The Wound That Speaks

I was nineteen when I shot a friend in my unit during a military operation.

It was a tragic mistake, part of a traumatic chain of events I witnessed and took part in during my service in an elite Israeli combat unit. We saw things no one should see. And yet, like so many others, I was never asked how I felt, never offered the chance to process what had happened. There was no space for that. The system didn’t see trauma—it saw weakness. So I did what many soldiers do: I started drinking.

Not immediately after my discharge, but shortly after, I became addicted to drugs and alcohol.

I didn’t understand at the time that these substances were building a wall between me and the trauma. They allowed me to function, to live something that resembled a normal life. I studied, worked, met the love of my life, got married, became a father. True, some PTSD symptoms began to leak through the fog—nightmares, anxiety, flashes—but each time they did, I just drank more, smoked more, used more. I thought I was protecting myself. I was just reinforcing the wall.

What I didn’t understand—and what I’ve learned over the years—is that trauma thrives in silence. And silence is often built from shame.

Research shows that early intervention makes a huge difference in treating PTSD. But when trauma is wrapped in shame, people don’t seek help. Especially men. Especially soldiers. We’re trained to suppress, to push through, to be strong. And when the wound is invisible, it becomes easy to deny it’s even there.

For years, I lived with that denial. But PTSD doesn’t stay quiet forever. It erodes relationships. It makes everyday life harder—partnership, parenting, holding down a job. It isolates you. It makes crowds unbearable. The world becomes full of triggers, full of hidden dangers.

Still, I didn’t know what it was. I was stuck in the mindset so many male soldiers share: if you’re wounded on the inside, it means you’re weak. And weakness is shameful. So I kept going, pretending I was fine—believing I could beat it on my own.

But untreated trauma doesn’t go away. It’s like a small monster that grows larger, heavier, and more violent with time. I managed to live with that monster for many years. At first, with drugs and alcohol. Later, after rehab, I became dependent on psychiatric medication—SSRIs, Quetiapine, Clonazepam. And still, none of it saved me when the monster erupted.

It happened during the COVID-19 pandemic. Isolated, under economic stress, I was invited to a reunion with my old army unit—men I hadn’t seen in thirty years. It was moving. And it broke me. After that meeting, everything collapsed. No medication helped. I spiraled into full-blown panic attacks that lasted for weeks, then months.

For the first time, the military acknowledged its responsibility and began to support me. I entered real therapy—for the first time. We worked through the battlefield memories, the psychological wound, the moral injury, the shame. And I began to understand: a psychological wound is not so different from a physical one. In some ways, it’s worse. You can replace a limb with a prosthetic. You can’t replace a soul.

But true healing began only when I started writing my novel.

Dog is a fictional story about an officer who doesn’t understand his own trauma until it explodes and throws him to the margins of society. But in writing it, I was finally confronting my own story. The process of creating the book became the most honest, raw form of trauma work I’ve ever done. I discovered that writing—like art in general—is not just catharsis. It is a path toward healing.

That experience—writing my way through the chaos—changed something fundamental in me. It didn’t just help me tell my story. It helped me survive it.

As I continued to write, I began reading more about the connection between creativity and trauma recovery. I came to understand that the process I had stumbled into—sitting alone, shaping memory into narrative—wasn’t just therapeutic for me personally. It was part of a deeper truth.

Art heals.

Whether it’s writing, painting, dancing, sculpting, singing, or composing—creative expression allows trauma to move, to be witnessed, to be transformed. It doesn’t replace therapy. And it doesn’t replace medication for those who need it. But it is a vital third pillar of recovery that too often gets overlooked.

In my case, writing was the beginning of healing. It pulled me out of the abyss and gave me structure, voice, and purpose. It gave me back some sense of authorship over a life that had felt hijacked by memory.

Trauma breaks things.

Creation mends them.

From my perspective, the mental health system does not encourage creativity. It doesn’t guide patients toward art or expression. Instead, it funnels them into psychologist appointments—and more often, into medication. The system seems far more comfortable when you’re sedated, quiet, and manageable.

In this model, healing isn’t the goal. Compliance is.

It rarely includes or legitimizes professionals with alternative backgrounds—especially those trained in expressive arts, creative therapies, or integrative approaches. In fact, these practitioners are often dismissed as unscientific, unprofessional, or fringe. And yet, they are often the ones who reach people like me—people who don’t respond to talk therapy alone, or for whom pills only mute the pain but never address its source.

I’ve come to believe that just as alternative schools—Waldorf, democratic, art-based—are thriving while traditional education systems struggle, so too must healing from trauma evolve. The old clinical model, rooted in diagnosis and sedation, is no longer enough. What we need is a cultural shift—one that validates creativity not just as self-expression, but as a legitimate, essential form of treatment.

Trauma is not a pathology to be silenced.

It’s a story that needs to be told—

in words, in color, in movement, in sound.

Only then does healing begin.