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

@Cattestreet - agree about gradual transitions. I have tried to 'think backwards' with my kids as in 'what will they need to be able to do in the next few years?' rather than look at everything as 'They're too young to do that' - because they will have to do it. Plus I don't want to be ferrying them everywhere forever.

DD has been going to the corner shop for things since she was 7.5 (no road crossings, about 50m away), started walking to/from her school (1 mile away) some days since spring this year because she'll have to take herself to and from secondary school. We live in suburban London, for context.

I agree. I think a lot of it is tied into self-reliance and responsibility, which should be taught from a young age. Quite often 8yo ds will lament something or other that has happened at school, accompanied by "but it wasn't me/ my fault it was so and-so". We've made a big deal out of explaining that in life he'll come across difficult people and difficult situations. We've explained that he will never, ever, be able to control the behaviour of other people, but he can control his response to it - which will then dictate what happens next, good or bad. It's a tough lesson for an 8yo but taking personal responsibility is an incredibly important thing for them to learn and it needs to start early. Ds knows we've ultimately got his back, but we try to get him to fix his own problems.

• she starts secondary in September

I agree that there are times when people could toughen up, but not sure this Is on the rise. I suspect every generation thinks they’re more resilient than the one that follows and has a slightly rose-tinted view of how well things were handled ‘back in the day’.

I work in hr and did a piece of work with our exec team recently where we looked at key attributes and competencies needed in our business to best contribute.

Resilience and emotional intelligence were where the top performers really differentiated themselves, way beyond the technical competence needed in our sector.

I've never seen our directors panic. Everything is a challenge or problem which can be solved. That's the hardest thing I've had to learn in recent years but has made the biggest difference in my career.

HalloumiMuffin You post made me sad. I'm not surprised you feel things are a bit shit. You sound like you've done brilliantly. 💐. I hope no one ever complains you are 'resilient'

One of my four kids (all adults) isn't 'resilient'. I don't know if it's my fault or not. They have an unbelievable work ethic and are kind and wonderful but things that I would brush off overwhelm them. My other kids aren't like that. I don't think they were treated any differently to their siblings I don't know really. I think it's ignorant to suggest it's all down to parenting. If I only had the other three then I wouldn't understand how much of an issue it is.

I don't know if there has been a change in how resilient people are. I think some of the apparent increase is because people don't feel they have to bottle everything up all the time and also because school and exams is definitely more pressured than it used to be.

Sorry missed out a very important NOT

It should read 'I hope noone ever complains you are NOT resilient'

'I have tried to 'think backwards' with my kids as in 'what will they need to be able to do in the next few years?' rather than look at everything as 'They're too young to do that' - because they will have to do it.'

This is an excellent approach. I'm doing similar with my 14yo, who will be off to the local-ish city (1h train ride then a few overground stops and a walk when he gets there) by himself today to go to a course. i figured it was about time.

Everything is so dramatic now too. Hen nights, stag nights, perfect wedding, babies gender reveals, baby showers.
All for a ordinary phase of life.
My mum spent her teenage years in the Second World War that’s stress, not does the bridesmaids shoes match the groom’s tie.

I agree OP lots of my friends are seemingly not able to cope with stuff that, while it's not great, isn't the end of the world. I would have thought it's just life. (E.g.not having the job they wanted, kids not getting into the school they hoped for etc.)
This article really summed it up for me.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/medicalising-mental-health-ilnness-nhs?
Lots of stuff hasn't worked out for me over the years but just have to keep going....

"I suspect every generation thinks they’re more resilient than the one that follows and has a slightly rose-tinted view of how well things were handled ‘back in the day’."

I'd probably agree with this too. My parents regard themselves as very resilient but, looking back, their usual coping strategy for dealing with stress and setbacks involved "consuming significantly more than the recommended amount of alcohol on a more-or-less daily basis". Same goes for a lot of my friends' parents, apart from the ones who were heavy cannabis users.

Why would adults today be less resilient? Does it not occur to people that they may just be under more pressure than we used to be? When I was at school, the majority left at 16 and you could get a job without much in the way of qualifications. Even if you didn't get a job, income support was much more generous. Only about 10% of the population went to university. There was just much less pressure than there is now.
It seems a bit bizarre to correlate the increase in mental health problems with not being allowed to cross the road when they are 8 or eating junk food rather than the more obvious answer that external pressures have increased.

I'd also be interested to know which of the PP who said that suicide rates had increased/dropped in the last thirty years were right.

