How Resilience Training Can Change Your Life
Dealing with the harsh events that are a natural part of life can be emotionally and physically trying. These events can include tragedy, extreme hardship, and the death of a loved one or the loss of a job. These obstacles are never easy, but learning how to build resilience and handle obstacles better can significantly affect how you react and recover. Some people lack the coping skills and ability to deal with these events and cannot fully overcome these challenges. Yet others can recover quickly in the face of adversity time and again.
The ability to face and overcome life's hardships is called resilience. To assess psychological wellness and resilience, the Connor Davidson resilience scale is commonly used. Besides providing awareness of how resilient a person is, the test can also guide mental health professionals in determining which medication and therapy are best when a client is getting treatment. Resilience training programs and building resilience can improve your life and help you manage life's challenges more effectively by developing resilience skills, fostering positive emotions, and enhancing social support. This way, you can better maintain your mental health and stay healthy in the face of significant stress and setbacks.
Read on to learn how this skill can improve your life and help you to manage life’s difficult challenges.
What is resilience training?
At some point, everyone will have to deal with an event that will test their emotional strength and stability. For some, it will be the loss of a loved one, an injury, or an illness. Trauma of any kind can cause extreme emotional distress and increases your risk for developing anxiety and depressive disorders.
If you are experiencing trauma, support is available. Please see our Get Help Now page for more resources.
Resilience training gives you the tools to adapt to, manage, and recover from this kind of adversity. According to a current systematic review, developing resilience is associated with lower levels of psychological distress, anxiety, and depression.
There are several types of resiliency training programs available that serve various specific groups (i.e., cancer survivors, college students, military officers, LGBTQ+, etc.) with different forms of content, length, and delivery. Some strategies for helping people build resilience in these programs include:
Emotional control and mindfulness training
Building self-confidence and combating self doubt
Self-compassion skill building
Communication skills and the ability to connect with others
Goal setting and recognizing personal strengths
Stress-management techniques
Fostering community resilience
A resilience training program is typically short, requiring a few sessions of a few hours each. The content and length will vary depending on the program, but all of them will assess your resiliency factors and provide resources to develop resilience. Some resources include tools and advice to boost your coping skills and your support network, helping you improve how you process difficult events and experiences. After the training, it is ultimately up to you to employ these tools. Therefore, these programs generally recommend a strong support system combined with talk therapy during and after your training program to help address any negative thoughts and promote healing.
Resilience training benefits
People with low resilience tend to focus on negative outcomes and problems. Stresses can compound, and some will eventually feel overwhelmed. Using a coping mechanism that will aggravate problems, such as drinking or binge eating, is also a sign of low resilience. If you are unable to handle and move past problems, it will take a toll on your mental and physical health. This is where resilience training helps to give you the tools to practice self-intervention and effect a positive change in your life.
The ability to reduce negative emotions faster following an event
The ability to better manage chronic conditions
A decrease in negative thoughts
An increase in overall quality of life (joy)
The ability to identify “purpose” in life
Resilience is your threshold for adversity, giving you the ability to adapt and move past major stresses and trauma. Unlike an attribute like strength, the benefits of resilience are seen over long periods. It helps you maintain a positive quality of life after negative events, which helps you manage and reverse the long-term damage stress can cause. High resilience also allows you to feel more in control of your life and more able to affect an outcome.
Tools to build resilience
Resilience training aims to help participants embrace certain mentalities, become more self-aware, and develop skills to manage and bounce back from adversity. These objectives are accomplished through the following techniques:
Stress reduction methods
Resiliency training offers stress reduction techniques geared towards a variety of personalities, including meditation, yoga, exercise, visualization, deep breathing, and systematic muscle relaxation. In stress reduction technique, you learn how to avoid unnecessary stressors and minimize necessary ones.
Coping skills
Traditional coping skills like spending time with family and friends, spirituality, and therapy work for many people, but they may not necessarily work for everyone. Others find solace in hobbies as diverse as comedy or a form of martial arts. To increase your resiliency, find something that gives you a period of peace and tranquility from negative thoughts during stressful times.
Self-awareness
Knowing yourself can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses and help you to set realistic goals. Self-awareness also helps you improve and change parts of yourself that have a negative impact. Furthermore, healthy levels of self-esteem are associated with knowing who you are. With greater self-awareness, you will be able to keep things in perspective, helping you to stop catastrophizing minor situations and make things better where possible.
Take positive actions
When you cultivate hope and look for ways to move forward, you can learn to take positive steps instead of detaching from your circumstances. You may be able to take decisive actions that will improve the situation itself, or your actions may minimize the damage it causes you. Sometimes, it is good enough to simply be there for the people who depend on you. This alone can be a positive action that can help you cope with difficult times.
Building resilience in children
A growing body of work suggests that helping children practice resilience training can lead them to become more resilient and can better prepare them for sudden and traumatic shocks. These can have significant effects on their development and constitution later in life, but resiliency can minimize these effects. However, building resilience in children often goes beyond teaching resilience skills. Instead, the environment where a child is raised may need to be addressed.
