Episode 4 – Why is communication so hard?

Mind Beyond the Mission Episode 4: Why is communication so hard?

Laryssa

Communication is essential for the success of military operations. It’s embedded at every step of the way. Drills, routine orders, briefing notes, O groups. There are even hot washes and AAR’s for after something has occurred. So it seems ironic that in preparation for this episode in communication, Brian and I both had the same response: Communication? I suck at it!

In this episode, we will try to communicate about why communication for a person with a traumatic stress injury – and the Family members – is so hard.

Brian

In some ways, when we first started talking about this, I was thinking, “Can we talk about something else? Something a little more comfortable, something easier?”

In a lot of ways I would rather talk about some really, really nasty things than talk about why it’s hard to communicate. Even now, when the conversations come up at home of, “We need to talk…” man, that’s an ominous thing to hear. And it can be just something really benign, but it puts me in threat zone, puts me in, “What bomb is about to land?!” mode. I would rather a real bomb did land. And all those pressures are going on in my mind when it’s, “Honey, let’s sit down and talk.”

So in that regard, the military has communication, but when I communicate up, it’s a back brief. I’m responding to something they’ve told me to do and I’m showing them how I plan on doing it.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

When I communicate down, it’s orders. I’m not really concerned about how you feel about the patrol you’re about to do. “You are going, do you have any questions?” And when I’m communicating laterally, it’s because I’m going to move my men through this, and you are going to move yours through that one. And we need to plan so we don’t bump into each other and ruin each other’s business.

Nowhere in there am I communicating in the way you and I communicate when we figure out how do we meet our needs, how we are going to do this project.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

And it certainly has nothing to do with how I communicate with my wife. So yeah, I have courses in communication, but the communication you are looking for scares the hell out of me sometimes.

Laryssa

Yeah, because the communication you’re talking about is one way communication. You’re providing the information, or you’re on the receiving end, and that’s it. And something that you’ve said before is that part of the training that you’ve taken is using the least amount of syllables as possible to communicate on something.

You and I have chatted about that, where in a relationship, more is required. It’s supposed to be two-way communication. You’re supposed to be receptive to the other person. You have to do reflective listening, all that kind of stuff. Because I think I’d asked you before, if the military relies so much on communication and you’re schooled in it, why is it so difficult for so many Veterans to communicate within that Family?

Brian

There was one mission I was on where my call sign – because we have those. A lot of people laugh at them when they watch Top Gun or something bad happens in the news, this has happened recently in our community, in the world of call signs – I was called “33 Pronto” for one of the tours I was on, which means “the third company,” Charlie company, the third platoon within it. So 33, 9 platoon, and Pronto was the person that is the platoon signaler. So that was my job for that mission. So why I’m called that – it’s not a cool name or we don’t get to sling it around in the bar and impress people – it’s meant to be deceptive. It’s meant that if you didn’t know what I just said to you, you won’t know what the heck 33 pronto is. So built into our communication is deception of anyone other than the specific person I intended to tell and what I intended to tell them.

Laryssa

Mhm, interesting.

Brian

So it is entirely fine for someone to ask the military version of, “Where are you right now?” They’d say, “Send locstat,” and I would give them an encoded grid more than likely if we were actively being pursued. And I would certainly give them a grid, not a location. I would not say, “I’m at the top of this mountain.”

Laryssa

Right, of course.

Brian

Because everyone would know where that is. I would give them a grid based on our mapping system. So it is designed to not tell you anything.

Laryssa

Okay, which means to me, the other person has to be in the know of the code

Brian

Yes.

Laryssa

And so, let me ask you then, do you have the same challenges communicating with your Veteran friends as you do with your Family?

Brian

No. They have the code book, right?

And that’s a lot of why it is easier, but there’s also the intimidation factor. Like I told you, my friends might come to me for advice. They might come to me just to socialize. Generally when the “Honey, we have to talk” conversation comes up, that means there’s a bit of a problem and it’s probably in the emotional sector. And you probably won’t like it, even if it’s like, “What do you want to do tomorrow?” Even if it’s something you will like, the “Let’s sit down and talk…” man, that’s an intimidating conversation. I would rather have just about any other conversation, so, yeah. Yeah. We’re skilled in communication, alright. Not the kind you’re looking for, though.

