Veteran Says: 'Anxiety' of This Shutdown Feels Like Combat 'Fight or Flight'

Leonard Goodson, a veteran of Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan, told ABC News that the 40-day government shutdown -- in which his furloughed wife and caregiver has gone without pay -- has brought him back to his service in Afghanistan, where he learned "hypervigilance."

Goodson suffers from the cognitive effects of a traumatic brain injury suffered as a combat medic.

The Goodsons, who live in Fairburn, Georgia, have lost their source of income from Leonard's wife, Dr. Precious Goodson, who is a CDC health educator and Elizabeth Dole Caregiver Fellow. After she was furloughed, she faced a "dilemma," she said, choosing to pull funds from her retirement account. She didn't want to take out loans for fear they would be unable to pay them back in the future.

"So you have to kind of move things around, and you have to do without, make sacrifices, and it causes a lot of anxiety, because you just don't know. ... When you don't know what the end date is, then, yes, that causes a lot of anxiety, and in my case, hypervigilance, And that's a bad place to be in, because it puts me back in a fight or flight, you know, just the same situation as if I was deployed, you know, to get through, to be resilient, you know, you just have to take it," he said.

- ABC News' Christopher Boccia

Originally published on ABC News