Resilient people are people who are capable to bounce back to their normal psychological state after the traumatic events. Psychological resilience is a learned skill.
When you are under stress you experience powerful negative emotions like anger, anxiety, and depression. Many people remain caught up in these emotions even after the stressful events that have caused them have passed. However, there are people who have the ability to quickly bounce back to their normal balanced state. These are people who have a specific approach or attitude to themselves and the world around them that enables them to manage stress more effectively. What defers them from others is their rather optimistic attitude, thoughtfulness rather then impulsiveness, feeling good about themselves and general feeling of a good control over their lives. This very feeling of control makes them believe that coping with stress is possible and that working on it will give the results. Those who don’t believe that coping will work to begin with, won’t be able to handle the stress.
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The problem is that emotions, like anger, anxiety and depression have a powerful influence over one’s perception. While you are under effect of these emotions, it may seem there is no way to find a solution. For instance, when you are depressed it may SEEM that nothing can be done to make the depression go away. However, this is not correct. The one can intentionally influence his own moods, changing them to more positive. Physical exercise is a simple example, because exercise temporarily lifts the bad mood. Also, the one may challenge the negatively exaggerated concerns by using intellect, so these concerns will not seem as huge and overwhelming. The one may think himself in a good mood. Resilient people have intuitive understanding of these dynamics and learned to use them to cope with life challenges. In other words, resilient people believe that they can change their mood, this is why they work on changing their moods and get the results.
Positive emotions not only let you enjoy a better mood and good health, they also help you build strong and healthy relationships based on mutual love and care, where you support others and others support you. Compare this to depressed negative feelings that tend to break the relationships despite the fact that usually the close people and family try to help the depressed person. Sadly, the depressed people often isolate themselves, which makes it difficult to help them.
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To become one of those resilient people you need to know yourself better, particularly how you react to the stressful situation. When you know how you tend to react when something stressful occurs, you can control your emotions rather than the other way around. For this you need to develop a greater self-awareness, i.e. to recognize the feelings as they are happening, to maintain the right perspective, i.e. to see things for what they are without exaggerating, to express feelings appropriately to the situation, and finally, keep your actions goal-oriented despite the pressure of stress.
Next: Managing Emotions