[ad_1]
The term flexibility can be confusing. Does it mean staying calm when facing stress? Bouncing back quickly? Growing from adversity? Is resilience an attitude, a character trait or a skill set? And could misconceptions about resilience harm people rather than help? To summarize it in one sentence: Resilience is the ability to manage stress in effective ways. It is not a fixed quality or characteristic you are born with, or a choice of attitude. (Also read: Four aspects of emotional intelligence)
Instead, it is a set of skills that can be developed by repeating specific behaviors.
As a clinical psychologist, researcher, and teacher specializing in training people to deal with stress more effectively, I know that resilience can be developed.
But like physical fitness, you can’t get strong abs just by wishing for it. Instead, you have to repeat specific exercises that strengthen your abs; This will not work with mere intention.
Developing resilience is much the same. Like physical fitness, flexibility is not a single quality, but rather has multiple elements that contribute differently to different strengths and conditions. For example, a person may handle relationship issues well but be unable to deal with the stress of a traffic jam.
Some of the building blocks of resilience are factors that are largely beyond one’s control, such as having high income and education and a supportive environment.
There are some things you can do in your daily life, like exercise, hobbies and activities, and getting enough sleep. Other aspects may take more time to develop, such as nurturing supportive relationships, building skills to tolerate distress and regulate emotions, meditating, incorporating spirituality or religion, and being less self-critical and Practicing more self-compassion.
Resilience can be developed
Misconceptions about resilience pervade not only the scientific literature and mental health perspectives but also popular culture. The idea that difficult experiences make someone resilient is wrong, or at least incomplete.
During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, I heard people claim that “kids are resilient.”
However, one of the largest research investigations into difficult childhood experiences, the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, which was conducted with over 17,000 adults at Kaiser Permanente in the 1990s, established that experiences in childhood The cumulative stress incurred impairs both mental and physical health. It was also found that greater stress predicted worse outcomes.
What really helped people become more resilient during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Studies show that the same building blocks mentioned above helped people cope with the pandemic with better well-being. Many of these building blocks also improve people’s outcomes after other stressful experiences such as unemployment, cancer, divorce, and exposure to violence.
All this says that resilience can flourish by engaging in specific behaviors and creating healthy environments. People often assume that it is best to remain relatively unaffected by stress – that is, to get rid of it quickly.
This can happen in many cases. If you forget an important meeting, for example, “Oh no!” Answer of. I will have to apologize immediately and reschedule” is probably better than punching a wall or concluding that you are a terrible person.
But what if a relationship ends? Is it always best to get over it quickly, or can a longer process of reflection and healing lead to deeper learning and growth? What appears to be resilience may be suppressing, numbing, or hiding emotions. Those tendencies are linked to worse mental health.
This is why the concept of resilience is somewhat nuanced; Some people who seem resilient are simply hiding, or coping in unhealthy ways – such as using alcohol to deal with difficult emotions.
Sometimes painful feelings or experiences contribute to personal growth. Post-traumatic growth refers to the positive changes that some people report after trauma, especially when they incorporate some of the resilience “building blocks” listed above.
This includes better relationships, greater appreciation of life, and increased spiritual or philosophical understanding. Rather than expecting yourself to always feel good or to bounce back quickly, it may be wise to allow yourself to experience deep challenging emotions and personal growth in certain situations.
Flexibility is not always the answer
Resilience is more complex than being mentally tough or not letting things get to you. Putting pressure on yourself to appear okay when you’re not – also known as emotional perfectionism – can make things worse and keep you from asking for support.
Sometimes, it is a healthy choice to adapt to stressful environments, such as a job or living situation, rather than changing them.
This is why flexibility can be a loaded word. Although coping with challenges has its place, for trauma survivors, people who have experienced racism or homophobia, or those living in areas particularly affected by climate change, and many others, resilience fails. The term comes across as tacit acceptance of the status quo rather than demanding accountability from those involved or working to reduce sources of stress.
Overemphasizing resilience can reinforce racial injustice by suggesting that those who are subjected to it are resilient enough to handle it. Wearing a mask of resilience or smiling can increase the burden of racism, making resilience exhausting. Constantly adapting to microaggressions and other forms of racism takes a mental and physical toll, coming at a cost to resilience to racism.
A one-size-fits-all approach to resilience doesn’t work for every person and problem. But most of us can benefit from developing some of the basic elements of resilience, such as supportive relationships, physical exercise, and self-compassion.
Becoming more flexible is a process. We can benefit from working on the building blocks of our own personal resilience and from initiatives in schools, workplaces and other environments that promote resilience more broadly.
The number of factors affecting flexibility may seem daunting. The good thing is that you can choose from many effective ways to build resilience to determine the approach that best suits you.
[ad_2]
