Emotional Resilience is something that has become near and dear to my recovery process! What is it exactly? I like to think of it as the ability to bounce back from difficult times in life. Resilience comes from the lessons and experiences we've gone through, helping us grow as we face difficulties throughout recovery and our lives.
Why is resilience important? The more resilient you are, the more capable you are in facing, overcoming, and strengthening the challenges you face. Resilience doesn’t make the problems any less real or existent but in my case, has helped me cope, adjust, and stay on track during recovery. Below are some of the top characteristics resilient people share.
Support network
Having a solid support system is a very important part of resilience and could include parents, friends, relatives, teachers, etc. These people in your support system should give you understanding, guidance, and comfort when you’re struggling. *Also incredibly important during the initial stages of the healing process
Give back
Giving back via your time or talents allows you to take off the focus from your problems and expand your problem-solving abilities. Some things to suggest:
- Keeping up your commitments to yourself, family, friends, or a commitment to a cause.
- Take up volunteering with an organization.
- Provide a skill or talent to someone in need
Throughout recovery understand that giving back can also mean to yourself. Resilient people avoid feeling sorry for themselves - taking good care of your health or doing something nice for yourself are soothing ways to take the focus off stressful emotions- especially as you try to navigate through this new phase of life.
Don't give in
Resilient people learn to accept emotional pain and stress as part of life – they don’t allow their difficulties to define them. recognize your feelings, acknowledge the problems that are arising, and believe you have the strength to maintain emotional balance.
Accept change
This is by far one of the most difficult for me- throughout the beginning of my recovery, change was difficult. It takes practice to accept the fact that some things change but accepting these things is a basic part of resilience.
I get it, when your goals, plans, ideas, or hopes are crushed because of circumstances, injuries, or recovery, it's difficult to accept these things, grieve these changes and look ahead. But, If you accept the things you can’t change or control, you’re free to put your effort into the things you can change and control.
Choose your attitude
Most of the time, you don’t get to choose the obstacles and difficulties that life puts in your path, but you get to choose your attitude toward adversity. During hard times, it’s helpful to find something positive to think about. Even if you don’t have all the answers and even if the solution to your problems isn't obvious, you can choose to believe that things will work out and can tell yourself that your problems are manageable. You can choose to see yourself as a fighter, not a victim.
Keep it in perspective
When a resilient person faces adversity, they’re likely to avoid making things worse by jumping to extremes – understand that things can’t be perfect and they have realistic expectations of themselves and what they can achieve. This will look different during every step of recovery.
Humor
It's true what they say, “laughter is the best medicine." if you are able to laugh at yourself and laugh with others, you will lighten your emotional load your brain is trying to work through and process. Laughter and humor are wonderful ways to connect to others and to release the feeling of stress that adversity causes you. Fun fact- Laughter changes your body’s response to stress.
If I were to tell you that this mindset was easy, I'd be lying and we will all have those days when it isn't possible and everything feels so overwhelming. But in learning how to best keep your emotions in check allows more space for your brain to focus on what it needs to, to better recover.
