Editor’s note: the video for this post has been removed. The text below is the video transcript.
I’m here to talk to you about what is resilience.
I’m sure you’ve heard of that term and we all have our ideas about what that means. To me what resilience really means is that we have a faster recovery rate. So that can mean recovery from any kind of stressor, whether that’s something physical or emotional or in your relationships. So of course we’re always going to have some sort of stress in our life or things that come and go you know: your car might break down, your husband might lose his job, you can have a health condition, an accident. Things like that. So there’s so many things that happen that’s oftentimes out of our control. So we really can’t completely avoid stress. What we want is to see that we’re able to handle the stressors and to also recover more quickly.
So one thing that you might also notice if you’re feeling more resilient after say working in therapy and feeling healthier, is that you might have more of a sense of humor in a situation that would have been really stressful in the past. But the main thing is that you (it) might take you only an hour to recover from a situation that would have taken you a day or two before. These are the things that we want to look for and this is what resilience means to me. It’s not that you don’t get as stressed out or even depressed or angry about things, but that you can come down from that and regulate a little bit more quickly.
These things can show up in different aspects of our lives. So physically that can show up in terms of pain and tension or [in] your gut and you’re gut feeling a little out of sorts or sleep. So again what we want to see is that those things, although you might feel that sense of activation or things being a little bit out of sorts, that you can then come back to that state of more calm and balanced sooner. And the same thing mentally: that your thoughts are oftentimes, when people with anxiety their thoughts can take them on this kind of runaway train. So with resilience what we’ll see is that you can start to bring yourself back from that runaway train a little bit more quickly. And mindfulness is a big part of that. And we’ll talk about that in another video. And relationally you’ll notice more resilience when you can again find a way to come together and engage with someone a little more quickly and a little more calmly. Or at least recover from some conflict more quickly without again losing a day or two over it.
So resilience essentially for me means: recovering more quickly. And it’s not about avoiding stress but about being able to ride those waves a little bit more, with more ease and a little bit more grace and having some confidence that you’ll be okay. So that’s all about resilience for today.
And thank you for listening! We’ll see you again.