Section XVII: Homesickness/Loneliness

Making the Best of Wherever I am

Goals of the Exercise

1. Reduce thoughts of home, family, and friends to a level that is not distressing.

2. Increase comfort and contentment with the new environment.

3. Reduce feelings of homesickness/loneliness.

4. Increase social contacts and new friendships.

5. Maintain contact with family and friends back home, while recognizing the impor-tance of limits.

Additional Problems for which this Exercise may be Useful

Suggestions for Processing this Exercise with Service Members

The “Making the Best of Wherever I Am” activity is intended for use with service members who are having difficulty adjusting to a new place, particularly those who have recently entered military service or are far from home for the first time. It takes a primarily cognitive-behavioral approach of identifying and testing unrealistically negative thoughts about the service member's situation, followed by offering guidance in seeking activities that will improve contentment and quality of life. Follow-up can include reading assignments from the books listed for this issue in Appendix A of The Veterans and Active Duty Military Psychotherapy Treatment Planner, and/or video-therapy using films suggested for the topic of “Friends and Support Systems” in Rent Two Films and Let's Talk in the Morning, 2nd ed., by John W. Hesley and Jan G. Hesley, also published by John Wiley & Sons, and reporting back to the therapist and treatment group, after 3 to 4 weeks about the results of the actions suggested in this exercise.

EXERCISE XVII.A Making the Best of Wherever I am

Homesickness and loneliness can seem overwhelming the first time we experience them, and this is a challenge for many people in the military. It's true that leaving a familiar place and the people you know there can be highly stressful. However, there are several strategies for adapting to a new place that will help you get through this phase of your move as quickly as possible and save you some heartache.

1. What we tell ourselves about our situations shapes our perception of those situations and our feelings about them. We aren't suggesting that you deny reality or try to live in a fantasy, but often the very same facts can take on totally different meanings depending on how they're expressed. There's an old cartoon that shows a man and a cat shipwrecked on a small island with nothing in sight but the beach and some palm trees.

The man is thinking, “Nothing but fish to eat, these stupid trees and sand everywhere…this is horrible!”

Meanwhile, the cat is thinking, “Fish every day, the biggest litter box in the world, and these great scratching posts…I'm in heaven!”

Making the best of a new place means finding ways to think more like the cat and less like the man.

2. Let's start by looking at a few of the thoughts a person can focus on in a new place, both negative and positive. Please read the examples, then write in some of your own:

Negative Thoughts Positive Thoughts
I'm with a bunch of people I don't know. This is a chance to make some new friends.
I can't do the things I like to do for fun here. I can find some new things here that I couldn't do where I was before.
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3. A psychologist named Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi researched what makes people happy and described what he learned in the book Flow. To boil it down, he found that we are happiest when we're doing things that interest us enough that we lose ourselves in them—when we lose track of time and aren't thinking about anything except the activity while we're engaged in it. The people who are the happiest are those who spend the most time in whatever activities interest them in this way. What are some of your favorite “flow” activities?

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4. You may not be able to do those things where you are now. So the trick is to figure out what it is about those activities that makes them so enjoyable for you, then look for other activities that share those qualities. Some examples of qualities that make different activities fun for different people could include: physical action (individual or team sports, dancing); deep concentration (games like chess, working difficult puzzles); attention to detail (building models, painting, writing); producing something you're proud of (building computers, working on cars); and so on. The hobbies you like may be individual pursuits or things you do with a group; fast-paced or painstaking; long-lasting or things you can finish quickly. Think of other characteristics that different hobbies may have. What qualities do the activities you like have in common? Once you have some listed, you can look for activities with the same qualities, and the odds are you'll like them, too.

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5. As for friendships: if you're feeling isolated, it's a good idea to find some new people to spend time with. The information from item 4 is a good place to start, because one of the best ways to find people you may like is to go do things you enjoy and meet other people who are doing the same things for fun. Maybe you can find a group to join, like a running club or a sports team. If you're a musician you might find (or start) a band; if there are classes available in subjects you're interested in, they'll be interesting and a good place to make friends. Sometimes being stationed far from family is an opportunity to put more of our off-duty time into taking classes than we could if we were back at home. What activities might be good sources of new friendships or ways to achieve goals for you?

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6. If you're in a new place where there are things to see and do that you couldn't do where you were before, it can be rewarding to explore and learn about it. You could get yourself a camera and enjoy some tourism, learn to dive if you're near the ocean, go mountain climbing, or see cities you'd probably never have gotten to see otherwise. What are a few things you can do in this new place that you couldn't do where you were before?

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7. There's nothing wrong with staying in touch with friends and family you're temporarily away from, as long as you don't try to rely on those long-distance ties to meet all your needs for interesting things to do. What can you do to stay in regular contact with people that you miss?

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Be sure to bring this handout back to your next therapy session, and be prepared to discuss your thoughts and feelings about the exercise.

