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You Can Do Hard Things. You Don't Have to Do Them Forever.

The military teaches you to push through almost anything. The trouble is, your nervous system doesn’t always know when the mission is over. Sometimes the coping strategies that made you effective are the very ones that need new orders.

Judy D. Lamb Ph.D.

9/21/20263 min read

You can do hard things.

The military has already established this rather conclusively.

You can work tired. Think while scared. Function while grieving. Miss your family and still get on the aircraft. You can experience what would objectively qualify as one of the worst days of your life and discover that, according to the schedule, you still have somewhere to be at 0600.

The question was never whether you could.

The question is whether you're supposed to keep doing it forever.

The military is extraordinarily good at teaching people to function while uncomfortable.

Tired?

Keep moving.

Cold?

Keep moving.

Hungry?

This sounds increasingly like a personal problem.

Scared?

Excellent. Do the job scared.

The military has spent generations refining a remarkably effective system for teaching human beings that whatever is currently happening inside their bodies is, at best, additional information.

You can be exhausted and still stand watch. Anxious and still brief the colonel. Homesick and still get on the aircraft. You can experience what would objectively qualify as one of the worst days of your life and discover that, according to the schedule, you still have somewhere to be at 0600.

And remarkably, this works.

Different skills for a different problem

Military culture didn't forget to teach healthy coping skills.

It taught different skills for a different environment.

If thinking about something painful makes it harder to complete the mission, you learn to put it somewhere else.

If showing fear interferes with functioning, you contain it.

If asking for help might mean being removed from your team, you become extremely good at handling things yourself.

If exhaustion is unavoidable, you learn that being tired and being incapable are two very different things.

These aren't necessarily psychological defects.

They're adaptations.

Then something inconvenient happens.

The environment changes.

Apparently your amygdala did not receive your PCS orders.

You come home. Or separate. Or retire.

The threat level changes. Your responsibilities change. Your family wants you back.

And your nervous system says:

Understood. Continue previous operations.

Your spouse asks why you always sit facing the door.

You don't know. It just seems objectively insane to sit with your back to one.

Someone drops something in the kitchen and your body reacts before your conscious brain has identified the sound.

You're lying in bed exhausted, while some part of your brain remains inexplicably committed to monitoring the perimeter of a suburban neighborhood where the most significant overnight threat is probably a raccoon.

Your family says you're distant.

You're not trying to be distant.

You're functioning.

You've been functioning for years.

That's what you're good at.

Sometimes the problem is that the coping strategy worked.

We tend to imagine psychological problems as failures.

Sometimes they're successful adaptations being deployed in the wrong environment.

Hypervigilance makes sense when vigilance matters. Emotional compartmentalization makes sense when emotions have to wait. Self-reliance makes sense when other people genuinely can't solve the problem for you.

The difficulty comes when the brain continues applying those rules after the conditions that created them have changed.

Your brain learned the assignment. Nobody issued updated orders.

The goal isn't to take away what made you effective.

Good therapy shouldn't require dismantling the qualities that helped you function.

Keep the ability to compartmentalize. Just develop the ability to decide when to compartmentalize.

Keep situational awareness. Teach your nervous system that it doesn't need the same threat posture in the grocery store.

Keep self-reliance. Recognize that being capable of carrying something alone doesn't mean you always should.

Keep the discipline. Keep the competence. Keep the ability to function when things get hard.

Just add another skill:

Knowing when you no longer have to.

Because sometimes coming home isn't about becoming a different person.

It's about helping your brain recognize that the mission changed.