Why Warfighter Works
The Warfighter Advance 7-Day program helps traumatized warfighters return to fit for duty status without the use of prescription medications. This program works because it gives warfighters their greatest weapon back: control of their minds and lives.
Warfighters are trained to function in high-tempo, high-risk situations, but are not trained in how to come home. Life at home is less clear, less purpose-driven and more complicated than military service, especially war. The absence of preparation for life at home can create a sense of isolation and distress, pushing warfighters away from the people who love them and could help them. Warfighter Advance trains our participants how to reintegrate into the civilian world successfully.
Warfighter Advance is a safe learning space where warfighters can begin the climb back into a functional life through knowledge. They learn first that they are not sick, broken, flawed or worthless. Their feelings are validated and explained by the lack of training to re-enter civilian life. They are taught the dangers of psychotropic drugs and shown a path to a healthy lifestyle through exercise and nutrition. They are taught how to deal with grief and anger, the basics of self-management, and the value of community.
Returning home after a tour of duty, warfighters can find themselves on shaky ground when it comes to trusting their own instincts in a world very different from the military. Civilians can seem harder to trust than their military family. But gradually warfighters can be challenged to trust. We teach both self-trust and trusting others at Warfighter Advance through team building and situational training, providing them the tools they need to trust their new environment appropriately.
Our community provides a safe space for the warfighters to be themselves. They
learn that they have all had similar experiences, both in service and at home. They talk together about their fears, their grief, and sorrow, along with the exhilaration and excitement of victories big and small. They discover new sisters and brothers. Every graduate is enrolled in our alumnae association through which they keep up with each other on a private social media page. They are contacted once a month by a mentor to make sure they are thriving. They call for help. They respond to other’s calls for help. The community is rebuilt. Nurturing happens. Successes are celebrated. Isolation is dispelled. This is what coming home was supposed to be.
They may have killed. Their brothers or sisters may have been killed. They may have experienced a moral injury. The military presents plenty of opportunities for grief to manifest. But grieving gets in the way of accomplishing the mission. Bottled up and unaddressed, grief is a force of destruction to the soul. At the Warfighter 7-Day Advance Program, we prepare the participants to face their grief. Then we give them opportunities to stare their grief in the eye and to embrace it, feel it, let the tears flow, often for the first time since deployment. Once they face their grief, it loses its control over them, and they no longer need to fear it.
