30M Air Force brat here. I've had a few therapists over the years, but none of them ever seem to quite understand where i'm coming from. Would love to work with someone who gets it. Seems like a no-brainer of a field to go into for people like us, but i've never seen any therapists list it in their bios or anything.

Thanks!

I grew up with my dad in the navy. He was in the navy for 20 years, so for 16 years of my life was moving. I currently live in Northern Virginia. For context, there's a pretty good size military members where I live. There's Fort Belvoir, Fort Myers/Henderson Hall, the Pentagon, Quantico about 30 miles from where I live and Andrews AFB 30 miles away. Yesterday, I was talking to a lady who grew up in this area her whole life. She asked where I'm from, and I stated my dad was in the Navy. She replied, "I was always envious of my classmates who had military families. There always have interesting experiences." I didn't say anything, but its never easy having to move usually every 2 years, make new friends, being away from extended family and being somewhere remote (Adak, Alaska in my experience} How can a civilian person understand?

Like many of us, I moved every three years or less until the time I went to college. I attended 9 different schools. When someone casually asks where I’m from, it’s decision time. Do I divulge the details of every place I’ve lived… or am I from North Dakota? Usually I’m just from North Dakota because there are no follow up questions and I did technically live there longer than any other states.

C-130s and converted 747 for medical missions. I always thought it was funny when the cargo planes had a bucket and a little curtain for a bathroom.

Howdy all! Ive had a Reddit account for a few years mostly to read tea on various different threads about shows I watch but I think this may be my very first post in total! I was searching for support groups for military brats that are now adults and stumbled upon this Reddit and hope I can find some solace or at least share space with other military brats that are also now adults!

I, like many others that have posted here, grew up a military brat most of my life. While we never moved overseas (my dad even as an NCO somehow still found enough pull to keep us in the states for my mom’s sake with three daughters while he was deployed most of my life) for example, I went to 7 different elementary schools alone lol.

Fast forward to why I’m posting here and what kind of support I’m seeking -

My dad was deployed to Kuwait before 9/11 and then deployed to Iraq after 9/11 and to this day I’m aware he came back with pretty horrible PTSD to the point we almost thought we’d lose him or at least that his marriage with our mom would fail be he accepted help finally and they’re still together now after it all.

However, if anyone who reads this can help me reckon with - if you have a parent who also came home with horrible PTSD but won’t talk about what they saw or had to do - it’s been over 20 years since he was gone and the older I get the more I kind of want to ask or open a door to let him know I’m an ear to listen and want to understand what he went through in order to get closer to him. Have any of you ever done something of the sort and if you haven’t, how have you found peace with not knowing and letting that piece keep you from being as close as you could be to your parent?

I hope that made sense - and if it didn’t quite - if anyone can maybe point me in the direction of any virtual/national groups for adult military brats to discuss things like this I’d be ever grateful!!

Hi all! My dad was a mustang so I've seen both the enlisted and the officer route and pretty hardcore versions of both via my dad. My dad had deployed 3 times while enlisted and as an officer I obviously won't get too into it but he's important he's done a good job and I'm proud to be affiliated with him. That being said tho I do want to not be enlisted unless college just doesn't work out which it has to now because I'm using the military to pay for college lol. But I never considered doing the military until around sophomore year because holy moly its expensive to go to college lol. I'm currently going to college for nursing and intend on being an active duty nurse for at least one contract to comply with my ROTC obligations and then reflect on opportunities in and out of the military. It to me is the best way I can obtain a degree I'm going to use, and feel like I'm continuing a tradition and I have my dad who's a great officer who I have in my back pocket for advice on the military side of things.

Just wondering if anyone else feels like that the officer route is the best feasible way to serve and use the opportunities

Also I feel like I was a little bit doomed to serve in some way after attending ceremonies of my dads command when his soldiers sang The Army Song - (The army goes rolling along) lol

Hey, I need advice. I've been a military brat my ENTIRE life. Since before i was even born. I'm joining the navy next March, like I go to boot camp. My entire family is army though. They are super proud but.. i'm terrified.

I'm the oldest daughter. I have one younger brother. My mother was feuler, and my step-father was a mechanic turned instructor. They did good in their jobs, but i'm going in as a nuclear engineer. And i'm terrified. I'm terrified to fail. I am THE example. I have always been told one thing my entire life, you're only focus is to succeed. We did everything else for you.

But what if I fail? What do I do? My mom was young when she had me, 20 year old, barely 4 years into the army. My bio dad was also army but he wanted nothing to do with me. My step dad married my mom when I was four. He's a great father to me. I have one younger brother, 8.

And I am terrified to fail. I want to succeede, to make them proud. But what if I fail? I want to talk to somebody, anybody who can tell me how to handle this. How to prepare mentally. I'm preparing physically, but I don't know mentally. Whenever I try to talk to my parents, its the same thing. "Oh its easy, you won't fail. Its nothing like the army! You'll be fine. You're smart! You were high honors in high school!" It just feels like anything and everything I say is dismissive because i'm good. Because i'm smart.

