Reintegration after deployment

Episode Summary of “Reintegration after deployment”

Welcome to another episode of the Communicate and Connect Podcast for Military Relationships, hosted by the esteemed military marriage counselor, Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky. In today’s episode, we’re diving deep into a topic that resonates with many military couples: reintegration after deployment. Inspired by a listener’s question on Instagram, this episode aims to provide support and guidance for couples navigating the complexities that arise when one partner returns home from deployment.

Dr. Polinsky begins by sharing a personal story about her own emotional turmoil and mixed feelings during her husband’s homecoming, highlighting the common experience of conflicting emotions. She goes on to explore the broader impact of deployment on service members and their families, emphasizing that while most return without severe mental health issues, the stress of deployment can cause temporary behavioral and mood changes in everyone involved.

Throughout the episode, Dr. Polinsky discusses the reorganization of family roles during deployment and the challenges of renegotiating these roles upon reintegration. She introduces practical tips to ease this transition, such as maintaining positive communication, managing expectations, and allowing time to reacquaint with each other’s new habits and interests. Additionally, the importance of social support and potential benefits of counseling are underscored as essential components for a smoother reintegration process.

Dr. Polinsky also touches on common pitfalls, such as the difficulty of letting emotional walls down when another deployment is imminent, and offers resources like the Gottman card decks for fostering meaningful conversations between partners. She concludes by encouraging listeners to openly communicate about finances and routines to facilitate a smoother reintegration process.

Join us in this episode as we navigate the emotional landscape of reintegration, offering insights, personal stories, and practical advice designed to strengthen military relationships through one of their most challenging phases. Don’t miss out on this invaluable conversation aimed at helping you reconnect and thrive in your relationship after deployment. Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe to stay updated on future episodes.

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Episode Transcript for “Reintegration after deployment”

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:01]:
This podcast is sponsored by Communicate and Connect Counseling, where we have a team of therapists who provide individual couples and family therapy services, all tailored to meet the needs of military and veteran families. To learn more about our services, visit www.communicateandconnect.com.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:00:27]:
Welcome to the Communicate and Connect Podcast for Military Relationship with your host, Elizabeth Polinsky, a military marriage counselor. If this is your first time listening to the Communicate and Connect podcast, please take a second to go, rate, review and subscribe to make sure you get all our future episodes.

We also really want to know what it is you love about our podcast. And if for some reason you’re not loving it, we want to know that too, because we’re committed to providing the best quality content to help you improve your relationships.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:01:03]:
You’re listening to episode 17 on reintegration after deployment.

Hi there. I’m so glad you are listening to this episode of the Communicate and Connect podcast. This episode is all about reintegration after deployment and how to navigate relationships when your partner is coming back from deployment. This was actually, this was a question that I had received from someone on Instagram. And so I’m pretty excited to be doing this episode just because it’s, you know, I guess it’s like the common experience across military couples is one partner is going to have to deploy.

And so this is one of the biggest struggles that military couples face, the deployment, but also the reintegration after deployment. And there’ll be another episode some point in the future on more of, like the deployment process.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:02:08]:
But today is really focused on the homecoming reintegration back into the family part. And I’ll just start off by telling a story. Recently, the last time my husband returned home and I was driving to go pick him up from the boat ship thing that he was on, and I was mad at him. I had spent like all week feeling anxious. Is he still gonna find me attractive? Is he still gonna love me? Is he gonna be different? Are we still gonna function the same?

You know, I have been feeling anxious all week, and then now here I am driving to go pick him up and all I could just feel frustrated. And he got in the car with me and he was, of course, very excited to see me. And it was nice and sweet and I was just frustrated. I was, like, enraged, and I pretty much kept it to myself.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:09]:
You know, I didn’t go off on him or anything, but inside of me, it was. I was boiling. And it was because I was angry that he had left me in the first place. Even though my logical mind knew it was happening and was prepared for this. Even before we got married. There was still this emotional part of me, you know, that was really annoyed that he had even left home to begin with.

