Building Resilience
The flowers can’t exists without the storms.
Resilience is the the ability to bounce back after stressful events, trauma and loss. The good news is that many aspects of resilience can be learned, increased and created. According to Dr Barry, a therapist and researcher, who wrote the book: Emotional Resilience; How to Safeguard your mental health
These aspects are essential to building resiliency:
1. Increasing self acceptance.
2.Improving Stress management skills
3. Building self-esteem
4.Being mindful and focused on the present
5. Expressing emotions wisely
6. Choosing to react to stress in healthy ways.
Building self acceptance and empathy has many benefits. It makes interpersonal relationships easier. It allows us to take other people’s perspective into consideration and process new information. It allows the mind to take a break from wanting things to be different and to a-tune to what is happening and accept it as it is. There are many ways to increase self awareness and self acceptance. Check out the Durango Dharma center and other local centers to learn more about increasing self acceptance and awareness.
Improving stress management skills may be as simple as acknowledging that you are experiencing stress and getting curious about the changes that happen in response to the stress. If a person becomes familiar with the early warning signs that his or her body give when experiencing stress, then he may be able to take healthy actions before it turns into a full blown sympathetic response (aka fight or flight). Counseling, books, online classes and seminars can teach various ways to improve stress management skills.
Building self esteem is something we do throughout life. I used to think that it was something you figured out in adolescence and then it stayed at that stable point. That is not the case. Life events, death, job loss and many other factors influence a person’s experience of self esteem, I know that I am my own worst critic. I say things inside my head to myself that I would never say to a friend or respected family member. One of the benefits of having yourself reflected back to you through the eyes of someone else, is that they don’t share your personal bias, and they can see the good in you when you struggle to see it yourself. Supportive friends, family and a healthy counseling relationship can go a long way in helping to improve self esteem.
Mindfulness training and classes can be found locally, and online. Mindfulness gives the ability to stay present in the moment and not be swept away in thoughts. It involves opening to the five senses and what it currently feels like inside your body. Mindfulness doesn’t want to change sensations or manipulating them, but simply noticing and accepting the moment as it is. It sounds easy, but it can be shocking to realize how much of your attention is not focused on the present moment. Training in mindfulness makes significant changes in the brain and allows for flexibility and grace in difficult moments. Many health care professionals teach mindfulness training, and there are specific programs designed for common difficulties like “The Mindful way through Depression.” Jon Kabit-Zinn
Wise emotional expression is not a skill that most of us were taught when we were young. What a different world it would be if emotional expression was like human 101 and taught in first grade. Often the emotion itself is the not problem, the difficulty lies in our reaction to the emotion. Emotions are like clouds in the ski, they arise, float across our awareness and then dissipate. When we feel a strong charge around an emotion we may use outdated coping mechanisms like denial, repression, or distraction as tools to avoid directly interacting with the emotion. Being upset by a disappointing situation or fear and anger are totally normal experiences and emotions. If felt, accepted and expressed in a healthy, conscious manner, those emotions will likely shift and cease to draw our attention. It is when we won’t deal with, won’t feel and and aren’t willing to try with emotions that they become burdensome. It is okay to be overwhelmed with strong emotions. But there are skill sets that can be learned to help a person turn toward the experience of emotion, and let it heal, teach and guide you to the next stages in life’s development. Art, dance, literature, food, music, are all just a few ways that emotions can be expressed in a healthy way that serves an individual’s self awareness and development. Dialectical Behavior Therapy is a specific type of counseling program which helps it’s participants learn wise emotional regulation and expression. Many local mental health clinic’s and practices teach training programs on DBT. DBT was created by a researcher and has the statistics that back it up as an effective treatment program.
Choosing to react to stress in healthy ways was probably not something you were taught. A certain amount of stress is important and can actually increase functioning. There is a tipping point where stress causes things in our brain to shut down and then suddenly making decisions and taking in new information becomes incredibly difficult. When we increase awareness around our stress patterns and how stress effect’s the functioning of the body and mind in general, we can take proactive steps to help ourselves react to stress. One of the biggest steps is to notice and acknowledge the stress in the first place. Then slow down. Take some deep breaths with the exhalation longer than the inhalation. Count to four with the in breath and six with the out breath. Do this for seven minutes or longer and that will begin to effect the philology of the body, which changes the chemistry of the brain. Breath is very connected to the nervous system and is one of the gatekeepers between normal nervous system functioning, (aka parasympathetic activation) and fight or flight (aka sympathetic activation.) There are many ways to increase the tools needed to manage stress in more productive and easier ways. Step one: notice and admit the stress. What does it feel like?
We are all human, imperfect, complicated and searching for a meaningful and fulfilling life. Reaching out for mental health support should be as simple and accepted as calling a Dr for help with physical complications; but in our society it is not. Don’t let that hold you back from getting support and tools for your tool belt. Reach out. Call a hotline. Book a counseling session. Take an online course. Connectedness is another factor in resilience. Connect to knowledge, people, help, training, science, spiritual practices, and anything else that will make it a little bit easier to be human.
Much Love Kristi L Zink MA, LPCC
Below is a 12 minute guided meditation designed to increase resilience. You’ve got 12 minutes don’t you?