Resilience
In order to be or become resilient, you must have experienced down times. You can’t rebound if you haven’t fallen in the first place
American Psychiatrist Peter Kramer said that the opposite of depression is not happiness, but resilience. In our everyday usage, resilience means to bounce back, which is actually the true (in terms of etymology) meaning of the word. Resilience comes from the Latin words meaning to rebound, or to jump/ leap back up. Following this definition, in order to be or become resilient you must have experienced down times. You can’t rebound if you haven’t fallen in the first place. So the number 1 condition in being resilient is to have faced adversity of some sort and come back from it, either to match others who never faced the same issues, or maybe even to do better.
Resilience is a bit like having a trampoline to break your fall when you need to exit a burning building. If you have nothing to fall on, you will hit the ground really hard, if you fall onto a big pillow you won’t hurt yourself so much but it will be hard to get up on your own. With a trampoline you will experience the fall and then bounce back again (hopefully up and out of danger). Falling to the ground without any protection is what we do when we don’t know how painful it is to hit the ground. It is a totally normal and natural thing to happen, especially when we are growing up. The trouble is when we do it over and over again and feel so battered and bruised that the only thing you can do is crawl. People who fall with a pillow are those who have learnt some coping strategies, although some of these may be better than others. For instance, using social support to help get you out of a bad situation can be really adaptive, drinking too much or avoiding problems can be really destructive.
Doesn’t it seem like some people just take difficulty in their stride, that it doesn’t affect them at all? Most of the time this isn’t because they don’t feel the sensation of falling, but rather because they have built themselves a personal trampoline. It is all well and good to say if you fall you have to get back up – but how?
First of all resilience is ordinary, no one is born a “resilient” person, resilience involves behaviours, feelings and thoughts that are learned. This means that it doesn’t matter who you are, you can learn to bounce back. The trick is to start off small and then generalise your behaviours to other areas of your life. For instance, when someone points out something you have done wrong – how do you react? You could feel really down, get angry, try to get revenge, but all of these responses will emotionally spill out in other areas of your life (like physical health and relationships). The trick is to let yourself feel, and then put those feelings into perspective. Allow whatever bad thing, whether it be big or small, to have its place in your life. Do not deny, avoid, minimise, maximise… just give it a place. This won’t feel good, it will be painful, but this is the hard part.
The next step is recovery, which is followed by growth.
Resilience doesn’t mean getting over things really quickly, it means processing adversity in an adaptive way. Although I would like to give easy solutions to get there, it is a journey. The best ingredients you can have to encourage the bounce back are hope, a strong sense of self, and a deep understanding of meaning in your life.
If you want to know more about resilience research or are interested in a self-assessment, get in touch.
– Jaimee