Resiliency training comes to Hanscom

  • Published
  • By Jennifer Green-Lanchoney
  • 66th Air Base Group Public Affairs
HANSCOM AIR FORCE BASE, Mass. --  As part of the Comprehensive Airmen Fitness philosophy, master resiliency trainers here have begun training unit resiliency trainers in an effort to continue Hanscom's commitment to take care of Airmen and their families.

Unit resiliency trainers undergo a three-day workshop and are taught resiliency skills that can help Airmen deal with life issues through awareness, action and acceptance.

"My focus has been, since attending (Master Resiliency Training course at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst), to help people develop these skills so that when body-slams happen, they will have as many tools in their tool box as possible to withstand the storm and be stronger because of it," said Linda Ambard, Hanscom's community support coordinator.

Ambard defines body-slams as events that affect a person emotionally, physically, mentally or spiritually. She went on to explain that resiliency training helps individuals build habits that could help them overcome body-slams through self-awareness.

"This training is not about sucking it up and getting over it, it's about developing real skills and strengthening your positive attributes," Ambard said.

Resiliency training began with awareness tools, giving trainers experience with concepts such as 'counting your blessings' and 'check your playbook.'

"'Counting your blessings' is a tool I use a lot, because there are so many things going on in our lives," said Maj. Diane Burch, a master resiliency trainer. "It helps to remember the good things going on in life, and that eventually you'll get past the bad stuff."

The 'check your playbook' tool reminds individuals to be aware what situations activate or influence unproductive patterns that interfere with performance, goals or relationships. Once awareness is achieved, action can take place. A tool for activating awareness is 'instant balancing your thinking,' which helps attack unbalanced thoughts in the moment.

"Imagine stepping up to the starting line for the physical fitness test and all of a sudden all of these bad thoughts come into your head, 'instant balance your playbook' is self-talk to say 'OK I'm not going to fail this because I've trained for it,'" Burch said. "You can use this self-talk anytime to get yourself out of that downward negative spiral and build up those positive thoughts."

The training covers action and self-awareness, which can help individual's face challenges and develop strengths; it also includes education on the acceptance phase to acknowledge and cope with negative aspects of events that are out of an individual's control and even grow and benefit from adversity.

"We don't know where that point will be when we can't come back as far as we did, or where we might snap," said Ambard. "This training is about awareness of increasing our pro-coping strategies so that we are ready, it is possible to have post-traumatic growth and it is possible to come back as a stronger person."

Currently seven trainers have attended the course, with two additional classes scheduled for August and October. For more information, contact Linda Ambard at 781-225-1771.