How Military Families Can Build and Maintain Resilience with April McBride

We are closing out the month of April, the Month of the Military Child, with a special episode on how military families can build resilience, featuring our guest April McBride. In this episode, we explore how military spouses and children can navigate uncertainty and change to build strong families, along with methods for balancing emotions and practical skills for developing resilience.

April McBride is  a native of Walterboro, South Carolina, wife of Michael L. McBride. April obtained a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the College of Charleston and a Master of Arts in Counseling from Webster University. April has 13 years of clinical experience that encompass mental health, crisis, family, rehabilitation and career counseling. April is a Certified University of California Los Angeles FOCUS Family Resilience Trainer, Certified Integrative Somatic Trauma Practitioner, and ICF- Associated Certified Coach.

April McBride: https://www.mecoachingllc.com/

Connect with us: https://linktr.ee/skillsandpillspodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We have to learn how to sit with and accept uncertainty. There is going to be times where part of your family unit is going to be absent for at least six months out of a year. I had to also learn to accept and sit with the hurt, the frustration that comes along with it from time to time, sometimes even resentment that may show up. But I had to learn to be present with that and not judge it.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

We've been getting a lot of feedback about the previous episodes. We're going to take a little shift. Same conversations, resilience. What does that look like? Capacity to serve others, capacity to serve ourselves. What does that look like? We're excited today that we're going to move into talking about those who serve. More specifically, our military population. Thank you for your service. Thank you for all you do. Thank you for the resilience it takes for you to protect and serve our country. Today we'll talk about what does that look like? What are the costs? What are the benefits? And what does it take to be authentically you and the role that you play for this country every day, looking at it also from a familiar perspective? How do military children traverse all the things and the call on their parents? When a military person serves, we believe the entire family serves. We're excited about today.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Yes, we're so excited. So April is the month of the military child, and so we had to reach out to somebody who's very special in our world. Um and we're so excited for you guys to hear the depth of her wisdom and her insights. But we've invited today April McBride with us today. Um, tell us a little bit, April, about who you are and and and what you do.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Absolutely. That's such a huge question of who am I? So I am the mother of a five-year-old. I am also the wife of a retired naval officer who served 26 years in the Navy. I'm also the daughter of a beautiful family who represents the Gulagie community in South Carolina. My mom is Inez Pierce. My father is Oliver Pierce. I'm also a mental health advocate. I have done at least 15 years serving in the capacity of helping people find healing. We're talking about adults, children, and families. And uh currently I serve in the capacity of a uh mental health coach, where now I am spreading my wings, if you will, and reaching beyond the walls of the United States and reaching individuals far and wide to help them find understanding and peace in the midst of adversity.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Wow, I love it. I love that. You said something that caught uh my eye and aligns with something that we've been talking about lately. You said, I'm spreading my wings, if I will. And we uh often talk about here being free to fail forward, meaning being compassionate with ourselves when we grab what we call high-hanging fruit, something new, or we grab in more closely to nurture what we call low-hanging fruit, which is something that you've either started or something that is stagnant that you want to nurture to flourishing. So failure uh free to fail forward, free to flourish, free to fly. Yes, we talk about those things with those concepts in mind. As you said, I spread my wings. What does it look like? We'll start with fail forward.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

Yeah, so in the essence of resiliency, so just taking a step back into my professional, professional, if you will, rim. Um, I am a certified focus, which stands for families overcoming under stress provider. Um, it was a program developed by UCLA. And what my role in that capacity was to help individuals, if you will, military families, to develop fundamental skills. The fundamental skills of resilience is emotional regulation, communication, and problem solving. So as I sat in that intimate space with families, I quickly discovered that the same skills that I was teaching them is the same skills that was honing and holding me in my professional life as a mental health professional, but also in my personal life as a military spouse, right? And so when we say freedom, I saw the value of what that skill set, basic fundamental skills, were giving to military families. And I knew deep down that these are skills that not only military can use, but also the wider, broader family structure. And so when I said the freedom to reach out after deciding to step out on faith and leave that job and foraging for doing something on my own, gave me the ability to offer those skills to everyone. And that's exactly where freedom lies for me as an opportunity to reach, train, support, and strengthen families, all families. Yes.

