Building Our Resilience
This blog post is associated with episode eight of the podcast with Enoch Weng about his journey with resilience.
My favourite analogy to use is that mental health is a muscle. Another way to picture mental health is to see it as elastic bands. They’re flexible, durable, strong, and come in different sizes. However, stretched too thin and they can snap. With mental health, it’s important to incorporate rest days, giving ourselves some space to recover so we can bounce back and grow. One of the most common themes that come with any type of hardship is resilience, or the ability to cope and heal after a difficult situation. Resilience is defined as the ability to withstand adversity and bounce back and grow despite the challenges.
Dr. Ken Ginsberg developed the seven Cs of resilience, which include learning competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping, and control. All of these aspects play a role in how we learn and grow from a challenging situation. Below is a brief outline of what each of the Cs refers to relative to resilience:
While there might be times we feel inadequate and incapable, this brings me back to reframing our thoughts and imposter syndrome. It might seem like we’re at the end of the rope but reminding ourselves that it’s okay not to be okay is perfectly fine. Take a deep breath, reevaluate the situation, seek help, and go with the flow. You’ve got this.
This is similar to competence. We’re often our own worst critics and it can be hard to feel confident about our abilities. When I’m feeling this way, I actively tell myself that we all start from somewhere and rather than seeing myself as incapable, I become excited about the opportunity to learn something new and to grow (which is not easy and usually frustrating).
When was the last time you checked in with yourself? With your physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and social health and care? Self-reflection is a wonderful (and sometimes challenging) opportunity to touch base with how you’re doing and the relationships in your life.
Character ties in with resilience because our values and traits influence the way we cope, learn, and grow with situations. Going back to my analogy of resilience is a muscle, the more experiences we go through and train our muscles to strengthen, the better we get at bouncing back. Every situation is different in severity but we become more equipped with the tools to work through the challenge.
This ties in with our spiritual self-care and finding a purpose or meaning in a situation. It doesn’t mean volunteering for multiple organizations or doing acts of kindness for everyone. Instead, what can you do in your capacity to give back? This could be calling someone while going on a walk to check-in or help to tidy up an area that has been neglected in your home.
Therapists spend a good chunk of time working with clients on developing healthy coping mechanisms. If you’re having a bad day, having an entire tub of ice cream might make you feel better in the short term, but you’re likely to beat yourself up or feel sluggish after consuming so much sugar and dairy. The keyword here is healthy and that could look like having a small bowl of ice cream then going on a walk while listening to a podcast to distract myself and destress. It could be taking a nap or watching an episode of your favourite show. We sometimes give ourselves an excuse to do whatever we want just because we’re having a bad day. I’d like to challenge you on building healthy coping mechanisms to tap into when you’re facing challenging situations.
Feeling in control or having power over a situation can help someone feel secure. Conversely, if things are out of our control, we might feel lost, helpless, and ultimately, incapable. More often than not, we blur the lines between what we can control and what we cannot control. One tool in cognitive behavioural therapy is examining the evidence for and evidence against something.
Here’s an example: Imagine you are setting up a virtual movie night with your friends. You send out an invitation to 10 people but only three people show up. You automatically think that people don’t care about you or they don’t like you.
Evidence for that thought: people did not show up to the movie night
Evidence against that thought: people are busy and have other plans, they might not like the movie, they do not like virtual movie nights
You’ll see here that the evidence for the thought is quite weak and has no indication of whether or not someone likes you. It’s also out of our control if someone has plans or enjoys movie nights. What we were able to control is that we set up a virtual hang out and you can still have fun with three friends!
In the podcast, Enoch and I spend a great deal of the episode discussing how we can get out of this ‘self-pity’ mindset and thinking that everything and everyone is against us when we’re feeling low. One practice that comes to mind is approaching the situation as a friend. If a friend told you about the same situation, how would you respond to your friend? This is an opportunity to practice self-compassion and letting yourself know that it’s okay to have an off day. It’s okay to feel defeated and discouraged. But, the next question is important, what can you do to cope in a healthy way? What can you do to grow from this? You don’t have to have an answer right away or solve your problems instantly. However, this is a chance for you to grow that resilience muscle.
In her TEDTalk, Angela Lee Duckworth talks about the power of grit and how perseverance of effort with passion can guide us through difficult times and situations. Resilience is also a characteristic of grit, and those who constantly work on how they recover from these moments tend to be more optimistic.
It’s definitely a lot easier said than done to bounce back from a situation and the last thing we might think about is how to grow from a tough moment. When you’re actively working on building your resilience muscle, you could try the following:
You’ve got this!
