The Precursor To Chili’s Advice
I hope everyone appreciated Chili’s words of wisdom from Monday. I definitely had to utilize them last night as I hit my breaking point of stress with this PCS. I realized yesterday, though, while listening to a podcast, that Chili’s advice only works when people are ready to be strong.
Sarah McDougal is a survivor of domestic abuse and child sexual assault. She uses her experiences and her education to create evidence-based and gospel-aligned resources to help women survive and thrive after abuse. I haven’t looked into many of her resources because, thankfully, I haven’t needed to. But many of the resources I have turned to work in close relations with her, so she comes highly recommended. One of the things she has talked about is the three goals of leaving an abusive situation. Only when someone has reached the third goal can they really take hold of Chili’s advice, and I don’t want to overlook the first two.
1. Safety
The first goal is always going to be safety. In a domestic violence situation, this looks like getting away from the abuser, putting them behind bars, placing restraining orders, etc. We also have to deal with safety in low-stakes situations as well. I am not trying to minimize anything that abuse survivors go through. These steps happen to apply to everyone.
We have to feel safe in our relationships. We need to feel confident that while the distance will change things, it won’t change everything. We have to feel safe with ourselves and be able to cope with negative habits or self-destructive behaviors. We have to feel physically safe going to bed alone at night. Going from two people in a life to one can feel really jarring across all aspects of our lives, even if we’re used to operating pretty separately.
We have to figure out how to feel safe going through life when something feels very different. For me, that means locking doors that I don’t usually lock and double-checking everything before bed. Some people install security systems to gain this feeling. Others buy tools for self-defense and keep them close by. To feel safe in our relationships, we can plan virtual date nights, put lots of effort into care packages, or talk constantly if that’s an option. Feeling safe with ourselves may mean getting in with a counselor, making time for friends, or setting boundaries to prevent ourselves from spiraling (for me, that meant leaving the house once a day and staying away from the news). Whatever works best for you, getting to safety should always be the first goal.
2. Security
Once we have established that we are safe in our situation, then we can work on rebuilding our lives. We have to function in the world while our spouses are gone. We get a big say in what this new life looks like. This is the time when we can establish what is important for us to do and achieve over a deployment.
It’s a lot easier to get up at 5:30 in the morning to work out when there isn’t someone snuggled up in bed with us. Putting in more hours on a project is easier when we aren’t balancing evening hours together. It’s easier to make and follow through on commitments when there is just one person to manage. Obviously, this gets harder when kids are in the picture, but the point is that this is when we get to decide what life will look like for the next few months. We can work to build up our work, social, physical, and mental life to meet the standards that we strive for.
3. Strength
Once we’ve made our plan and sketched out our life for the next few months, then we can find the strength to execute that plan. This is when we show our stuff. This is when we can make time to have a little cry, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going. It is a privilege to be able to do those things, and I want us all to recognize that.
Having the space, time, and freedom to fully express our emotions and then push past them isn’t something that everyone has access to. I am incredibly grateful that when I could sense that I was nearing my breaking point, I could stop and take the time to reset myself. I’ve felt much better today, and even though there still remains a lot to be done on my to-do list, I am in a stronger place to handle it.
It’s tempting to forget this process. It’s easy just to try to demand more out of ourselves, but that doesn’t lead to success. As with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can’t reach for the top until we’ve met the bare minimum of the bottom. Everyone should feel safe and secure in their lives, but not everyone does. We cannot ask people to be strong before they are safe, and we certainly cannot ask that of ourselves.
Disclaimer: I am not a licensed advocate to help anyone dealing with an abusive situation. I highly recommend taking this with a grain of salt and seeking out licensed resources. Sarah McDougal is a great place to start, and there are many others as well. This isn’t a post about domestic abuse, and I know that is a problem well represented within our military spouse community. Between 2015 and 2019, there were 42,000 incidents of domestic abuse involving service members and their partners. That number is likely higher, though, since the DOD is not consistent about when or how it tracks those numbers, and domestic violence as a whole went up during the pandemic. I imagine military members were not immune to that spike. All this to say, if you see something, say something. And if you are in a situation that doesn’t feel quite right, please speak to someone professional about it. It might be no big deal, but we’d rather know than guess, so talk to someone licensed and ensure you are in or getting to a safe space.