenchantment to a broader problem, one he sees as “global PTSD”—homelessness, addiction, isolation, corruption, war, deficient education, and more. As he shares successful healing techniques (emotional freedom technique, talk therapy, nature, exercise, work, human connection, and love), he exposes that we all suffer and can be helped. He traces his problems on transparent paper and lays them over the entire world. The overlap is astonishing. Vogel removes the shame and embarrassment associated with PTSD. His shared experiences will help others find their own healing process from the invisible wounds of this crippling disorder.