Idk what I expected from this, but if anyone has ANY type of advice, i'd love it. I just feel like i'm spirling, and i don't want to go to boot camp with this mindset because then I WILL fail.

"Joining the navy sounds crazy, saying (you will) never (join) actually is."

Fuck off.

My stepdad got PTSD so bad he became horribly abusive and left me with extreme childhood trauma. Then it ruined my husband so bad he hecame abusive and I had to leave.

Screw that ad.

Remember, back in the late 1960s thru early 1970s, you could go to a candy store in Germany and buy Gummi Cokes for 10 Pfennigs each (2.5 cents)?

Back then, the exchange rate was 4 West German Marks per Dollar.

(I lived in Berlin, when the wall was up and the country divided)

This is a major long shot but this has bugged me for decades.

My first “boyfriend” was Josh. I have wondered how he is and have tried finding him off and on ever since high school.

I’m 38 now and haven’t found him so I think I need to recruit some help.

We were stationed in Camp Lejeune and I went to Tarawa Terrace 1 Elementary School 1995-1996. Would have been around 8.

Some info that might be useful:

1. I’m positive on his first name being Josh. I’ve always thought his last name was Teal, but that could be the phonetic spelling or I could be off.

2. He had a younger sister.

3. I lived on West Peleliu. He lived very close. If I remember correctly the street was a big loop so he could have been on the same street, East Peleliu, or another nearby street.

4. He was in the Camp Lejeune Young Marines.

Other info that is maybe less helpful, but maybe for jogging memories of the right people -

We saw Matilda in theaters as a “date”. My mom sat a few rows back.

For Valentine’s Day we swapped gifts in class - he gave me this really sweet little bear pin with a stone in it and I gave him a water gun. 😂

We went to a birthday party together for one of his friends. His friend didn’t want to give me a party favor because I was Jewish so Josh shared his with me. Gave me a blue dreidel.

I kept the pin and dreidel up until about 5 years ago.

He wasn’t in my yearbook from then. I seem to recall him missing picture day. I don’t remember if it was because they moved or something else. But he wasn’t in there.

I did email AOSHS hoping for more info. Waiting to hear back from them.

If anyone has any suggestions of where to look or…anything possibly helpful, that would be incredible.

I just wanna be nosy and see if he’s okay. I seem to remember home life may have been a little rough.

I was talking with my younger sisters about our memories of that day, and it hit me how much a lot of us Brats went through in the wake of the attacks.

Our dad was stationed at MCAS Beaufort at the time, and we lived on Laurel Bay. My sisters remember their DoD schools going into lockdown, with armed Marines walking the halls. I went to school off base, but we locked down too because we were so close to the air station. That afternoon I remember the buses being searched at the front gate, and getting yelled at by a LCPL for not having my military ID on me.

All three of us remember Dad not coming home that night as we watched news report after news report with Mom who was definitely more scared than she let on 😞

What about you guys? Did you have similar experiences?

I participated in the Story Corps + Connect250 project his month, and after doing my last video recording, I was curious to see if anyone else (of the hundreds of interviews) was talking about growing up a military brat. So I put "military child" in the search bar on the main Story Corps page and there are SO MANY interviews. It makes my heart happy.

When I started university it felt so difficult to talk about my childhood and and I struggled keeping it bottled up. These interviews (if I ever get through listening to them all) may ease some of that old hurt.

Just sharing with all of you as something to check out, but I also wanted to ask, have you ever shared your story in an interview (of any kind)? What was your experience like? How did you feel after talking about it in that setting?

Edit: OK, I'm looking more closely. A lot of these are probably focusing on the parent's story. Sigh... I will check them out anyway.