So it was kind of odd sensation to logically think one way and emotionally feel another way. And it took me a little bit to, I guess, calm myself down and adjust to the fact that he was back.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:03:52]:
And of course, it took a while for him to adjust to my emotional reaction to him returning and being angry when he was expecting me to be excited that he would be back. And so this is important to talk about. And so the things that I wanted to cover today are kind of the impact that deployment has on people and really the family unit, how the integration process, and then some tips of things that have been found to be helpful during that reintegration process. And so those are kind of the big.

The big goals for today’s episode. So we’ll start just with the impact of deployment. You know, so many people, I think, feel nervous. Is my service member going to return home and have some sort of mental health problem? Most people return without mental health problems, so that is something to know.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:04:47]:
Is it a possibility, especially if they go through something traumatic while they’re on deployment? Absolutely. They could develop anxiety, they could develop depression or ptsd. But for most people, they return home with no mental health concerns.

At the same time, it is still a stressful experience, both for the service member who’s deploying and for the families. And stress on its own can cause anxiety and irritableness. So in that type of sense, we would consider that non clinical. So if I have anxiety from stress or irritableness from stress, it doesn’t necessarily mean that I have a mental health diagnosis or a mental health disorder. It just means that I’m feeling stressed out.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:05:31]:
And so this whole experience is stressful and can cause more feelings of anxiety that don’t quite meet criteria for a mental health disorder or irritableness. And it can also create some behavior change, like maybe someone is sleeping more or maybe they’re drinking a little bit more, but still not quite at the point where it might be like a disorder or problematic.

So I was just trying to say you may see changes in mood and behavior as a result, both in family members and in the service member. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a mental health disorder going on. It just means that everybody is under a lot of stress. Of course, if you had concerns that it might be a mental health problem, you would just go see A mental health professional, and they would help with that.

Now, while the service member is deployed, there tends to be this reorganization of responsibilities and routines and roles. You know, the person being left behind, the spouse or the partner.

Family adjusts roles during reintegration; coping varies.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:06:37]:
Now, both mom and dad is now, you know, two parents functioning as two parents. Maybe one of the kids is taking on more responsibility around the house also. This is a really common thing that happens in families, is that kids start taking on more responsibility as well at times. And so the whole idea of who’s responsible for cooking and cleaning and household chores and working and mowing the lawn, all of this gets reworked when a spouse has gone on deployment.

And one of the things that can happen is people tend to cope with the stress and the loneliness of their partner being gone in one of two ways. They either overperform, sort of are like, okay, I’m gonna do this, and now they’re this, like, super rock star, making sure everything gets done, or they underperform, which is also a way of coping. They might become more depressed, more isolated, less motivated to do things, less social. And they may, you know, not do the dishes for a week or two, or not do laundry for a week or two.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:07:51]:
Their whole life kind of slows down. This is another way of coping. Kind of like hibernation is the way that I like to think of it. So that could be an experience for some families, is that some people are going to cope with the stress and the distance of their loved one by becoming maybe more perfectionistic and really taking control and trying to make everything happen. And other people become more withdrawn into themselves, isolated as a form of coping.

Either way, the roles and responsibilities have now shifted in the family, and there can be this sense of uncertainty. Uncertainty in how are things going to get done, uncertainty in what is my partner thinking and feeling? Are we going to. You know, how is this going to impact us? You know, there’s so many people, you know, I guess you hear, like, horror stories, right, of affairs happening on deployments and divorces happening on deployments.

Reintegration after deployment: challenging readjustment, emotional reconnecting.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:08:50]:
And like, all these, like, when the negative things happen, they happen on deployment. And in fact, it’s actually making me think. It’s kind of funny now at this point, but every time my husband has left to be on a ship, something has happened with one of our dogs. I don’t remember the order of it all happening, but one time our cat died, like, in the first couple of days that he was gone.

Another time, my dog had to have emergency eye surgery. And so, at least for us in our family, there’s Kind of this joke that what can go wrong will go wrong right when he leaves. So we have a little uncertainty maybe about that now of what’s, what’s it going to be this time?

