Advice to Ease the Transition After Deployment

Main | Stories | Challenges | Advice | Resources | Photo Gallery | Share

• Talk, talk, talk. To counselors, to clergy, to fellow soldiers, to friends and family who are also undergoing reintegration. Avoid letting your thoughts build up, and don’t become isolated. “For me, I bottled up a lot of stuff; it wasn’t until I was a having a deep conversation with a buddy one night that all these emotions poured out,” said one of the interviewees, Lt.Col. Mitch “Taco” Bell.
• 

  photo courtesy of Joint Base Fort Lewis-McChord

  Learn how to manage stress. Find what works best for you. Get more rest, be physically active, eat healthy. Avoid stressors that aggravate anger and frustration. Other stress management techniques may include writing, deep-breathing exercises, meditation.

• Reach out for help if you need it. Connect with friends, family, and professionals. This is especially important for family members during deployment. As writer Marcia Sargent frankly tells it, “Make friends with your neighbors, even if they don’t understand what your spouse does. Who knows, your car might break down.” These are also good relationships to have once your spouse or family member returns home.
• Ally yourself with help on base. Part of the charge of Family Readiness Groups and rear detachments are to help military families with deployment and reintegration issues. Use the resources they provide.
• Be adaptable. Military life has one constant – change. The key is to stay positive and keep your plans flexible. One mother of a soldier writes, “Family members and soldiers must be adaptable to that change. Complaining doesn’t make it better. Embrace the change. If you can’t, investigate ways to ease the anxiety, and mix with others in your similar situation.”
• Write it out. Spill your thoughts, concerns, gratitude, sadness, confusion, victories over paper. Start a blog or a journal. To keep it positive, start with the phrases, “I feel powerful when…” or “I am most grateful for…” (For more great tips about journaling, check out the Real Warriors article, How Veterans Can Aid Resilience by Writing.)
• 

  photo courtesy of the National Guard

  Love your spouse. Show your partner you love them, support them, need them – whether you are a family member at home or a solider overseas. Communicating this affection goes far during the tough times of reintegration.

• Give children time to adjust.  According to Real Warriors’ Tips for Spouses of Returning Service Members, “It is common for children to have the same feelings of apprehension and fear.” Says blogging mom and wife Heather, “As part of our reintegration, we focused on time and compromise. It took time for my husband to re-enter our little girl’s heart. It took compromise for us to share parenting roles again.”
• Deployments don’t happen in a vacuum. You are carrying things that happened last time with you this time. It adds up. New deployments are harder, not easier. You don’t just get used to it.
• You are never alone. Talk your problems through with someone – a spouse, buddy, Chaplain, or the operator at Military One Source. The fast way into a hole is to keep it to yourself and try to push through it.
• The military gives you time after a deployment for a reason.  Take the time and go slow at home. It’s not normal to pound your fist and cuss at the coffee-maker because you spilled a little bit on the counter. Just like standing guard mount, know what normal is, and react to or report what is not normal to someone, anyone.

When you get time with your family and friends again, treasure it. And use it to slowly rediscover your “new normal.” MAJ RET Montgomery Granger said, “In some ways, the returning veteran and the surviving spouse may never fully heal from the experience, but it’s important that they listen to each other and give it time. The soldier can get egocentric and think he or she was the only one affected by deployment. The reality is that everyone suffers, and everyone needs a turn to be listened to and comforted.”