The art of resilience

As lockdown takes its toll on our daily lives, learning to cope with the “new normal” is a skill you can teach yourself

- LINDSAY DE FREITAS

IF THERE’S anything the past couple of months has shown it’s that every now and then something you have no control over will come out of the blue and throw you for a loop.

This time it’s a global pandemic that’s had us all feeling at turns anxious, fearful, and lonely – possibly even all three at once. But it could also be something such as your child being diagnosed with a serious health problem, retrenchment or a sudden death in the family that hits you for a six.

It’s at these times of trauma, tragedy or threat that you need resilience, which is the ability to cope with stress and hardship. It’s having a mental toolkit and a reservoir of emotional strength to call on in times of adversity. And while some people are more resilient than others, it’s not true that resilience is something you either have or don’t have.

You can learn to become more resilient. It’s a skill that, like a muscle, can be strengthened if you work at it. Which is good news in these uncertain times.

“Now more than ever, we need to build mental resilience as we try to work out how to navigate our new day­to­day lives,” says Johannesburg­based coun­ selling psychologist Tamara Sosa.

Resilience isn’t to be confused with an attitude where stressful events in your life simply don’t affect you, she adds.

“Often when people hear the word resilience it makes them think of ‘toughness’, of having an impenetrable armour which can’t be worn down.

“But resilience doesn’t mean that nothing will impact or harm you,” Sosa says. “It means that when you do go through a stressful or painful experience, you have tools at hand that enable you to bounce back and feel better again.”