Caregiver bond
A strong bond with their primary caregiver starts at or possibly even before birth. Skin-to-skin contact and attention reinforce these bonds. At about the age of five, the child needs to be given more control over their activities and should begin to solve their own problems. Learning to problem solve starts to build independence and shows that the caregiver trusts the child, both of which can build resilience.
Self-esteem building
While the debate over praising children can be heated, people who advocate for more resilience suggest that praise should be given only when due. They believe that constant praise may reduce a child's ability to incorporate praise into decision-making, thereby reducing its potency. To increase the effectiveness of praise, it's best to be specific. "You cleaned your room all by yourself and did such a good job picking up your toys!" is more helpful than "you're the best kid ever!"
You can also help your child build self-esteem by getting them involved in volunteer projects, constructive hobbies, or skill-based activities. The child will not only feel better about themselves, but they'll also learn empathy along with other skills they can use later in life.
Methods to increase resilience
If you are looking to build your own resilience, there are a few routes you can take. Here are some common methods:
The Master Resilience Training Program
The Master Resilience Training program was originally developed for the U.S. Army in collaboration with the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. This 10-day positive psychology program consists of seven modules and is a part of the Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. These modules include:
Building mental toughness
Identifying character strengths
Strengthening relationships
Enhancement (skills like those taught by sports psychologists and used in sports training)
The Master Resilience Training program was intended to help soldiers and their families preemptively cope with the stress of combat, loss, and PTSD, but it was also designed to be easily picked up and taught to others.
Self-education
Resilience training revolves around helping you become more self-aware and introducing you to various outlets to relieve stress. Some people can practice resilience training by reading, learning, and communicating with others. To help you better understand where to start, here are two resources:
This is a curriculum and handbook for teaching resilience classes. The 12-session course can be used in many different settings, often as a part of helper training, and is designed to help people overcome shame. The book contains both individual and group activities using cognitive-behavioral techniques.
Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant
The title refers to the fact that most of our lives require and are lived inside a plan B—a life we did not necessarily choose. The book aims to help you put situations into perspective and build mental toughness. It also has sections on recovery and how to enjoy life again.
Therapy sessions
In addition to resilience training programs or online courses, you may benefit from speaking with a therapist who is familiar with effective resilience training education or research. General therapy sessions are a common way to help work through and deal with life's challenging situations. If you need support, know that help is available.
BetterHelp gives you support
Should you choose to participate in therapy, working with a licensed counselor at BetterHelp is both convenient and affordable. An online trained therapist can help you work through any challenges and increase the benefits you receive from resilience training or education. With a little help, you may learn how to optimize your training and better prepare for a healthier and more fulfilling emotional life. Online therapy with someone trained in resilience building may even help you build leadership skills, which may serve you well in a variety of work environments or in any organizations where you volunteer.
Beyond this, online resilience training has been proven to be effective in the majority of cases, resulting in strong positive effects for those involved. Online resilience training is just as effective as most in-person therapies and programs.
Takeaway
What are five ways to build resilience?
Research is plentiful on the best ways to build resilience. From a therapeutic standpoint, methods like cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness-based therapy, or a mixture of the two appear to be the most effective. Such techniques can help people cope with current challenges and build resiliency to cope with future challenges.
There are science-backed things you can do in your everyday life whenever you’re faced with significant change. Researchers at Yale University measured the resiliency of faculty, staff, students, healthcare workers, and their families throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. They found several core strategies that promoted mental health and well-being. Five of these strategies apply to everyday life, too. They include:
1. The ability to accept change
Whether the change is abrupt or gradual, recognizing what you do and don’t have control over is key to forming resiliency. It won’t likely happen overnight; you might have to take it day by day, but once you accept the things you can’t control and take action on what you can, you’ll feel more empowered and resilient enough to handle them.
2. Reframe negative thoughts
When faced with a situation that makes us feel powerless, we may spend more time replaying it in our minds than we realize. These replays can blur our perspective, cultivate negativity, and drain our resiliency. But once we learn to identify the negative thoughts and beliefs, we can reframe them into more realistic, positive, and helpful ones that provide a foundation for resiliency.
3. Take care of yourself
Self-care is essential for building resiliency during stressful times. Care for your physical health by getting plenty of quality sleep, eating nutritiously, and exercising. Stress-management activities like meditation, mindful movement activities such as yoga or tai chi, and journalling can help you strengthen your mental health and resilience.
4 . Cultivate healthy relationships
Time with loved ones may help you feel more connected and supported. Their compassion can remind you that you’re not alone during difficult times. Their empathy can make you feel understood and validated, helping you build resilience and perspective.
5. Stay active
Participating in activities that make you happy can foster resilience, particularly when they involve learning a new skill or expressing yourself creatively. Mastering a hobby, creating art, and learning something new can empower and provide you with the inner strength to cope with challenges.
What is the purpose of resilience-based training?