There’s also a sense of loss that often happens for people during deployment and really throughout the entire deployment process there, you know, when you’re, when your partner is gone, there’s kind of this sense of, you know, there’s like the grieving, the loss of them being present with you in your day to day life. And that can be pretty painful, I would say, especially the first few times.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:01]:
And I would say it’s also probably more painful the less secure your relationship is going into the deployment. That can really, if the relationship is feeling insecure to begin with, it can really amplify those feelings of uncertainty and loss about the relationship.

But as people move on through the deployment process, they, most people adjust and they can start feeling more confident in their ability to handle all of the life stresses. Being kind of the sole person in charge of the family while their partner is gone.

This can lead them to feeling stronger and also having better social relationships. So I think pretty, pretty much like a natural grief process there for a lot of people. There’s the dip in mood and grief continues over time. But as time goes on, they start getting close to friends again, they start doing more activities.

Reintegration requires time, patience, and support.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:10:59]:
And this is ideally what will happen for a lot of spouses who are the ones who are staying home. Although I believe it can apply to the service member as well. The longer they are in that situation, the more confident they are at handling it. The more they have adjusted to it over time, the more they feel good about their capability and the more they start to form and engage in their social friendships.

And this is really important because good social support is one of the biggest factors for adjusting well to a deployment versus having more struggles with a deployment. And so you really want to make sure you have a good social support. I know some people who maybe because they had a permanent change of station right before a deployment, they decided to go back and live with family back in their hometown or something, just so that way they would have that social support while their person was on deployment.

And so if you can’t do that and you don’t have people nearby, then you probably really want to start trying to invest in friendships and do the zoom calling and the phone calls and the keeping connected to, to people in your life through technology.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:23]:
I will say for most people, the most stressful part of the whole process is the deployment itself. And then for other people, sometimes it’s the reintegration part. And so let’s talk a little bit about reintegration. There can be a lot of anticipation and mixed emotions when you’re gearing up for reintegration. There’s sort of this like happy feeling that comes up. There’s anxiety and nervousness, but also excitement. And then, you know, if you’re like me, then there is this anger at.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:12:58]:
Why did you leave me in the first place?

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:13:00]:
Even though logically my mind knows why he left in the first place. So there can be, I’m just trying to say there can be a lot of emotions going on when they first come back. It’s very typical to have a honeymoon period where you feel really close in, lovey dovey and you know, like you would on a honeymoon, hopefully. And that can last for a few days. For some people, it even lasts for a few weeks.

And so you’ll just want to kind of acknowledge that you guys are in this state of super happiness and closeness in the relationship. But that honeymoon phase is not likely to last because it’s in those first few days to few weeks that families start trying to renegotiate those roles and responsibilities.

And so you have the one partner who, you know, was home during the whole deployment, who was in charge of finances and housekeeping and getting the kids ready and taking them to school and making dinner and making everything happen, right? And now their partner is back.

Renegotiating family roles after deployment.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:14:03]:
And so now there’s this renegotiation of what does my spouse take over versus what do I maintain control of? If kids were really taking on a lot of responsibility, then there has to be a shift there too, with the parental unit taking on more responsibility, with the kids having less responsibility.

So there’s this renegotiating happening. And families can struggle when there is conflict over the new roles and responsibilities. You know, I guess it kind of depends on each family individually. But sometimes a service member comes back and expects to do all the things that they did before in the family.

But now the spouse had taken over those roles, you know, and they’re used to filling that. So now there might have to be a renegotiation of how do we want this to look moving forward. Other times a spouse might return and they’re like, oh great, you’re doing it all.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:02]:
Cool, I won’t do that. But then the person who was doing it all might say, no, I need you to take over some of these things. So there can be conflict in coming to a balance of who’s in Charge of what? And like I said, for some people, this is the most difficult stage in the deployment cycle because of this conflict that can happen over renegotiating these roles and responsibilities.

