Description
Warrant Officer Nowell speaks about his personal issues with a PTSD and shares a new focus on where it all may develop and how this type of condition exists for those inflicted by the disorder
Cory Nowell
Mr. Cory Nowell was born in Prince George, BC in 1973. After high school Cory considered joining the military and at age 24 joined with the Artillery regiment presently known as 4th Artillery Regiment General Support. Cory took on the rank of warrant officer with his occupation of drone operator/mission commander. While training in the Arctic, 2008, Cory was given an opportunity to deploy to Afghanistan. Warrant Officer Nowell is a still serving member and currently located at the Royal Canadian Artillery School at CFB in Gagetown, N.B. With inspiration from friend and fellow comrade, Warrant Officer Nowell has been selected to be part of Team Canada for Invictus Games 2018 where he will travel to Austraila and compete in the games. He currently resides in Rusagonis, New Brunswick with his wife and family.
Transcript
For myself I didn’t think I was dealing with anything. I thought it was life is normal, you know, work is normal. And, you know, as time goes by your mental resiliency starts to break down. It starts to affect the little things and we have kids and that changes the family dynamic and stuff like that. Stigma is another big one. A base this size with this many soldiers here and you want to talk about PTSD and mental health issues, you know, you are supposed to be tough, rugged, right? But it wasn’t til probably a couple of years ago now that I’ve finally started talking about what my issues are. It’s not all tour related. I don’t even know if any of it is tour related really. That was one of the stigmas that I realized was that, you know, PTSD is not a combat related issue. These are things that people deal with in real life from when they are kids, adults, job related, family related or whatever it may be. Since I have started taking that path to working on my mental health those are the things that I am starting to realize and I am starting to reflect certain points in my life like man, you know, like I lost one of my brothers when I was seventeen. I didn’t realize how much of an impact that had on me. He was one of twins. So the other twin brother, the survivor, just happened to die sixteen years later as well. You know that’s just a glimpse. There are so many things that people don’t really realize that affect your mental health, your mental resiliency.