The Offutt Airman & Family Readiness Center will host a resiliency event aimed at military spouses April 11.
The event is intended to be an introduction to resilient thinking, and to gauge interest in a possible two-day course offered once a quarter.
“Spouses feel the effects of active duty service members’ military career,” said John Galbraith, a community readiness specialist with AFRC who helped re-design the course. “They have to suck up all the long hours, the deployments, the moves and all the hardships the military members feel. Anytime there are challenges or stresses in your life, that’s where resiliency comes into play.”
Galbraith said resiliency is important all the time, not just in times of crisis.
“It dramatically improves the quality of your life, even when things are going well,” he said. “You tend to concentrate better, problem solve better, feel better. Your outlook is better, so when adversity does come, you can handle it. “
Michael Dunn, a community readiness consultant with AFRC who worked with Galbraith to re-design the course, said the April 11 event is intended to get the ball rolling.
“We’ve done surveys to see what the interest is out there, and now we want to see if that interest is backed up by physical presence,” he said.
Dunn said the course is not intended to stop negative thoughts entirely, but instead to help individuals redirect those thoughts.
“It’s a program to help people recognize how they view things, and how they think – and how they can intercept those negative thoughts and turn them into something more positive and realistic,” he said.
The course will focus on specific concepts intended to improve resiliency, like mindfulness and gratitude.
“Humans are wired to look for threats, and to take just the negative information so we can protect ourselves from that,” Galbraith said. “We seem to be more wired for negativity, so we need to deprogram that. Because whatever you program your mind to do becomes who you are.”
Call 294-4329 to register. The event will run from 6 to 7:30 p.m., in Building C, Room 206.