Emotional Resilience: Learning to Stay With What Is Difficult

We often think of resilience as the ability to cope when life becomes difficult. We imagine someone who can withstand adversity, keep going and somehow bounce back when things don't go according to plan.

But resilience isn't about becoming so strong that nothing affects us. It isn't the ability to avoid difficult emotions, suppress them or remain calm and unaffected in the face of adversity.

In fact, emotional resilience is developed through experiencing the full range of human emotion and learning that we can stay with difficult feelings without being overwhelmed by them. Life will inevitably bring uncertainty, disappointment, loss and change. We cannot protect ourselves from all of these experiences, but we can develop our capacity to meet them.

Learning to listen to our emotions

I think of emotions as messages. They provide information about how we feel about the people in our lives, the things we do and the world around us.

Fear might tell us that something feels unsafe. Anger can alert us to a boundary that has been crossed. Sadness can tell us that we have experienced a loss or that something is important to us. Joy and excitement can draw our attention towards the things that bring meaning and pleasure to our lives.

This doesn't mean that every emotion tells us exactly what is true or that we should act on every feeling. Emotions are information, not instructions. The skill lies in learning to listen to them, understand them and decide how we want to respond. This is emotional intelligence, and it is closely connected to resilience.

When we are able to experience an uncomfortable emotion without immediately needing to escape it, we begin to learn something important. I can feel this and I can cope.

The importance of staying with discomfort

Many of us have become very skilled at avoiding difficult feelings. We distract ourselves, seek reassurance, stay busy, overthink, withdraw or try to find a solution as quickly as possible. These strategies can provide relief, but when we consistently avoid discomfort, we don't get the opportunity to discover that we are capable of tolerating it. 

Resilience grows through experience. We become more confident in our ability to cope when we have experienced anxiety and found that it eventually passes; when we have been disappointed and discovered that we can recover; when we have faced uncertainty and realised that we don't always need to know what happens next.

This doesn't mean that we should deliberately seek out suffering or that difficult experiences are somehow good for us. It means that when difficult feelings inevitably arise, we can become curious about them rather than immediately trying to make them disappear.

We can ask ourselves: What is this feeling telling me? What does it matter to me? What do I need? Is there something I need to change, accept or communicate? Sometimes the answer will be clear, sometimes it won't. The important thing is that we are listening.

Resilience and change

This capacity to tolerate discomfort is also important when we want to make changes in our lives. Growth rarely feels completely comfortable. Starting something new, setting a boundary, leaving something behind, pursuing a dream or doing something outside our usual way of living can all bring uncertainty and self-doubt.

Our minds can interpret this discomfort as a reason to stop. But feeling afraid doesn't necessarily mean that something is wrong. Sometimes it simply means that we are doing something unfamiliar.

Resilience allows us to hold both things at once: I feel uncomfortable, and I still want to move towards this.

This is where resilience becomes more than simply surviving difficult times. It gives us the capacity to live more fully, because we become less dependent on feeling comfortable before we allow ourselves to act.

Building trust in ourselves

Resilience isn't something we either have or don't have. It is influenced by our experiences, our relationships, our circumstances, the ways we have learned to cope, and it develops over the course of our lives.

Every time we meet a difficult experience, remain present with ourselves and discover that we can move through it, we build a little more trust in our own capacity. Sometimes resilience means reframing a situation and looking at it differently. Sometimes it means asking for help, leaning on people we trust or taking care of ourselves when life feels overwhelming. Sometimes it means recognising our strengths and remembering what we have already overcome.

It doesn't require us to do everything alone. In fact, supportive relationships are an important part of resilience. Being able to communicate honestly, accept support and allow ourselves to be vulnerable with people we trust can help us feel less isolated and more able to face what is difficult.

A more realistic idea of resilience

Perhaps resilience isn't about bouncing back to exactly who we were before. Sometimes difficult experiences change us. They can alter what we value, how we understand ourselves and what we want from our lives. We may emerge with a greater sense of compassion, self-awareness or clarity about what matters to us.

Resilience is the capacity to remain flexible when life disrupts our plans and to find a way forward when the path we expected is no longer available.

It is not about never feeling overwhelmed, frightened or sad. It is about knowing that these feelings can be experienced without defining us, and that we can continue to make choices even when life feels uncertain.

We don't need to become invulnerable. Perhaps we simply need to develop greater trust in our ability to feel, adapt and keep going.

Melanie Elliott | Psychotherapist