unknown 5:53

Yeah, yes.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

I would say that right now, um, from my vantage point, from right now, um, there's been a lot going on in our world. Like you can click on the news and you see all these things going on. Um, and I think that even though I have some fear, maybe some founded, not not some founded, about what's happening around me, I feel very closely because I have a sibling that is enlisted or is active duty, that there's a different kind of understanding or weight that is carried from their perspective. And so this year we've been focusing a lot on what we carry and how we carry the things in our world, what we can release and and what burdens that we put on ourselves. And so, what has been your experience of the we'll call them burdens or what is carried by the military family, the wives, the spouses, the partners, and the children?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Absolutely. One of the things that we really have to carry is knowing that we have to learn how to sit with and accept uncertainty. So uncertainty is interwoven into the military culture. I discovered that myself after becoming a military spouse of a naval officer, which you know, every military branch has their own uniqueness, if you know, if you will. Um, so what was unique about the US Navy is that deployments is a part of the story. That is one of the absolutes, right? There is going to be times where you're going to have a structure, a sound part of your family unit is going to be absent for at least six months out of a year. Can you sit back and just imagine that? That's half of a year that you're going to be missing an individual who is actively engaging in your family unit. So I had to learn to accept that. I had to learn to embrace that. I had to also learn to accept and sit with the hurt, the frustration that comes along with it from time to time, sometimes even resentment that may show up. But I had to learn to be present with that and not judge it, right? Because often we do that with ourselves. We forget that we are human and we are having human experiences. And these human experiences are going to invoke emotions. Emotions are normal. And that's one of the fundamentals we teach in resiliency training is emotional awareness and looking at emotions as they are, which they're not good or bad, they just are. And allowing yourself to accept that emotional validation. So accepting that, yes, being in the military, having to deal with deployments, it is hard. But how am I going to walk through this hard season as an individual, as a military spouse? But now, if we put on the frames of having a child, how am I going to support my child and train my child on how to develop a relationship of building comfort in the midst of uncertainty? What is that going to look like for us? So that's one of the hard truths that we have to figure out. And it's always going to be a part of our conversation is that how do we find comfort in the midst of uncertainty and adversity?

SPEAKER_01 9:33

That's so good. And like you said, I love earlier when you mentioned you're like, like, of course, this is all about we're talking about the month of the military child, this is all focused on that. But when you said broader, like anybody and everybody really could benefit from that. Um, and you mentioned something a minute ago um where you said, my emotions are not good, they're not bad, they just are. Um, and when you were talking, I you know, when I think about the kids, um, and we talk a lot um on uh we do lives and stuff like that, and we talk a lot about co-regulation um and what it looks like to, and usually we see co-regulation with children because they can't yet, you know, manage their emotions at all. And so it does take us as the parents, the adults, or the the leader in the room to teach them how to emotionally regulate by modeling it ourselves and to be their regulation, right? And I can imagine that with the amount of uncertainty and with the amount of constant change, that that can be a difficult skill to tool, a difficult skill to teach. Um, so as far as people when they're trying, like say they're in their own space of like emotional healing or they're on their healing journey and they're trying to learn how to regulate on their own, what kind of tips and tools are you using to kind of guide that for them?

SPEAKER_00 10:59

So, one of the basic tools that we taught, and I still teach it today in the other um realms in which I work on, um, is called the feeling thermometer. So if you Google it, you can find it. And it's really simple, and it's simple because it speaks to everyone. Those that have a vast emotional vocabulary would easily embrace the concept, but it's also designed and created for the individual who may not have a large vocabulary regarding feelings. So it's essentially designed in a color code scheme with the true essence of what we know thermometers do, right? It gauges temperature. Well, this one gauges your emotional temperature. And so what they, when you look at the thermometer, you see like the bottom color of the thermometer is green. And you know, and when I explain this with children, I say, this is where you're calm, cool, and collected. And so they'll identify like what emotion will make you green, right? What emotion or event, if you can't identify emotion, then what event will make you green? That's to help them get a true conceptualized understanding of what green is. And then we go to the yellow zone. When you're feeling yellow, that's slightly elevated. But guess what? You still have the ability to tap into that executive function green and make some good decisions, right? So, so what gets you slightly elevated, but you can still solve problems, right? So they'll identify emotions there and they'll identify events, and then we're going up to the orange zone, and that's when your body. So now we're talking about the soma, right? You're teaching people to be more self-aware of what's happening internally. And so they identify what event, what emotion will put you there. And then at the top is the red zone. This is when you're tapping into that amygdala, what triggers that fight, flight, or freeze, right? So you're building a sense of emotional awareness in not only the adult and the children. So after we go through that, then we'll talk about specifically what skill do you already have in your toolbox box that have helped you get from the orange down to the yellow, at least. And then we introduce concepts that they can add so that they can feel supported. Because when you are dysregulated, you're really looking for something to get me grounded again. But having that visual aid, because you know children respond very well to visual aid, and quite frankly, adults do too. Having that visual aid displayed in your home is very beneficial with helping you reach back and say, okay, this is what I need to do to regulate what's going on inside of me. Deep breathing, meditation, right? Um, progressive muscle relaxation, um, visualization, guided imagery. There's a multitude of things that we introduce to our families to help them learn how to regulate, because that's where the empowerment is.