It’s also important to remember that each member in the family has changed over the time of deployment, even if it’s just a little bit. You know, kids might be the ones to change the most drastically. Like let’s say they were in a punk phase and now they’re in a, in like, I don’t know, like a academic phase or a sports phase or something. Right. But even, even the spouses have changed some over that period of time.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:15:53]:
The spouse is more independent and autonomous and, you know, used to being in charge of everything. And the kids are more advanced a lot because of their age and their natural growth during that time period. And so this requires a lot of patience to really get to know each other again, to not expect people to be exactly the same as how you, how you left them.

And it can take patience and commitment to navigating, getting to know each other again and getting to know how your person had these new experiences. You could also make use of resources, any type of resources that are available to you. So this is where sometimes couples counseling is really helpful right after a deployment while families are renegotiating these roles and responsibilities and getting used to each other again. You know, there’s military one source. There are couples counselors out there.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:16:54]:
You know, this podcast even. There are tons of different, like date night ideas out there. You can use whatever resources there are to help you in this. Getting to know each other again. I recently had a couple. Man, I can’t. And this is where I’m thinking of this story, but I don’t actually have the name of it. But I could tell you about a different one.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:17:18]:
I had this couple recently who were telling me about this card deck that they bought and it had questions on it to spark conversation and get to know each other again and see how things had changed. I don’t remember the name of the card deck that they were talking about, but the Gottmans from the Gottman Institute have a card deck like that. And it’s a, it’s an app on your phone and it’s a free app.

If you just search in your app store for the Gottman card decks, that is a great, a great resource for just starting up conversations to talk you and your partner and get to know each other again.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:02]:
So it has just like these open ended questions.

Reintegration challenges after deployment separations.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:18:05]:
For example, how do you feel about our home? Do you see your work changing in the future. There are questions about sex and romance and there are just lots of things on there. So that would be a really great resource, I think, specifically for this time period of trying to get to know each other again. When there have been changes and it’s been, you know, a long deployment for some people, when they know they’re going to deploy again soon, then it can be especially hard to reintegrate.

There is sort of this sense that when my partner, or if I’m the one deploying, when there’s a deployment in the family, in the couple relationship, both individuals sort of put up an emotional self protection mechanism to cope with the separation. And sometimes that can look a variety of ways. So I guess I won’t really go.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:03]:
Into that right now, but we cope.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:05]:
Everybody copes, whether you’re the one deploying or the one staying home. And we kind of guard ourselves emotionally in those moments.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:14]:
And so if I know that I’m.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:17]:
About to leave again or my partner is about to leave again, it can be hard to let the walls down, let the guard down, to have these moments of really connecting. And that could prevent actually me from reintegrating. When I know that I’m going to deploy again soon.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:34]:
It can, or my partner is going to deploy again soon.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:37]:
It can be hard to let the emotional walls down. And it can be hard to reintegrate. Almost like I don’t really want to reintegrate fully or let those walls down because I know I’m just going to have to adjust this and cope to this again. And so I keep the walls up. And so that can make it really hard to reintegrate.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:55]:
And that could also be a good.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:19:57]:
Spot to utilize a couples therapist. So things that can help with the.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:02]:
Reintegration process are, number one, positive communication. You really want to try to be kind and compassionate. Even if you are full with rage and anger like I was. Kindness and compassion are really important.

You also want to kind of manage your expectations for what things are going to be like. A lot of spouses, myself included, can create like this fairy tale of how romantic it’s going to be when you know when they walk up to you and how things are going to be.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:35]:
For the first few days.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:20:36]:
And oftentimes these types of expectations and fantasies of the ideal scenario don’t happen. And so it’s important to realize like, okay, this is a fantasy that’s happening in my mind. It may not be as exciting as all of that. Part of that is remembering that your spouse is going to be tired.

