Resilience

We are living in an era of crises, it is estimated that one billion people are suffering from stress-related illnesses and that number is rising. The key to resilience is staying healthy even when faced with life’s great burdens. Resilience keeps people mentally healthy despite serious crises while others break down. Resilience is a natural phenomenon that enables people to continue developing after they experience a catastrophe or traumatic event.

There seems to be a connection between optimism and the fact that people believe they can somehow cope and that it will probably work out somehow. That seems to be connected to resilience, so someone who cultivates this kind of positive assessment style or develops it over time is less likely to be affected. So can we influence how resilient we are?

There’s a lot of data showing that people who can distinguish between negative stimuli and neutral stimuli are better protected against stress and associated stress-related mental illness. In this respect, we are also quite confident that we can use this to derive further neurobiological findings.

When we experience stress, the brain is activated. This sets off a complex cascade of events. In the brain, stress signals are sent to the hypothalamus. This in turn releases hormones that make their way to the pituitary gland. The pituitary gland then releases its hormones to the adrenal cortex, which instructs our bodies to make extra cortisol to deal with the stress. Cortisol allows all the cells in our body to flood with additional energy to aid the fight or flight response. Cortisol is our main stress hormone and it travels to all organs in the body. We must be well prepared for a stressful event. Cortisol binds to receptors in our cells and that’s a good thing Because the receptors then report back to the brain: “Thank you! We have enough cortisol bound here now.” The stress response is then switched off in the brain and we calm down again. At least when everything is functioning correctly.

Many people are nervous at interviews, but normally, when the situation is over, our stress hormone levels should downregulate again. People with this particular genotype are not so good at this. So for them, the stress hormone stays higher for longer.

What happens when we are convinced that we will fail at something? Your thoughts influence your actions. If you think you can’t do it, then it may well be that you really can’t do it. So you would then say yes, I can’t do it anyway, so I won’t even try. If negative thoughts lead to bad results, shouldn’t the reverse also be possible? That’s precisely where we can do something for our health and resilience, namely by looking more closely at things that we have already achieved. We often pay much more attention to the things we haven’t achieved. And we remember things that went wrong. And we somehow forget even the little things that have gone well. Remembering the successes, trying not to judge experiences too negatively, and staying active despite adversity - are key factors for resilience.

We can equip ourselves mentally at an early age to cope better with crises later on, which we will all experience in one form or another. But to what extent does being resilient also mean social pressure to self-optimize to be ready to perform at all times? Resilience simply means finding ways to deal with stress.

You enjoy the moment more because you know how quickly moments can change, and how situations can change. You move through life with much more awareness. Resilience is not a state of being, but rather a continuous process. Our psyche is a complex mix of environmental influences, genes, and our ability to act. Resilience is not about happiness it’s about living with all of life’s gray areas, surviving crises without losing your mental health. To have a realistic understanding. Everyone told me it’s not even worth trying. I tried anyway, but that doesn’t mean everything went like I wanted. Like everyone else, my resilience is never perfect, never 100%. I managed to achieve a lot despite everything, but I haven’t solved everything, and I think that can be said of you, of me, of everyone.