Compartmentalization

One of the things that I have learned over the last two months is that the act of mental and emotional compartmentalization is a huge key to success in making it through a deployment. Compartmentalizing can be defined as separating emotions and experiences into individual categories. In this way, you can separate your everyday reality from the 'what ifs'. As a military spouse, this is a skill that, in my opinion, must be learned. Otherwise, every movie where a character is brandishing a weapon, every song about someone dying, every book about sappy teenage love will bring us to tears. It's just not a pretty way to go about life - being triggered by every single little thing.

Being able to separate our own fear for our soldiers down range and the events of our everyday lives is vital. For the last few months, I have been volunteering at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the first stop for soldiers injured in the war. The first time I went after Ernie deployed, I burst into tears at the sight of a soldier on crutches. The second time I went, I nearly had a panic attack when I saw a Hungarian soldier in a wheelchair. My husband is an avid runner, and all I could think about was how miserable he would be if he couldn't run. How depressed he would get. And, I began to already mourn for the loss of his limbs even though nothing even remotely like this had happened to him. I was stressing myself out needlessly.

At some point, I just detached. I didn't allow myself to draw these connections anymore. Don't get me wrong. It still happens on occasion. It's not a skill that I've absolutely perfected, but it's SO much better. I don't know the process I followed to make this happen. It just did. Maybe it was the way that my brain decided to cope with our situation. However it happened, it's working wonders, and the absolute proof of it's success was evident yesterday.

Part of what I am doing at Landstuhl is shadowing the dietitians through their day to learn what they do. So, yesterday, I shadowed an incredibly knowledgable dietitian who happens to be an expert in trama care. When she told me we would be visiting the ICU, making the rounds with all of the other trama care doctors, I almost told her no. I feared a total emotional breakdown in front of everyone because,

Every patient was a victim of a rocket attack or an IED.

Missing legs, severe Tramatic Brain Injuries, internal bleeding, and broken hips. Everyone unconscious. All of them flown in from places just miles away from my husband.

But, I went.

For some reason, facing the reality of the situation tends to make it easier for me. Watching Restrepo just before Ernie left made me feel more at ease. At least I had an inside look into what his life would be like for the next year, and I knew that his experience wouldn't be NEARLY as bad as those fellas had it in the Korengal Valley.

So, facing these injured soldiers sort of did the same thing for me. Seeing the care that the doctors take for each and every one of them. The incredible amount of diligence, the dedication made to every individual. The amount of time and effort put in by each specialist - whether they specialized in internal medicine, surgery, Dietetics, pharmacology, or otherwise - made me feel safe in knowing that even if the worst happens, my husband would be in very, very good hands.

I was also able to separate the experience of these soldiers from what I know to be true of my husbands' experience. These things haven't happened to him, and I didn't allow myself to play the 'what if' game. When your husband is in a war zone, that is the worst game ever. It will literally drive you insane. I was able to look at these guys from a purely objective standpoint and consider their nutrient needs based on their specific injuries. Thoughts of their mothers, children, or wives never entered my mind.

I had a job to do, skills to learn, and that was what I was focused on. Disallowing those two compartments in my brain - my Ernie and these injured soldiers - to become entangled together allowed me tremendous amounts of mental clarity. Not only was I able to learn so much about the nutritional needs of trama patients, but I was also able to prevent a massive panic attack in front of a sea of professionals.

Even in everyday life, this skill serves us. We can prevent freak outs in front of our children when we put our fears on the shelf until there is a safer time to deal with them. We can be incredibly strong on the phone or in emails with our husbands, and cry later when they can't hear us.

Compartmentalizing is vital to our survival, to our sanity, and to the strength we can bestow upon our families, friends, and perhaps even patients.