Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Vol 54(4), Aug 2023, 295-304; doi:10.1037/pro0000507
When clients with a background in the military or policing are asked what brought them to treatment, they often reference a desire to improve relationships damaged by service-related changes in their interpersonal functioning. These changes frequently involve a more distant, irritable, sometimes explosive style, and by the time people come for help, they often describe feeling hopelessly stuck in their current interaction patterns. Clinicians and their military and police clientele would benefit from a broad, intuitively accessible framework for conceptualizing the nature, functions, and persistence of interpersonal changes resulting from lengthy exposure to high-stress operational environments—a framework that clarifies and helps explain interpersonal patterns while stimulating feelings of hope and agency regarding possibilities for change. In this pilot study, an interview-based study conducted with a small (n = 15) group of male service personnel living with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), we explore the clinical utility of using interpersonal circumplex theory (IPC; e.g., Carson, 1969; Kiesler, 1983) for this purpose. Participants were given a brief overview of IPC and asked about their characteristic interpersonal styles before, during, and after exposure to high-intensity operational environments. Interviews explored the perceived functions of stylistic shifts on deployment, as well as factors interfering with a return to predeployment interpersonal functioning. Practical implications for the treatment of operational stress and trauma are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)