Maintaining healthy relationships key to mission success

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Monique Randolph
  • Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  Military life presents a wide range of stressors for total force Airmen and their families. Deployments, increased operations tempo and decreased manning can have negative effects in both the workplace and the home if Airmen do not know where to turn for help.

As part of ongoing efforts to educate Airmen about healthy ways to manage stress, the Air Force introduced 12 monthly stress management initiatives in May. The theme for June is "Healthy Relationships."

The Air Force tries to combat the negative effects of stress at the lowest possible level through several key programs and agencies dedicated to identifying, managing, treating and reducing sources of stress affecting Airmen and their family members. These agencies are part of the Integrated Delivery System, a group of cross-functional experts dedicated to the well-being of Airmen and their families.

Airmen and Family Readiness

One resource available to Airmen and their families is the Airmen and Family Readiness Center. The A&FRC offers individual relationship consulting services as and other relationship-building classes.

"Airmen have a continuous juggling act trying to meet the requirements of the Air Force mission and the needs of their families," said Brenda Liston, the chief of community support and family readiness at the Pentagon. "Whether it's your co-workers, your neighbors or your nearest and dearest, it's important to look at ways of maintaining your core relationships and working to make them stronger. Every relationship can benefit from a little bit of maintenance."

Some services offered through A&FRC include:

-- Marriage-enrichment classes: Couples seminars and retreats focus on relationship dynamics.

-- Communication classes: Facilitates positive communication skills and effective listening.

-- Understanding yourself and others: Classes are for Airmen and family members. Program uses learning tools to explore personality differences and ways to work through those differences.

- Heart Link spouse orientation program: An interactive learning experience geared toward new military spouses, but open to all, which informs spouses about the Air Force mission and military programs, services, benefits and entitlements available to them and their family members. Each spouse is "graduated" from Heart Link by the installation commander and receives an official Air Force spouse coin at the end of the day.

"The relationship consulting programs offered by the Airmen and Family Readiness Center provide a foundation for communication, particularly in an age when many younger people are more comfortable communicating virtually rather than face-to-face," Ms. Liston said.

"Even Heart Link, although geared toward the spouses, benefits the entire family," she said. "Heart Link gives the spouse the sense that he or she is also part of the mission and an understanding of what is expected of their Air Force member day to day. They are in this together, and when they understand the mission, they can speak the same language."

Chapel

The chapel also offers services to help military members maintain healthy relationships, said Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Harry Mathis, a staff chaplain at the Office of the Air Force Chief of Chaplains.

"A healthy relationship is one in which there is open communication," Chaplain Mathis said. "Certainly, it's not going to be free of all conflict because conflict is really a part of intimacy. But, having a healthy relationship means you find healthy ways of dealing with that conflict and disagreement.

"All of life happens in relationships," he said. "Maintaining unhealthy relationships can be detrimental over time. It deteriorates your capacity to live a full and meaningful life. So, if a relationship is struggling or having trouble, you need to go and get some help with it."

The chapel reaches more than 9,000 military and family members across the Air Force every month through pastoral counseling, he said. With the support of chaplain assistants, chaplains provide counseling for workplace relationships, and marriage and family relationships.

"Often times, people will seek out chaplains for counseling, because we're afforded the highest level of confidentiality of any other helping agency in the military," the chaplain said. "When people come and talk to a chaplain, anything that is shared is completely off the record, and completely protected.

"People often think of the chapel in strictly religious terms, and of course, that's our first job," Chaplain Mathis said. "But the chaplain service is also about developing healthy relationships. Relationships take a lot of work and a lot of communication, and we're well trained and more than happy to help with that process."

Family Advocacy Program

Family Advocacy has a variety of formal programs that focus on building and maintaining healthy relationships. The goal of FAP prevention and outreach activities is to support mission readiness by promoting resilience in families and communities.

"Healthy relationships are associated with physical and emotional well-being and life satisfaction in general," said Maj. David Linkh, the chief of family advocacy policy and research. "We have also come to recognize that healthy relationships promote mission readiness, allowing our Airmen to be at their best in performing the mission."

Some of Family Advocacy's formal programs include:

-- Family Advocacy Strengths-based Therapy (FAST): Professional assessment and counseling for couples and families in crisis.

-- Preventive Relationship Enhancement Program (PREP): A divorce-prevention, marriage-enhancement program designed to help partners improve communication, work through relationship problems and strengthen relationship bonds.

-- The Power of Two: Helps couples develop necessary skills for a successful marriage. It focuses on three principles of zero fighting, everyone wins all the time, and mistakes are for learning.

- Facilitating Open Couples Communication Understanding Study: A self-diagnostic tool designed to help engaged or cohabiting couples identify and work through issues before marriage.

Family Advocacy also offers briefings for couples on maintaining long distance relationships, reconnecting as a couple, love after marriage, and more.

"All the programs currently in use have important things in common," Major Linkh said. "They educate couples about relationship fundamentals such as communication, managing stress and resolving conflicts, and also promote better understanding and more positive interactions between partners.

These services are provided under the auspices of prevention and outreach to the Air Force community, Major Linkh said. They don't require a referral and are not documented in medical records.

"These programs are not offered by Family Advocacy exclusively, although we do play a vital role in terms of guiding such activities and providing resources and expertise," he said. "Our IDS functions at the base level share a common interest in promoting healthy relationships. Very often these agencies collaborate to provide programs to their communities, pooling their resources and skills or providing different opportunities and options in a coordinated manner throughout the year."

Mental Health

The Mental Health Clinic, formerly the Life Skills Support Center, is yet another avenue for Airmen seeking ways to strengthen their relationships.

Mental Health has clinical social workers, clinical psychologists and psychiatrists on staff to provide counseling to members and their families.

"It's important that people seek help before things get bad, because any personal or marital problem left long enough will ultimately impact the mission," said Lt. Col. Steven Pflanz, the senior psychiatry policy analyst for the Air Force surgeon general.

"In my experience, Airmen are reluctant to seek treatment through Mental Health because they are worried about the stigma -- that people will think less of them, that there will be adverse career outcomes or that people will be involved in their personal business," he said.

"The truth is, 97 percent of Airmen who seek treatment suffer no adverse career outcomes, and in 90 percent of cases of Airmen who seek treatment, the unit is never notified. Unless a risk to safety or the mission is present, Airmen need to know that privacy is the norm," the colonel said.

Mental Health provides clinical counseling for couples who are having significant communication or relational problems, Colonel Pflanz said. Mental Health can provide a safe, neutral environment that is comfortable for both partners to communicate with each other.

"We're all people with everyday problems," Colonel Pflanz said. "The healthy, well-adjusted Airmen try to fix problems before they get worse. Going to see a counselor will not get you in trouble. Not being able to do your job, will. If you seek help, you will be better able to do your job." 

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