SPEAKER_02 13:51

That is excellent. So those are tools because of the uncertainty is infinite for military, for military people, is what I'm hearing. And so, even when you I hear you talk about it and you use the word uh uh control or what we can, we often talk about the lotus of control, right? And so, what does it look like for the military child? For how do you teach a child that this uncertainty is technically your life? Because you have a lot of military people that like your husband, that are that's career. So, how do you teach spouses and children what they can control, what they can't control? Does it go that, does it hone down that far as to uh because military is a culture of its own to actually present things, let's say to new military families to say, so they can future caste. Yes, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

I was gonna ask that. What are you telling the new military family? They are maybe have young ones, maybe just enlisted. Like how are you building them up to say, okay, this is gonna take some resilience out of you, or this is what's necessary?

SPEAKER_00 15:05

In addition to having candid conversations about um emotion and also providing the psychoeducation about the deployment cycle, right? Um, they do spend a lot of time providing, they meaning the resources. So every branch of the military has a resource center. The Navy is called Fleet and Family Services. So they have a multitude of psychological information to help you understand the deployment cycles, right? So we'll give the purpose is to normalize what people are experiencing because when you're feeling something, you automatically think that something is wrong with me. So that information is very important. So, number one, reach out to your family resource centers to get information about what is to come. Number two, community.

SPEAKER_02 15:54

Oh, we talk about support networks so much. Yes, yes, like we talk about um the importance of having people around you. So when your capacity is low, you have people around you, that doesn't mean you cannot not go to the next duty station. You cannot not go and serve that deployment. So what um are the conversations surrounding support? Now is there intentionality?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Absolutely. Okay. So with every command that my husband has been attached to, there is always an FRG, family readiness group. That is the group that's designed for those that are left behind, right? These are the people that are having a shared experience with you, which is very important. They understand the cycles, they understand how hard it is. This is where you also get information about what's going on while your sailor is deployed. You get firsthand correct, if you will, information, right? So this is where you need to connect and also have your children connect with those that are in their age group that are shared, living the same shared experience. Because as you indicated earlier, the military culture is uniquely different. The Navy's culture is uniquely different. So making sure that you reach out to your FRG is paramount if you want to know how to navigate deployments for you and your children.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

I love we're coming of time. Like I'm I'm feeling we have to have you back. You just put it out. Did you just send it out back? I was about to dance around it a little bit. But you're like, no, we have to have you back. We have to. We have to because there is um such a need for the to understand the culture. And we often say when you serve, because we believe that we all have a purpose to serve in some capacity. And we always say, don't serve like this. Serve with your hands open. Uh, because once you serve with your hands open, you're able to freely give. Better yet, based on what you describe with the military family, you're ready to receive at the same time. So, what you described is so spot on when we talk about that uh retooling, reflecting. Like, get with these people, they know they know what it looks like. They're gonna reflect on their experience, they're gonna give you something and resetting every to every base must be different. I can only imagine. Everywhere you go, you have to reset your life, reset your family, reset your expectations. I can imagine. And then you're having the ritual. It is our hope that um we're creating a resource hub where we want to tuck um individuals, providers, resources, people with expertise that can assist people. Because when you're in the virtual world, that's very what we call asynchronous. Meaning, I don't get to really talk to you, but we uh have a responsibility, all of us as be uh behavioral health professionals, to resource, if you will, yes, or to make efforts um to protect the public and to help others live love and work well. So it is our hope that we're able to have you in that expertise space and to have get resources directly from you. Absolutely. Why can we normalize allowing people who have competencies and expertise in a certain area to thrive so we don't have to try to be all things to all people? As an adult mental health professional, an adult mental health professional, an adult mental health professional, I believe that one of the hugest things we can do is know where we begin and end. And when it comes sitting here in this moment, even though it was power packed and full, I became more aware when it comes to the military culture, even though I'm a behavioral health professional, when it comes to that type of resilience, when it comes to the work you do, there's a space where I end. And it brings me joy to have you in the space to feel that I get to know that there's people out there doing necessary work.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

And we say that all the time on our pod and on our lives. We get to do just a little bit of a piece of the pie. We want to open up and have more dialogue about um the importance of mental health, the importance of asking for help when you need it, start having those hard conversations about it. But we know we only get to reach certain people, and so we always want to celebrate and we always want to elevate people that are reaching for mental health in ways that we cannot, um, and doing a different portion of this pie, if that makes sense. So we appreciate you. Um, and this isn't the last time. We got to have you back. We appreciate you so much. Um, for those of you guys that had the honor of listening to us today, we're so grateful that you took the time out of your day to take a listen and just for us to begin the conversation about military family wellness, mental health, and the healing journeys and the resilience that it takes to be a part of the service. If you are a part of the service, we thank you for your service. If your family, children, if you're affiliated in any way, we thank you for your service as well. We appreciate y'all, and we'll see you next episode to chat about it more.