On Resilience: Embracing Emotional Downs as Playful Challenge

Till Weidner
Sep 6, 2018 · 7 min read

An alternative pathway to increased well-being

Nobody is nor can be always happy. Life has emotional ups and downs and for some is even a roller coaster. Rather than happiness, it seems most people aspire to have general contentedness, a healthy self-esteem and a sense of purpose. Seen from a different angle, it is the ability to rebound from sadness and sorrow, to savor positive events and achievements and to cope with tragic life events — emotional resilience in short. Curiously, it appears that some people have naturally more of it, others have found their own ways of achieving it through reflection and struggle, while yet others are constantly struggle to muster such desirable emotional strength.

Many prominent thinkers have written prolifically on this topic, sharing insights about positive thinking patterns, exploring scientifically causes and mechanisms of dealing with depression and anxiety. Nevertheless, a great number of individuals in today’s society struggle with isolation, depression and inferior self-esteem, which stops them from realizing their full potential and achieving life satisfaction.

The technique proposed here, as counter-intuitive and strange as it may sound at first, is a simple tool that can help increase emotional resilience and lead to a content life. It requires some practice at first, as well as careful introspection and honesty with oneself. However, it builds on every instance it is utilized and perpetually becomes second nature until one starts to wonder how life can be so simple.

The idea is straightforward: Whenever you feel down, upset, lonely, been treated unfairly or meanly, found yourself the victim of unfortunate circumstances or any other negative thought loops arises, you consider this difficult situation as one more opportunity to unleash the force of your consciously acquired resilience strategies to cope and recover from it. In other words, you welcome and embrace emotional hardship as a playful personal challenge to see how long it takes you until you feel happy again the next time. To be even more unconventional, you are almost looking forward to instances of mental stress to see whether you can shorten the rebound time compared to a similar event in the past and get more proficient at recovery.

So what is meant by “consciously acquired resilience strategies”? It is essentially the plethora of healthy thinking-loops, situational reframing practices and reference experience consolidations that enable you to interpret events differently, help your mind to process and memorize personal experiences in a healthy way and create opportunities for emotional healing.

To illustrate what this might entail, the list below gives some practical examples. It starts with “emergency” measures that can be applied instantly, and proceeds to strategies that require a bit reflection, making them more foundational. Which ones are picked from the list would also be determined by whether one’s mood is caused by a random event, a reoccurring issue or a gloominess of unknown origin. Excluded here is the advisable development of personal goals and a healthy self-esteem with long-term measures.