Good piece: Put down the self-help books. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour

We have been giving people the wrong message. Resilience is not a DIY endeavour. Self-help fails because the stresses that put our lives in jeopardy in the first place remain in the world around us even after we’ve taken the “cures.” The fact is that people who can find the resources they require for success in their environments are far more likely to succeed than individuals with positive thoughts and the latest power poses.

What kind of resources? The kind that get you through the inevitable crises that life throws our way. A bank of sick days. Some savings or an extended family who can take you in. Neighbours or a congregation willing to bring over a casserole, shovel your driveway or help care for your children while you are doing whatever you need to do to get through the moment. Communities with police, social workers, home-care workers, fire departments, ambulances and food banks. Employment insurance, pension plans or financial advisers to help you through a layoff.

Striving for personal transformation will not make us better when our families, workplaces, communities, health-care providers and governments fail to provide us with sufficient care and support. The science shows that all the internal resources we can muster are seldom of much use without a nurturing environment. Furthermore, if those resources are not immediately at hand, we are better off trying to change our world to gain those resources than we are trying to change ourselves.

www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-put-down-the-self-help-books-resilience-is-not-a-diy-endeavour/?__twitter_impression=true

I thought this and the discussion of resilience post the tsunami in Japan were very thoughtful.

I would be interested in the sense of isolation (self-imposed in some cases?) that mean some people are surrounded by what seem to be appropriate resources but don't use them.

I agree, but most of these adults seem to be on MN.

In real life, people seem to be able to cope and make much less drama!

Life has changed so quickly that we're all scurrying to keep up and I think that's a big part of it. Our generation and our parents' generation (current DC's grandparents), learned things like self-reliance and independence at an early age, whereas I feel that anyone under about 25 now has had a much more stunted growth into adulthood. Much more is now done by parents for their kids and for a much longer period of time. Many graduates now are leaving education with huge debts that Gen X and Boomers never had. Much more pressure is put on kids now in school and uni. You have to get A or A* now in all your subjects to get into a top uni, whereas we could get into decent unis (i.e. what's now called Russell Group), with Bs and Cs (as I did!). Now there is pressure at 11+ that there never was before. SATs. The constantly changing National Curriculum. The cost of housing that means that young people are stuck at home for many more years than we ever were, stunting their growth and independence and forcing them to be reliant on their parents for housing and having to live by their rules into adulthood. So you name it, DC and young people nowadays are under pressures that we never were.

Couple that with the recent vogue for the two extremes of helicopter parenting and parents permanently glued to their phones/social media and you have a generation growing up with more pressure, less independence, lower levels of self reliance, the toxic presence of social media in their lives showing them all the things they 'need' to have and all the people who have those things showing off ... no wonder we have a MH crisis among our young. No wonder they're less able to deal with setbacks. No wonder they put pressure on themselves to be perfect and fall apart when they don't reach the impossible goals they set themselves.

Dungeondragon15 That’s not at all true in my experience. I grew up in a mining town and was a teenager during the miners’ strike. We had no jobs to go to as school leavers. Things were incredibly bleak. Same for my DP who had an incredibly difficult childhood and who was one of those poor souls who had to claim dole standing next to his own father in the queue. Fast forward a few decades and we have both had very successful careers (two in my case) and we are both very resilient people. DP in particular has had a lot of challenges and is the most positive and hardworking person I know.

Same goes for the very senior colleagues that I've worked with. By and large, they don't have better coping strategies than the very young new joiners straight out of uni, they just have different bad ones (excessive drinking, chain smoking, taking out their stress on others). There are plenty of exceptions of course. However, I was only discussing with a friend the other day how many of our respective fathers' colleagues died in middle age after years of badly managed stress, long hours and poor diet/ heavy alcohol use. How many of them weren't coping and nobody ever saw it?

I'm really on the fence here. I'm not going to vote either way, as I think you're being neither and both (there's doublethink for you). There are currently valid reasons for feeling hopeless. Those who believed the Blair rhetoric of the 'classless' society', that 'things can only get better' and that anything, including social mobility, was possible with an education were sold a lemon. There was nearly a global financial meltdown in 2008. We're in an age of austerity when only the greedy, corrupt bankers, those congregating in the City and the Windsor family appeared to be doing very nicely, TYVM. The rest of us were squeezed to oblivion, property prices became ludicrously inflated, cost of living went up and quality down, jobs are underpaid and hard to find, workplaces are toxic and bullying, exploitation, sexism and abuse are rife. Suicides among young people are at an alarming rate and is now the key cause of death for UK males under 50 - that's above cancer or heart disease. It's safe to say there's a bad malaise of late - I don't think 'national emergency' is too much of an exaggeration.

