FORT LEAVENWORTH, Kansas — The Exceptional Family Member Program and the R2 (Ready and Resilient) Performance Center have teamed up to offer resiliency training to the community, with the first class of the four-part program kicking off Sept. 17, 2025, at the Resiliency Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Instructor Joe Stonecypher, R2 performance expert, said resiliency involves being able to handle and fight through adversity, as well as being able to learn and grow from a setback in order to thrive.
“I think so many people think, ‘Oh, it's about bouncing back to normal.’ No, it's about how can you roll with what is happening and come out the other side, maybe bruised, but stronger,” he said. “How can you learn from setback? How can you take lessons from things? Life is going to happen, but you need to be able to take those calculated risks. You need to be able to have that confidence, and I think, ultimately, the training is about how you provide people with the skills that they need in order to be able to bounce back from those setbacks, being able to learn, grow and thrive.”
EFMP Systems Navigator Ursula Chapman said EFMP sponsored the training to support EFMP families, but that the sessions are open to all members of the community.
“I think resiliency is applicable to everyone,” she said, noting that she believes resiliency applies to every person of every age, gender and stage in life. “EFMP sponsored (the training) because the (EFMP) population is working with a family member who has unique medical needs or unique educational needs… They cope with all of the things we all do daily, but there is an added layer.”
Chapman added that resiliency involves daily coping skills, including self-regulation of emotions, and sometimes EFMP families have children or other members who are not able to self-regulate, which can add stressors and challenges.
The first session of the training introduced the concept of “detecting icebergs” — recognizing how underlying beliefs can affect a person’s emotions and responses. Chapman gave a few examples, including how parents who might feel they need to do everything for their exceptional family member could make that family member feel he/she can’t do things on his/her own. Conversely, the parent might go to the other extreme of not believing in the diagnosis, expecting him/her to “buck up” and denying that family member resources.
Program attendee Sgt. Anthony Santos, resource manager with the Religious Support Office, said he took advantage of the training for multiple reasons.
“I do have a family member that has a chronic illness, so I was thinking, when I saw that (flyer), … this might be resilience for myself, how to get up, keep going with this person, with the challenge, because sometimes it is hard, it's very hard,” Santos said. “I noticed that other people, that when they give up, I try to understand, like, why though? Don't you love that person? Isn't that person your blood? But then when I was thinking (about) this course, I was like, I have not given up yet, but … one day I will give up — it's just inevitable. … How will I be resilient for myself and that other individual?”
Stonecypher said the training is designed to provide skills to help people recover from or even prevent that breaking point.
“Everybody is going to reach a breaking point at some point — happens to every person on the planet,” Stonecypher said. “Being able to have a set of skills that when that moment comes, it doesn't happen — you're able to fall back on things to keep pushing through. You can rely on yourself, you can also rely on people around you, but you don't want those moments to come up that it shatters you… You need to have a set of skills where you're able to deal with that punishment and recover and heal and be able to kind of negate that. These are protective factors, that's what these skills are.”
Santos said he thought the class provided tools that he could also use to help his “brothers and sisters” in his extended military family.
“I actually know a couple (of soldiers) that I don't think (are) resilient, but I think doing this course, hopefully they come, but I can help them… This course is really, overall, to learn to just keep going and never give up.”
During the class, Stonecypher introduced the ATC model, an acronym for one of the core competencies for building mental toughness that stands for “A” activating event, the resulting “T” thoughts and the “C” consequences of associated emotions and actions. He said that self-awareness, the ability to tune into what is going on in one’s head, is necessary to control thinking, identify patterns in thinking, and check that thinking for accuracy.
He said the activating event could be anything, internal or external, good or bad, that triggers the brain to begin interpreting an event. Those interpreting thoughts then drive emotions and reactions, which can include behaviors, as well as one’s physical state, such as increased heartrate.
Stonecypher said the ATC model developed from the human storytelling response to stimulus of trying to understand one’s thoughts. His slides focused on deconstructing ATC and recognizing patterns in thinking to increase strength and performance.
“Being able to look over time is really beneficial because you can start to see these waves, these trends in our emotions and the types of thinking that we're having, and in the actions,” Stonecypher said. “While it's good to be able to tune into these things and look over time, we do want to be able to dig down under the surface and see … what are some of these deeper ideas that I have that are actually driving the way that I think, the way that I view the world, the way I view myself. And it's not just in the way that we think; it's the way that we're interacting. It's the beliefs that we have about other people, beliefs that we have about the world… It is constantly trying to explain what's going on; it's constantly telling us a story... We think about it, we tell ourselves a story about what it means, and then those thoughts drive us to feel and do things.”
The resiliency training, based on the Master Resilience Training program, continues at 5 p.m. Oct. 15, 2025, in room 157 of the Resiliency Center, followed by two more sessions Nov. 19, 2025, and Jan. 21, 2026. Each class builds on the last session, but anyone interested can drop in on one or all of the sessions. The training is geared toward adults and teenagers 14 and older. To register or for more information, call 520-684-3838 or 520-692-6363.
For more information on the R2 Performance Center, call 913-684-1786. The center, located at 626 McClellan Ave. in Root Hall, offers unit and individualized training, an escape room team-building activity and more.
For more information on the Exceptional Family Member Program, visit https://leavenworth.armymwr.com/programs/exceptional-family-member-program-ft-leavenworth.
Social Sharing