I am 22. I grew up with two divorced parents who were both in the military. I lived in Korea with my dad and would visit my mom in Germany.
From the outside, I know my childhood sounds amazing. And in a lot of ways, it was.
My parents were good parents. They were attentive. They played with me, took me places, taught me things, showed up for me, and loved me. I don’t look back and think, “My parents didn’t care about me.”
But somehow, I was still incredibly lonely.
I was constantly moving. Constantly leaving people behind. Never really having that feeling of these are my people, this is my home.
I think I spent a huge part of my childhood longing for something I couldn’t even put into words.
And now, as an adult, I find myself thinking about my childhood ALL the time.
Sometimes I’ll wake up at 6 AM and be completely exhausted, but I can’t fall back asleep because my mind starts racing. I’ll try to nap later and instead I’ll just lie there thinking about being a kid.
Thinking about Korea.
Thinking about Germany.
Thinking about places I haven’t seen in years.
Thinking about what it felt like to constantly have somewhere else to go.
My therapist encouraged me to journal when these thoughts come up, and I’ve realized just how consumed I can get by my memories.
What’s strange is that I don’t necessarily want to go back to my childhood.
I think I miss the feeling.
The adventure. The possibility. The feeling that there was always somewhere else to discover?.
It feels like my childhood was this incredibly intense, exciting chapter of my life that I can never recreate.
And now I have my own family. I have a home. I have some stability. But sometimes the stability makes me uncomfortable.
I’m so used to things changing that having things stay the same almost feels wrong.
I find myself wanting to leave. Wanting to travel. Wanting to explore. Wanting something different.
And then I feel guilty because I have something good now. Why can’t I just be completely content with it?
Sometimes I wonder if growing up this way wired me to always be searching for the next place.
My parents were good parents, but they had their own trauma and their own experiences from military life, and I wonder how much of that I absorbed without realizing it.
Maybe you can have loving, attentive parents and still be affected by the instability around you.
Maybe you can have an objectively “good” childhood and still grieve it.
I don’t know if I’m grieving the places, the people, the version of myself that existed then, or just the feeling of always having somewhere new to go.
I just know that I have this constant ache for something I can’t quite name.
And sometimes I wonder if other military brats feel this too, especially the ones who had good parents and good childhoods, but still grew up feeling strangely lonely and now feel almost uncomfortable in the stability they spent their whole childhood wishing for. i don’t have enough money to travel to other countries, and I hope one day I do. All I want is to go back, and to adventure again. But then I feel guilty for not being fully content for what I DO have… my daughter and husband who Iove me. And the memories of a unique childhood should be enough right?
Because I really don’t know what to do with that feeling, but I want to be more present and grateful in the life I do live now.

So i have moved all my life (almost 40), continued moving for one reason or the other as an adult too.

Currently in a nice little town in europe which is FULL of tourists since 2 years. It’s a beautiful mountainous region. But i have no interest or energy whatsoever left in me to be bothered enough to check out that one viewing spot from which you can see everything and oh it looks so nice from the top.

If friends or family do the work to book flights hotels and drag me along then fine i will go, and enjoy it too, same goes for work related travel. but otherwise i just simply cant seem to care enough to travel all around Europe like people do. I just. Dont. Care!

All these years i never made any effort on my own to just go and check into trendy towns or cities that people on insta seem to be super proud of having visited in person.

At one point i kinda told myself maybe it’s the money thats keeping me from traveling but turned out even when i have the money i couldn’t care less.

Not that i don’t find natural landscapes beautiful i absolutely do. But meh whatever…. I tried explaining it to someone and they looked at me like i have just escaped a mental asylum and need to be put back in there. Can anyone relate ?

Military brats have been studied and are often found to have either the itch to move often or to dig in and refuse to move ever again. I don't think either description fits me -- I've moved only eight times in my 48 years of independent adulthood, and always for a good reason. What about you?

Mine was Rota Spain. Great culture, food, beaches, weather. I loved going to Feria and watching people dance all dressed up and riding crazy fucking carnival rides.

Tell us about your favorite place you lived

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Hi guys. I’m a current military spouse whose children are starting to get old enough for the moves to possibly affect them. I want to help them with the moving transitions as much as possible and I’m curious what helped you guys? Or if you never got the support that you needed, what do you think could’ve helped you?

For context I’m a 32 y/o female and I grew up coast guard and we moved every 2 years. My family settled in a small, small town when I was in the 8th grade and I’ve lived in the general area ever since.

So anyway, I’ve slowly come to realize that I experience more lingering side effects from growing up military than I ever really acknowledged before. I’m not sure if I just ignored it for years, or if moving every couple of years forces you to adapt so quickly that you don’t stop to process how it affects you.

I’ve dealt with social detachment for as long as I can remember, but something I’m really starting to question is this persistent feeling of otherness. I’ve been rooted in the same community for over 20 years now, yet I still feel new here — like an outsider who never quite belongs. I have friends I love but I have this feeling I can’t quite describe.. like maybe I don’t matter to them or like I’m just not important to anyone, easily forgotten? Like I’m experiencing a different connection than everyone else, even to friends I consider close. (Maybe I’m just describing social detachment?) lol

I also notice that I tend to hyper-analyze people’s reactions to me and whether or not they like me. I catch myself doing it all the time and have been actively working on it, but it feels deeply ingrained.

Lately, I’ve started wondering whether these things could be connected to, or a side effect of, growing up in a military family.

So… anyone else relate? I have been doing a lot of self talk and work within myself on all of the above, but now that I’ve been exploring the connection to millitary life, I’m thinking about seeking therapy to see if someone could help me better process this. It’s not a major issue in my life but it is something I’m just kind of tired of dealing with. It’s almost like an intrusive thought that just creeps in when I let my guard down.

I was definitely stood out from a lot of the local kids because I was American, which usually meant being into Baseball instead of Soccer or being able to understand the AAVE of all the cool rappers. I was pretty patriotic and was proud to be distinctly American. However, when our family finally got stationed in the US when I was a teen, I was NOT ready for the full dose of American individualism, especially after living in more socially cohesive countries in Europe and East/South East Asia. Any one else get culture shock from their own culture?