03/19/2026
We talk about the military-civilian divide as if it’s a canyon.
Sometimes the best way to understand the difference is to hear it from the other side. To let a civilian speak about what they don’t understand and then find the bridge from there.
I believe trauma is trauma. It doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care who you are.
You don’t have to have worn a uniform to recognize loss. You don’t have to have deployed to understand grief. You don’t need the perfect terminology to feel empathy.
At PVP, our vets worked on a brilliant short film concept.
A veteran sits across from a civilian psychologist. They’ve been meeting for months, same questions, same clinical tone. The therapist is present but distant.
Finally, the veteran says, “It’s time you see the world through my eyes.” He hands him a pair of glasses.
When the psychologist puts them on, the room dissolves. He sees flashes of war, the chaos, the moral confusion, the images that won’t leave, and the sounds that linger.
When he takes the glasses off, he’s shaken, “Oh my God,” he says. “I get it now.” The next patient walks in. Before asking a single question, the clinician says, “May I see your glasses?”
We don’t always need to make civilians understand military life in technical detail. What we need is to give them tools to empathize.
I don’t fully understand military su***de in the lived sense.
But I have been touched by civilian su***de. I know what loss feels like. I know what silence feels like. I know what it’s like to ask, what did I miss?
That’s the bridge.
When civilians realize they already have the emotional vocabulary, when they stop waiting for the right jargon and simply allow themselves to feel, the divide narrows.
Indeed, I like to think of film as an “empathy machine.” Film can do that, it can foster empathy, in this case by put the glasses on. Sometimes, that’s where understanding begins.
🪖 Hi, I’m Ben Patton, founder of the Patton Veterans Project. We create therapeutic filmmaking workshops for veterans navigating trauma and transition. If you’d like to learn more or help us reach another veteran, you can support our mission by donating at this link
- https://lnkd.in/grGEXMmG
