What is emotional resilience?

For a lot of people, it represents being tough/strong/emotionless. Always.

For others it is about having awareness of when an emotion hits you and then figuring out ways to stop them from overwhelming you in the moment.

Both notions are fraught with complications. Because it assumes that (a) one can turn emotions on and off at will (a command and control system), and (b) that showing emotion is a bad thing. On the first one, in theory, yes, it can be done, but up to a point. The breaking point. The emotional piggy bank grows and eventually outgrows its confines, possibly metamorphosizing into something ugly and unrecognisable too (ala the Ghostbuster sludge monster) that releases when least expected.

The second one has somehow become the business norm, possibly even a societal norm where showing emotion = weakness. Showing emotion = lack of control. Showing emotion = stay away from her, she is needy. And I use her deliberately because *cue the gender bias, patriarchal system*, women are ‘more inclined’ to cry more often than men. Showing emotion = I will ignore because I do not know how to handle it/comfort/may be sued for harassment. The list is a lengthy one.

With all of this going on, it is no wonder that both men and women are floundering in their ability to cope with stress, anxiety, frustration, guilt, empathy, and kindness.

To answer the definition question posed upfront, emotional resilience should simply be knowing how to adapt your emotions to suit the situation at hand be it positive (happiness, prides as examples) or negative (such as fatigue, stress, distrust). Do you gush when you are happy? Building on the earlier point, it may signal that you are uncontrolled and uncontrollable with your emotions. Prefer not to show emotion? Again, the perception could be that you are cold and distant.

It is this double-edged sword of perceived judgement by others that leads most people down the path of finding some neutral ground of managing how they show emotion. Calibrating it as it were but often unsuccessfully. Why do I say that? Because how many times have you found yourself recalling the situation repeatedly in your mind, each time reacting with varying levels of emotion and content or building up and amplifying a particular emotion? My guess is regularly.

What this shows is in that trying to find that neutral emotional ground, one moves away from one’s authentic self. In the new normal of 2020, with new balancing acts being struck and more time to spend on and by yourself and loved ones, maybe you have started to move closer towards your truer self again, which is great.

My tips below will enable you on that journey of reconciling what your true emotions should be and how to embrace and build on that for a more resilient you.

Tip 1: Label your emotions correctly

To regulate emotions effectively, one needs to know what emotion you are dealing with i.e. awareness of the emotion. Are you happy or perhaps proud, maybe even feeling confident about something? My first tip is to expand your vocabulary on what emotions you’re actually feeling. The image in the next column is the work of Dr Gloria Wilcox, who created this feelings circle in 1982 to increase levels of awareness around emotions.

The circle features three rings, the innermost of which includes seven core emotions: happy, surprised, bad, fearful, angry, disgusted and sad. These are go-to emotional states, but they are vague. The outer two rings, however, drill down into the specific emotions associated with those larger emotions to give you a better sense of what to do about them. For example, you may be feeling sad, but the sadness may stem from feelings of guilt, or loneliness. Your coping mechanism for dealing with guilt would be different to that of loneliness, thus knowing the difference changes the plan or outcome.