The Rational Basis® of Happiness Podcast

Transcript

The Selfish path to romance. Download chapter one for free at DrKenner.com and @amazon.com

If you have a family member?maybe your daughter or son, or maybe you're a husband or wife, or even your father?maybe going off during a war and you're very worried about them, what do you do? What happens when they return? How can we make the return easier? I recently went to a conference. ?How Will We Welcome Them Home?? That was the title of the conference: The Unseen Cost to American Armed Forces and Their Families. And I heard a wonderful speaker. His name is Jay White. He's from the Department of Veteran Affairs, and he's in Hartford, and he is a readjustment counselor, and he has been through the war. He's going back to it. Welcome, Jay, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, Jay, it sounds like you've been through some very unusual experiences. You've been over to Baghdad. You served in the National Guard.

I did in the Army Reserve.

That's right, yeah. And at the conference, I heard someone say the war starts when the vet returns home. And I'm wondering what's meant by that.

Well, I guess what they would be talking about is the readjustment period, and that doesn't go just for the veteran. It goes for the family as well. And it's a debate about who has it harder. Some people could say, you know, the veteran has it harder, or the family has it harder. As far as trying to get readjusted. What you see a lot of times is, take for instance, soldier and his wife is at home. This is a common thing, or his fiancée, or, you know, one significant other. I think what happens is the person at home?first of all, while they're gone, your imagination can really take off on you. So you have no longer the help. Also you have doubling that up. You have the fear that your loved one is in danger,

Right. So if your husband goes overseas to fight a war, not only do you have the anxiety from that, but you've now got to play the role of the husband: to take out the garbage, to take any of the responsibilities with the children or elderly parents that he would have helped you with.

Yeah, pretty much everything. Yeah. And then from the Veteran?s point of view, when they are over there, there's nothing they can do. So that's a detractor. You know, that's a big problem. You feel bad for one and guilty and all that. And it's a concern, because you know, if something does go wrong, be it, you know, you're thinking about your wife. You know you heard she had a flat tire. What did she do? How did she fix it? You know you weren?t there to help. You're handcuffed and you'll get phone calls. You know, she's upset, saying, ?You need to come home,? and you know you can't. So you're really caught. And when you mentioned that the war starts when you come home, and it does in a way, because that's when they first see you again. You being the?

Right. And what are their expectations?

Well, they're usually higher than what they should be.

Daddy?s coming, or daddy or mommy are coming right back, and we?ll just pick up where we left off.

Exactly what they do. A lot of times, from what I have seen myself, and from what I hear, is it seems like people put you on pause and expect you to pick up right where you left off. But you were gone for 12?15 months.

Right, and you were not on a vacation around the world.

No, you weren't on vacation. And you've changed. You know? You've got a lot of new experiences?some of them the most memorable of your life, good or bad?and you're expected to come back as you left.

Yeah, and to pick up all the responsibilities again.

Right. Right. And that doesn't stop just at home. At work too. People, you know, they see it work, and according to the laws, you have to have your job and all that. But deep down, people think, ?Well, you haven't been here for a year, so you need to?? you know. And you don't want to come home day one and just go right back to work. You want a month off or whatever. And you're entitled to it a lot of times with their leave. So you just?people don't see you and just think you're going to come back exactly as they last saw you. And that's not the case.

So just the shock value, your expectations are so high. You come home and you get the realities of what's really going on, and people may not understand what you've been through. And you may have been?you may have seen people killed. You may have killed people. You may have seen best buddies maimed, or you know, what goes on during a war. And there's?who do you process it with? Your young daughter or a fiancée? You know? How do you deal with those types of issues?

Well, very rarely from the Veterans I?ve seen that come into the Vet Center here do I hear that people are able to process it with somebody at home. And I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's somebody, you know, on a different spectrum. You care about them, and they don't understand. So it can be frustrating too, and you don't want to open a can of worms.

And you can retraumatize them. The vicarious traumatization for them might be there if they feel, ?Oh my God, he was hearing mortar fire, he was almost killed,? or ?He just nearly escaped death.? Here, this is where you come in, because you run an outreach program. Can you talk a little bit about what you do as a readjustment counselor? I know during the conference, you were talking about taking vets deep sea fishing or to the Boston Marathon, or playing baseball, or doing unusual activities that you wouldn't expect in therapy. Help explain what's available for vets and how to get over the stigma too of going to seek help.

Okay, sure. The basic things we do here at the Vet Center is the outreach, where we go and talk to units or individual soldiers, Marines?any veteran coming back. So you have that segment where we go out and spread the word about where to go and what benefits people have. But once they come here, the two main things are, we do individual counseling and group counseling. Not everyone is prepared to go to group counseling if they don't wish. It?s open to everybody. But those are the two main things. And then in the individual counseling, you also have sexual trauma counseling and bereavement counseling, and it's open to significant others.

Yeah, I was just going to ask that. But can family members come too? And do you do any family therapy?

Yes, yes.

It's open to anybody who's been a combat veteran. Their significant others. It doesn't have to be family. It can be a friend of theirs or friend of theirs. They're allowed to come in. What you were talking about with the activities?we do have that because there is a stigma, like you mentioned, about coming in. You know, the military is a proud group, and you don't want to say that you need help. And you probably think you don't need help at first. You know you can handle it. And then things start changing, whatnot?not to be afraid of anything?but where is it you go to get help? So one issue for the veteran is to find out where to go. And two is to, I would guess you could say, have the guts to go.

Okay, so that's where they need courage. The courage that they need to fight a war. They need to be honest with themselves, and if they're experiencing some of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder or depression, if they find themselves numbing themselves emotionally or reacting to startling easily or getting angry very quickly, it's really important to reach out early. And I want to thank you so much Jay for joining us. This is Jay White from the Department of Veteran Affairs at Hartford, the Hartford Vet Center, and he's a readjustment counselor. There's a lot of help out there. I worked at the Brockton Veterans Hospital, and we worked with families. We worked with the vets, and really tried to help them put their lives back on track again. Help them make sense of the trauma that they went through and deal with it more reasonably for themselves. Thank you for joining us again today, Jay.

Thank you for having me.

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You can download chapter one for free by going to DrKenner.com, and you can buy the book at amazon.com