Blog Post #29: Common Resilience Skills and Attitudes

Being connected to others is one of the most important. Relationships can provide support and caring during a crisis. Having a number of relationships within and outside of your family that offer love and encouragement and reassurance can build and support resilience. Unfortunately many people do not have strong friendships especially men. Flexibility is a critical component of resilience. It is one of the primary factors in emotional adjustment and maturity. This requires that you be flexible both in your thinking and your actions. Digging your heels in and standing your ground can be helpful in some situations but not in all.

Being able to make realistic plans and carry through with them is also a critical component of resilience. This involves being able to see clearly what is rather than what we would like. This also involves being proactive rather than reactive and being able to assert ourselves rather than behaving aggressively or passively.

Communication skills and problem solving skills are important components of resilience. Many of us have never learned to communicate effectively, especially to listen effectively to others. Effective communication allows us to work with others in solving a problem which is an important part of being resilient for ourselves and for others.

One of the most difficult things in resilience for most of us is being able to deal with and manage your strong feelings. This is known as emotional regulation. And it allows us to take action without being impulsive and responding out of emotion. Emotions are important but they can also cloud our thinking. We need to be able to think clearly will respond to a situation. It is usually best to think when we are angry or hurt before we act and speak. Many of us today are quite angry about what is happening in our country and we should be. However will will will we need to vent these feelings and discharge them so we can think clearly about what action we need to take.

We will talk about more resilience skills in the next post.

Ron Breazeale PhD