Laryssa

Which obviously creates a huge barrier. And we talked before about how for any relationships, from any couples or Family members, there are challenges to communication. I mean, there’s umpteen million communication courses that you can take just for personal interactions, or for your work environment. It’s challenging for most people. So let’s add on top of that a, traumatic injury. So, have you been able to ever identify how your specific PTSD puts another layer of barriers on communication?

Brian
Yeah. So I went to an incident once where there was an exploded bus and it was really, really bad. But for me, there were other incidents that were also really bad. It took me three years working with my doctor to be able to answer the question to him of what was bad about it. So in those three years, other people are asking me the same questions, like, “How are you? What’s bugging you? What can we do to help?” and I really didn’t have the answer, right.

So I’m not lying to you when I say I don’t know. I didn’t know. And then even for a while where I thought I did know, I was wrong. So we get into a situation where I don’t have the answer or what I told you is not true. You might call that lying, but in the process of my doctor and me working for years to get to what the truth was, that’s what I told.

Because that’s what I thought. So in this circumstance, what actually bothered me was that I’d stepped in the purse of one of the people that was deceased in the vehicle. It’s a purse. I didn’t say rucksack, right? Well, soldiers have rucksacks, but women have purses. This is a different situation.

So stepping in that purse bothered me more than what was inside that vehicle. That’s weird. That’s not normal. That’s not how it’s supposed to go. I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a neighbour, I’m all those things. I’m supposed to be concerned about loss of life, but I got into such a place where the loss of life was so relatively common that it bothered me more, that I’d stepped in someone’s purse.

Laryssa

Because it was then personal. There was someone attached.

Brian

How do I tell you that? And what will get better when I tell you that? And the truth is, as we’re sitting here together, there’s a couple people in the room helping us with the sound here, they’re listening to this too, and I can see their faces, I can see yours. You don’t know how to help me with that, right? So why did I just tell you? What’s the value in me telling you that? What are you going to do to help me?

Laryssa

And I think that’s hard for Family members to accept, because again, we were chatting about this earlier, that I’m going to talk specifically about about a couple’s relationship – when we use the term ‘Family’ in regards to Atlas or the podcast, that could be parents or siblings or friends – but in this case, I want to talk about couples. For many couples, your significant other is supposed to be your best friend. They’re supposed to be the one that you provide that shoulder, they can lean on you through tough times with mutual support.

So it’s really hard for Family members when we ask, “What’s the matter, what’s wrong?” and their response is, “I don’t know,” it feels like we’re being shut out or shut down, or like we won’t get it. And in many cases maybe we don’t get it, but I think in light of communication, if Family members understood what you just said, that sometimes I haven’t been able to process it on my own.

And there’s that other component too, which we’ve touched on before about that protective piece. You want to protect us from what you’ve been through. If you’ve got those movies going on in your head, why do you want to put those movies in my head? Like you said, what’s the benefit of that?

So I think it’s helpful if the Family members understand that too, and can provide some space or more understanding in that.

Brian

And I think from our perspective that we have to maybe be reminded or be willing to accept being reminded that there is more to communication than just the relaying of facts.

And we know this. There are cases where we’ll put stuff in a report and the emotion that we’re trying to put in the report, like, “I drove through this town and they hated us, but they didn’t hate us last week. Something’s changed.” I remember reporting that and also reporting the standard things of how much gas we used and all this, and the only thing that got into the communication that went was the facts, the gas, the numbers.

And so I remember being frustrated by what I think you’re frustrated by, which is that you took all the heart out of it. So there are circumstances in how we do business where the situational awareness or the feel, the atmospherics, are part of what we do.

I think it might be helpful to remind soldiers that the conversation with your spouse is probably more about situational awareness than it is about facts and figures. That’s language we would understand. I don’t know if that helps anything, but it’s one of the few places in our background where we can be reminded, okay, you do this in part of your communication as well at times, and you need to bring that talent back home.

Laryssa

Alright. I want to touch on something else that you said, too. You said so much of communication is not the hard facts. So we were talking about barriers and what barriers might be impacted by let’s say post-traumatic stress or depression or whatever. And so some of my experiences were as a family member, when my spouse maybe was really triggered and just trying to get himself grounded. And I am complaining about taking the garbage out. And I feel like he’s not present. He’s not listening, he doesn’t care.

