What Is Resilience? Your Guide to Facing Life’s Challenges, Adversities, and Crises
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People face all kinds of adversity in life. There are personal crises, such as illness, loss of a loved one, abuse, bullying, job loss, and financial instability. There is the shared reality of tragic events in the news, such as terrorist attacks, mass shootings, natural disasters, a global pandemic, and war. People have to learn to cope with and work through very challenging life experiences.
Resilience theory tells us that resilience isn’t a fixed trait (you can grow your capacity to practice resilience). And it’s not constant, in that you might demonstrate a lot of resilience when it comes to one challenge you’re faced with, but struggle more with being resilient when it comes to another stressor you’re up against.
Sood says resilience involves these five principles:
- Gratitude
- Compassion
- Acceptance
- Meaning
- Forgiveness
The Top Factors That Build Resilience
Developing resilience is both complex and personal. It involves a combination of inner strengths and outer resources, and there isn’t a universal formula for becoming more resilient.
According to the APA, some of the key factors that contribute to personal resilience include:
- The ways you view and engage with the world
- The availability and quality of social resources
- Specific coping strategies
A variety of factors contribute to building resilience, and there isn’t a simple to-do list to work through adversity.
RELATED: 20 Tips for Building and Cultivating Your Resilience
According to resilience theory, other factors that help build resilience include:
- Social Support Research shows that your supportive social systems, which can include immediate or extended family, community, friends, and organizations, foster your resilience in times of crisis or trauma.
- Self-Esteem A positive sense of self and confidence in your strengths can stave off feelings of helplessness in the face of adversity. A study in Frontiers in Psychiatry found that self-esteem and resilience were closely related.
- Coping Skills Coping and problem-solving skills help empower a person who has to work through adversity and overcome hardship. Research has found that using positive coping skills (like optimism and sharing) can help bolster resilience more than nonproductive coping skills.
- Communication Skills Being able to communicate clearly and effectively helps people seek support, mobilize resources, and take action. Research has shown that people who are able to interact with, show empathy toward, and inspire confidence and trust in others tend to be more resilient.
- Emotional Regulation The capacity to manage potentially overwhelming emotions (or seek assistance to work through them) helps people maintain focus when overcoming a challenge, and this trait has been linked to improved resilience, a study showed.
What Does the Research Say About Why Resilience Is Important?
Resilience is what gives people the emotional strength to cope with trauma, adversity, and hardship. Resilient people utilize their resources, strengths, and skills to overcome challenges and work through setbacks.
People who lack resilience are more likely to feel overwhelmed or helpless and rely on unhealthy coping strategies (such as avoidance, isolation, and self-medication).
Resilient people do experience stress, setbacks, and difficult emotions, but they tap into their strengths and seek help from support systems to overcome challenges and work through problems. Resilience empowers them to accept and adapt to a situation and move forward, Sood says. “[It’s] the core strength you use to lift the load of life.”
What Are the 7 Cs of Resilience?
Ken Ginsburg, MD, a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a cofounder of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, developed the 7 Cs model of resilience to help kids and teens build the skills to be happier and more resilient.
The 7 Cs model is centered on two key points:
- Young people live up or down to the expectations that are set for them, and they need adults who love them unconditionally and hold them to high expectations.
- How we model resilience for young people is far more important than what we say about it.
- Competence This is the ability to know how to handle situations effectively. To build competence, individuals develop a set of skills to help them trust their judgments and make responsible choices.
- Confidence Ginsburg says that true self-confidence is rooted in competence. Individuals gain confidence by demonstrating competence in real-life situations.
- Connection Close ties to family, friends, and community provide a sense of security and belonging.
- Character Individuals need a fundamental sense of right and wrong to make responsible choices, contribute to society, and experience self-worth.
- Contribution Ginsburg says that having a sense of purpose is a powerful motivator. Contributing to your community reinforces positive reciprocal relationships.
- Coping When people learn to cope with stress effectively, they are better prepared to handle adversity and setbacks.
- Control Developing an understanding of internal control helps individuals act as problem-solvers instead of victims of circumstance. When individuals learn that they can control the outcomes of their decisions, they are more likely to view themselves as capable and confident.
The 7 Cs of resilience illustrate the interplay between personal strengths and outside resources, regardless of age.
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