How to Develop Resilience and Why It Matters
- Brainz Magazine
- 1 day ago
- 9 min read
Dr. Birkhofer is known for inspiring and empowering people to improve their mental health. As a Clinical Psychologist with over 40 years of experience, her upcoming book, titled "Beyond Quick Fixes: Essential Inner Resources for Good Mental Health & a Fulfilling Life," will be a valuable resource.
Many people secretly yearn for a life free of struggle, one filled primarily with happiness and smooth sailing. Unfortunately, that option isn't on real life's menu. Life is unpredictable, and it will include both joy and sorrow, good times and bad. We will be tested, and there will be storms. Resilience helps us navigate whatever "bad weather" we encounter in our lifetime. No one is exempt from adversity. Everyone eventually faces the death of someone they love, loses something that matters deeply to them (e.g., a dream, a relationship, a pet, their community, a job, their home, good health, or financial security), or has their sense of self threatened by rejection or a humbling experience. What matters more is not what happens to us, but how we handle it.
What is resilience?
Resilience is our ability to adapt to life's misfortunes and setbacks. It is not a fixed trait you are born with. It is developed through the process of facing difficulties and learning to adapt to and recover from adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. It does not mean you have to suppress your feelings or act "tough" and unaffected by life's hardships. Working through something challenging typically evokes uncomfortable feelings. What matters is how you deal with your emotions and what you do about your situation.
Being resilient is best exemplified by an attitude of "I can deal with hard things." No matter how awful you feel or how terrible the situation, you remain determined not to let the difficulty take you down. You believe in your ability to see it through, somehow, some way. In fact, research suggests that resilience not only helps you get through difficult times, but also empowers you to learn and grow from experience and become stronger and more capable in the process, a concept called post-traumatic growth. Resilience represents the internal capabilities and beliefs you use to deal with adversity. It doesn't make problems go away, it helps you face them with wise effort and determination.
How do you become more resilient?
Decades of clinical and personal experience, along with research on resilience, have shown the following capabilities to be crucial for resilience:
1. Managing emotions
Adversity, loss, and trauma often evoke painful feelings, such as fear, anger, sadness, grief, and stress. It helps to have enough emotional maturity to skillfully manage your emotions, to acknowledge and tolerate your feelings, and constructively process them so they don't overwhelm your capacity to wisely handle your difficulties. Accept and allow space for emotions, but do not let them interfere with productive action and thinking. Navigating adversity often includes the need to mourn losses and work through the pain of disappointment. The hurt is real, and it’s part of being human. And you can survive it and learn to take care of yourself in the process.
2. Kindness & self-compassion
When times are hard, good self-care is critical. It is taxing to work through stressful, serious challenges. When you're in the midst of a crisis, don't make it worse by being harsh with yourself or spiraling into negativity. Even if you made mistakes that contributed to your problem, it won't help to waste precious energy beating yourself up. Focus on how to make things better now. Fortify yourself with healthy self-care so you can handle what needs to be done and work through the difficulty. Some people fear that self-compassion will make them weak. Research dispels that myth. Self-compassion can improve your ability to handle difficulties. Get enough sleep, reach out for counsel and support, and avoid unhealthy coping tactics like binging on substances to ease your pain.
3. Attitude: Acceptance & determination
In any situation, there are things we can and cannot control. Fortunately, our attitude is one of the things that remains under our power. When adversity strikes, it's important to accept that reality and then meet it with an attitude of determination. When you remind yourself that you can and will find a way to cope with the current challenge you're facing, the body and mind can shift from a state of overwhelm toward ideas for effective coping. The message you want to give yourself should be honest and encouraging, "This is really hard, but I will figure it out. I'll get through this." This attitude offers some reassurance and can keep you from collapsing into despair and hopelessness. Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus, said, "In the midst of winter, I found within me an invincible summer, no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there's something stronger, something better, pushing right back."
4. Manage your thinking
Cognitive reframing is the ability to consider alternative narratives for what is happening, perspectives that are less catastrophic, hopeless, or negative. When we get bad news, the mind often reacts by imagining worst-case scenarios. While it's important to acknowledge your initial fears, broaden your thinking from the most worrisome projections to include more hopeful possibilities and perspectives. The way we interpret things and the stories we tell ourselves about what's happening have a powerful impact on how well or poorly we handle difficulties. For instance, if you just got a cancer diagnosis, instead of dwelling on the scariest possible outcomes, acknowledge your fear and then redirect your attention toward more promising outcomes or treatments, or focus on the ways you can take good care of yourself while more is being revealed. Curbing negative internal dialogue that includes catastrophic thinking, fear-inflaming stories, and defeatist attitudes is a critical aspect of being resilient.
5. Agency
Agency is a person's capacity to intentionally exert influence over the direction of their life. We are not merely victims of our circumstances. We have the ability to influence how things continue to unfold by the way we think and behave, the attitudes we hold, and the choices we make. Agency includes expressing our needs and asking for help. It is not simply believing you can influence your life, it involves taking action to do so. When you're facing difficulties, you'll need to figure out what you can do to make a positive impact and then start doing it.