But there’s – maybe he’s trying to manage symptoms, so that can be an additional barrier. Um, as well, he used to explain that. after his injury, he needed more time to process and compute. So I would be communicating with him. And then there’s this, again, this space and time. Um, but he was really processing what I’d said.

Um, wanted to formulate his response. So that was something we had to adapt. Um, let’s face it. sometimes along with mental health injuries comes, uh, substance use that can be an additional barrier. Um, if you and I were in a really crowded Tim Horton’s and there’s a lot of things going on that you’re trying to maintain situational awareness.

And, um, and I’m delving into something that I think is really important. So I just, I just think there’s so many different layers and I might be reading things, your body language or such, which is not factual, not verbal. And as a family member, I’m interpreting that they must be about me. So I just think there’s that additional layer, that comes along with the injury.

Brian

Yeah, I think for a lot of us, when I look at barriers, often our communication that we work with is, “I need to take this thing that’s wrong to the person who can help me with that thing”. And that’s it. I don’t go talk to a mechanic about what’s wrong with the radio and vice versa.

So a lot of it is a version of us protecting you. And you’re a grown-up; you can handle it. But do you need to handle it? But at the end of the day, the biggest barrier for me in communication is often, “what can this person actually do to help me out?” And it is just looking at yourself in some regard, but I think a relationship is more than just the sum of the parts.

There is another entity in the room between a husband and wife, other than the two people, which is the relationship. And the communication that we work with doesn’t care about that. So we have to kind of change the mode we’re in. It’s not easy. It’s not easy even now.

And I feel like, if I have a problem with Tim Horton’s, does that mean you have to have a problem with Tim Horton’s? By the way, Tim Horton’s people: love your chili. And I’m an apple fritter guy, right? So just putting that out there. But if it wasn’t my place, now it’s not your place if we’re in a relationship.

In fact, you might even not know five years from now why you don’t go to Tim Horton’s anymore.

Laryssa

Exactly.

Brian

And it could be because I’ve conditioned you that way. I don’t want to condition you.

Laryssa

Exactly. I think that’s a whole other area of conversation because I think that’s pretty insidious.
And when we’re emotionally connected to someone, you can’t, kind of, taking on those things, I guess, in some certain ways. You talked about wanting to talk to people who can help you. Tell me more about communication with your therapist. Is that different than with your buddies? Different than with your family?

Is that something you had to adapt? How does that go?

Brian

So I built a 20-year history of lying to doctors. You know, you get into the military, you’re going to get an assessment. I think it’s pretty easy to tell when they’re asking you questions at the entry point that the answers of “yes, I have a problem” or “yeah, that bothers me” are not going to be good for you to get in. You want to go on a deployment and, let’s face it, this is one of the communication problems actually between soldiers and the country: the country doesn’t understand often that we like these jobs and we want to do them. I’ve had people come up to me before like, “Oh, it’s so bad you had to go.” No, it’s not. That’s what, like, you have to hold me back from going.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

So there’s a communication problem just there, right? But I think that’s kind of how this stuff pans out in the end is, you just get this feeling like the only people that really thoroughly get me are my buddies.

Laryssa

Okay.

Brian

And this person I’m married to wants to do everything for me that’s possible. But, um, that’s pretty limited. So in terms of the doctor, I look at the doctor, like every other doctor that I had to get through to get the thing I wanted.

Laryssa

Okay.

Brian

I want to take the Combat After Capture course. I know that you can’t allow someone on there that’s got a problem. So guess what? I don’t have a problem. And then you finally get to a point where that catches up to you. It takes a while. So if you think you build rapport with me in one session, good luck.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

Good luck with that. It takes a while. So yeah, unfortunately, through no fault of their own, I put the medical practitioners through the ringer before I get a sense that they are actually here for me.

Laryssa

It’s a sniff test?

Brian

Hell yeah. I mean, when I reported that I had a problem to the military, quite rightfully, their biggest instance of dealing with me is to see what threat I am to the department. And they should do that. A disturbed soldier can cause a lot of damage within the system. They must protect the people in the system. But on the receiving end, you really feel like that, like you’re just being tested to see what you could damage, not administered from a health perspective.

Laryssa

So, it never felt legitimate to you? Like, you didn’t feel that those people that were there to help you were invested. It sounds like you felt misunderstood. There was a disconnection.

