Centering the Unseen: The Caregiver's Side of Military Transition

Itzel Yagual, PhD(c)
Mar 31
4 min read

Content Note:

This edition speaks openly about the lived experience of caregiving for a combat veteran, including references to PTSD, emotional dysregulation, and the psychological impact of military service on families. Please read at a pace that feels safe for you. If you are in crisis or need immediate support, the Veterans Crisis Line is available 24/7 — call 988 and press 1, text 838255, or chat at VeteransCrisisLine.net.

A Seat at the Table

This week, I have the privilege of joining a panel on Veteran Leadership — a conversation centering on the structural and personal challenges that transitioning military members encounter as they re-enter the civilian workforce, and the pathways toward meaningful support. My contribution to that conversation comes from a particular vantage point: that of a caregiver, a spouse, and a military family member. It is an honor — and a deeply vulnerable one — to bring this perspective into a space that so rarely makes room for it. A part of my experience that has long existed in the margins is finally being invited to the center. I am not here as a clinician or a provider. I am here as someone who has lived this — and continues to.

Two Tracks, One Journey

Transition, when you are partnered with a combat veteran, is never a singular event — it is a prolonged, layered process that unfolds on two simultaneous tracks. When a service member returns home, they may still be neurologically and psychologically operating in a combat state: hypervigilant, perpetually scanning for threat, disrupted in sleep, and destabilized by the unpredictability of civilian life. The degree of difficulty in reintegration varies widely, particularly for those who have spent extended periods deployed in active combat zones. Therapeutic intervention and peer-based veteran communities can offer meaningful scaffolding during this time. But the conversation I am most compelled to have — the one that remains persistently underexplored — is about the other person navigating that same transition: the caregiver.

Living It From the Inside

Through my work alongside the Vet Center, my daughter and I were supported in developing a framework for understanding what my husband was experiencing psychologically. What I witnessed from the outside — the emotional dysregulation, the irritability, the profound disruption to sleep — was, at times, overwhelming to hold. And without a clear understanding of what was unfolding within him, I, too, was quietly suffering. His world had been irrevocably altered, and he was now navigating entirely unfamiliar terrain — and so was I. With the support of therapy and other resources, my husband made meaningful progress. My own struggle, however, persisted — not for lack of effort, but because the systems designed to support military families were not designed with the caregiver's interior life in mind. The infrastructure that exists largely positions caregivers as functional supports for the veteran — present, stable, available. What it does not adequately address is who is holding the caregiver: their grief, their disorientation, their identity, their needs.

The Transition No One Labels Explicitly

There is considerably more to understand about how caregivers experience the caregiving journey in its totality — beginning with the moment of return and extending far beyond it. It is not only the service member who is in transition. The partner, the family member, the friend who receives them is also in a process of profound renegotiation — relearning who their loved one is, reconciling who they expected them to be, and quietly reconfiguring their own sense of self in response. That is a transition. It deserves to be named as one.

Building the Research that Should Already Exist

I carry this lived reality as a designated caregiver of thirteen years. I also serve as a behavioral research consultant and PhD candidate in Industrial-Organizational Psychology — a scholar whose work centers on how systems are constructed, who they serve, and, critically, who they render invisible. My interest in human behavior, decision-making, and the structures that shape both has led me to a research focus that I believe is long overdue: the interior experience of caregivers supporting combat veterans with PTSD, and what it would mean to build systems that genuinely meet their needs. The work I am developing is not about optimizing care for veterans. It is about recognizing the full humanity of the person beneath the caregiver role — their aspirations, their losses, their right to thrive. That body of research does not yet exist in any meaningful form. I intend to build it.

Your Truth is Enough

If you are a designated veteran caregiver, your insight is not only welcome — it is essential. This research exists because your experience matters, in its full complexity and without judgment. Participation is completely anonymous. You do not need to present a polished or composed version of yourself. You only need to be honest. Your truth is enough.

If this resonates with you — if you have ever felt unseen in your role, if you have ever wondered whether your experience counts as something worth studying — it does. This research is for you, and it begins with your voice.