6. Taking constructive action
Active coping strategies are the opposite of avoidance. You develop resilience by learning to face your difficulties head-on and take whatever actions you can to improve the situation or the current moment. Ask yourself, "What can I possibly do now to make it better, or at least not make it any worse?" When facing difficulties, aim to be solution-oriented and brainstorm problem-solving ideas that might help in the short or long term. This is the opposite of putting your head in the sand or giving up. It is an active, constructive engagement with reality.
7. Meaning & a sense of purpose
It can be challenging to transform your pain and personal challenges into something meaningful, such as lessons learned about yourself or life. Surviving adversity can help you reevaluate assumptions and clarify your values. For instance, losing a job allows you to consider new work opportunities that are more aligned with your strengths and passions. If you've gone through a painful breakup, you can reflect on what is most important to you in relationships and work on becoming a better partner in the future. Challenges and losses can inspire people to help others struggling with similar difficulties, or support charities and efforts to find cures for illnesses or fix big problems, to be more empathic and generous because they have lived experience with the pain these problems cause.
While it is not easy to think of tragic losses being anything but unfortunate and unwelcome, they do have a way of carving us into sturdier beings, roughed up a bit by the tough life lessons that serve as opportunities for personal growth, nonetheless. Remember that it is only under extreme conditions, intense heat, and crushing pressure, that carbon atoms are rearranged and converted into diamonds. When we're going through a tough time, it can help to know that at some point we may be able to find some meaning in it or see how it strengthened our ability to cope with whatever life throws our way. Navigating adversity can help us get clarity about our purpose in life, to recognize and live out what truly matters most moving forward.
Contextual factors impacting resilience
If you haven't yet developed the skills you need to be resilient, be patient and compassionate with yourself. It is never too late to change and evolve. Early life experiences that include excessive exposure to adversity during formative years of your development teach you more about mere survival than about how to cope effectively and build resilience. If you repeatedly found yourself in situations that were unmanageable and unsafe, such as living in poverty or with abuse, and you were too young to be able to alter those conditions, you may have learned to feel helpless, that your efforts were futile or useless. You can lose faith in your ability to solve problems effectively or to influence your environment. That is understandable given your circumstances. Fortunately, you can learn to be an active agent in your life now and develop the skills to cope well with life's challenges moving forward.
Children begin developing resilience when they have enough basic safety and the opportunity to work through difficulties with some success. This builds faith in their abilities. They need help and encouragement figuring out how to navigate challenges, and they also need permission to do so imperfectly, as none of us learns without making some mistakes along the way. Mistakes are opportunities to redirect ourselves, try something different, and gain valuable insights in the process. Adults needing to develop resilience go through a similar process. Get whatever help and support you need while you are developing your capacities to deal with hard things and learn from setbacks, on your way to becoming more resilient.
External support for cultivating resilience
You don't have to develop resilience in isolation. Supportive relationships help us be resilient and cope with the hard parts of life. While our friends and family cannot "fix things" for us, they can listen, lend a helping hand, offer empathy, and perspectives that help us carefully think things through and cope effectively with our challenges. Many of the different communities we are part of or belong to can act as part of our support system. Let people know when you could use their support. Being there for each other is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another. We don't have to feel so alone with our burden when we care about each other in this way.
Psychotherapy, coaching, or spiritual counseling can be valuable resources. Therapy helps people develop their capacity to be resilient by providing the kind of support and guidance that may have been lacking in their lives. It is immensely helpful to have someone who cares about you and what you are struggling with, listens carefully, helps you process your feelings, co-creates some meaning from what you're going through, and encourages your efforts to take constructive action to deal with your pain and difficulties.
Develop resilience into one of your superpowers
Knowing you can and will deal with whatever life hands you is empowering. My most tragic loss was losing my son Wiley when he was 27. I was utterly devastated. Early on, I could not fathom how I would survive it. I loved and missed him so much. Life without him in it felt nearly unbearable. I feared I would be left as a shell of my former self. One very small step at a time, I found myself unevenly and ungracefully adapting to my new reality. I'd never experienced such crushing heartache. I had to strengthen the internal resources mentioned earlier so I would have a chance to not only survive the tragedy, but live life fully again, despite the loss and pain I still carried in my heart.
Do not give up on yourself. You have more strength, courage, and determination buried inside you than you may be aware of. Get the help you need, patiently keep putting one foot in front of the other, and discover the much-needed power of resilience.
Read more from Dr. Celeste Birkhofer
Dr. Celeste Birkhofer, Licensed Clinical Psychologist
Dr. Celeste Birkhofer is a Clinical Psychologist and Adjunct Clinical Faculty member of Stanford Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. With over 40 years of dedicated practice, she has guided countless individuals through personal growth and healing, witnessing both the best of personal transformation, as well as the more devastating impacts of serious mental illness. Her mission is to inspire and empower people to take their mental health seriously, improving and protecting it as best they can. As she is known to say, “Your mental health impacts everything-it matters. You matter.”