This, too, Shall Pass: Taking it One Day at a Time

Goals of the Exercise

1. Reduce thoughts of home, family, and friends to a level that is not distressing.

2. Increase comfort and contentment with the new environment.

3. Reduce feelings of homesickness/loneliness.

4. Increase social contacts and new friendships.

5. Maintain contact with family and friends back home, while recognizing the impor-tance of limits.

Additional Problems for which this Exercise may be Useful

Suggestions for Processing this Exercise with Service Members

The “This, Too, Shall Pass: Taking it One Day at a Time” activity is intended for use with service members who are having difficulty adjusting to a new place and persev-erating on how long this situation will last, such as junior service members just beginning their first unaccompanied tours overseas. The strategy of this activity is to address the service member's self-perception as unable to tolerate a situation he or she finds unpleasant for long by guiding him or her in recalling past experiences of unhappy situations that the service member got through, and noting that although at the time it may have also seemed that those experiences would last forever, in retrospect they probably don't seem as long, and the unpleasant feelings they caused are only a memory. Follow-up can include reading assignments from the books listed for this issue in Appendix A of The Veterans and Active Duty Military Psychotherapy Treatment Planner, videotherapy using films suggested in Rent Two Films and Let's Talk in the Morning, 2nd ed., by John W. Hesley and Jan G. Hesley, also published by John Wiley & Sons, and reporting back to the therapist and treatment group, after 3 to 4 weeks, about the results of actions suggested in this exercise.

EXERCISE XVII.B This, Too, Shall Pass: Taking it One Day at a Time

It can be tough to find ourselves in situations that we dislike and that will last a while. It's natural for our thoughts to focus on how long we'll be in those situations. A person's thoughts can end up getting distorted, exaggerating the long-term nature of the situation along with its unpleasantness and underestimating his or her ability to have a reasonable level of happiness or peace of mind in the meantime. This exercise will help you examine your own thoughts about your situation and make sure you're seeing it realistically and not causing yourself avoidable unhappiness.

1. One of the best examples we can think of is dealing with a physical injury that takes a significant amount of time to heal. Have you ever had a broken arm or leg, for example? If not, perhaps another painful injury or illness on a similar scale. If you're like most people, when you first got hurt, the intense pain captured your attention pretty thoroughly, and you may have had the thought that you couldn't stand it, along with feeling discouraged about how long it would take to heal—to get the cast off, and so on. The same thing can apply with situations that cause emotional pain instead of the physical kind, like the breakup of a relationship or the loss of someone close to you. If you've had an experience like this, with a pain that seemed as if it would last forever, what was it?

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Another part of that situation, if you're like most of us, is that when you were past it, it didn't seem as long as it had starting out; also, although you have the memory of the pain, you aren't feeling it anymore. This can be a very helpful way to think about unpleasant situations, remembering those we've overcome when we're in the midst of new ones. What thought(s) have you been having about your situation, and what more balanced thought(s) could you think instead, based on your own experiences and what you've learned about yourself and about your ability to get through tough situations? Use this space to record some examples from your own experiences.

Negative Thoughts Positive Thoughts
This hurts so much I can't stand it. This hurts the way (past experience) did, and that was tough, but I got through it.
This is going to take forever to get through! This is like (past situation) that lasted a long time, but when it was done it didn't seem as long as when it started out.
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2. Have you ever heard the old joke about how to eat an elephant? The answer is “one bite at a time.” It may not be the funniest one-liner, but it makes a good point. We can handle anything big, whether it's an unaccompanied tour far from home, getting a college degree, or recovering from a serious injury or illness, if we divide it into small, more manageable pieces instead of thinking about the whole task or time ahead. That's why this exercise has the title it does, and if you've ever heard much about Alcoholics Anonymous and other 12-Step recovery programs, you may have heard the slogans “This Too Shall Pass” and “One Day at a Time” as reminders that every situation eventually passes, and that all a person has to do to stay sober is not drink today, whatever day it is. When it's a matter of time until something is over, it can help to break it up into months and/or weeks, keep track of their passage, and give ourselves some kind of small rewards as we put each of those smaller pieces behind us. How can you use this principle in your present situation?

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3. It can help to remember another old saying: “a watched pot never boils.” The meaning of this, of course, is that even though there's no difference in how long a pot of water takes to boil whether you're looking at it or not, it can seem to take forever if all you're doing is watching it and waiting. It goes much faster if you occupy your attention with other things in the meantime. What are some ways you can keep yourself busy instead of watching the calendar and feeling depressed that it isn't over yet?

a. First, what familiar hobbies or other recreational activities can you enjoy where you are?

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b. Second, what new activities are available where you are that you haven't tried, but think might be fun?

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In this exercise, we've looked at things to do when you're stuck for an extended time in a place where you'd rather not be. We've looked at correcting negative distortions in thoughts about it, ways to break the time up into smaller chunks to have more sense of its passing, and finding enjoyable ways to spend as much of it as possible. Keep thinking about these and adding to your lists, and you'll be better equipped for this kind of experience.

Be sure to bring this handout back to your next therapy session, and be prepared to discuss your thoughts and feelings about the exercise.