Resilience does not mean smiling through difficult situations

How is this so hard to understand?

There are stressors all over the place. Different things are stressful for different people. Then there are stressors that are universal. So far, so obvious. Now imagine that something challenging happens. Something that’s out of the ordinary, out of your control and entirely unexpected, confusing, potentially traumatic. I don’t know a single person who would not find this stressful.

How can we expect people to just keep going the same way they did before? How can we expect people to just shake it off? Well, we can – but it’s not a helpful approach.

Taking time to process a situation like that is not a sign of weakness.

• It’s a sign of taking time to process - well, duh!

• It’s a sign of knowing that if you deal with it properly in the moment, you take its power away and it won’t come back to haunt you.

• It’s a sign of having done the work and of doing your best to navigate life while exercising self-compassion.

Unable to handle stress?

Think again! Processing the emotions that a stressful event triggers IS handling stress. Somehow people have not yet arrived in the 21^st century. I don’t see it as a badge of honor to just power through and ignore all feelings and emotions. Pretending you’re “fine”.

Ignoring what’s going on, bottling it up is still what we’re expected to do. “Happy” is the default setting, right? Happy is what we all need to aspire to. Wrong again! But I don’t want to repeat what I wrote here on toxic positivity.

This is where cognitive dissonance pops into my head. Randomly? Maybe not so much. Avoiding situations that would cause cognitive dissonance is also part of handling stress. Staying true to yourself and making decisions that benefit you in the long run. No point in doing something just to keep the peace.

I’m not a robot

We all know those pictures where you have to decide which of them contain a traffic light, a motorcycle or whatever. All just to prove you are not - in fact - a robot. So, we’re having to prove that we’re not a machine. Yet, when we turn out NOT to be a robot that just keeps going no matter what, we’re not resilient, we’re unable to handle stress. This makes total sense...

Come on! We need to do better than that. We are human beings. We have emotions.

And all emotions are okay. Some need longer to process than others, but all of them are important signals our body sends us. Ignoring them is never helpful. And on the subject of not being resilient - I totally ace the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) test and I’m still here and going strong. What’s your point?

Too sensitive?

How cute! Nope, there’s no such thing. I choose to acknowledge those sensations and deal with them in a caring manner. It’s called self-compassion or self-care. Maybe look it up if that’s a confusing concept.

That’s what was on my mind this morning on the train. I know this is a bit ranty, but not ranty enough to go in the rants section. I would have needed to add a few choice words for that.

Hope you’re all doing well. I leave you with a picture of a rainy day in Liechtenstein. Seemed fitting.

June 2022, on a bus somewhere in Liechtenstein.