What does it mean to have resilience and how do resilient people think?
A Fearful Phone Call
Last night, after an evening of martial arts training, I noticed a missed call and voice mail from my ten-year-old, searching for reassurance I was okay. She was having ruminating thoughts that something might happen or has happened to me. Not the first time I have received those calls, like many of us parents. Humans have vivid imaginations, and we can be wrecked by fear if we get hijacked.
Memories of My Own Childhood
It brings back memories of my own childhood and the fear of losing my own mom as a kid and how I could not imagine a life without her. Looking back, I know I spent a lot of time in anxious, ruminating thoughts fearing one day I may be taken over by debilitating emotional pain, that would leave me broken forever. Thankfully my mom is a healthy 83 and alive and well, but fear is real and we all have them.
The Human Brain Loves Certainty
Over the years I have had thousands of conversations with people both causally and professionally and one thing I notice is the human brain loves certainty, and people are naturally fearful of pain. Humans are however, full of curiosity and with curiosity comes the need for new experiences and challenges which means uncertainty and the potential for failure, loss and pain.
How Do I Manage My Anxious Mind?
So, then the question becomes, without a crystal ball to solidify certainty:
- How do I manage my anxious mind?
- How much does mindset play a part in the manifestation of my outcomes?
One question I often ask is:
- Do I believe that I can overcome absolutely anything?
When I think of resilience, and what it means to be a resilient person, one question I pose is how comfortable can I be being uncomfortable?
Let’s dive a bit deeper into resilience and explore how we can use it to navigate uncertainty and fears.
How Do Resilient People Think?
Being resilient is about adapting and coping with stressful, adverse events while maintaining an overall sense of well-being. It is learning how to overcome challenges, adapting to change, maintaining a sound mental health and creating emotional stability, during times of uncertainty. Resilience is about using our experiences to learn, develop, and become stronger.
A Different Mindset
I have noticed a different mindset with resilient people vs people who perpetually feel the universe is out to get them and/or believing something in the universe will rescue them. Resilient people however don’t view the world this way, rather recognize that “shit happens” and that tragedy, pain and adversity do not discriminate, and pain and suffering will inevitably affect every single one of us throughout our lifetime, recognizing that the longer we live the more pain we will experience both emotionally and physically. We will be hurt and we will hurt others. At the end of the day, being a human is hard, no matter what age we are.
Resilient Can Still Mean Oppressed
It is worth mentioning that some of the most resilient people are those who are oppressed. While pain in itself does not discriminate, oppressors certainly do and can inflict tremendous pain on self and others.
Resilience is however, built from pain. It is built from circumstances, failures and mistakes. Resilience is about adapting to negative change and working to recover as quickly as possible.
Change in general is a challenge. Afterall, it is much easier to adapt to positive change rather than negative change. I would even go so far as to say that often we don’t even notice when good things happen, yet we sure notice when “bad” happens. We are hard wired to notice the negative before the positive, it is part of survival. Do you notice the T-Rex in the field or the flowers?
Rooted In Survival
We are fundamentally rooted in survival. Every action of every day is based on survival. When we feel threatened, by an actual threat or a perceived threat, we activate the stress response which is our body’s natural reaction to a stressor, often referred to as the “fight-or-flight” response. It’s a survival mechanism that prepares our body to either confront or flee from danger. While it saves us, it can also activate too often and for too long causing extreme stress on the body and maybe even death. Short term stress can be helpful and can come with excitement, but long-term stress can be deadly. Being resilient is about noticing and being mindful of stress and working to stabilize the hormones and regularly complete the stress cycle.
Resilience is also about deciding where to put our attention. Focusing on what we can control and letting go of what we cannot control, as focusing on what we can’t control is an utter waste of time.
Resilience is about recognizing the difference between pain and suffering and that pain is inevitable, and suffering is a choice. We can stop suffering through acceptance. Once we accept, we can then begin to heal and move forward. You can accept and not agree, that’s important to recognize and sometimes it is hard to accept what we don’t want to be true, but that does not mean you agree. Life can be hard and unjust.
Resilience is about learning how to pull the pain closer, allowing it to be just as it is, without judgment or avoidance. Recognizing we cannot change the past, and cannot change the moment, but that we can certainly change the next moment.
At the end of the day, isn’t everything just an event, and it is the interpretation that we put on the event that defines whether it is good or bad? This is how the Stoics think.
Accepting the Negative
Resilience isn’t about ignoring the negative, rather accepting the negative and then noticing the good, especially during tough times. We want to be cautious not lose what we have, to what we have lost!
Resilient people work to find gratitude in the pain and realize that as we navigate the uncertainty and the unknown, we will have ultimately grown as a person. There is posttraumatic stress and then there is posttraumatic growth, which is the growth that comes after the trauma. It is adopting a growth mindset, recognizing that nothing in life is absolute and even in awful there is good.
Resiliency is about having gratitude for life, all of it, both the wonderful as well as the awful. I think we learn this through experience, not being told or taught. I recall times that I have struggled to find gratitude, especially when I am really hurting. I have had times in my life where I have lost empathy for myself and others. I’m smarter now and turn towards compassion and grace first, then work to sort out the turmoil in my head. I think when trauma and adversity hits, we can often wonder if we will ever again find happiness. So let’s see what the research says about happiness.
