What is Resilience?
Resilience: the ability to adapt and recover from adversity, stress, or trauma.
Resilience involves a combination of mental toughness (not to be confused with ignoring emotions), emotional regulation, and a positive outlook that enables individuals to navigate life's challenges mindfully and effectively.
Resilience + Mental Health
Resilience is crucial if we want to experience overall health and wellness as it helps us effectively cope with stressors. Life is full of difficult things that we can’t control. Without resilience it can be easy to slip into fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
As a whole, resiliency allows us to maintain or regain a sense of well-being. Resiliency helps us foster a healthier mindset. By actively and mindfully building resilience, we can improve our capacity to handle future difficulties, which can enhance our overall mental and physical health.
How Can We Increase Resiliency?
Resiliency is something that we can mindfully work to increase. Just like someone might go to the gym and lift weights to gain muscle, we can set aside time each day to work on building resiliency in our own lives.
Develop a Strong Sense of Community: Building relationships with family, friends, and community members who align with our goals and values can provide immense emotional support and a sense of belonging. Maintaining relationships with people who energize us can help reduce feelings of isolation.
Practice Self-Care: This does not mean retreat to a spa as often as possible. Instead this means engaging in things that help you feel recharged and energized. Some examples could include, maintaining regular physical activity, a healthy diet and quality sleep routine. It could also include participating in things that you love to do.
Practice Gratitude: By focusing on positive aspects of life annd recognizing when things are going well can create a more balanced outlook on life.
Increase Emotional Regulation: Work with a psychotherapist to learn to manage and express emotions in a healthy way. Counselors and psychotherapists can help clients practice emotional regulation skills, such as mindfulness and meditation.
Set Realistic Goals: Break down larger tasks into smaller, manageable steps and celebrate achievements to build confidence and motivation.
Learn Problem-Solving Skills: Develop strategies to tackle challenges and make informed decisions, reducing feelings of helplessness. Understanding that humans are social creatures that require support. Noone is meant to shoulder life’s difficulties alone.
Work with Flexible Expectations: Mindfully practice adapting to changes and understand that setbacks are opportunities for self growth.
Professional Help: Mental health professionals, such as therapists or counselors, are trained specifically to help clients build resiliency. Here at Well Mind Body, we specialize in helping people regulate thier nervous systems so that they can make decisions from a place of empowerment, instead of fear.
Cultivate and Sense of Purpose and Meaning: Learn to lean into your particular strengths and find meaning in your daily experience. Participate in activities that provide a sense of purpose and fulfillment, such as volunteering or pursuing personal interests.
Identify Goals and Values: Practice making choices that are in alignment with your own goals and values. Eliminate saying, “YES” to things are are not in alignment with your goals and values.
By mindfully incorporating these practices into our daily lives, we can enhance our resilience and improve our mental health.
Here at Well Mind Body, we understand the importance of building resiliency so that we can live fulfilling and healthy lives. We understand that when we are able to build resiliency, we are able to meet life’s inevitable challenges in a way that serves us, instead of breaks us down.
If you or a loved, one is struggling with mental health symptoms, we are here to help.