Brian

Yeah. Well, I also had one doctor ask me, “if you got blown up that day, why’d you go back out the next day?” Well, if you think wars are fought in shift work, this isn’t going to be a healing place for me. Next? And so I wound up maybe being overly critical, but I was certainly critiquing whether they had even the slightest clue of who I was. And in Vancouver, where I’m from, there aren’t too many soldiers around. It’s a different society out there. It’s difficult to find a doctor that has a clue as to who you really are as a person.

Laryssa

Okay. So that’s what I wanted to kind of ask a little bit was, I guess, from both sides of it. What would you offer service providers who are working with a Veteran community? What can you offer to them to help them build that rapport and help them communicate with the veterans that they’re supporting and working with in their practice?

Brian

I would say simple Plan A stuff. And what I mean by that is, if you think you are going to be getting a client coming into you who has just come back from Latvia and has an issue, well, maybe read a bit about Latvia then. And Defence is actually pretty good at putting stuff out there, mission updates as to what the mission is doing.

Don’t dare see him without reading that first, you know?

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

I mean, do some homework as to who we are, and then if you have a couple of clients from our background, start trying to figure out what we have in common, because what a lot of us feel like is that you’re trying to fix the soldier in me.

I don’t want you to fix that. I don’t work in the military anymore, and I still consider myself to be a soldier. And I organize my life that way. I plan that way. I function that way. I’m speaking to you now while you’re probably trying to get to the Brian, but the one I prefer to show you is the soldier.

And I think you’ve got to understand that. That’s the person who’s sitting on your couch. Don’t try to get the military out of the way I do business. And when I get the sense that you aren’t hostile to the soldier in me, then I can talk to you.

Laryssa

Okay. So, there’s maybe a little bit in there to speak to other Veterans, because that was going to be the other side of my question: what would you offer Veterans who might be going to service providers? And what recommendations would you give them in how to make communication flow better? And really, because I think you get out of therapy what you put into it, you have to invest in it. So if you were shut down for all of those and you’re taking nine sessions to do the sniff test and see if this person understands you, it’s not benefiting anybody. So, what could you offer to veterans about communication with their therapist?

Brian

They’re a specialist; approach them like they are. If you’re getting a weird noise out of your turret when it tries to move to the right, but not when it goes left, you would say that. You would say exactly that. You wouldn’t hide some of that, right? You have to treat this person like they need to know the truth to do their job. So if someone tells you, for example, that drinking more than four beer a week is bad for you, and you drink way more than that, this isn’t a sniff test to see if you’re obeying the rule. The doctor needs to know how much you’re taking in.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

Because they’re going to prescribe things, potentially; they’re going to work on therapies; they’re going to pick options that are best suited to you. So they need to know the truth about you. And that took me a while to come to terms with.

Um, and I know that’s pretty common. So, if you ever intend on leaving that room in any shape or form that’s better than when you entered it, truth only—as best  as you know how to say it.

Laryssa

So, your analogy is so military centric. Because what I would say to family members who oftentimes need their own support, and therapy is, take all the lint out of, like, take everything out of your pocket, including the lint. Take the lint out of your pocket as well. The therapist needs to see that, too. So, reach down into the deepest, darkest corners and put it all on the table. So that’s the Laryssa side of your analogy: the turret.

Brian

Yeah, but I do I think that I have a doctor right now who’s done a lot for me. But the first thing he had to do was get me in a place to tell him the truth. Like, “What are you really thinking? Suicidal ideation?” I didn’t have that problem, right? But I did. And it took me a while to believe that this was the place to table that. And this stuff isn’t easy, but you will not fix it, in my opinion, by giving him 60% of what you think he needs to know.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

How would you know? And that’s it. It is a craft. And you’re probably not going to get a cut-and-dried answer, like if you sprained a wrist. Those are pretty defined. It’s going to bump and wiggle for a bit. You’re going to go through a process that may feel like they’re guessing and testing, but that’s because the mind is so complicated, and you have to trust that this is a specialist who knows what they’re doing.

I’m going to get you to accept my precursor at the end, which is: fire him if it doesn’t work. You can’t keep working with the same doctor if you know that that relationship isn’t working. You owe it to yourself, the taxpayer who’s funding the bill, and that doctor, to be using that session in a good way.
If it’s dead in the water, if that relationship is soiled, go to a different one.