Happiness = Gratitude + Agency
Gratitude is just a fancy way of saying “to be thankful”.
Agency is the sense of control that we feel in our life. It is our capacity to influence our own thoughts and behavior, and to have faith in our ability to handle a wide range of tasks and situations.
With my depressed, anxious and traumatized patients, agency is often what is missing and what we work to build up.
I believe humans are in an evolutionary paradox. In one sense, we want to do things the most efficient and easy way (why walk 8 miles to kill a buffalo, when I can walk 1) but on the other hand, human are built to do hard things!
Think about it, as hunters and gathers, we walked on average 20,000 steps in a day just to survive. The elements used to kill us! But now, obesity, stress, addiction, sleep deprivation, and mental health disorders kill us. I think at times we forget that we need to force ourselves to do hard things in order to grow. Sometimes the hard things we take on in this lifetime are a choice, like running a marathon, confronting an abusive partner, atoning and accepting responsibility for our hurtful behavior. Other times though awful events are thrown at us, like losing a loved one, being in a terrible car accident, sexual assault, losing a home, a tragic break up. Pain happens, planned or not planned.
Physical & Emotional Pain
Let’s shift gears a bit and talk about pain (both physical and emotional), something many of us fear as I mentioned in the opening paragraph. Many of us try to avoid anything that will cause pain or even make us think of pain, however the body never lies, and trauma lives within the body (until we heal) and therefore avoidance doesn’t work. Look up the experiment “Don’t Think of the White Bear” by Fyodor Dostoevsky.
As a trauma informed therapist and ketamine assisted psychotherapist, we work to pull painful memories closer in treatment. We sit in the pain together, but with compassion, empathy and courage, opening new neural pathways and learning new ways to think. That is how we heal.
For the past two years, I have been jumping in cold water every day. While I am in no way comparing tragedy or chronic pain to cold plunges, I will say cold water has taught me a thing or two about pain and WOW does it feel like you are suffering when you are sitting in 45-degree water for ten minutes. Talk about mindfulness, focus and the release of the fight or flight response. Do I love this? My initial response is “YES, I love to jump in cold water”, but the answer is honestly probably “not particularly”. In all reality, I am cold and naturally want to pull my body away. In fact, I used to sit on the edge of the swimming pool for 20 min before jumping in the pool to swim laps as I hated the shock when I hit the cold water. What a wuss!
Love the Outcome & Results
So, in the moment, I probably don’t always love the pain of cold plunge and doing hard things, but I do love the outcomes, and I love the results of my hard work. And when I have survived the pain, I find gratitude. I know I can suffer and struggle both physically and emotionally and survive regardless. I can do hard things.
I wholeheartedly recognize that jumping in cold water is clearly not equivalent to losing a loved one, being rejected by the college of your dreams, going through a tough break up, or being diagnosed with a life-threatening disease. That would be silly to compare the two. But what I have learned through my own adversities (adversities beyond cold plunges of course), and managing the emotional and physical pain within myself, is that if we can learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable and try to allow the events to be just as they are, without judgment, work to emotionally and physically stabilize, eventually things may begin to neutralize, and we adapt, heal and grow.
We build resilience through pain. Humans are made to pivot, made to adapt, made to survive…
When we are not mindful, we are mindless. Keep in mind anxiety is not a mindful experience even though the symptoms of anxiety are present. Anxiety only resides when we are in the future or past.
Discipline, Courage, & Practice
It takes discipline, courage and practice to sit in pain and be okay with not having the answers and being uncertain. When we don’t have the answers, maybe the answer is to emotionally stabilize and look at the experience through a lens of curiosity, rather than judgement. Notice if shame is rearing its ugly head. Afterall, shame loves judgment and secrecy. Trauma and adversity can taint our lens creating a false narrative filled with stuck points and negative thoughts. Neurons that fire together, wire together. I quote Tommy Boy “that’s gonna leave a mark”.
If the goal is resilience, suppose we look at each adverse event as a preparation for the next and an opportunity for growth. We don’t move on from tragedy and pain, we move forward, and the experience becomes part of us and that is not always a bad thing. It takes courage to sit in our pain allowing it to be, just as it is. The longer we can tolerate the not knowing and uncertainty, the longer we can calmly ride the wave, shows just how resilient we are.
A Half Century To Realize
It has taken me almost a half century of life to realize, I am the agent of change and while I cannot foresee the future and don’t have a crystal ball, I can certainly live in this world knowing that whatever life throws at me, I will survive, learn from and grow. It is not if pain will hit, rather when the pain will hit and what will the extent of that pain will be.
I anticipate much more pain in this lifetime, but I am preparing. Pain always motivates me to create change and grow, and I am working to not fear it, rather accept it and respect it. In fact, I remain curious as to how I will manage the ahead adversities and possible tragedies. I have learned that to fully love, we must be willing to accept the pain and heartbreak that comes with it. Being human is hard. We are not born resilient; we build resilience and that is by being in pain.
I am no longer that scared little 10-year-old fearing the unknown and yes, I do still get scared at times, but I know I am resilient, and I wholeheartedly believe in and trust me. I am willing to accept whatever the universe throws my way, however rather than avoiding my fears, I have learned to pull the fears closer realizing I am the agent of change. Be your agent of change. Mindset is everything.
