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

I agree OP. I think we live in a time now where everything has to have a label.
Where someone once got nervous at job interviews it is now called anxiety. Where someone once had a bad day/week it is now called stress. Sometimes life is a bit harder than before, but it doesn't always need to have a label.

That is not meant to diminish the feelings of people who do legitimately suffer from these issues. And I realise a lot of people do suffer from mh related issues.

A lot of people do have really shit childhoods and no protecting factors, so emotionally are unequipped to deal with life.

I personally don’t find that to be the case. I had a very hard childhood, poverty, divorce, abusive household with addiction issues and my father died. I am hands down the most resilient of my friends. The second most resilient person I know is my best friend who grew up in care.

I am sure statistics won’t bear this out but personally I have found spoiled children become spoiled adults.

The reality of work is that sometimes it will be shit. Sometimes we won’t have enough money to do what we really would love to do, and sometimes we will have to deal with difficult people. That’s life
Yep.

Not doing our kids any favours.

Of course having no problem taking a sick day is a negative. Wait until you are older and have chronic health problems and your normal is feeling ill. Do you just give up work all together?

@evilmorty I agree.

And if you think the older generation just put up and shut up about shitty working conditions you are wrong. But we got involved in the union and campaigned to improve things for everyone. Not just became an individual who was a pain in the arse to their own team. That is passing the buck to your peers.

Some people who had terrible childhoods grow up to have psychopathic tendencies with no empathy, emotion or kindness in them. Others grow up to be emotional wrecks. I would prefer to work with emotional wrecks any day of the week.

I agree OP

I'm from that "older generation" and we did used to deal with things ourselves. Social media means that now, if I have a problem I can ask my 125 "friends" what I should do about it. I do think that all this asking advice, erodes your ability to deal with life yourself.

I’m a lecturer, and the number of students who suffer from MH issues is alarming. I suffer from an unholy trinity of anxiety, OCD and depression, but view it as something I need to manage to live a normal life. I am absolutely not unsympathetic, and I bend over backwards to accommodatecand support where I can, but I do wonder how these people will manage in the workplace.

@judy I think that is the issue. I know plenty of adults in their 50s with bipolar, depression, anxiety, who work, socialise and manage their life. They have mental health issues, but they are resilient enough to deal with day-to-day life by managing their issues.

I work in the police and the amount of people that call in over trivial issues that 10 years ago they would have just dealt with themselves in incredible. "My ex boyfriend's new girlfriend put a post on Facebook slagging me off", "my neighbour has parked his car in front of my house", "someone i don't know is knocking on my door, can the police come and speak to them and move them on", "my 9 year old son is being rude to me

These are not from people with vulnerabilities, these are from fully grown adults that don't seem able to regulate their own lives and deal with their own problems. We seem to spend half our time having to "adult" for people that don't want to do it for themselves

My DH is like this sometimes and it drives me up the wall.
He can deal with important stuff that other people will find stressful, but he seems to find it impossible to deal with 'standard shit'
I have no idea where it comes from

We live in uncertain times; expensive housing, lack of job security, the lane slowly dying.

Lots of kids come from families where they were shunted around and barely parented. Add in academic pressure and too many drugs and you end up with messed up young adults.

Just got back from my first holiday in 20 odd years without one of my kids (they are mostly grown up now) and I was frankly appalled at how many kids are just ignored while parents play on their phones, poor little buggers. When my kids were growing up, being on your phone wasn’t really a thing, so possibly I would have been just as bad. I consider myself fortunate to have nothing to come between me and interacting with my children.

10 years ago OP, I would agreed completely.
I left a pretty nasty home life at 18, went off to big city, worked to support myself through a degree, half froze in a series of ghastly bedsits and just got on with it because there was no choice. Much the same as everyone else I knew. We came out ok.
However in my late 40s I lived with someone in the family dying over a protracted period. Horrible but I expected to pick myself up and bounce back, as normal. And found it much harder. I didn’t get outside help but I should have done. It cost me a job and a relationship and took 5 years to recover from.

So, I do understand how some circumstances can cause real problems. I just don’t understand why every little setback is a crisis, so YAnbu.

I think there's some research somewhere about it being much more difficult for children to delay gratification now, as during their early lives there are barely any times when they have to compromise or wait compared to previous generations, but I can't remember details. Anecdotally I'd say that waiting for your turn, accepting that things aren't all they were cracked up to be, or knowing sone positive self talk to stop difficult situations spiralling, are all skills that get better with practise in the early years.