Laryssa

I think that’s really valuable. I appreciate you bringing that to light because my observation in working with Veterans and families and in my personal life with my spouse is that I believe that maybe there was at some point that you didn’t feel that you could do that.

I mean, in the military, you are assigned a clinician or whoever is at the MIR. That’s who’s treating you. And that’s it. You didn’t have those options that you couldn’t advocate for yourself, that you weren’t in charge of your own recovery. And I think it’s important for some folks to hear that if it’s not meshing, if it’s not fitting, then you can advocate for yourself and go a different route. You are not stuck with that one person or even that one treatment modality. So I really appreciate you speaking about that.

Brian

Yeah, and you know, rank does come into this, no matter how much people want to say it doesn’t. They’re saying that from the end of the conversation that it doesn’t matter. From the patient’s point of view, it does. I felt, as a warrant officer that I could come back to the system and say, “That practitioner doesn’t work for me.”

Laryssa

Okay.

Brian

I have troops that told me they didn’t feel that same flexibility, even though it’s told to them, even though they say you can bring this up.

Yeah, well, it’s a different conversation. You know, it absolutely is a different conversation. And that’s where leadership can actually play a role, is to remind people that they have rights, that they’re a patient here, not just a soldier. So I think that stuff matters.

Laryssa

Okay, I’m throwing it at you, Brian. We’re talking about communication. We’ve chatted a little bit about working with service providers, chatted a bit about family, which we might come back to, before we’re done here today. But tell me about communicating with others who provide service to you, like VAC.

Brian

Sure. How about the Canucks?

Laryssa

Okay. [laughs]

Brian

Right.

Laryssa

That was subtle.

Brian

So I ran into a problem a couple years ago. And I’m fairly meticulous with my paperwork. The problem I had was that I hadn’t opened up a very benign letter from Canada Revenue Agency, the tax office, that was telling me I had to do something; I had to provide them with a document. Easy to do, but I hadn’t responded in about 14 months. Now I have a problem. Well, the whole reason that happened is that brown envelopes from the government for a number of years were always bringing me bad news. They were normally, “you don’t qualify for this” or “you need to go get reassessed for that”.

It was normally some painful answer written in seven pages of legalese that, by the time you got it interpreted, it was bad news. It got me to a point where everything that looked like that got treated the same way. So yeah, I had a tax problem. I had a tax problem because I was sick and tired of the written communication that was coming to me, and it would set me off.

And the next thing you know, the pile of things that looked like that on the desk were piling up. There was even a reimbursement cheque in there, by the time I finally cracked it open. There was literally good news in one envelope, but I didn’t ever get to celebrate that $54 cheque in my favour because it sat there like everything else. That’s part of it. And I’ll admit that I’m the guy that wants to still talk to somebody. I don’t want to talk to a wall or plexiglass or someone that says you have to make an appointment. You know, we have problems now.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

So, go and ask to have an appointment through this computer program, and then that person will respond to you and maybe book something a week down the road—that’s not what I’m looking for when I have a problem. And maybe the answer is, well, don’t look for help here, but then you better own that answer, right?

So there’s a lot of trickiness in this communication question. I know people who deal with the government in their business every day, multiple lines of communication to various departments. But there’s one they don’t want to speak to. And it’s because it’s raw conversation.

We’re not talking about a business opportunity through, you know, Science Canada or something to that effect. We’re not talking about, you know, you want to export a product. We’re talking about what’s your coverage going to look like and how many more times do you have to revisit this story to convince that other person on the other end that you qualify for something.

Laryssa

Right. Because veterans’ interactions with VAC is around an illness or an injury, service-related obviously. So there’s a vulnerability in that, whether it’s a physical injury I’m guessing, or a mental health injury where you have to go back and revisit that and delve into some of those things, whether how it came about, how it’s impacted you in the past, it might be a reminder of changes, maybe, in who you are now: that you’re not as capable; you don’t have the capacity; you’re not as well as you were before. So there might be other layers to what that envelope represents. And then the necessity: I’m not full; I’m not fit; I’m not who I was before. So, there might be more represented in that.

