Army News: Building Resilience

Resilience training is embedded into courses at every level of Army training.

Published in the Army News, Issue 511.

The COVID-19 pandemic is taking its toll on mental health in many areas of New Zealand society. The government requires our Army personnel to be in the best possible shape to help where needed. Our personnel have their own health to consider, and that of their family and close friends. It often all boils down to resilience.

Why do soldiers need resilience?

Soldiers are exposed to a number of stressful demands, both during training and on deployment. These include:

• Physical demands such as long pack marches, lack of sleep and digging shell scrapes;
• Mental Demands such as decision making when cold, wet tired and hungry;
• Emotional demands such as isolation, conflict with others and being away from family for long periods of time.

These demands can lead to a number of negative effects and reduced performance on our soldiers if they aren’t adequately prepared. Indeed, at its worst they could also contribute to negative mental health effects, such as anxiety and depression.

That’s why resilience training is embedded into courses at every level of Army training, starting a BLOC training during recruit course, DLOC training within units and OLOC training during pre-deployment training.

Soldiers participate in a mental preparation session and mental recovery session with their instructors before and after each major field exercise.

How do you build resilience?

Today’s recruits at the Army Depot receive the most advanced and evidence-based resilience training out of any other generation. Moving away from the old-school model of “sink or swim,” TAD now gives them all of the tools and theory they require to get through training and to set them up for success later in their careers.

Plus, it’s developed over time. While TAD used to deliver a three hour resilience brief one time during previous courses, the Army has learnt that training is much more effective when it’s short, repeated, integrated and practical.

That’s why that brief has been split into multiple shorter lessons throughout the course, which cover the basic physiology of stress, how to identify when you or your mates are stressed, and how to create a stress management plan. TAD has also included practical mental skills sessions, such as teaching recruits tactical breathing and mental imagery while they are shooting on the range.

Finally, they also participate in a mental preparation session and mental recovery session with their instructors before and after each major field exercise.

During the preparation session, the recruits talk about what demands they will likely come up against, how they would normally react to those demands and what strategies they can use to get through those tough times. They then go into the field and use the strategies that they have been taught while outside of their comfort zones. Finally, the recovery session takes the recruits through “Guided Self Reflection” in which they reflect on what they learned during the exercise and what they can do better next time.

Reflection is one of the most important steps in developing resilience over time.

The Resilience Development Cycle

This work is based on the Resilience Development Cycle, which is composed of PREPARE, PERFORM and RECOVER.

First, they prepare for stress by:

1. Identifying what stress they will come up against,
2. Identifying how they usually react to those stressors, and
3. Identifying and practising mental skills and other coping strategies to deal with those stressors.

Then they perform under stress that pushes them out of their comfort zones and practise the mental skills that they learnt.

Finally, they recover from the stress by going through guided self-reflection, learning from their experiences and developing their abilities over time.

Basic recommendations for Soldiers

1. Learn about the stress response and how it affects you — The more you know, the better you can deal with it when it appears.
2. Learn about different coping strategies and find out which work for you — The recruits are taught a number of mental skills such as tactical breathing, visualisation, positive self talk, goal setting and relaxation techniques. Try them out and practise them n regularly so that when you need them, they are already there for you to use.
3. Reflect after stressful events (e.g. field exercises) in order to develop your resilience over time — What happened, what went well, what didn’t go well and what can you do better next time? This is one of the most important steps in developing resilience over time. If you don’t take the time to learn from past mistakes, you’re much more likely to repeat them.