Emotional Resilience

Most people have heard of emotional intelligence, or EQ, which is comprised of empathy, effective communication and social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation.  But have you heard of emotional resilience?  Emotional resilience is your ability to respond to stressful or unexpected situations and crises.  The amount of emotional resilience you have is determined by a number of different things - including your age, your identity, and what you've experienced in your life.

Dr. Courtney Warren, a Harvard-trained clinical psychologist, has compiled a list of nine phrases that can help build emotional resilience in yourself.

1. "I can get through this."  Think of this like, "As much as I hate this, I can survive it." The heart of these phrases are grit and mental toughness.

2. "I'm not going to let myself be a victim." This doesn't mean there is no pain in mistreatment that has happened to you. Try to think, "How can I grow from this?"

3. "I won't always be happy with how things play out. But it's part of the journey."   Life isn't always fair, and we all experience emotional hardships.  Try not to take things personally when they don't go your way.

4. "Each day is an opportunity to feel a little better."  Setbacks and challenges can feel horrible in the moment, but remember that nothing in life is permanent. 

5. "What can I learn from this?"  Openness to experiences and the ability to shift your perspective from "Why did this happen to me?" to "What can I take from this to help me grow?" can help you better navigate through life's inevitable ups and downs.  Think of ways to use these experiences to empower and transform yourself.

6. "I need some time."  A key component of resilience is emotional flexibility, or the ability to regulate your feelings and reduce their intensity in a given situation. It's okay to take a moment before you respond to or make any big decisions.

7. "I may be struggling, but I can find a way to be thankful for the good things in my life."  We are hardwired to notice threats to our well-being. But people who are resilient find a way to turn towards the positive, even in times of difficulty.  Try to find one thing to be thankful for each day.

8. Instead of saying, "It is what it is," which can make you feel powerless, try to say, "I have to see reality for what it is, even if it's not what I want, so that I can move forward."   Don't deny reality or seek a reason to feel better about something bad that happened.  Once you accept the reality of the situation, you can devise a plan to make improvements.

9. "Forgiving this doesn't mean it was okay; it just means that I'm no longer letting it weigh me down." Staying mired in resentment, wanting retribution, or focusing on payback keeps us holding on to past pain.  Developing resilience requires getting to a place where we can see difficult life circumstances for what they are and actively choosing to let them go.

Steven Southwick and Dennis Charney have studied resilient people, including Vietnam prisoners of war, Special Forces instructors, and civilians, for over 20 years.  These people all dealt with terrible experiences, such as medical problems, abuse, and trauma.  Southwick and Charney wrote a book entitled Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life's Greatest Challenges.  They found that truly resilient people who survived the harshest situations and still accomplished goals manage to balance a positive outlook with a realistic view of the world.  

The first step to doing this may be to ask yourself, "How can I use this experience to empower and transform me?"