Brian

Yeah. And a lot of the stuff – and we’ve mentioned this before – is that the gateway to getting something that will help you is quite often a designation that doesn’t sound all that nice. You have to need to be rehabilitated before you qualify for things in the world of rehabilitation.
Now, I understand, from a bureaucratic point of view, why that has to happen. But I don’t like being told that I am in need of rehabilitation or that my status is diminished.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

So in their defense, there probably isn’t a good way of doing this, but there are bad and worse ways. And it’s a pretty harsh exterior when you’re trying to communicate to it sometimes.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

So, one thing I’d like to say is, and this will put you on the spot, but I think it’s kind of the point. I want to drag you back to my purse conversation. How can you help me with that?

Laryssa

Wow. Okay, yeah. Putting me on the spot. Well, first I guess I can’t help you with that if I don’t understand what’s happening for you.

And that’s not to say that I need to know the nitty gritty details. So we’re talking about communication. It’s not that I want my spouse, or for you as my colleague, to delve into those, but maybe how I can help you with that is by you telling me how that impacts you.

Brian

Yeah.

Laryssa

So, as an example, I’ll use my spouse as an example.

He, for the longest time, had troubles driving through a drive-thru. I don’t know exactly what happened for him. I’ve been around the military long enough that I can probably speculate. There’s the building itself, there’s usually a fence on the other side, you’ve got vehicles in front of you and behind you, your movement is limited, etc. I can pick up on that. So I didn’t need to know the details of what happened. What I needed to know was that going through a drive-thru was difficult for him.

Brian

Yeah.

Laryssa

So, I either needed to accept that when we go to a restaurant, we’re going in to get our order, rather than going through a drive-thru or, on one occasion, the first time we went through a drive-thru together, I was like, wow, this is really cool! I’m really proud of him! And I thought it was going to help. So what I did was, I started chatting with him, chatty, chatty, chatty, chatty, because I wanted to distract him from being triggered.

So we’re moving through the drive-thru, and I’m chatting the whole time. We get through the drive-thru, and the first thing he does is pull over and looked at me and he said, “Don’t ever do that again!”

Brian

Yeah.

Laryssa

Because I distracted him from the grounding techniques that he wanted to employ, that he talked to his therapist about. He was trying to do all of that. I was distracting him in the wrong ways. But again, that all needed to be communicated.

So I guess that, to go back to your question, how I can help you with that is for you to ex.., if we’re ever in a situation or how can I be sensitive to it, supportive.

Brian

So, this drive-thru thing. I’m happy you brought this up.

So you’re in a car. You can’t escape to the front because the car in front of you is there, probably arguing about if they want cheese on their burger or not.

Laryssa

Apparently ordering way too many sandwiches. Drive-thrus are not supposed to be for ordering full meals.

Brian

Well yeah. and then you’ve got the person behind you, so you’re trapped there. You can’t escape left because that’s where the restaurant is, which will be on the driver’s side. He can’t go out right because you’ll be caught in there. How would you not know what’s wrong with a drive-thru? It’s just common sense, right? Well, it’s common sense around my peers because going through a drive-thru is what we, if I was doing that to the enemy, we’d call it channeling. I don’t just have bad things for them. I have to get them into a position for that bad thing to do. It’s business to them.

Likewise, the enemy doesn’t just put bombs all over the world and hope I step on one. They have to create a scenario that drives me towards that point.

Laryssa

Right.

Brian

Maybe they even need to get my vehicle 18 inches, no closer and no further, for it to have effect. And the way they would do that would be to create a zone that you have no choice but to go through that one zone.
Also, you add talking over this radio, so you get the metallic comms voice, very similar to talking over a military radio. You add that this is very similar to going in and going out of a camp, which is where you’re going to have this massive emotional change, like you’re happy to get back or you’re trepidatious about what’s out there as you’re leaving.

Yeah. Hell yeah. I don’t want to go to that drive-thru. But I bet that my kids even today don’t understand why I don’t want to go through that drive-thru.

Laryssa

So what would prevent you from telling them what you just told me?

Brian

Because I don’t want to turn them into a pack of weirdos. I don’t want four people in my house to now hate drive-thrus.

Laryssa

Interesting.

Brian

Go ahead. It is more efficient. I understand why you want to do it. You don’t have to get out of the car. Things show up. It’s quick. Got it. Hate it. Not going. And that’s exactly it.

