Military Families Readjustment: Return to Home

By Les Perera, AMFT
Life Balance Counseling Peoria

Military service is commonly a disruptor within a family, marriage, and home. Time away from home means shifts in parenting, household chore responsibilities, and personal care goals. It means changes in communication, work priorities, finances, and often times it comes with unexpected long-term changes in our loved ones, which profoundly affect relationships. These abrupt shifts can suddenly throw the family out of balance, and resentments can creep in and accumulate rapidly if not discussed and worked through. Reentry into day-to-day home life for the veteran can shake things up for everyone, right down to the pets.

There are few more noble causes than serving our country and protecting our freedoms. Military service IS an entire family event, even if only one family member has actively served our country. Everyone in the family feels the impact of military service, as a result, the family as a whole often needs guidance, care, and resources to transition successfully once a service member returns home and to civilian life. Ensuring that your family won't go through any additional hardships within the home honors the sacrifice everyone has made. A peaceful home, a balanced life, open communications, and healthy co-parenting are what our military families deserve.

And yet, it is easy to ignore, brush aside, overlook, neglect, or minimize key areas that may require more than just maintenance, perhaps needing a complete overhaul due to the vast changes that have occurred since the family was last together. These matters often require significant communication, hard work, and sometimes can be helped along by a little guidance beyond having a beer with a buddy at the VFW. That's where we can help! Therapists at Life Balance Counseling Peoria provide individual therapy, couples therapy, and family therapy all in an effort to help you “work the problem” of your family readjustment—to guide, identify, and resolve those newfound problem areas that you have discovered are a part of your family's sacrifice and adapting to a new normal.

Every veteran in preparing for military service or deployment completes a comprehensive checklist that ensures service members and their families are prepared, protected, and safe. It covers various challenges, including legal, financial, family care, and personal preparations. This helps reduce stress and provides a clear roadmap for what's ahead. Likewise, once home, service men and women can expect to have the same lists of challenges that require management and care in re-entry to civilian life.

And even though the military mission may be complete, the mission to re-integrate into home life may be assisted by some mental health care to help both the veteran and his family adjust to the new normal after military service. That is because veterans sometimes return home with silent and invisible injuries, and these need the same guidance, care, and resources. Depression, loss of purpose, isolation, substance abuse, sleep disturbances, survivor's guilt, and PTSD are common struggles veterans experience when returning home. Often-times, veterans do not want to share invisible injuries with their family but instead actively seek to protect their family. This speaks to the true heart of a veteran—protection.

Finding a safe place to work through these deep experiences is essential in helping cope with the things that can potentially disrupt one's home and family, and quality of life. Individual, couples, and family counseling to manage these common challenges can only ensure good outcomes and a true desire for a peaceful life, home, and family.