Emotional Resilience and Our Ability to Bounce Back

Even the best of us can be derailed by stress, loss, change, or disappointment, especially when these things come as a surprise. How well we bounce back is down to our emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is what allows us to recover from emotional setbacks. Understanding our emotional resilience requires us to get to know ourselves and begin the work of shoring up areas of emotional reactivity. Emotional resilience and emotional reactivity are things everyone has. Emotional resilience is a skill set that can be honed and improved with practice and strengthened over time. In contrast, emotional reactivity is something that needs to be unlearned. Emotional reactivity is usually a quick reaction that is more reflex than thought. Becoming less reactive and more resilient requires slowing down our reaction time. As we give ourselves more space to process and consider what we are truly feeling and why we are feeling the way we are, we can then act in a way that de-escalates emotional tension and protects our peace. When we reduce reactivity and increase resilience, we become better able to manage stress, adversity, and emotional pain and regain our psychological well-being. As our emotional resilience increase, we will still feel sadness, anger, anxiety, and grief but no longer feel emotional deregulation. We will learn to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively.

The benefit of high emotional resilience is that we become more compassionate and adept at handling difficult emotions and feel overwhelmed less often. As we become less reactive and more self-aware, we are better able to take the steps during times of calm that will protect our peace when things are more challenging. With better preparedness for difficult times, we recover more quickly from setbacks. With increased self-awareness and reduced reactivity, we are better able to maintain healthy relationships and let go of bad ones. When we live a life of reactivity, we tend to accept our own boundaries being crossed more often because of the regret, guilt, and shame that come with reactivity. The more reactive we are, the less patient and understanding we are in the moment, and that leads to overcompensation when the reactivity passes. Reactivity results in defining ourselves in negative ways and feeling like we deserve less. It is important to know that struggling with reactivity and having low resiliency is not because we are weak, but because the experiences that shaped how we learned to cope taught us to be reactive. Unprocessed trauma, chronic stress, perfectionism, and harsh self-criticism increase reactivity.

When we understand that reactivity is a maladaptive survival technique, we can know that it is safe to let it go. We can begin the process of leading with resilience, and resilience looks different for everyone. The core elements like being able to identify, name, and process emotions tend to be universal cornerstones. This is because, when emotions are ignored or suppressed, they intensify. When we are aware of our true feelings, this reduces intensity and creates space to decide how to respond. Developing and practicing self-compassion improves resilience by creating the habit of responding to our struggles with understanding rather than judgment. This is something we need most in moments of failure or emotional pain. Self-compassion improves our ability to self-soothe and self-regulate. Developing a regulation tool kit will help create space between emotion and action. Resilience and regulation are built and strengthened through small, consistent practices rather than dramatic change. A step to take that can help is practicing naming the emotions you felt throughout the day without judging them. Another is to build the habit of pausing before responding, even if it’s just a few breaths. These exercises will help you become more resilient and less reactive, leading to more good days than bad.