Editor’s note: Charlie Mike is our blog on military and veterans issues. From basic training to the VA, this is the place to share stories and engage on topics important to the men and women that have worn our nation’s uniforms.
Gallup is running a series of articles this week on what they call “the veteran experience in the United States.” A piece posted yesterday reveals some interesting results about veterans, servicemembers, and stress. In telephone interviews with veterans, active duty military personal, and non-veteran civilians, respondents were asked two questions: whether they felt stress and whether they felt worry “during a lot of the day yesterday.”
As it turns out, veterans and serving military members answered affirmatively less frequently than civilians. (The full article with precise poll results can be found here.)
So are our perceptions of the emotional and psychological impacts of combat on those who experience it inaccurate? In short, no. Those impacts are real and extend well beyond susceptibility to stress and worry. However, our military, our government, and our society are much more aware of and sympathetic about issues like PTSD. There is virtually universal acceptance that military service in wartime can cause invisible wounds. America has, in not so many words, told our servicemembers and veterans that their experiences might have left them “broken” (in an entirely non-judgmental sense) in some way, but that that’s okay, and that we deeply appreciate their sacrifices. But according to these polling results, maybe military service also equips our men and women in uniform with a more effective toolkit with which to handle daily stresses.
So no, these results don’t mitigate the need for us to appreciate the impact of combat on veterans’ emotional and psychological well-being. But they do offer an important reminder that a simple narrative, no matter how well-meaning and sympathetic, fails to capture the full range of effects of wartime service, not all of which are necessarily negative.
John Amble is the Managing Editor of War on the Rocks, a former U.S. Army officer, and a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Photo credit: The U.S. Army
KMBarden 
John in NC 
George M 
Perhaps veterans, especially those who have spent time in a combat zone, may define “stressed” or “worried” differently than the general public, only assessing substantially more intense levels of those feelings as qualifying. There is also a tendency among the folks I know to not allow attention to their personal discomforts, almost a feeling that it’s not OK, to not be OK because I’m the one that helps folks not the one who needs help. I suspect that such a simplistic assessment is of negative value due to the disparities in culture, experience and even language use.
It is an interesting poll that Gallup took and the results are not surprising to me at all.
Keeping my initial response within the context of the article discussed, one doing research along these lines should without question find in their initial hypothesis that the vast majority of veterans do feel less stress in daily life than civilians.
Since their question(s) were simple the answer is likewise simple. Yes, I myself included find civilian life now as a retiree and former frontline Army soldier in the wars less stressful.
Why?
Simple, what I find stressful because of the high stress of multiple deployments and prolonged combat, my stress tolerance is very very high. It’s my new norm.
On a side note, I find myself and my fellow friends have “cooler heads” when dealing with stressful situations that arise, sometimes spontaneously in civilian life.
My new norm for daily stress as is for many others who have deployed several times and experienced a hearty dish of combat is and always will be different from that of a civilian.
Alas, now that we know that there is a difference in norms concerning stress between veterans and civilians. I for one can attest to the reality that it can and does cause friction within friendships and relationships.
Since we, the veterans are fairly large in number and spread all across the US, it sometimes, and a lot of the time I’ve noticed can come across as that we are callous or uncarring because we don’t stress enough. All simply because we do not display the same amount of stress over daily affairs as our friends, significant others, spouses, coworkers and so forth.
In reality, that isn’t the case by any measure.
We do worry.
We do sweat it.
We do care.
We do stress, it’s just different now.
I myself and my fellow veterans/retirees should stress the point and communicate that our norm for stress is different and we recognize the civilian stress norm is different from ours and there is nothing wrong with differences.
So, a good poll on stress but let’s also be mindful that it can sometimes lead to arguments and we should communicate better between one another on what we find worrisome, stressful in our life seeing as how there are two vastly different norms for stress now.
I fully agree with John – stress is different now, or at least our perspective of it.
Nobody got killed, nobody lost a limb, no one has TBI? OK, it may suck, but we’ll get through it – it’s not that big a deal. Let’s just get it fixed.
In general this is a good thing – I know that I have a lot more patience with my kid than before my last deployment; work, while hard, is not (as) stressful; jerk drivers don’t really bug me, etc., etc.
[Come to think of it, when I was an ROTC cadet, the best instructor was the major who had been on a Huey that was shot down halfway through his second tour, and endured years of rehab after that – he just radiated calm. When we screwed up in tactics he would focus on the important things, stressed us but not overstressed us, a real mentor. His counterpart, a bit younger, all the merit badges but missed Vietnam, just exuded stress from every pore – not just because he was trying to (over)stress us, but because he was stressed himself.]
That doesn’t mean that those of us who are usually calm and have not been diagnosed with PTSD may not have a few triggers that immediately make us recall some less than pleasant memories. There is some scar tissue there. But for those of us lucky enough to make it through relatively intact . . . a lot of stuff doesn’t seem like as a big deal anymore.