To worry about the resilience of adults

[MyKingdomForACaramel]

Am not trying to come across as goady or insensitive but have seen a distinct upturn recently both irl and online of adults not being able to deal with, what are essentially day to day life/set backs in a rational way -what was once a mishap is now a crisis.

To be clear I’m not talking l about those suffering with mental health issues (I have had my own), but more generally

To be honest, I don't think people need to get more resilient; I think society needs to get a whole lot kinder, patient and more easy going. It's been going in the wrong direction for the last 10 years or so and it all seems be very dog eat dog now. The 90s and 00s were a lot better. Life is really hard and complicated for lots of people, don't be one of the people that makes it harder.

@madein1995 It sounds like you are doing a good job of building your life up. I agree with what you are saying and have heard similar from many young adults.

I wonder if emotional maturity is a better term that the much misused resilience.

I regularly read posts on here and think “really?” How did people cope without the internet to post all their insecurities and petty dramas?

Yet we now have mindfulness days on our company where a colleague can take a day , paid, off to reconnect. No requirement for previous MH issues or a diagnosis, just take as you fancy.

Reading thread with interest.

Slightly off topic, but think the above policy is good a thing and your company sounds very forward thinking. Yes there are people with extreme anxiety and mental health issues which require intervention of some kind, but prevention is better than cure. And we are an evolving society since the initial industrial boom and reforming how we work is part of that. I know so many people whose lives involve working long hours and very little else. Even the average 9 - 5 leaves little room to develop other interests, or mental relaxation, especially if you have a family or other responsibilities. Weekends are usually reserved for chores, shopping, etc. Some time just to reflect is a good thing in my opinion, and may help prevent further absences due to a severe mental health issue occurring.

We need to start acknowledging the instrinic self-worth of people unrelated to what work they do or how much they earn, or what interests they have and prioritise the needs of everyone to have space and time to pursue mental wellness. Everyone.

I find the people who have constant drama in their lives inflict their stress on everyone else and they have no clue how theyakes others feel as everything is about THEM.

How did people cope without the internet to post all their insecurities and petty dramas?

I think they probably had more physical chats - down pubs, across garden fences, in the street/shops, in front rooms with cup of tea. So they were telling fewer people and probably encountering fewer people ready to inflame situations.

I'm sure people still had insecurities and petty drams they were just less visible and probably forgotten quicker while here threads can run for days.

I think social media has distorted people's view of life. The constant needing likes or whatever must be exhausting. Sometimes no one likes what you've said but it's still worth saying if it means something to you.

To be honest, I don't think people need to get more resilient; I think society needs to get a whole lot kinder, patient and more easy going. It's been going in the wrong direction for the last 10 years or so and it all seems be very dog eat dog now. The 90s and 00s were a lot better. Life is really hard and complicated for lots of people, don't be one of the people that makes it harder.

Absolutely this. Sadly kindness and empathy seem to be considered weaknesses in today's world, and anyone who critisices the way society is going is labelled a snowflake.

CatherineOfAragonsPrayerBook

Also agree with your post. It's incredible that in a world that has changed so much over the last century, we are so wedded to the traditional 9 to 5.

Sakura7
There's a difference between promoting kindness and empathy and being a snowflake though.

Expecting learning to be easy, expecting adults in your life to remove any difficulty, being "triggered" by different opinions because they might differ with your world view, taking every disagreement as an act of bullying, self talking every moment of normal nervousness as 'anxiety' or any moment of sadness as 'depression', expecting to have a high paying job but no pressure (because pressure isn't healthy pressure, it's stress), not responding to perfectly reasonable professional constructive feedback because all criticism is somehow a threat to your very existence, wanting to no platform people who don't agree with you because it's so triggering, and so on are all very much snowflake behaviours.

We see them in schools with the rise of lawnmower parents who seek to find a way to remove any obstacle or bump.
E.g.
Lawnmower- 'my child has self confidence issues since not getting on the trip and I think you should put him on the trip. You're picking on him and isolating him from his friends.'
Me - The deadline for the full form was last Friday. Your DC handed an incomplete form in this Wednesday and we'd already drawn names by then.

Lawnmower - Hi HOY. My child is being targeted by others in their year on social media. She is too anxious to come to school today and won't be in school until you can guarantee she won't see any of the bullies and she s in different classes.

HOY - So we would first start by suggesting your DC removes those people from social media and blocks them and we also generally suggest to parents removing phones at night as that can cause issues. We can't move timetables aroubd but we can monitor it in school and deal with school issues.

Lawnmower- That's not good enough. She needs her phone for an alarm and I'm not happy you're willing to put her in harms way by refusing a class change.

Reality - a falling out happened on social media over the weekend and by Tuesday the girl was back in school and had made up with them all by Monday afternoon.

As adults we have a moral obligation to teach children and teens how to manage entirely normal emotions without resorting to therapy language. We have a moral obligation to show them what normal human interactions are like, including the fact that people will be in bad moods or be a bit abrupt or have differing views but that's ok.

There is a need to be kind and compassionate obviously, but I think the lack of resilience and emotional intelligence is something that adults promote in kids.