This is why the attitudes 'if you're poor, it's your fault' or 'you needed to have worked harder' are so infuriating. People have worked hard, and this is where they've ended up. And you can't tell who does or doesn't have a mental illness by looking. Sometimes, even the person suffering doesn't know.

There's also a problem with the conflation of mental illness and mental health, which are far removed from being the same thing. Mental health services are woefully underfunded, and the issue isn't being treated with the seriousness it really merits. Yes, you get your whiners, but the sort of people who will run off for therapy if they as much as break a nail have always been around. Something far more invasive (and dangerous) is going on.

And while I'm at it, don't you just hate that lazy, pejorative term 'snowflake?'

I have said it before on this thread and I will repeat it again. The link between food and mood is interesting reading. I am shocked when I read the ‘what have you eaten today’ threads how many people eat crisps, chocolate and other snacks in place of proper food. No wonder so many people feel lousy. I am teaching my dc to cook and when I do so I talk about the nutrition in the food (not calories). We don’t care about low fat. I do care about the fact I want them to cook so they spend their lives eating the correct amount of things their bodies need to function properly.

www.mind.org.uk/information-support/tips-for-everyday-living/food-and-mood/#.XTGBLCXTWEd

Well actually, while it's realistic that we have to put up with difficult people to some extent, I really think what I put up with in a number of jobs (or saw other people putting up with) shouldn't be acceptable and I'm glad young people won't do it.

Including, bullying, sexism, sexual assault, favouritism, belittling, withholding equipment to do the job properly, changing the goal posts constantly, empire-building etc, etc. Why should people be able to away with this just because they've manoeuvred themselves into a more senior role. I'm honestly quite shocked on here the number of times people say to suck things up at work. Actually, what would make us much more productive and happy in our work is to challenge this kind of thing, and I admire young people for doing it.

Another point was very well made by redexet (name?) about people with shit childhoods not being given the tools to build resiliency (in fact the opposite applies). Obviously, there are exceptions to that, people who transcend awful backgrounds but those are very much the exception.

A lot of the problem is our "always on" society and the hunt for support online. This is invaluable in some cases, there are excellent online resources for many people who would otherwise not have anyone who understood them (eg rare conditions, support for parents of children with disabilities etc). However, the teens becoming adults now have become used to searching for an answer to everything and expecting it straight away. Don't find the answer you want? Try another group. Self-diagnose. Your off-day that may or may not have developed into a pattern in the past could lead to you deciding that you have anxiety/depression. You can spiral into a rabbit hole of despair as you desperately try to "fix" yourself.

Schools add to pressure - my 11yo came out with resilience tips for exam stress. Well meaning but heavy handed. I hate SATS with a vengeance as I think they teach to the test rather than encourage learning, but I do think that tests should be a constant part of school life (spelling, mental maths, questions on a topic you've been learning). Children need to learn to be tested and to pass or fail, and to learn that getting a low mark does not mean any bad consequences. Teachers should be able to say to little Timmy that scoring 2/20 in a test means he might need a little help, or that whatever that was is not his best subject, and encourage his other areas (sport/art/drama/whatever).

DD2 had a teacher who said "you can be whatever you want to be". She wanted to be a NASA scientist. It came as a shock in secondary when she realised how far out of reach that was. Surely the message should be to dream big, but remember that not everyone can get exactly what they dream of but you CAN do something in that area. You may not be a premiership footballer, but you might be a team coach/sports teacher/work in a gym. You may not be a NASA scientist but you might be a science teacher/lab technician/pharmacy assistant.

Kids feel like failures when they see people making "easy money" on YouTube and just want to do the same - not realising that just like the celebrity actors/footballers etc that as well as talent there is also an element of luck and being in the right place at the right time, most people just have to plug on at working.

I'd also be interested to know which of the PP who said that suicide rates had increased/dropped in the last thirty years were right.

@edsheeranpaidmoretaxthanccola I think I was the only one who mentioned that stat. I just missed out the word dropped in my original post (the preview button doesn't seem to be working for me today!)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_Kingdom
From 14.7/100k in 1981 to 10.1/100k in 2017z

Oh and that should be nearly 40 years now I guess!!

Can't do maths today let alone string together a coherent sentence.

Point still stands though.

Just dipping in here to say I did a great course (free) on Future Learn about increasing your resilience. I'd recommend it. Even if just for giving perspective.