As Veterans, we lived two different lifestyles, civilian and military. Returning to civilian life may have been difficult. To fully understand that difficulty, one needs to examine. It is tempting to focus exclusively on the stressors around you. But it’s also helpful to look at the stressors within you. Perhaps you’re overestimating the size of your problems, or being overly pessimistic. Maybe you’re being too hard on other people. Or perhaps you have issues that are stealing your joy day by day and moment by moment.
If you’re experiencing hurtful feelings that just won’t go away, it’s time to schedule an appointment with your religious leader, or with a counselor, or mental health professional. These people can help you look inside to discover and then banish the hurtful feelings or exaggerated thought patterns you may have. When you examine yourself—as you look at your own personal history and your habitual ways of dealing with the world around you—you may decide it’s time to make some changes. If so, here’s twofold advice to get you started now.
Being patient with other people can be difficult. But sometimes we find it even more difficult to be patient with ourselves. We have high expectations and lofty goals. We want to accomplish things now, not later. And, of course, we want our lives to unfold according to our own timetables.
High self-awareness is a solid predictor of good success in life, perhaps because a self-aware person knows when an opportunity is a good fit for them and how to make appropriate enterprise work well. Quite frankly, most of us are running on “autopilot,” are hardly aware of why we succeed or fail, or why we behave as we do. Our minds are so busy with daily chatter that we usually only self-reflect when something goes awfully wrong.
Perhaps we stumble through a job interview or academic test for which we we thought we were well prepared, or we handle something in our lives awkwardly that we assumed we were good at, or perhaps we lose a romantic partner over some misunderstanding where feelings got hurt.
Our response in challenging situations is often to get defensive, make excuses, or blame another person, because we don’t want to see our own part in the disaster. If we can observe ourselves during such incidents, it will be a good start to self-awareness.
Help is available to you by calling the local VA hospital in Northport, 631.261.4400 or Veterans Crisis Line 1.800.273.8255, press 1 to talk to a veteran or have a confidential chat at >VeteransCrisisLine.net< or text to 838255.
If you have any question relating to veteran problems, please do not hesitate to contact us and we will do our best to answer it. Contact us at Drfred72@Gmail.com.
Rev. Frederick Miller, Ph.D.