Expert Advice: Proven Strategies to Boost Emotional Resilience

We hear a lot about resilience in connection to health. 

Building resilience is said to be the key factor in improving many facets of our well-being, from the immune system to social skills. Although individual definitions of it vary, resilience generally refers to two related traits: one’s capacity to withstand or recover quickly from difficulties and an ability to spring back into shape.

So, how does resilience feature in discussions around emotional well-being and mental health? Mental well-being relies greatly on our capacity to work through and recover from hardship; however, it also entails our ability to return to ourselves when forces outside of our control – such as work, family, daily stresses, and larger global events – push and pull us out of shape. With respect to our mental health and well-being, these are great starting places. Fortunately, many researchers and experts have recently developed more nuanced approaches you can use to further boost your emotional resilience.

Education

Resilience is frequently discussed in relation to children – in terms of how parents and caregivers can help them develop resilience from an early age. In many of the studies, education was determined to shape young people’s feelings and demonstrations of childhood resilience most strongly.[1]

In this instance, education doesn’t mean simply attending school (although this can be extremely useful to young people, both in terms of their learning how to learn but also providing community and safe spaces to explore and creatively try on identities), it merely refers to learning about the world and oneself in it. Understanding cause and effect – if I do this, then this will happen – is critical to broader strategies of resistance in childhood and beyond and can only occur through education about the world. 

Education also provides new and different perspectives on events by offering alternative viewpoints on the feelings that each of us experiences on a daily basis. Greater perspective is extremely useful when recovering from hardship, as it allows for multiple frameworks for how to deal with diverse problems.

Community

Studies of resilience in university students are also common because this population often faces unique challenges from being newly independent and having increased personal responsibility in an institutional setting. Research has found that, among university students, resilience is most often developed through building community. [2]

This finding should not surprise anyone who has sought treatment or therapy for mental health, since communities and connection are often at the core of well-being. What’s distinct about the relationship between community and resilience is that, similar to education, we use communities to learn resilience, not only as it is modeled to us by others but also in dialogue with other people. Deriving support from our friends, family, and peers as we explore and recover from our own setbacks is one of the critical processes in developing our own emotional resilience.

Self-Reflection

Many studies of the military are also focused on resilience since trauma and injury are key features of life in conflict for soldiers and civilians alike. Many of these studies show that self-reflection is one of the main features of resilience development.  Soldiers who demonstrate the most self-reflection, or ability to consider situations in context and analyze their meaning, also show the greatest resilience when it comes to recovering from hardship and physical harm.[3]

Positivity

Positivity can be a thorny topic among psychologists and mental health experts since cultures of toxic positivity have had a detrimental effect, especially across social media. However, there is no denying that there is a correlation between positive outlook – a tendency to think on the bright side and cultivate an inner sense of power and control over things – and long-term resilience.[4]

Cultivating positivity does not mean simply “being indiscriminately happy all the time.” Instead, it entails focusing on positive emotions and seeking what makes you feel good. Reflecting on when and why you feel good forges neural pathways that perpetuate this positive emotional state and can impact long-term resilience.

[1] Poulsen, Marie Kanne PhD. Strategies for building resilience in infants and young children at risk. Infants & Young Children 6(2):p 29-40, October 1993.  

[2] Kacic V, Zimmerman F, Milbourn B, et al. Developing resilience and promoting positive mental health strategies in university students. BJPsych Open. 2021;7(S1):S142-S143. doi:10.1192/bjo.2021.403

[3] Crane, M., & Boga, D. (2017). A commentary: Rethinking approaches to resilience and mental health training. Journal of Military and Veterans Health, 25(1), 30–33. https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.175049523006251[4] Gloria, C. T., and Steinhardt, M. A. (2016) Relationships Among Positive Emotions, Coping, Resilience and Mental Health. Stress Health, 32: 145–156. doi: 10.1002/smi.2589.