Mental Health - How do we become resilient, this blog has some answers

As a PODS trained trauma therapist, I have worked with people who have experienced the worst that life has to offer in terms of family relationships and traumatic life events. These clients have functioned well to some extent, they have coped, they have kept going. If we are to try and pick resilience apart, learn the aspects that we can practice in everyday life then these clients have something to teach us.

Resilience involves three measurable elements

1)      An adversity has occurred – traumatic experience or stressful event

2)      Evidence of healthy functioning must be present after the adversity

3)      The mechanisms a person employs to avoid the distress or recover from it

Health is not measured by an absence of pathology, it is important that assessment of well-being in addition to symptoms is undertaken to treat people holistically. What do I mean by this? does the GP or the school or the CAMHS assessor think about all these facets separately? Resilience is a preventative practice, not a crisis quick fix.

 So, what are the protective factors that allow greater functioning and support post traumatic growth. 

Emotional regulation

Being able to regulate our emotions and feelings in a way that keeps us within self, being able to identify and own our feeling. Know what soothes the fight or flight response. Control impulsive behaviour, be able to discharge our angry feeling in healthy ways (people believe that anger is a dangerous emotion, in itself it isn’t, how we discharge it matters) Be able of tune into our bodies and identify where feels uncomfortable.

Character strengths have also been identified such as perseverance, grit, determination. These are closely related a sense of purpose which may involve goal setting within that. In my mind these are qualities that would grow from challenging negative automatic thoughts, working on strongly held core beliefs, positive data logs etc.

Interpersonal relationships

This is an important domain, it is easy to think that it is about being within a social circle, but it involves much more than that.

The ability to initiate and maintain strong interpersonal relationships plays a huge part in our ability to be resilient. 

         I.            Social influence/social comparison – people gain behavioural guidance through comparisons, people assess their beliefs, they assess their capacity and capability through members of the group displaying theirs.

       II.            Social guidance in a directive way – family members, work colleagues, friends may encourage, persuade, remind you to adopt healthy ways of functioning and coping that is right for you.

     III.            Knowing who we are to others, what meaning do we hold to that other person. Do we matter in relation to others?

    IV.            Self-esteem is related to how we evaluate ourselves in relation to our roles, hence when we take on another role that is out of our comfort zone, we experience the four stages of competence that are so frustrating and rewarding in equal measure https://trainingindustry.com/wiki/strategy-alignment-and-planning/the-four-stages-of-competence/ - This is the area we will work one in time in the group. How good, worthy and competent we are is important.

      V.            Belonging and companionship – Connections to other people provide us with a sense of belonging. Feeling like we belong involves acceptance and inclusion by members of ones primary and secondary groups. Connection should equal communication and mutual obligation and warmth.

Making meaning – this is a very important component.

How we process what happens to us really matters, what meaning and conclusion we come to contributes to our internal conditions of worth. Can you explain and understand your experiences? Do you have the right people in your life to do this with?

Do those people leave space for your internal reflection, or are they directive?

It is important that the facts of a situation or experience are validated, but so are the feelings. At the extreme end in traumatic exposure, Critical incident debriefing is used for this purpose as well as others.

As people we have ‘mulled’ over things for centuries. I talk more in more resilience workshops about the correct people who can provide this (I don’t mean trained professionals) we give space to think about what qualities that person needs to have to provide that level of support.   

I mentioned sense of purpose earlier in this blog and it is worth pointing out that all addiction recovery models promote resilience to relapse, the people who work within these models work hard with their clients on a sense of purpose element.

Poly-strengths

The resilience model promotes the idea that people need a range of strengths to reduce exposure to adversity (you can’t feel safe in an unsafe environment without connection). The term poly-strengths means the total number of protective mechanisms the person has in place. Research has shown that it is the total affliction of distressing/traumatic instances, not just one type of violence or abuse (poly-victimization) that is most associated with poor psychological outcomes. The different elements discussed here would need to be practised daily/weekly.

These things are talked about separate to attachment styles that may hinder or facilitate building these elements into our lives. When a person’s development is hindered, when feelings are repressed especially anger or hurt, then you grow up to be an adult with an angry child inside, same for the feeling on underachiever and the well know imposter syndrome.

It contaminates are lives, how do we make this better, how do we control how often and how much we feel overwhelmed. We go back and explore what needs that inner child had. We don’t do this in a feel sorry for me kind of way, but in a way that is intentional and structured and emotionally managed.

I will be running some inner child sessions/workshops in the Spring locally, also my up and coming on line course will feature some of the elements of inner child work. Please get in touch if you are interested in working on this. 

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