08.12.2022: Building Resilience – Talk
What is resilience?
Resilience is our ability to know how to recover faster form life’s challenges, problems, adversities. Resilience relies on how we experience our lives.
Misconceptions:
- Resilience can’t be developed (you are born resilient or not)
- Empathic, sensitive people can’t be resilient
- Resilient people are always happy
- Resilient people are always strong
-> Resilient people know how to deal with struggles.
There are three resources which are essential for resilience: the social support network; psychological resources such as intelligence, education and relevant personality factors; coping strategies that a person uses when facing adversity and stress.
-> The third resource is our most flexible resource and the one which is most under our personal control.
Neuroplasticity of the brain: Our brain responds to stress via fight and flight. The amygdala is the part of the brain, which is representing our alarm system and is working non-stop under stress. To become more resilient, the goal is to strengthen the relationship of the prefrontal cortex (which regulate our emotions) and the amygdala, which needs a lot of experience.
Three steps to develop resilience:
- Strengthening self-awareness
- Development of relational competences
- Change of our inner dialogue
Self- awareness
In order to be self-aware, one needs to practice mindfulness. One should be aware and focused on what you are doing, what are your thoughts, feelings, body sensations and reactions. One should try to be present in things we are doing and while we are doing them. Also, we should accept our thoughts, feelings or emotions, and not judge them. This helps to not stress out even more, also suppressing ones thoughts and emotions is no solutions. We need to be aware of every aspect and be self-aware.
Ask the following questions to yourself: Which situations cause you stress? What thoughts do you have in stressful situations? What feelings do you have in stressful situations? Which body sensations do you experience in stressful situations? How do you behave/ What do you do in stressful situations?
Exercise: Breathing space
Awareness: step out of your automatic way of reacting in a stressful situation and ask yourself: “Where am I?”. Try to be aware of your feelings, your body sensations, without the need to change them.
Gathering: focus just on breathing.
Expanding: focus on breathing and the body as a whole.
Tell yourself: it’s okay whatever I am feeling right now.
Development of relational competences
- Nurture important relationships (both private and professional!) – How am I contributing to relationships to make them strong and meaningful?
- Common humanity vs. Isolation – When going through hard times, we often isolate ourselves and don’t talk about the struggle. We need to be aware that no one is perfect. We need more common humanity. True relationships as a network are very important.
- Practice mindful communication
- Have a beginner’s mind and no judgement and try to be patient.
- Think about your answer, don’t rush to give advice. If you tell someone, that you have to think about it a little more, it shows them, that you are actually willing to put in some effort into the relationship and the talk you are having.
Self-criticism
How you can change your inner dialogue:
Think of a situation in which you judged and criticized yourself for some mistake or failure you faced. Become aware of your feelings, thoughts and body sensations.
Then try to answer the following questions:
What would a close friend, someone who loves and unconditionally accepts me, say to me in this situation?
How would they talk to me, how would they calm me down?
How have I changed and grown from this experience?
What lessons have I learned?
What do I know about myself now that I didn’t know before?
Do I have any ideas, thoughts or wishes about how things in my life should look like going forward?
Tips for moving forward
Pay attention to how you perceive challenges (your perspective, black and white thinking, attitudes you have…). Try to see challenges as opportunities.
Become aware of your inner critic- thank them for their contribution but think about what you would rather want to hear – develop an inner motivator. Ask yourself when your inner critic appears. Write five things that you really like about yourself and ask your friends to do the same thing about you. This can help you to see how other people perceive you.
Connect to others and ask for help or support.
Soothe your emotions, thoughts and be aware of your automatic responses and reactions.
Try to have empathy to yourself as-well, but not self-pity.