So they just worked really hard. And they were also struggling with being away from their family in this whole new environment. And depending on what they went through while they were deployed, they could be just so emotionally exhausted. And they don’t necessarily want to party or celebrate or go on this huge vacation.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:27]:
They often just want to be home and to rest and to relax and to be around their family. On top of that, they often, unless they have, like, leave lined up, they often have to go back to work.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:40]:
Like, a week later.

Adjust, communicate, and reacquaint with changed dynamics.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:21:43]:
Those are things to keep in mind to help you manage your expectations of what things might be like. I guess I’ll throw this out there, since it was my experience. If you’re the one returning home, just know that your family has been trying to adjust to having you gone. And they may have a lot of mixed emotions, including frustration that they don’t know how to explain because they wish you hadn’t left in the first place.

So the next thing that’s really helpful is giving yourselves time to get reacquainted to each other and get to know these new aspects of each other that may have changed while you were separated. Maybe your spouse has taken up a new hobby. Like, I like tap dancing, but my husband has never known me as a tap dancer.

And if we have a deployment coming up, coming up in the next later this year, and I was thinking about taking tap dance classes just because I miss tap dancing and I wanted something fun to do and, you know, if he came back and he was like, what, you’ve been tap dancing? Like, he.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:22:51]:
There’ll need to be time to get to know these new things about each other. And again, the Gottman card deck would be a good resource for that. Counseling is another good resource, really, to recognize and process emotions. This is the key to couple recognizing my emotional experience, processing my emotional experience and sharing it with my partner. This is where I see most couple relationships break down.

When there is difficulty in expressing emotions, it can lead to relationship problems, intimacy problems, kind of, obviously communication problems, even domestic violence or intimate partner violence, Unless we’re talking about, like, really cruel, intimate terrorism, a lot of domestic violence. And intimate partner violence is a breakdown in processing emotions. It’s a common, common problem, especially in the military.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:23:49]:
And so counseling and couples counseling is a great way to help you both process through those emotions for spouses. One thing that I just wanted to mention are risks. You know, depending on how you look at it, it’s either a risk factor for what may make it really hard for you during deployment or it could be a source for you to work on.

So that way you can have navigate deployment in a much easier way. And so, so the research is pretty clear that the older you are when your partner deploys, that goes a little bit easier for you. The longer you are married together, that makes deployment a little bit easier. Your coping ability how do you do with coping with stress in general?

This is where individual counseling could be helpful. If, if you struggle more with how to cope in a healthy way, then you know deployment is going to cause a lot of stress and loneliness and potentially emotional turmoil.

Counseling helps reintegration by improving coping skills.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:24:59]:
And so counseling could help kind of build up those coping abilities if that’s not a strong suit for you. And then your level of emotional support and social support, the more support you have, the better it goes for you during deployment.

This is kind of just my overview of the reintegration process from deployment to reintegration to things that will help, and this is my action step for you today, is that if you are reintegrating and in that process and you’re renegotiating those roles and routines, you want to really try to be open and honest about finances and the routines that you have been doing in the family.

Just maybe it’s, it’s maybe even like over oversharing. It’s what you’ve been used to just doing for the past several months, but you want to kind of say it out loud, what you’re doing and why, and then kind of offer for your person to be involved. They, they may say they are fine with you continuously continuing to do that, but you know, oftentimes they, they want to be involved and they’re not sure how to be involved.

And so if you overly communicate about the finances and the routines and offer for them to be included, then they’ll often kind of start negotiating that with you and take on some of those things and then they know where it’s easiest for them to reintegrate into family life as well.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:35]:
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode and you can check out the show notes at my website, www.elizabethpolinskylcsw.com. thanks.

Dr. Elizabeth Polinsky [00:26:57]:
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. If so, please take a second to go rate, review and subscribe so you get all of our future episodes. Make sure to check out the show notes to sign up for our free 10 week relationship email course.

This email course is really designed for people who are maybe having trouble with communication or connection in their relationship and helping them develop some quick wins right away to start improving it. While I am a therapist, this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not considered therapy. And it should also not be a replacement for therapy. If you think you need a professional of any kind, you should definitely go find one.

Until next time.