Resilience is a trait vital to maintaining mental wellness. Adapting to tough challenges in your life is a life skill that can help you maintain good mental health.
Being mentally, emotionally, and behaviorally flexible can make adjusting to the demands of life more attainable. Resilient people are better at emotionally withstanding trauma, adversity, and hardship. Resilient people also utilize healthy coping skills to overcome obstacles and recover from setbacks. Life is not fail-proof; therefore, learning to be resilient can be the difference between using unhealthy coping mechanisms and healthy coping mechanisms.
Poor Coping Mechanisms
Relying on poor coping mechanisms like avoidance, isolation, and self-medicating can create low resilience, which results in feeling overwhelmed or powerless. Resilience develops with time and practice, and you can get better with advice from a mental health professional. You will encounter obstacles along the way, and it will take time, strength, and assistance from others around you. However, once you get there, you can see how far you have come and be proud.
How to Become Resilient
Life is full of challenges and opposition; however, learning to manage tough times can make your life more enjoyable. Becoming resilient can help you experience a full and joyful life. Resilience can be a hard skill to learn, and it will take time as it is not an overnight process. Learning this skill will be beneficial as you go through your life and face small and big challenges. So, how can you learn to become more resilient?
- Build strong relationships: Building strong, healthy relationships with friends and loved ones can offer you a safe place where you can reach out when you need support or guidance during good and bad situations. Taking the time to value your relationships and putting in the effort to make stronger connections can help you learn to become resilient.
- Learn from past experiences: You have successfully made it through every single hard day that you have encountered thus far. Taking the time to reflect on how you cope during some of your hardest times can help you learn how to cope in the future. Writing down your past experiences and identifying the positive and negative things you did to cope can help you prepare for future crises.
- Create meaningful days: Not every day is going to be sunshine and rainbows. But taking the time every day to do something that makes you feel good and helps you feel like you have accomplished something can do wonders for you. Setting S.M.A.R.T goals can help you look at your future with meaning and hope.
- Practice self-care: Taking time for yourself can significantly impact your mental health and make you feel hopeful. Doing basic things for yourself like getting enough sleep, exercising, or participating in your favorite hobbies can help you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t take the basics for granted because they can help you feel better and put you in the right state of mind to succeed.
Coping Skills
Putting in the effort to learn healthy coping skills can be helpful and rewarding. Whether on your own or with the help of a therapist or mental health professional, learning positive coping skills can help you endure tough times of hardship and trauma. This could be stress and time management, problem-solving, decision making, and lifestyle management. It also requires:
- Emotional regulation: Properly managing your emotions during stressful times can help you stay calm and level-headed. This is by no means an easy skill to learn, but focusing on the things that you can control from the things that you cannot control will help you stay focused on being resilient and living a happier life.
- Being proactive: Sitting around waiting for things to get better or ignoring the hardships around you will not make your problems disappear. It is important to actively do things to help put you and your mind in the right direction. This could look like journaling, seeing a therapist, getting out into nature, or doing any of the things listed above.
Making a plan and actively working on that plan could be the difference between learning this life-saving tool and not. Take the time today to be proactive toward your goals. Remember to set reasonable expectations when creating your goals.
Challenge Is Inevitable
No endeavor is exempt from challenges. The road to successful mental and physical well-being requires a great deal of resilience. However, you don’t need to go it alone. Seeking professional care will help set you on a path to establishing trust and confidence from within and with others.
It can take time and energy to recover from challenging life events that might create setbacks or be traumatic. It is okay to take time to feel your feelings, but try not to make that your whole world. At Acera Health, our programs provide conventional and holistic approaches to help you develop and practice skills that build resiliency in real-world settings. Our goal is to educate you and your family about your mental health and set you on a path toward successfully managing your symptoms. Learning to be resilient can be the difference between becoming depressed during every life event or feeling joy for the life and opportunities you have. If you or a loved one is currently struggling, let us help you through this process. To find out more about our programs, contact us today and call (949) 647-4090