Resilience-based training is designed to enhance psychological resilience. It can be delivered in any context but is most often used to assist individuals working in high-risk, high-stress environments like healthcare, law enforcement, first responder, and military roles. Some business organizations also use resilience training programs for professional development and leadership training. In such contexts, it teaches employees how to recognize their reaction to stress and how to cope with it effectively. Some types of resilience training aim to help individuals who belong to groups that face high levels of adversity, such as cancer survivors, people in the LGBTQ+ community, college students, and others.
What are resilience exercises?
Resilience exercises are activities individuals can do to help boost resilience and adaptability in times of stress and adversity. For example, people might do visualization exercises to imagine a positive outcome. Taking on a difficult task or learning a new skill can help you feel empowered and resilient. Staying connected with friends and family can help you feel supported and better able to cope with trying situations.
Research shows how we care for our bodies during stressful times can have a significant impact on how we handle stress. For example, multiple studies show that our exercise levels proportionately affect how resilient we are. In other words—the more exercise we get, the more resilient we become.
What depletes resilience?
Everyone experiences stress differently. What drains one person’s resilience might not impact another’s. However, there are a few common factors that might deplete our resistance and make it hard to recover from challenges. They include:
- Stress, burnout
- Negative thinking
- Lack of social support
- Unresolved trauma or grief
- Unhealthy relationships
- Chronic upheaval or instability
- Lack of purpose or direction in life
- Physical health issues
- Neglecting self-care
Are resilient people happier?
Some older studies show a bi-directional relationship between resilience and happiness for some people. Evidence also indicates that resilient individuals have greater self-esteem, confidence, and overall life satisfaction. Studies suggest there is also a link between mental resilience and cognitive agility.
However, some current research suggests that resilience doesn’t always guarantee happiness. One such study found that survivors bullied as adolescents developed higher resiliency skills and avoided mental health problems later in life. However, they also reported significantly poorer well-being than individuals who were never bullied—regardless of resiliency.
How do you test your resilience?
There are many self-assessment quizzes and scales that can help you measure your resilience, including, but not limited to, the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, the Predictive 6-Factor Resilience Scale, and the Resilience Scale for Adults. You can also take free resilience self-assessments online, such as the University of Denver’s assessment.
How do resilient people behave?
Resilient people have certain behaviors and mindsets that enable them to handle challenges and recover from setbacks. Typically, such individuals maintain a positive outlook and can adjust their approach flexibly in the face of change. They manage their emotions effectively, are solution-focused, and have perseverance and determination under pressure.
People with resiliency believe in their ability to handle challenges effectively. They often have a clear sense of goals or purpose that motivates and helps them stay focused. Resilient people accept reality during challenging times and find ways to move forward.
Resilient people maintain strong connections with individuals who support and empathize in hard times. They prioritize their physical and mental health and maintain a healthy lifestyle that promotes overall well-being. Individuals with resilient traits seek ways to grow and learn new things, building confidence along with new skills.
How do you build a resilient mindset?
For many, building resilience means changing how they approach their thoughts and beliefs to view challenges from a more positive perspective. While it may be challenging, people can incorporate some specific habits and practices into their daily lives to cultivate resilience. Here are some tips:
- Practice gratitude and positive thinking to cultivate optimism
- Develop emotional awareness to regulate them in times of heightened stress
- Approach problem-solving with flexibility
- Nurture your relationships and ask for help when you need it
- Embrace change and reframe challenges as opportunities to grow
- Focus on the things you can control
- Practice self-compassion and refrain from negative self-talk
- Develop a sense of purpose and identify your values
- Learn from your experiences and stay open to self-growth
- Take good care of your mental and physical health
Why do so many people lack resilience?
Many factors influence how much or how little resilience one has, and they typically interact in unique ways depending on the individual. What depletes one person’s ability to handle adversity might not affect another. Here are some common examples of things that may challenge resilience:
- Early trauma, neglect, or instability
- A lack of strong social connections or a support network
- Continuous exposure to severe stress or traumatic experiences
- Limited access to resources like education, healthcare, and financial stability
- A tendency towards pessimism or self-doubt
- Lack of self-efficacy, feeling powerless
- Mental health conditions like anxiety or depression
- A lack of purpose or goals
- Societal expectations, cultural norms, or systemic inequalities
Additional questions
What are the ways how resilience training can change your life and help you manage stress?
Resilience training can enhance your ability to cope with stress, recover from difficult situations, and develop a more positive and adaptable mindset, leading to long-term improvements in well-being.
How does resilience help in recovering from trauma?
People can get over traumatic events by building resilience. This is done by developing coping skills, emotional strength, and the ability to adapt, all of which are necessary for rebuilding a life and better mental health.
What role does resilience play in maintaining good mental health?
Being resilient is an important part of keeping your mental health in good shape because it helps people deal with stress, problems, and pain better, which can help them avoid long-term emotional distress.
What are the key benefits of how resilience training can change your life and reduce stress?
Training in resilience gives you the skills to handle stress better, deal with problems in a healthy way, and become emotionally stronger. This makes your life more peaceful and satisfying.
Can resilience prevent mental health issues after experiencing trauma?
Even though resilience can't fully stop the effects of trauma, it can make it much less likely that someone will develop mental health problems by making it easier to deal with things and get better.
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