Examples of resilience strategies

  • Acceptance and recognition: The first step is to accept the situation and to consciously recognize your own feelings. You could say to yourself things like “alright, I’m clearly feeling bad/down again, I’m not fully sure what has caused this but let’s accept that something has caused my mind to interpret recent events in an unhelpful way” or “okay, this was clearly out of my direct control and it made me upset. Let’s explore what exactly has caused my negative feelings and what are my mind’s underlying (wrong) assumptions about the situation”
  • Reframing: To reframe a situation means to look back at the circumstances that caused your negative feelings and to rewrite your assumptions about other people’s intentions. Put yourself in the shoes of others and try to understand their motivations for acting the way they did and potential issues they might have. This requires not only empathy but also creativity; the idea is to assume good intentions on one hand and to come up with stories that could explain or even justify their behavior (e.g. something unrelated to you has happened to them in the recent past, which left them emotionally charged and struggling).
  • Being helpful, kind and polite: It might seem counterintuitive but putting oneself out there and be nice to others when feeling upset, disappointed or unhappy can have profoundly positive effects on one’s mental state. Positive human interaction is shown to boost our mood, distract a troubled mind and help find purpose. It is important to not do it for expected reciprocated kindness but to do it for the act of kindness itself, and the effect it has on your own mind.
  • Practicing general gratefulness for life and its beauties: A well-known practice is considering yourself grateful for everything that you already have, starting from the fact that you exist and then moving on to consider other likely fortunes, such as your family and friends, a roof above your head and a warm blanket, that you can move and talk, have good health, liberty and human rights or not being in a warzone. Many pleasantries can be cherished for free, such as the singing of the birds, a beautiful meadow, the smell of roasted coffee beans next door or the excited wiggle of a dog being petted. You can make a list of things that you are grateful for (especially when you lack them such as when travelling, on rough outdoor holidays or under temporary illness) and look at it whenever you feel that life is unfair, that you are worse off than everybody else, or have been victim of a minor accident. Another way is to consider the misery of people around the world, e.g. Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, immigrants in African camps or political prisoners in autocratic countries. Besides feeling empathy for others and helping you to care for wider issues, it will also help you put your condition in context.
  • Sharing your troubles and opening up: Talking to somebody close to you about what is bothering you, sharing your sorrows and being understood by others are immensely powerful ways to alleviate emotional hardship. Years of scientific research points in the direction that good relationships are so healthy for us because they act as a support net for the times when we struggle in life. It can sometimes be daunting or uncomfortable to open up and to “burden” otherwise joyful people with one’s misery. Nevertheless, in most cases people are happy that they can help, that they are being trusted and are keen to show respect. If it still seems too much of a big step, it helps to ask family members and good friends in times when everything is going well whether they are okay being approached at times of hardship. It may also help to explain certain conditions you are suffering from or recurring mental challenges you have, so that they can understand better what your needs are in times of trouble. Some people might not know how to help or feel uncomfortable, in that case it helps telling them that just listening is already enough and nothing is expected of them. Despite all the benefits of opening up, repeatedly telling the details of a particularly stressful event to others (with a very negative perspective) might distort your memory and make it worse than it is. Thus, it is always sensible to practice some reframing and empathy already while telling it to others.
  • Drawing from positive reference experiences and achievements: We all have these moments where everything seems to flow perfectly, whatever you say makes sense and is received well, jokes are on point or the audience is engaged into your talk. There are also moments of achievement, being the best in class in an exam, having passed the driving test, scored that job or having solved a complicated technical problem at work. We feel happy and satisfied with our performance. However, when we feel sad or unhappy, we tend to forget and downplay these instances as our memory works in mood-affirming ways (e.g. better remembering of similar events or phases in our life). To fully realize the healing potential and long-lasting effect of positive reference experiences, we can take notes and make a list of them. Whenever we feel upset, simply by looking at the list and replaying these instances of achievement and super-confident moments in our imagination (and what we have felt back then) acts like an antidote to feelings of doubt and low self-worth.
  • Realizing the transient nature of many positive emotions: Happiness, being desired or feeling energetic are momentary feelings which unfortunately do not last forever. Although often they can be the fruit of your efforts, sometimes they are incredibly random and not caused directly by you. While we ought to cherish them, we should also realize the contradictions of emotional highs. When they become the “new baseline” for a few hours, a day or a week, we feel upset when the situation changes. We yearn to go back to those emotional states and wonder what has happened or what we have done to be punished with a less satisfactory emotional state. However, usually nothing in our control has happened and the outstandingly good times (that we can be grateful for) have just passed. Understanding the dangers of an adjusted baseline, being comfortable at and accepting your actual baseline can help you manage sudden doubts and unhappiness after a streak of greatness.

These examples will hopefully serve as a first set of tools which empower you to “battle” the unhealthy ways in which the mind sometimes works and serves as inspiration to add other practices. It is worthwhile to remember that life is not always fair or easy, hence the aim is to learn to get balance back quickly rather than trying never to lose balance in the first place. Striving to get proficient at coping well with undesired feelings, hardship and disconnectedness ensures that one’s power and focus can be directed to more purposeful endeavors.

While often it is a matter of how we perceive something, at times there are problems which justify a thorough analysis of its root causes and consequentially dealing with them in the real world. A troubled mind can be a good indicator that change in the world, not just our minds, is needed.

Curious about just policy, community cohesion and advancement of critical thinking | Believer in the great socio-ecological transformation

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