Nurturing Resilience

Often when I feel low, I search Brené Brown quotes on Google. I find her words so nurturing and encouraging, and they can redirect my mood quicker than an episode of Derry Girls. The quote that struck me most today was the following: “Joy collected over time fuels resilience.” On day four of this Level 5 lockdown, I imagine I’m not the only one drawing on my emotional reserves in order to see the next stage of this pandemic through.

I’ve always considered resilience to be something that’s well learnt by midlife, like how to make a proper roast chicken dinner. It’s a part of our emotional armour just as a good smokey eye is part of our beauty arsenal. But the more I read, the more I realise that there is a lot we can still do in midlife to strengthen our resilience, which is good news because as we know this is a period of life rife with challenges, from ageing parents, ill-health and menopause to career pivots, redundancies and divorce. There’s also the existential angst that can strike in our middle years. We know we’re not going to live forever, so we begin to look back at what we’ve achieved and re-evaluate our priorities for the future. Midlife can be a time of shifting values and for this reason it can sometimes feel like a mind melt.

Scientists suggest that resilience is not so much a learnt behaviour as an emotional muscle that needs regular workouts just like our physical ones.

According to Psychology Today, “The Resilience Theory states that it’s not the nature of the adversity or challenging situation that is most important, it’s how you deal with it that’s important.” But what really interested me was the assertion that filling our days with tasks and efforts at self-improvement is not the best way to boost our resilience in difficult times. It is, in fact, partly about giving ourselves time and space to heal and about showing ourselves some compassion in tough times. So for all of you who, like me, have not Marie Kondoed your life this year, don’t worry, there are other ways – better ways – of dealing with adversity and of sparking joy.

According to the poet, painter and Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse, “...whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.” Resilience is very much tied up with our attitude and outlook on the events that befall us, and like honing our muscles in a gym, it is a process rather than something instantaneous. Dr Dennis Charney, author of Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges was shot one day leaving a deli in New York. He told The New York Times in an interview, “It’s good to be prepared for it, but it’s not too late once you’ve been traumatised to build the capability to move forward in a resilient way.” On one level, his story makes moaning about Level 5 feel feeble, but a lovely friend of mine once told me never to diminish my own pain or sense of loss. That’s always stayed with me, and she’s right because you don’t have to be the victim of gun violence to find yourself really struggling with your own circumstances.

Philosopher Alain de Botton said, “A good half of the art of living is resilience.” I think the difficulty in midlife is that we feel we should have “made it” in some way, that we should have climbed the cliff face of career and family and have arrived at less rocky terrain. We don’t expect the landscape to look so daunting in our middle years, even without Covid-19. But according to Dr Adam Grant, who with Sheryl Sandberg, wrote the book, Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience and Finding Joy, the qualities of middle age may give individuals over 40 an advantage over the young when developing resilience.

By midlife, we’ve been through a multitude, and Grant told The New York Times in 2017 that one way to boost resilience is by remembering our comebacks. We’re fortunate that at this stage in life we’ve all experienced more than a few. “Look back and say, ‘I’ve gone through something worse in the past. This is not the most horrible thing I have ever faced or will ever face. I know I can deal with it,’” says Grant. For me, there was a time when I was in a terrible work situation which left me broken and soul-destroyed at the end of each day. Back then the idea of being cooped up at home working remotely would have seemed like a dream too good to come true. It’s all about perspective.

Grant also advises telling yourself that a situation is neither personal or permanent. It’s the easiest thing in the world to blame ourselves for what we perceive to be our mistakes. I spent many years beating myself up for buying a property in 2007 – literally five minutes before the bottom fell out of the market – and then for being made redundant a few years later leaving me unable to pay the mortgage. I watched my neighbours snap up the very same apartment for a third of what I paid and continually told myself that I should have known better, I should have foreseen what was going to happen, and that I shouldn’t have been so stupid. Nothing about this approach helped me, that’s for sure, so I’ve spent the past few years doing something else Grant suggests, which is reframing my narrative. It’s been difficult, but I’ve tried to rethink the language I use and how I frame my own history in an effort to unearth some positives from the experience. The redundancy, for one thing, certainly led me onto better and more fulfilling jobs.

As the saying goes, “Make mistakes. Learn from them. Move on.” Focusing on the now is key to embracing this mantra and building resilience. For me, that’s always been difficult. When I have to get in the car and drive somewhere I haven’t visited before, I panic because I don’t know what the road ahead looks like and I don’t trust myself to navigate it. Similarly in life, I want to be sure of where I’ll be working or living in a year, two years’ or five years’ time. I need to be able to visualise my immediate future or I become anxious. This year has been so turbulent, however, that I've begun trying to practice that old adage of taking one day at a time. It’s not easy, but really there’s no other choice. Now that I’ve reached midlife I’ve learned that uncertainty is just part of the journey, and with that uncertainty often comes stress.

I read once that stress is the stimulus for growth. This year has given us all plenty of opportunities to grow, that’s for sure. I came across another Brené Brown quote today that might be of use right now. “We don’t have to do all of it alone. We were never meant to.” Coping with stress and strengthening resilience is not a one-woman job. We may not have all of our loved ones close by, but we each have our bubble at least. That’s good enough for now.

Marie Kelly, October 2020.