Question for retirees- what's been the most challenging part about returning to civilian life after a few decades of service? Also, what has helped you to adjust in a healthy way?

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Allowing yourself to enjoy and embrace the transition without expectations.

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Finding a sense of purpose if you felt strongly connected to being a soldier. Attitudes of coworkers. Slowly making the military less an integral part of your identity and personality.

I found a vet group in my area that has regular meetings that I like. It’s not people living in the past, still talking about PTS from 20 years ago, it’s people talking about issues that they’re dealing with today.

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10-12

Veteran entitlement is probably one of the first things I tell people to drop.

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This. Most places respect your service, but it stops there. Many more doors will open if you can focus on where you’re going and what you’re going to do rather than where you’ve been and what you’ve done. Outstanding achievement outside of the uniform.

Dunno. I did my time concurrently. 🤷‍♂️

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One of the biggest issues I had that I never thought about and took me a while to pin down was realizing I needed to do something to serve my community (similar to what M1 stated above about sense of purpose).

I didn't realize that was something I needed in my life, even though I only spend about 10 hrs a month volunteering and being in the board of a local charity.
I don't need (or want) to make that my identity, and it's no where as big a part of my life as the Army was, but it does give me something intangible that I lost when I retired.

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I think it's great you realized that. A sense of purpose has definitely been a struggle for me, gonna look into local volunteer opportunities as well. Thank you!

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It's the acceptance of the fact that your services will no longer be needed and you have to return in doing the things that you were doing before you entered military. It's finding your sense of purpose again after deciding that it was what you want to do for the rest of your life, serving.

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First thing to note is the difference In coworkers, not everyone has the same end goal. This will differ a bit If you chose to work on base, post, etc., vs a true civil job (commercial, corporate, outside the fence, or however you want to label). You have to quickly find your zone and learn to adapt to a world where your rank isn’t respected or at least acknowledged anymore. Note you will be creating a new lane. Lastly, I will say you will need to have a support system of folks that have successfully made the transition. You got this!!!

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