By Holli M. Kelly
"Named must be your fear before banish it you can.” –Yoda
Fear can be a powerful force in people’s lives
and interactions with others. After all, intimacy is where you’re the most
vulnerable regarding being hurt, abandoned, and rejected. This can be particularly
challenging when events such as deployment occur. Deployment in and of itself
is a stressful process. To be separated from loved ones, enter the unknown, and
prepare oneself for potential life-and-death situations can leave the strongest
warriors feeling unsettled and anxious in foreign emotional territory.
In my work with military couples, I focus
on their relationships. And I help them to be mindful, intentional, and
creative in learning how to stand up together against fear, use their
individual and shared strengths, and create a common vision of where and how
they want to move forward in the most authentic state possible. This requires
vulnerability and courage through introspection of what’s going on inside each partner
as well as personal accountability and responsibility of how they’re engaging each
other.
There are 3 areas military couples would
benefit from paying attention to and nurturing, thus enhancing both self-care
and connection with each other. These areas are your head, heart, and body. Fear presents itself in a variety
of ways through each of them. In your head, there tends to be the inner critic who
is judgmental or negative about who you are or the people you love. Common phrases
are, “I suck,” or “He doesn’t really love me.” Fear can often lead to being
irrational or creating drama or stories that might not be accurate, yet they
produce the very real feelings of defensiveness,
withdrawal, or combativeness. In your heart, fear presents itself
through numbing your feelings or shutting down to your partner. In your body, you
feel fear through tensing up, shallow breathing, and increased heart rate.
So
how do you combat fear for the betterment of your relationship, particularly
during a deployment?
The main key is awareness. To know how fear
shows up in you and how it impacts your relationship is important. Everyone
feels fear as it’s a common and lifesaving emotion. But when you’re
entertaining fear instead of turning towards love and intimacy, it can be
destructive and detrimental. You can engage in the following techniques to
stand up to fear—both personally and in your relationships—and work through it in
productive and compassionate ways.
Stand up to fear with your head
Be aware of what you’re telling yourself.
Are the messages positive, or are they critical and judgmental? Are they
balanced, which means you can see all sides of the situation instead of just
the negative, including the deployment? How do you speak to yourself? How do
you think about your partner and your relationship? Are you hard on yourself,
and in what ways? Do you give yourself permission to embrace your humanness,
which includes making mistakes, not being perfect, and understanding this doesn’t
make you any less of a partner, parent, Warfighter, or friend?Try journaling your answers to the above questions, so they don’t continue to clutter your mind. Then examine them objectively and ask yourself if they’re true. Are there other possible explanations for these ideas you might have?
For example, if you call home during a
deployment and your partner doesn’t answer the phone, you might jump to thinking
he or she’s having an affair. Yet this might be fear talking as fear is often
irrational with little factual basis. Consider other possible explanations such
as she might be running errands or working late. Write these down as options to
open your mind and reduce stress. Then imagine having
the conversation with your partner, which might look like this: “Honey,
I was really worried when I called earlier today and you didn’t answer. It’s
hard for me to be here—and you there—and not knowing if you’re okay. In the
future, if we plan to talk at a certain time, please let me know if you need to
reschedule or if something comes up—as that would be really helpful to me.” Allow your partner the chance to have this
conversation with you and come up with ideas on how to improve your
relationship going forward, trusting you have each other’s backs.
Stand up to fear with your heart
Since fear is often deemed an uncomfortable
feeling, one way of managing it is to shut it down completely. You might do
this by disconnecting from your emotions by either not acknowledging them or
numbing them in some way such as with addictions. When you abandon your heart, you
also tend to disconnect from the positive feelings as well. In addition, your
emotions are still a part of you—whether you engage them or not. So, if you continuously
try to ignore or numb them, your feelings might come out in other ways such as explosive
anger, depression, or physical ailments such as stomach aches,
fatigue, and migraines. Your emotions help guide and inform you, so embracing
them adds value and insight to your life.
A way to reconnect to your feelings is to
simply feel them. Journaling can be helpful here too. However, when compared to
asking yourself specific questions, more freestyle writing is useful. To be
curious about what you’re feeling—instead of judging or ignoring it—can help
reduce its intensity. To name the feeling and speak it out loud also can
release the emotion. It can be empowering to say, “I’m feeling really angry
right now and not sure what’s causing it, but it might be related to…,” and
then explore where the feeling might be coming from. Also, to recognize that
feeling something doesn’t necessarily mean you have to react to it. For instance,
you might be upset that you’re missing your son’s birthday party at home, but
this doesn’t mean you have to tell your partner you’re feeling fine about it. To
express feelings in a healthy way unchains you from the pain of holding them
in. You might say, “I’m really happy that Tommy had a great birthday party, and
it means a lot to me that you made sure the kids had a good time. I’m also sad
I couldn’t be there, and my deployment during these times is harder than I
thought it would be.” This is a brave act of openness and honesty, and it gives
your partner the chance to provide comfort and support, which might be a
welcoming experience for her or him. Finally, practice
gratitude! Every day, write down 3–5 things you’re grateful for to
help keep things positive. Share these joys with your partner too.
Stand up to fear with your body
You can learn valuable information when you
pay attention to your body. If your jaw is tense, your back hurts, your fists
are clenched, or you feel flushed, you can do a body scan to see what’s causing
your symptoms. Close your eyes and imagine a light passing over you, starting
at the top of your head and slowly moving its way down your body. Where in your
body are you feeling “off”? This often happens when your head is off-line or your
heart is off-center. Patterned breathing—that is, inhaling deeply, holding your
breath, and then exhaling on counts of 5—can reduce tension in your body. You
also can enhance relaxation by squeezing
and releasing all the muscles in your body, starting with your toes
and working your way up. Your partner can perform these practices too. It can
be helpful to use deep
breathing as a way to calm your body when you’re feeling angry. You
also might tell your partner, “I’m feeling really overwhelmed right now. I need
to take a break for a few minutes, so I can take some deep breaths and calm
down.” Another idea is to gently tap your chest while saying something positive
to yourself such as, “I’m okay. I got this.”
Exercise, yoga, and other meditative
practices can help you and your partner re-center yourselves, and they can be
shared experiences. There are many apps with ideas and reminders on how to relax
and meditate too. I had one couple who meditated together via Skype for 5 minutes
twice a week and another couple who worked out on the same days of the week,
even though she was deployed. This was something they felt connected with. And
it improved their overall health, despite the 8,000 miles that separated them.
It’s a lifelong process to overcome fear
and choose healthier ways of being. However, when you create a more holistic
sense of self by embracing these 3 areas—head, heart, and body—it likely leads
to a more endurable deployment and a more meaningful connection with your
partner during this experience.
During
CHAMP’s 2018 #GotMySix campaign, show
support for your partner on social media. And remember to tag @HPRConline and include #GotMySix in
your posts.
Holli
M. Kelly, PhD, LMFT, has practiced clinically for almost 20 years. She
currently works with Veterans and their families around trauma and readjustment
issues at the Marietta Vet Center. Dr. Kelly is also the Executive Director of
the Georgia Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (GAMFT) and an adjunct
faculty member in the Marriage and Family Therapy Department at Northcentral
University.
* The
views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official
position of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences or the
United States Department of Defense.
