Order some resilience whilst there’s plenty about

She’s very resilient. They need more resilience.  If only he could develop more resilience…

The thing is, resilience isn’t a born with or without - a benchmark, one size fits all quality. It changes and develops over time and resists being a tick box attribute.

I feel that I have resilience, but a child out there may be exhibiting much more resilience than I may ever need to muster. Both of us developing it by necessity.

At one end of the continuum, some people are able to bounce back quickly from adversity and cope effectively with existing or new challenges. On the other end, individuals with lower resilience might struggle to recover from the mildest setbacks, they may face difficulty in adapting to the stress of new events.

In the middle of the continuum sits the majority, with moderate levels of resilience and handling certain difficulties but perhaps struggling with more significant adversities. It’s there in the BACP service levels, ‘normally I’m  okay but right now I’m not coping.’ That’s when you need a reliable support network of family and friends, or professional support.

Resilience can be influenced by various factors, such as personality traits, the quality of your support systems, challenging life experiences, and your coping mechanisms.

It's helpful to remind yourself that your resilience is not fixed, it is a dynamic quality you can cultivate and strengthen.   Have you sought social support, practiced mindfulness, worked on your mindset, grown aware of and learned from past experiences?

Understanding that resilience isn’t a preordained gift can help us understand that it's a journey of growth and development; we’re all working towards accurately understanding our current capacity.