Are you or have you dealt with stress in your military marriage? I know I have. My husband has been in three combat tours and I wished I would have learned about this program years ago. FOCUS, a national program is free for all military children, couples and families at select installations across the United States and Japan.“Over one million children and their families are facing challenges that come with a parent’s wartime deployment“
FOCUS was designed specifically to help military families who are facing the multiple challenges of combat operational stress during wartime and is a resiliency training program of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED). They design and customize a program to meet your needs, so there’s no reason not to call.
They also hold FOCUS Family Resiliency Training sessions which allow families and couples to build a shared story about military life experiences, skill building groups and workshops on topics such as improving communication, solving problems, expressing feelings, managing stress, and other benefits.
For more information about FOCUS and how to access services in your area, please visit FOCUS online and like their Facebook page. Here’s just some of the topics that they address:
- Emotional Regulation: Family members learn to better understand their emotions and a common emotional language to make it easier to communicate with one another. Parents learn skills to help them identify emotional reactions their children might have, such as being worried or sad.
- Communication: Family members learn to actively listen and respond to one another’s concerns. They learn how to express feelings, talk to each other, and deal with deployment stress. Parents also learn how to address their children’s concerns when they are worried about their parents’ safety and/or their own safety.
- Problem-Solving: Families learn how to clearly define problems and implement effective solutions, as well as ways to handle to day-to-day challenges related to deployment, while recognizing and building upon their existing strengths.
- Goal-Setting: Families learn how to set and take steps towards achievable goals. Parents learn to work better as a team in parenting their children before, during, and after deployment.
- Managing Deployment Reminders: Family members learn how to develop a plan together to deal effectively with deployment and combat stress reminders.
Click to visit your base FOCUS Program:
29 Palms
Camp Lejeune
New River
Camp Pendleton
Cherry Point
Hawaii
Okinawa
Quantico
Miramar / San Diego
Other Local Areas
