Ways To Cope With The Surviving Stage
The surviving stage and the thriving phase have two different sets of coping skills for most of us. They will sound similar in many ways, but we need to focus on various aspects depending on where our head is. These are the things that I focus on when separation begins. Whether it will be big or small, I know what my triggers are and how to avoid them. Of course, this doesn't mean that I never struggle, but it means that when I do struggle, I know the way out (even if I let myself sit in it for a while longer).
1. Have something to countdown to
This is not to say that we should be counting down to the end of the deployment, mainly because we often don't even have a good guess on when that would be. When we are barely surviving, counting down from 300 days to 299 days does more harm than good. But we can do smaller countdowns.
When I was postpartum, I knew that six weeks would be a big turning point for me. So I counted down to get there. I counted two days until I left the hospital. Three days until my dad gets into town. Two days until I reach day ten (a mile marker my nurse had given me for recovery). Four days until my grandparents come to town. Six days until they leave. Two days until...
These weren't necessarily exciting milestones to look forward to. I did feel better every day, and there were things that I was excited about in the meantime, but my goal was just to make it to the next point. It's like when people go for a run and say they will make it to the next mailbox. Then once they get there, they can push through to the next mailbox, and so on.
2. Don't be alone
When it comes to this strategy, kids don't count. Yes, kids are people, and for many of us, having a break of real alone time might be exactly what we need, but for others of us, we need some sort of adult interaction. Talking to our children, especially if they are under a year like my son, means that we are really just talking to ourselves or spending a lot of time saying things like, "No, you cannot pull on the compost bin" (which I have been doing a lot of while writing this).
Whether we call our mom, best friend, or just go through a regular check-out lane at Target, we need to talk to someone. When I was going through my husband's first deployment, I forced myself to leave the house once a day. Sometimes this meant dinner with friends. Sometimes it meant game nights at my neighbor's house.
But more often than not, it meant splitting up my errands across several days so that I would go out in public, at least for a little bit. I would go to the grocery store on Monday. Target on Tuesday. Lowe's on Wednesday. The base thrift shop on Thursday. Whatever random errand that needed to be completed, I tried to do it in such a way that I would position myself for some semblance of adult interaction because I needed that for my sanity. I knew that if I didn't force myself out of the house, it would be very easy for me to end up sitting at home for the entirety of his deployment and become more and more depressed along the way.
3. Feel everything
Sadness, hurt, pain, anger, and any other emotion rattling around in our heads must be fully felt. It is tempting to shove our feelings down and deal with them later, but all that does is set us up for failure down the road.
I chose to keep a journal during this time, and at the end of the day, I would write down everything I did and felt. Granted, this only lasted the first 30 days or so, but it certainly helped until I reached the thriving stage. This wasn't a place for me to write down all my achievements and victories. It was more of a daily log to remind myself that I had made it through, which was a victory in itself. And now, I can look back at it when I prepare for the next separation and recognize which days were brutal, why, and how I got out of my funk.
4. Practice small acts of self-care
I think the term self-care gets overused and doesn't always mean what we think of. I know often, especially with moms, self-care gets used to describe things that should be fundamental aspects of human life. We don't call it self-care when a dad does it because it is just accepted and expected for them. But that clarification goes out the window when we are talking about surviving in a separation. While long, luxurious baths with glasses of champagne and lots of candles can be very relaxing and reviving, that often isn't what we need during the survival stage. And frankly, we usually aren't capable of creating these relaxing environments, let alone enjoying them.
But we can do basic things. For me, this means getting in the shower once a day. Whether I do a whole routine or just stand there for ten minutes, I make sure to get water on my skin. I also brush my teeth. And I put on new cute and comfy pj's. If I'm feeling really bold, then I'll use a shower steamer and shave my legs. Then I make sure I eat something, which usually means Mac n cheese or thawing some gluten-free gyoza. These aren't big things for me. And these may not be important things or things that help you feel better. But I know that my mental state gets so much better if I just make the effort to brush my teeth in the morning. So figure out the small, daily activities that can help you feel a little bit more like yourself during this time.
5. Don't overcommit
One of the biggest pieces of deployment advice that I have often seen is "stay busy." And while this is great and true advice for some, it is absolutely horrendous for others. If we overschedule ourselves too much, then we miss out on life. If we never have a moment of downtime in our day, then we don't have any time to stop and think. Sure, this means we
probably won't dwell on our emotions, but it also means that we won't process them. And we can't move from surviving to thriving if we never stop to analyze what we are feeling and what would fix it. All overcommitting ourselves does, is burn us out so that we feel even more lost halfway through the separation.
6. Protect your mental health at all costs
I love a good doom scroll on Instagram as much as anyone else, but I know that if I don't have anything to pull me out of that, then I will just dive further and further down. I was very lucky that when my husband deployed, there wasn't any news to watch about his location. I didn't have to field calls from relatives asking about what they heard or read about. I didn't have to skip channels or feeds because I was worried about what I would see.
But, if your spouse is somewhere where those things are ever present in the world around you, then please, please, please set boundaries and protect yourself. Maybe this means you can only watch Netflix and Hulu rather than scrolling through YouTube Tv or cable. Maybe this means you don't take calls from your cousin because all they want to do is share the latest
conspiracy theory they heard. Making it through the survival phase depends on our ability to stay sane throughout it; one of the keys is managing what news we allow in.
If it doesn't come from my husband or a key spouse, then it is purely a rumor, and I shouldn't put any weight in it. I know for me, it was fun to think about the rumors that they would be coming home early, but I always knew they were only rumors. Sure, some sources were more reliable than others, but I never allowed myself to believe anything until I heard it directly from my husband (and he had heard it from his commander).
Please take what works for you and leave the rest. We are all different people, and we will struggle and thrive in different ways. Even though we will all go through a surviving stage, it will last longer for some of us than others. And the things that pull me through may absolutely not work for you.
I heard some truly terrible advice before my husband's first deployment. Maybe one day I'll share that, along with a collection of the awful advice that you heard, but for now, just trust yourself. If something sounds fishy for you or your marriage, then throw it out. At the end of the day, the best way to survive a deployment is whatever the best way is for you. Don't compare your strategies to someone else's because our first goal is just to survive, and then when we figure out a way, we are going to thrive, but we're going to do it exactly the way you need to.