Building Resilience: Strategies for Tough Times
Resilience is the ability to adapt well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats, or significant sources of stress. The concept of resilience is not one limited to an individual, where 'personal resilience' was the traditional focus, but the idea of groups, communities, and even nations becoming resilient is now also widely discussed. The world is moving at an ever-increasing pace, and change happens extremely quickly. Almost every day, we hear news or our world is being shaken by an event that we never expected to happen or that perhaps brings up personal memories of other traumatic events that have happened in our lives. As a result, resilience is presented as a tonic or as a muscle that can be trained to help us toughen up and get through all the challenges of life.
Resilience is intimately connected with mental health
and well-being and is seen as a fundamental part of emotional intelligence. It
may be worth taking a moment to think about how you define or understand
resilience. You might want to do this exercise during your reading or come back
to it at the end of the essay. It is possible that you have not consciously
considered such a concept in the past, and you might want to consider if it is
of any relevance to you and your life. When most people think about resilience,
they often think of it as one's ability to 'bounce back' after things have
gotten tough. In this type of thinking, resilience is about being able to pick
ourselves up after we have fallen down. It is, of course, true that resilience
is about being able to withstand adversity, but more so, it is also about being
able to grow as a result of the experience.
1. Understanding Resilience and its Importance
When one experiences adversity, be it from a sudden
negative event or from a chronic negative event, two psychological dimensions
are deemed relevant: the damage that it causes and the resilience to cope with
this. The term resilience is actually relatively complex, and psychologists
have tried to describe, by means of empirical research, to understand in more
detail the processes that lead some, who undergo trauma, to emerge
psychologically and emotionally devastated and others not. Resilience is the ability
to return to the previous level of functioning, or maybe to exceed that. It is
possible to increase resilience: this is not a fixed and unmodifiable
attribute, but a skill that develops and improves throughout life. Resilience
means coping with what life throws at us, facing a problem, and even solving
it, while being able to maintain a positive mood.
From a psychological point of view, resilience can be
an important aspect of emotional and behavioral health. In a disaster, an act
of terrorism, or the psychological struggle of military personnel serving in a
war zone, some may be sorely hurt while others do not. Some people endure
personal losses and still find the strength to work hard to rebuild, while
others seem to be fraught with worry: their life is not really smiling; this is
the case even in the face of a negative event whose frustration is growing,
leading to a desire to withdraw from people, uncertainty, irritability, and
depression. The ups and downs of relationships, financial distress, and
personal health problems can be managed with strong emotional reasoning, good
decision-making, and satisfactory interactions within and outside the family,
only if a job is well managed during tough moments. It is likely that people
who possess these human behaviors have a good volume of resilience within them.
2. Practical Strategies for Building Resilience
While there are no quick and easy fixes when things
become tough, there are practical strategies that can help to build our
resilience, making us better able to cope with tough times when they do hit.
These skills are best developed in the 'up' times and can take years to really
become a part of our being. However, it is never too late to start, and you can
definitely build on these to grow and develop 'bounce-back-ability'. It is also
important to practice small coping strategies frequently so that they are
easier to call on when you are feeling down. Resilience skills are practical,
everyday skills. There is a takeaway message here: you can choose to
participate or withdraw. Key strategies, tools, techniques, and resources for
building resilience interconnect with the key aspects and signposts for
developing students through higher education. ● Main techniques: goal-setting,
language, and relationships. ● Additional techniques: problem-solving,
reflective practice, positive self-talk, self-awareness and managing emotions,
growth mindset (being adaptable). ● Tools: coping box/folder, three ways,
in-basket, transactional model of stress and coping to identify potentially
controllable sources of stress and how resiliently it is dealt with using other
principles. ● Frameworks: the bounce-back chicken, the road or a path? Looking
ahead, construct of loss, construct of change, construct of understanding, five
ways to wellbeing, thrive factors.
3. Coping Mechanisms and Self-Care Practices
Coping mechanisms are strategies or behaviors people
use to handle stress or setbacks. When experiencing a tough time, the way an
individual chooses to cope can either help or hinder their mental well-being.
Research has explored how different types of coping can impact the likelihood
of developing stress-related problems like anxiety or depression. In general,
problem-focused or approach-based coping, where the individual tackles the
stress head-on, has been found to be more effective in handling adversity.
Avoidance-focused or emotion-based coping, which involves pushing the stress
away or doing something else to momentarily forget about it, is less effective.
Within the literature, coping is often divided into positive and negative
coping behaviors to distinguish between maladaptive coping strategies and
adaptive ones.
One effective strategy for dealing with tough times is
self-care, which is maintaining regular activities and habits in order to
maintain health and effectively deal with life’s common stresses. In
psychology, resilience is built with time and can be supported through
activities that develop positive coping strategies. Typical self-care practices
include things such as getting enough sleep, reducing alcohol intake, eating
well, and exercising regularly. From a positive psychology framework or
person-centered care principles, focusing on one’s strengths and engaging in
activities that bring about joy or positive emotions can boost mental
well-being. Engaging in activities that are of personal meaning to the
individual can provide a buffer against stress. Additionally, in periods of
high stress, individuals can become consumed with their difficulties and lose
their entire identity. Engaging in self-care (especially if it includes
positive psychology and person-focused activities) is a way to establish a relationship
with your sense of self and maintain your identity in times of difficulty.
Activities such as physical activity, sleeping, spending time with friends and
family, listening to music, and playing helped to handle everyday stress.
4. Building Resilience in Communities and Organizations
A community can be more resilient if it is well
organized, well resourced, and contains a mix of different individuals,
families, and households. People and organizations that are victimized or
exploited become weaker and can lose the capacity to respond—to reach out for
help, to solve problems, to advocate for themselves—and this can leave them
more vulnerable to further tough times in the future. A group, organization, or
community can become resilient if its members work together to make it happen.
Many of the communities, groups, and projects we heard from did this by making
a commitment to collaborate. People need to know that they can rely on their
neighbors and that they can do things together.
But building resilience is not just a task for
communities; leaders at other levels can play an important role. Leadership can
make the difference between a group coasting through difficulties or breaking
into internal squabbling. An organization can demonstrate its commitment to
well-being through policies and procedures. It acknowledges that people's
personal lives are important. Resilience can become an element of an
organization's strategic thinking and can drive action. It should be built into
the culture, ethos, and principles so that everyone understands and supports
the idea. Staff believe in standards of excellence and professionalism. They
see the trainees as clients. They are committed to effective teamwork and to a
pleasant work environment—where improvement begins with me.
Empowering clients to make meaningful contributions to
improvement fosters linkages between training and employment—linked to client
capacity to make change. There are a number of core models of change which
impact staff inspiration; organizational development ethos of including staff;
spiritual; organizational development; liberation; capacity building; social
awareness; change management principles underpinning all of the above. A
training program is helping to build a full culture of collaboration and move
this initiative to the next level. This initiative will continue to build its
capability to bring about systemic change—to drive the development of
resources, infrastructure, and support systems that are resilient by design.
The initiative will be sustained and grown naturally through the creation of
knowledgeable and caring communities that harbor social capital and have these
individuals in their midst. Resilience is collaborative, collective, and rests
on an investment of time in developing others. And that is not something that
can be achieved on a timetable.