Top Questions – Service Members
▼ Q: How can FOCUS help us come together as a family or couple?
A. FOCUS can teach your family how to talk about different concerns and feelings you have. Better communication prevents misunderstandings or conflicts and helps everyone get back to normal routines or come up with new ones, if needed.
▼ Q. I think I have a pretty good idea of how my children feel about my military service – how can FOCUS help me understand them better?
A. FOCUS can teach your family how to talk about different concerns and feelings you have. Better communication prevents misunderstandings or conflicts and helps everyone get back to normal routines or come up with new ones, if needed.
▼ Q: How can FOCUS help my spouse/partner and children?
A: Through FOCUS, families can learn techniques for dealing with stress and worries, how to solve family problems, and how to adjust to new routines following a move or during deployment. They’ll also learn ways to connect as a family and build strong bonds.
▼ Q: I have been career military for a long time. How can FOCUS help us now?
A. Families have to deal with different challenges that arise with each new deployment, PCS, or even school year. As kids grow older, they might ask questions about your military service that are tougher to answer. They also may be faced with new challenges that are just a normal part of growing up. You may find your relationship has changed over time and you need to learn new ways to talk about those changes and reconnect as a couple. FOCUS provides skills-training to help families learn new ways to deal with common challenges and form strong bonds.
▼ Q: Since I got back from deployment, I haven’t felt like talking to my family or anyone else about how I feel because I just do not think they would understand. Sometimes I have nightmares and am constantly on alert. How can FOCUS help me talk and relate to them?
A: Avoidance, re-experiencing and hyper-vigilance are very common in service members who experience combat operational stress. One of the goals of FOCUS is to make it easier for you to include your family in the healing process. FOCUS helps you find ways to be comfortable with allowing your family to assist you in re-establishing family bonds.
▼ Q: Some aspects of my military service can make our lives feel pretty hectic – how can FOCUS help make those times less stressful for our family?
A: FOCUS can help families anticipate issues that might be most stressful and make plans to reduce that stress. For example, FOCUS teaches families to set and achieve realistic goals, like having a strategy for setting up the family schedule so obligations do not come as a surprise.