In fact, Dr. Christiane Routhier, a psychologist, was freed from all her other duties in order to be able to work full-time on the Resiliency Training Program, or RTP. This program is much more extensive than a mere three hours on PTSD. Obviously, it deals with operational stress. It also addresses terrorist tactics. What's extremely interesting about this program is that in order to get the soldiers to take it more seriously, we present stress as a combat weapon. This is an extremely interesting concept that was developed by Dr. Routhier so that soldiers would see that this is a weapon used against them, that it can cause damage and that it is very subtle. Symptoms of their injury may occur several months after their return here. Nevertheless, it is a weapon and it is the cornerstone of terrorism. Furthermore, it is a war of fear. They will scare you and you will be afraid: this is basically what we tell them. We tell them what fear is, what psychological stress is but also what physiological stress is. We give them the tools to minimize their anxiety and to learn to breathe better and even techniques to slow down their heart rate.
We normalize stress, which is also extremely important. We do not tell them that they won't be afraid, that everything is going to be fine, that they're trained and that everything will be great. We could tell them that but we also tell them that it's normal to experience stress, that they will experience stress. After we name it, we tell them how to deal with this stress. That's what we teach them.