What is resilience?
Many people think it's about never feeling bad. Never feeling stress. Floating above the pain and overcoming it.
That's not what the word actually means though. It means being able to survive and recover. If we never feel scared, low, anxious, we don't demonstrate resilience - we can't because there's nothing to recover from.
It's those of us who feel the world is against us at times, and who work hard on ourselves just to feel ok again. Who survive what life throws at us, who feel as if we are lurching from one crisis to the next, or who feel we have a general "low" approach to life and the more positive elements are rare and "not really me" - and who survive. This is what resilience is about.
It's about feeling like that, accepting that "that feeling" has come again, greeting "that feeling" and slowly regaining our equilibrium. At times, not thinking everything's going to be ok, just surviving. That's resilience. That's the strong people, those who feel weak.
There are people all around who tell us that if they "can do it" so can we. That's not true, because we all do "it" our own way. If we try to copy, role model, emulate someone else, we will fall over again eventually because it won't be real, it won't be us. It would be us acting the way we think someone else is, when they are really acting anyway themselves! They also have low times, they just don't say they do because it doesn't fit their persona
Surviving is about getting down to basics, which means resilience is too. About allowing ourselves to be ourselves. About stopping thinking about what anyone else would do and trusting that inner feeling, knowing that you do actually know what feels good and what feels wrong. You're right. You are the only one in your head so you are the only one that knows what is right for you.
It's sometimes useful to get help to unravel what's going on in your head - sometimes it feels like a tangled web, and someone can help you untangle the thoughts. But you're always the only one in your head:-)
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