A 90-second guide to Resilience

What is it?

The ability to bounce back from a very stressful experience or periods of lower level but continuous stress AND to have grown from that experience. Resilience is not a coping mechanism: it is an adaptive response that enables you to perform, learn, grow and enjoy that process.

To express it another way.....it is your ability to respond positively to change, pressure and work/life stressors without becoming ill. It is more about positive long-term adaptation rather than short-term maladaptive coping. The problem with unconsciously ‘coping’ is that it can become a habit which eventually undermines resilience and is a forerunner to stress-related illness.

What makes one person resilient and another one less so?

There are several factors that can help build resilience and they include: genetics; physical fitness; early life experiences (parenting/social support); lifestyle behaviours (eating/exercise/sleep); a well regulated nervous system, emotional intelligence and emotional regulation. So, there may be a number of reasons why one person is more resilient than another. There is no right or wrong about this. Previous difficult/traumatic life experiences can also undermine resilience even if they happened a long time ago. Examples include witnessing upsetting scenes when a child, car accidents, surgery, physical/emotional abuse and even bad experiences at a dentist. Successful people are not immune to events and episodes in their life which can cause a severe problem to their resilience and wellbeing. In fact, mental strength is a great quality which can be overplayed and eventually cause fatigue, burnout and a loss of effective decision-making.

Isn’t life full of difficult experiences? Shouldn’t we just get on with it?

‘Yes’ is the answer to the first question and maybe is the answer to the second. We have a wonderfully designed adaptive stress response mechanism: the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and it has evolved over thousands of years to help us become a very successful species. Its primary job is to keep us safe and alive. It releases stress hormones to trigger the energy mobilisation we need when dealing with threat/challenges - the fight and flight response…..then successfully discharge that energy (the Polar Bear shaking)…. and then recover by replenishing the energy we need to cope/adapt again with the next challenge/threat - it self-regulates and in doing so becomes more resilient. It makes sense for us to respect this successful evolution of our the ANS and work intelligently with it rather than cause it to become disturbed and less effective.

We disrupt the efficiency and effectiveness of the ANS with poor sleep, nutrition, too much caffeine/alcohol, lack of exercise: choices within our control. Trauma and chronic stress also cause it to become dysfunctional. So... we have the capacity to successfully adapt to change and difficult experiences. However, this capacity relies upon effective physiological recovery.

Mmmm....how does this happen?

The ANS does a lot of work automatically so the higher functions of our brain can focus on more complex, demanding and strategic thinking. The fact it is automatic (mostly unconscious) is important and we’ll come back to that. For now it is important to understand the ANS has two branches - sympathetic and parasympathetic.

We are always in one of these modes. The sympathetic generates the energy to fight or flight (or in more modern society - argue, compete, worry, play sport, play video games, etc.). It is a catabolic process - eating up reserves in the body. The parasympathetic nervous system helps to repair and build the reserves the body needs to cope with the next sympathetic activity (challenge/threat). It also helps us recover from illness, become fitter, stronger etc. It is an anabolic process and sometimes called ‘rest and digest’ Ideally, after sympathetic activity we should swing into parasympathetic mode - a healthy nervous system cycles like this throughout the day - energising and recovering.

Why do you say ideally?

Research undertaken with animals show they recover very quickly from high stress situations by switching from sympathetic to parasympathetic. Their effective recovery is enabled through the rapid release of energy built up by the nervous system and the rapid activation of the parasympathetic system. We tend not to do this because we have a thinking mind that ruminates and replays past stressors and adds to them with new or further anticipatory stressors i.e. we prolong the stress response and can even create it with our thinking mind. In fact, we can condition our nervous system to stay more in sympathetic activity than it should. This is very common in the military (called being ‘stuck on high’ ...like a car engine over-revving) and probably more common than people realise in certain job roles/sectors.

Is this a problem?

In the short term probably not. A certain amount of pressure and work/life stressors are good for us and, as we said at the beginning, will help us become more resilient. The problem is more that if we are continually activating our sympathetic nervous system then we are likely to develop stress-related symptoms.