Ask Andrea - Ready to Make a Move
- Andrea Liss
- 14 hours ago
- 4 min read
Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ
Dear Andrea,
We are moving back to Canada this summer but don’t know where we are posted. What are some concrete strategies to help me navigate this part of the posting cycle? This waiting is taking forever!
- Ready to make a Move
Dear Ready to Make a Move,
Here are some tips from previous OUTCAN families that have already returned to Canada after their OUTCAN after having experienced just what you described, Ready to Make a Move.
For those that need certainty or are downright intolerant of uncertainty, posting season can set off repeated thoughts and can put our bodies on high alert. Our ‘need to know’ can grow so strong that we press for information and certainty from our spouses or the internet, even though a part of us realizes there is futility in doing so. Our intolerance of uncertainty can cause us to seek too much reassurance-seeking from others which can weigh on them and lead to increased conflict. Here are some quick tips that can help you with your need to know:
Take Committed Action Toward Resilience
Assume your military spouse has, like you, not heard where you will be posted and that you will be the first to know once it’s known.
Stop asking your spouse if they have any news when they come home from work.
Contract with your military spouse that you will no longer ask if there is any news as to your posting as you are confident that they will let you know as soon as they know.
Name it to tame it. Notice and observe the mounting physical tension that comes along with your strong need to know. Sometimes, it develops slowly over a day and at other times it comes on hard and fast. Increase your capacity for self-observation. Naming the felt sense helps us consider the conditions in which sensations arise. When we make alterations in conditions, sensations will also change.
Once you have named the intolerance to uncertainty, breathe. Take as many breaths as is required until your parasympathetic nervous system kicks in and does its job of calming down your body.
The answer will show itself in time. Patience is required right now. Patience requires noticing that things are moving at a pace that is not to your liking. Noticing this holds us accountable to managing our feelings.
Control what you can. Whether it is cleaning the house, creating lists or action plans, or taking a moment to savour the positive elements of your OUTCAN experience, acting on something within your control can help you get unstuck from fretting and put you one step closer to being ready to move when the time comes.
You can so do this! You can and will move once again. You can do this move with grace if you put your mind to it and have this as an intention. Often when we are anxious we have unconscious beliefs that we can’t handle things. If this were true, you would not be OUTCAN. Being screened green (in addition to your joie to vivre) is what got you OUTCAN and so you will also get back home. If you were not seen as capable, the screening Social Worker would have indicated so and your request for an OUTCAN would have been denied. It is only strong families that are posted OUTCAN as this posting requires a more than normal amount of life skill, openness to new experience, and community mindedness.
Respond instead of React
There is a difference between reacting and responding. Reacting is emotionally driven without intention and is often impulsive. Responding involves staying connected with our intentions and values which, for many military spouses, include civility and poise. How do you plan on responding when you hear the news of where you are moving to? Or when you encounter a wrench in the plan? Or a dashed hope? How you behave at such moments will directly affect your spouse, family, and even yourself. If you lose your cool, so may others. If you respond with grace or composure, you can help your family take its own committed action which may be the need to roll with the punches. Here are some tips to help you respond versus react:
Prepare your response ahead of time. Whether you get what you want or not, you can respond to whatever the news is gracefully or effectively. As soon as you come to know of your posting location, take as many breaths as you need until your mind is back online, then pause, half-smile (like the Buddha) and say “Yes- we’ll figure it out.”
Each morning bolt upright in bed and say “Yes” to the day
Radically accept. When something happens to us that is not to our liking, accepting it wholeheartedly, without reticence, is a useful skill. Radical acceptance is not acquiescence or endorsement that the event or circumstances are ‘right.’ Acceptance is a willingness to work with what has already occurred and to let go of the preoccupation with wishing it were otherwise. When we do this, it creates space for us to redirect our focus and commitment.
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://forms.office.com/r/F3rxQKvTdQ and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work and is a Registered Social Worker (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program. Andrea is your MFS OUTCAN Rest of World Social Worker. If you are a CAF family member and would to speak with her or join the spousal support group for all OUTCAN spouses that she runs please email her at liss.andrea@cfmws.com.