I think you're right to some extent, but the fault lies with the generations who raised them, mollycoddled and wrapped them in cotton wool

Resilience isn't about a stiff upper lip. It's about having a range of strategies to cope with the ups and downs of life. To develop those people need to be in positions where they have to persevere, where it's ok to get things wrong, where they will find things difficult. (E.g. if two 13 year olds fall out on social media, let them sort it out and they'll be fine by Wednesday, don't call the school demanding 15 teachers change their seating plan or class moves on Monday / if a child has forgotten to do their homework then that's life, don't email saying they don't have to do a break detention)

I think it's great that we are becoming more tolerant and aware of mental health issues and removing the stigma, but hand in hand with that seems to come the 'cool labels for regular emotions' rubbish where mental health labels are misappropriated because people couldn't possibly be nervous, they must have anxiety. The problem with this is it trivializes mental health issues and makes it harder for those with very real issues to get support.

shieldmaidenofrohan
I wonder how many of those calls are from MNers who've been advised to 'log it with 101'

There’s been quite a lot of coverage of children’s MH issues on Radio 4 recently. The main point all the experts appear to agree on is that parent’s need to help their children build resilience. Help them realise that shit happens sometimes and it’s just part of life, and that the best thing we can do for our children is help them learn to deal with crises, big and small, on their own.

I have taught for many years and increasingly have to deal with lawnmower parents who want to cut down and remove any obstacles that their children have to face, Whilst the short term gains might be obvious, long term their children are not equipped to deal independently with normal day to day problems and setbacks. When you combine this with social media and the undoubted pressure from the current exam system and you have a perfect storm.

I considered myself fairly resilient, having dealt with childhood emotional abuse, chronic illnesses and the deaths of most of my family (and knowing I probably won't live to retirement age). Most people would probably think I'm a mollycoddled mess because I get upset about being needlessly criticised by my nitpicky micromanaging boss, but at the end of the day, I spent my life getting two degrees, choosing between food and public transport, living in infested bedsits and just telling myself that it was all going to be worth it in the end, and the day to day reality is that it just isn't. Life is more tedious and shit than not and no-one prepares you for that.

I remember thinking this just after I graduated. Several of us went to pieces after joining the adult world and ended up having counselling or on antidepressants. I guess I held it together as I managed avoid this and managed to get and keep a job but I was really miserable for the first few years in the working world.

I almost went through the 5 stages of grief for my old uni life and felt totally unprepared. I hated being an adult, hated working, hated not having enough money to move out and start a life of my own, hated my crappy non-existent social life.

I just remember thinking what the hell has gone so wrong with us, it's a normal life transition not some horrible traumatic event. I don't want to blame those who raised me but we need to look at it and try to make it better for future generations coming of age.

The main point all the experts appear to agree on is that parent’s need to help their children build resilience
It is is so hard to do because all the messages parents recieve is how you should your upmost to protect your kids and the moment you step a bit from it, to give children some experience of self reliance, the parent is judged for being reckless.

It is used to be accepted that building resilience in our children was the way to set them for adult life, now the focus is on the impact of anxiety in children setting up for a life of mental issues for the rest of their lives.

Anxiety is seen as the devil feeling to avoid at all cost. How many threads do we get about how kids are under too much pressure with a ams and they should be let to be kids. Or how the ment they are being teased, it is consider bullying that requires others to intervene immediately to stop the child having to deal with it because they shouldn't have to.

Anxiety is an unpleasant feeling but is part of life and as long as it isn't intense, continuous and managed, it builds a person strengths and capability for facing the ups and downs of life. I find it so sad the number of people who have become too anxious to go out, face strangers, go to any sort of meeting etc... These are things they should have got over as kids so that as adults, even if 9utside of their comfort zone, they could do it without feeling the world is going to fall apart.

I think there will be an even greater gap in adults of the next generation between those who will have grown up learning resilience and move on tackling the unpleasantness of life allowing them to progress towards self independence mentally, physically and financially and those who will be too scared to face those challenges and naturally retreat towards safety leaving them in the same stuck places.

I think one part of the problem is that having essential life-skills has now been branded as 'resilience' - put in a box as something to be aspired to, analysed and taught to people. There is endless psycho-babble out there about how to be 'resilient' when the reality is that being resilient usually means just getting on with things as best you can; coping with minor setbacks and not making a drama out of your life.

No, I think most people are just better at opening up about when they are feeling stressed.

This is so true.

Also there is a difference between being honest and open about MH issues and taking an active pride in having them and hugely exaggerating them.

The panic over Brexit does make one wonder how we would all cope with a major issue (a war close to home or a 1920s type depression, for example).

Vocabulary has altered out of all recognition, as well, encouraging people to over react to relatively minor issues.

Heartening 82/18 split on this thread, though, in OP’s favour!