LolaSmiles I don't think anyone condones those kind of extreme examples. But the world has become a harsher place for many people over the past decade, and those same people are vilified by certain quarters for having the audacity to be poor or disabled. Lots of "I'm alright Jack" and a distinct lack of empathy these days.

The world has become a lot harsher in the last 10 years in terms of benefits and services and how we treat asylum seekers. But in other ways the world is becoming less harsh around issues such as bullying and mental health.

Why do people think the world has become harsher? I think it is the opposite.

What is true is that being connected 24/7 makes one unable to park problems to one side as one used to do.

I thought of this thread when I read an article in the local paper about a McDonalds that could not open unexpectedly one morning as a result of a drainage issue. There were adults outside weeping and one demanding that someone repay her bus fare.

To be fair, I could easily be one of them.... 😳😂

Why do people think the world has become harsher? I think it is the opposite.

What is true is that being connected 24/7 makes one unable to park problems to one side as one used to do.

I think it's not a case of mutual exclusivity.

We live in a much more 'me me me' world nowadays where 'feelings' are prioritised more than ever, but technology and the internet have facilitated social interaction with strangers which I feel can remove boundaries/responsibility - like online rape threats etc which would be much less likely to happen face to face or if not hidden behind a firewall of anonymity.

I think modern life is just too difficult for a lot of people. For most people for most of history, life didn’t get any more complicated than get up, eat, do mundane repetitive work, eat, sleep, repeat. And it was physically hard and dull and relentless, but it wasn’t hard to understand. You got paid in cash, you handed cash over to your landlord and anyone else who had something you wanted. Now just to function in everyday life there are so many things you have to understand and manage. Look at the amount of thought on here that goes into who takes responsibility for “life admin”- even 20 years ago that was barely a thing.

And everything is so increasingly interconnected that you can’t just miss bits of it out without it affecting the rest of your life. If you fail somewhere, it becomes part if your identity, it follows you everywhere and bars your access to other things. Basic life is really complex and failing at it has consequences. But our brains haven’t changed that significantly. I suspect that a fair proportion of people just don’t have the capacity to learn how to manage all these things, and then another fair proportion can do it, but it takes a lot of mental energy. And even those who can do it set the bar higher and higher for themselves. I don’t think it’s the slightest bit surprising that people, not just young people, melt under the pressure.

I think life is supposed to be hard.

@Doobigetta

That's an interesting point. I sometimes wonder with some people who become homeless (some, not all) is not so much that they don't have the money but that they don't have the skills to manage living alone, paying the different bills, organising money and life admin.

@SnuggyBuggy it’s something that keeps striking me. Most people in the past didn’t have to do anything more complex than watch a few sheep, make fishing nets, whatever. They had a very clearly defined path in life with very simple rules that they learned in their teens or even younger and then just kept doing for the rest of their lives. We always look at that from the modern perspective of how frustrating and limiting that must have been for the people with much more potential, but there must have been a far larger number who were content with that level of simplicity and it was probably at or near their capacity. And we plough on now with automating everything and say how freeing it is, and how we can do so much more. But there are a lot of people who can’t, and it isn’t just because they haven’t been given the opportunity.

And we blame a lot on schools but it should be obvious that not everyone can be a howling success in the world of work.

In my line of work (clinical admin) I have to deal with a lot of individuals who live "independently" in the community with maybe some token support who simply don't have the skills to organise themselves, remember different appointments, cope with the admin that inevitably comes with managing a health condition. Many of these people get into a terrible panic over how they will manage appointments or they disengage because they find it all too stressful.

I'm not suggesting any time period was perfect for vulnerable people but modern life where the focus is making everyone independent and resilient doesnt seem to work very well for many. I mean people argue that it's great that they now have autonomy and aren't nt shut up in institutions but is living in a near constant state of panic about how you will cope really any better?

I’m from this generation.

Interestingly, my parents spent a lot of time during my childhood ‘building resistance’-making me do social stuff that terrified me (I was very shy) but also telling me that I didn’t have to do well in school, just pass your GCSEs etc.

The future still really scares me, I’m worried I’ll be terrible in interviews, be shit at hypothetical future jobs, get fired. And I had a bit of a (admittedly short lived) breakdown after I didn’t do as well as predicted in my A levels. Teaches expected a lot of me; my parents didn’t really.

I do have plenty of ‘resilient’ friends though. I think to an extent it’s a personality thing. I’ve been watching the ‘Up’ series recently and while most of the participants (baby boomers) do generally seem to have gotten on with it and overcome some horrible problems in life, some took what might seem to be minor failings very hard.

Working in higher education I do worry about how difficult some students find talking constructive criticism. They don't seem capable of believing/accepting that doing things imperfectly, and being given the tools to improve, are part of the learning experience. They ideally want to be told first time that they are amazing, or as a second best, given a quick and instant "fix" for any problem.

It's really sad, because these individuals (it's common but no universal) generally sell themselves short, because they don't make the most of opportunities to learn and get better. I wonder what it is about education at school level, or society generally, that has made this such a common scenario. If any negative feedback is seen as a threat, however delicately phrased, it's pretty difficult to move forward. And the very need to be "delicate" probably adds to be problem at a deeper level. It shouldn't be traumatic or embarrassing to get constructive criticism in an educational setting! It should just be an obvious part of the process.