So let me roll this back and talk about the bus. It took me years to understand what I’m going to tell you. What bothered me about the bus was the purse, and what bothered me about the purse was that’s the last remaining items of this person in the world. I felt like I’d stepped on her tombstone.

Now if I had known for the first couple of years that I was suffering through this, that what I just told you was actually what’s bothering me, you probably could help me as my friend. My wife probably could help me as my spouse. My doctor would’ve saved himself three years.

So I can have that conversation now because I know what the conversation is about now.

Laryssa

Got it.

Brian

Right? I’m aware now that it’s actually my emotional connection to that moment of thinking that I disrespected somebody.

That bothered me more than what had gone on. That took a while. And you’re not going to get any of that unless I tell you. So yeah, the onus is on me to do the communicating. But I want people out there listening to this to realize just how intimidating of a conversation that can be.

Laryssa

Yeah, because it’s not superficial. The word that came to my mind a couple of times was “vulnerable”, even as you were describing the drive-thru. That’s putting the military member, the veteran in their mind, in a vulnerable position. And you disclosing what that person represents, meaning putting yourself in a vulnerable position again, which yeah can be extremely difficult.

Brian

So here’s something else to try on, though, And this, I mean, it’s a communication episode, but it might as well be called the bus story. There was another camp in that country, in Afghanistan, where people had taken half of a blown-up bus and used it as a coffee bar. They were literally serving their equivalent of Starbucks through the window of this blown-up bus.

I didn’t have any problem with that. Now I wonder why I didn’t have a problem with that. I’ve had a problem getting on buses here. Perfect bus here; no one on it is going to cause me any problems. This is not green roots in Afghanistan with a bus blown up, flipped over, two kids trapped under it. That’s what I experienced there. That’s what I’m reminded of when I get on buses here.

But amongst my friends and my peers, I could drink a coffee served to me through a blown-up bus, right? I don’t know why. I’m not all that sure that that’s okay, actually. But it just goes to show that, when I’m around the people that I know get me, it just takes all that unnecessary pressure away.

And you can see the humor in some of these things. You can see the humanity in it too, and we just get it. So yeah, I have problems here with things that are way more benign than if I was experiencing them with other veterans.

Laryssa

Right. And how do you communicate that with your family?

Brian

How do I communicate that to my family without making them feel that they’re lesser than my mates?

Laryssa

Yes. Yes. And that was something that I had to accept, I think, in my relationship was that my spouse has relationships that have different bonds, just as close and maybe even tighter bonds than he has with me for different reasons.

There are folks that he served with that literally they held each other’s lives in their hands. And I think I had to resign myself to the fact that it wasn’t a competition. That it’s just a different type of relationship that I wouldn’t understand. And it doesn’t mean he loves me less. It means it’s just very much in a different context.

I want to touch a little bit more back about families, because we’ve been chatting a lot about communication challenges, barriers for the veteran. Now, when you and I were prepping for this, I had the same reaction as you did: I suck at communication and I felt hypocritical that I’m recording this podcast on communication when I know that, in my home life, I’m no guru, that there’s a lot of places that, as a family member, I can improve. And we can dissect those reasons and rationales for that. Some of it is because of my relationship with a veteran and not sure how to approach things or the questions to ask.

Some of it is my own poor coping skills on shutting down. I think a lot of family members shut down, especially if they’re not getting a desired response from the veteran or, as I said, maybe they’re misinterpreting the veteran’s symptoms, behaviours, not making eye contact, whatever the case is.

Brian

Well, we don’t actually know what you go through. And to some degree, you’ve taught me that. I was part of a military Family. I was one. It’s actually a sticking point of mine sometimes that, when people try and engage the Family, sometimes they try to engage the Family other than the Veterans.

Laryssa

Yes.

Brian

I’m here too, guys. But all the way back to the founding of this institute, why did we ask that Families were parallel to us through this? And it’s because we knew that there were problems, but it certainly isn’t because I knew what they were, right?

Even in just the two years we’ve worked together, I have learned more about perspective and what you guys are going through. I found myself frustrated sometimes when people have either a glorified picture of war or a completely tragic picture of it.

I played a lot of volleyball overseas. I played a lot of poker, too. That’s not the conversation that normally happens.

