Building Resilience To Withstand The Storms of Stress

Do you wait for a flood to wash your stick and mud house away, or do you build a solid foundation that will withstand the chaos of the coming storms and keep you safe?

You build a strong foundation.

You may get a little flooding every now and then, but if you have a strong foundation your wet feet will dry and you will still have a home to protect you.

The same can be said for emotional and mental resilience. 

When you don’t have resilience, every inconvenience, stressful situation, or mishap can feel like a struggle where you’re just fighting to keep your head above water.

When you’ve built your emotional and mental resilience up, every stressful situation you encounter doesn’t have to feel like a battle, you may stumble but you won't fall.

Building mental and emotional resilience takes effort, you don’t just wake up one day knowing how to cope.

What is resilience?

Resilience is defined as, “the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.”(1)

Physical resilience is having a healthy and functioning immune system that can fight off the bacteria we encounter every day.

Children, the immune-compromised, and the elderly have weaker immune systems so they get sick more frequently. They aren’t as physically resilient as healthy individuals.

Mental and emotional resilience is being able to not just live through a stressful experience but cope effectively.

Coping effectively means not being triggered or breaking down for a long time when something stressful happens. Coping means you’re able to bounce back and function in your life when the going gets tough.

Does trauma cause resilience?

Someone who has suffered from trauma is often described as being so strong or resilient. Oftentimes it’s because the person had no choice but to grit their teeth and weather the storm. There was no other option.

Unfortunately, trauma can cause unhealthy coping mechanisms that mimic resilience, like:

• Substance abuse

• Hyper-independence

• Manic episodes

• People-pleasing

• Insomnia

• Extreme bouts of hyperactivity

• Aggression

How do I build resilience?

We start learning and developing our resilience from the time we are babies. A sign that a toddler is developing resilience is when they try to work out a problem instead of throwing a tantrum because they are frustrated.(2)

So, most of our resilience is learned throughout our lives. However, that’s not the end.

Resilience can be learned as an adult. It’s a combination of skills and behaviors that are learned, practiced daily, and enhanced as you meet new situations that test your resilience.

For example, being self-aware when you encounter professional setbacks and analyzing them for their true causes and outcomes instead of taking a very personal approach and becoming angry and frustrated, as a toddler would, is learning resilience.(3)

Practices such as mindful meditation, guided journaling, breath work, and vagus nerve stimulation all help build resilience.

Here are 3 vagal exercises to help you build resilience!

The key is to be consistent. Practicing these, and other, vagus nerve exercises daily will help you build your resilience.

1. Self Touch

🏋️ Place one hand on your forehead and the other at the base of your skull/top of your neck. Apply gentle consistent pressure. Focus on the difference in temperature between your hands and head. Notice how you feel supported and held.

💡 This exercise helps you feel grounded in the moment. By placing gentle consistent pressure on the front and back of your head, you are stimulating the nerves and sensory receptors. By consciously focusing on the temperature difference. This is the perfect exercise to do if you’re suddenly feeling overwhelmed and is subtle enough that you can do it right at your desk at work.

2. Auricular Nerve Massage

🏋️ Hold your ears and gently pull them away from your head in a circular motion. Change the place where you hold your ear to get maximum movement.

💡 The vagus nerve touches the auricular nerve. By manipulating the ear or pulling it away from the head in different directions, you’re internally stimulating and massaging the vagus nerve. Next time you feel a headache coming on because you know you’re in a loud and stressful situation, try this exercise to soothe your body.

3. Baby Rock

🏋️ Place your hands on your chest and stomach and apply gentle pressure. Close your eyes and rock your body side to side while thinking about how it would have felt to be held and rocked as a child.

💡 Rocking back and forth gently stimulates the vagus nerve. The muscles in your upper body work like soothing loving hands gently rubbing your tired vagus nerve in long strokes. By closing your eyes and focusing on the feeling of being held and rocked as a baby or small child you’re creating a “new memory” on your vagus nerve. You’re combining that happy comforting emotion of being held while stimulating your vagus nerve gently and lovingly.

Can I lose my resilience?

Sadly, you can.

Without dedicated practice and time set aside to build and work on your resilience techniques and tools, you can lose your ability to be resilient in stressful situations.

Mental health matters!

We should all devote at least 10 minutes every day to building our resilience and the connection between our mind and body.

Our Recommended Reading:

1) Resilience | Psychology Today South Africa
2) Gordon, K. (1996) Infant and Toddler Resilience: Knowledge, Predictions, Policy, and Practice. Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). Infant and Toddler Resilience: Knowledge, Predictions, Policy, and Practice. 15p.
3) Walsh, B. (2015) The Science of Resilience. Harvard Graduate School of Education. The Science of Resilience | Harvard Graduate School of Education.