Featuring Dr. Fred Medway, Professor of Psychology

Dear Dr. Fred,
What tips do you have for journaling and communications with my loved one overseas?  I want to let them know what’s going on and express how I feel without upsetting them in any way.

Journaling, or writing about things that bother you, can often make you feel better. You can record emotions and thoughts, and go over them later.  In many cases keeping a journal, diary, a blog, and daily list of feelings and events can be very therapeutic because you get to express pent up emotions and examine what you are thinking and feeling.

However, when you are sending communications to others, particularly soldiers overseas, you face a difficult balancing act.  You must weight your needs to let them know what is going on at home with their needs to not be distracted from their important charge.  You don’t want to say something that burdens them, causes them pain, or is something they can’t do anything about from overseas anyway.  Therefore, keep these few tips in mind

1. Communicate regularly and frequently.  Research shows that frequent and effective communication between military spouses and partners reduces feelings of isolation, reduces believing rumors, and increases relationship satisfaction, both at separation and reunion.  Maintain a regular schedule and use the calendar system of Connect and Join to give you a visual picture of your communications.  Try to communicate at least every three days even if the message is short.
2. Start to work on your communication before your loved one is deployed by making plans to just talk over the dinner hour or before going to bed.  You can’t expect that effective communication will start once your loved one leaves.
3. Decide on the type of communication that you and your partner feel most comfortable with—Connect and Join offers several modes and some families may be more comfortable with one type (e.g., email, video, make and take projects, etc.) than another. 
4. Be positive and stress the good things that are happening at home.  It’s not productive and it can be demoralizing if you send many messages that describe how lonely you are, how bad the children are behaving, how many things have broken in the house, etc. 
5. Communicate about little, everyday things as well as big ones.  All information is important and will be valued by your loved one away from home.  Besides, keeping up with the small things tends to make coming home much easier because the loved one can re-integrate back into the family easier once they know what’s going on.
6. A picture or video can convey a great deal.  However, you may need to add captions if you are not sure how your loved one will interpret it.
7. By using the arts and crafts activities you can communicate your messages nonverbally; also these are great ways for kids to communicate and great ways to connect with your children by working on meaningful projects together.
8. Make sure you write about what people did, what they were thinking, and how they felt to give the recipient of the communication a full picture.  And, don’t worry about your grammar, spelling, etc.  Just get the message down!
9. Spice up your communications by communicating in different ways, not only using different methods such as email, video, etc. but also in the way you compose—draw pictures and cartoons, write stories, tell jokes, etc—anything to remind the loved one of real life at home.

Everyone knows that communicating during deployment and separation is important but the way you do the things you do, with care and concern for the recipient, it is really important too.

Send your questions to Dr. Fred at Connect And Join

drfred@connectandjoin.com 

About Dr. Fred