There’s five days on my worst tour that were really bad for me. The rest of them were an absolute blast. I wish that you could experience the camaraderie and the excitement and just the fun of being around a platoon. And I’m sad that other people don’t get that. But for the average soldier, if you told him that there’s no one within a kilometer that wants to hurt him, that’s amazing news. That’s worthy of breaking out a poker tournament.

If you tell the average spouse that, outside of a kilometer, there’s someone that really wants to kill your husband, this is bad news, right? So the very same thing from two different perspectives is a tough conversation to have. Now add eight time zones in the middle, and we’re talking over Zoom at best, right?
Um, so Laryssa, we honestly don’t know what you go through.

Laryssa

I want to share kind of an exercise that I participated in a few years ago.  And this is specific to, again, a mental health injury, but it might give folks some insight and maybe use some insight in relation to that. Because then we could talk about what I experienced during a deployment as a military family member during that time.
But, but I want to, kind of, go back to the experience of supporting a loved one with an injury, a mental health injury. So this exercise was during a couple’s retreat. We had all of the veterans with a mental health injury go into one room, all the family members went into another room, and did the same exercise in both rooms.

So around the room, we put different posters with headings on them: psychological, spiritual, financial, physical, and asked the participants to write down on the lists how the injury impacted them in those different areas. So for me as a family member, how was I impacted physically, etc.

So, at the end of it, we brought the two groups together and put the signs side by side. And what we found was that the experiences of the family members were the same as the veteran. So a lot of the things that you’re experiencing with your injury, the family members are experiencing as well.

So I guess all of that to say, since we’re talking about communication today, it sounds so cliché. Talk to your family members, talk to your veteran, listen to what their experiences are because I’m guessing that maybe you have more in common and you’re more on the same team as you are adversaries in going through the journey.

Brian

So, in the world of shop talk on our way through something here, one thing I find is that when I go to a doctor, I’m spending an hour speaking to him about some things that are obviously pretty personal, heavy stuff. I really have to focus on my drive home in order to focus on the drive home and not on the conversation. How do you want me to walk through that door and say, “I don’t want to talk to you right now”?

Laryssa

I think I want you to tell me before you leave through the door to say, “Listen, I have a session today and when I come home, I really need some time to decompress and process what was going on for me. So if you can give me that hour, if you can let the kids know, etc.” So again, coming back to communication, letting me know prior, so that I’m not in your face saying, “How’d the session go? What are you thinking? How…”  So that we can respect what you need and vice versa. If the family member is going to a therapy session or if they work full-time and the veteran is at home, ask the family member, “what do you need when you come in through the door?” But ask it prior.

Brian

One thing we’ve had a bit of success with in that regard is, if you want something to not happen, it’s helpful to then designate when it will happen. So, if my session is over at 1:00, I’ll be home by 1:15. If I don’t want to get bombarded with questions at 1:15, one of the ways to do that is, after dinner I can talk about that. Or “I’m going to walk the dog. I’ll probably be back at 2:00, then we can get into it.” I find that if we designate how and when we are going to chat, then it creates the space to be able to come into the house, put my coat down, pet the dog, and just drop my tools a little bit. And drop my defenses a little bit, right?

So designating when we are going to talk helps create the space of when I need to not talk. Now that’s just a Brian answer. I don’t know if that works for anyone else out there, but we’ve had some success with that.

Laryssa

Okay.

Brian

Well, are you going do it then? Are you going take my advice? Or are you just going to ignore me?

Laryssa

Yeah, I’ll get back to you. I’ll get back to you.

Brian

So this is communication. This is why it’s hard. Honestly, it scares me sometimes.

Laryssa

I think it’s continual. I mean, as we sat down here, I disclosed I was no expert on communication, and I think it ebbs and flows. So, I think the important thing is to be aware, have conversations, and continue to put effort in.

Brian

And be willing and open to revisit stuff. It might be, “No, I can’t talk to you”, but it also might be, “No, I can’t talk to you right now, today, about that incident, but maybe in a week I can”. And both sides have to see that as like: “no” doesn’t mean “no ever”. We can, and probably need to, communicate about these things, but I may also need five minutes.

Laryssa

Exactly. Well, it was good having the conversation with you, communicating about communication.

Brian

We’ll communicate later about how we communicated about this communication.

Laryssa

[laughs] Roger, over.