Written by: Aileen Carson, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Resilience is often described as bouncing back from adversity, but sometimes it can take time to recover from difficult circumstances. While it’s important to have the ability to adapt to circumstances, it can be helpful to take your time to recover, reflect on what you’ve been through and work out a way forward.
Living through a pandemic has been exhausting and has tested all of us. Many people are struggling with their mental health and coping with grief and loss. Others have been living in survival mode which isn’t sustainable in the long term.
Take your time
So what do you do when you’ve been through a difficult experience such as a pandemic and you find you’re not bouncing back?
First, don’t assume that because you’re not straight back to where you started that this means you’re not resilient. We all react differently to events, so rather than putting pressure on ourselves or comparing ourselves with others who appear to bounce back quickly, spend some time regaining your energy and moving forward at a slower pace.
It can be hard to feel resilient if you have been through one stressful event after another with very little space in between. When this happens, you may not have had enough time to recover from the first event before being hit with the second and third and so on.
It doesn’t even need to be a hugely traumatic event. Relentless pressure or stress can wear you down, reducing your energy levels and making smaller things harder to deal with. If you don’t give yourself enough time to deal with the stress associated with one event, you’ll carry it with you to the next event, making it even harder to deal with.
Go back or move forward?
Consider whether you want to go back to where you were. Would it be better to try to move forward rather than devoting your energy trying to go back to being the person you once were? Resilience involves adapting, so you might find you don’t go back to your former self. Instead, you might become a different person with evolved coping mechanisms – someone who can build on their experiences to work out the best way of moving forward.
Be kind to yourself
Taking time to regain your strength means you are taking responsibility for your wellbeing. Many people are much harder on themselves than they are on other people, so try to recognise if you are being particularly hard on yourself and show yourself the same compassion you’d show others. We all cope differently with whatever life throws at us. No one else is on the same journey as you.
Work out what you need right now
If you’re struggling to cope, consider what you need to help you at the present moment. This could be something to eat or drink, fresh air, exercise or something else. For me, looking after myself involves exercise, meditation, reading and spending time with people close to me, but it might be different for you. Anything that helps you stay well will benefit you. Self-care isn’t selfish or self-indulgent. It’s essential.
Learn from your experience
When you’re in a better place, reflect on your experience and work out if there is anything you could do differently the next time you find yourself in difficult circumstances. Is it possible to find something positive about it? This doesn’t mean you’re minimising your experience or how you feel about it. Finding meaning in whatever has happened to you will make it easier for you to move forward.
We’re all adapting to a different way of life now and this is not easy, but giving yourself time to recover and learning from your experience will help you in the future. Observe how you coped and use that knowledge to help you move on. Taking time to recognise what you’ve been through is essential for your recovery and will help you increase your resilience.
Aileen Carson, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Aileen Carson is a professional coach who specializes in helping people with career transitions. She has had a varied career, starting as an editor in the publishing industry and then moving into the social housing sector where she worked with people with mental health problems and dementia.
Her passion for working with people led her to become a coach. She focuses on helping people identify what’s important to them to enable them to find work that is more fulfilling. She also supports people to find ways of dealing with stress to help them avoid burnout.
Aileen’s own career transitions have given her a unique understanding of the problems people face when moving into a new sector and her personal experience of the common difficulties other people face in their working lives, such as burnout and redundancy, has given her valuable insight that feeds into her coaching work.
