Resilience… things you’ve been through where you realise you have built so much more resilience than the average person

[ThiasTime]

For me it’s having been a lone parent for the first two years of DD’s life. I had a c section and then three days later came home alone and just had to carry on. I had family support emotionally but nothing practically.

So many friends and family have had children since then and even the smallest thing can cause them to feel stressed or irritated or upset or tired. I have sympathy and always try my best not to let what I’ve been through stop me being compassionate… but the reality is that 95% of things people mention they struggle with with a newborn or small baby was really the tip of the iceberg for me when doing it all alone. Anyone else feel like this about experiences they’ve had?

This is so true. I think you need a combination of resilience and some way of processing difficult things that happened to you. I'm a similar age and have been through some rough things,. I have also therapy helpful. So, we should acknowledge resilience and mental health issues both. They are not mutually exclusive.

Being orphaned at 18 and leaving my council owned home with a suitcase was tough yet I had a job and found a flatshare. But all my decisions I made for myself and I learned that mistakes are recoverable and if you want to sort things out, do it yourself. It’s something I wanted to pass on to my kids-I look at the learned helplessness of some of their contemporaries and think the parents who always sorted out all their kids’ problems didn’t help them in the end.

Yes, having a difficult childhood that saw my four siblings suffer severe mental health difficulties. Abusive father. Lost my first long awaited dc, infertility. 3 dc with SEN, lots of caring responsibilities including anorexia, ocd, hospitalisation of dc narrowly avoiding sectioning, severe self harm and suicide attempt. I realise for the 12 years I was a SAHM, it was also probably also that I struggled with my own autism/adhd. 3 children with EBSA, one currently out of school and at SEN tribunal. We live half a world away from our family, never had any family back up.

i am now able to work despite all this and have done for the past seven or so years.

i am very grateful not to have ‘my lot’ in a country like Afghanistan or Gaza. I am grateful to live in a democracy, have a house with a mortgage, access to food and running water. These are major things and I am grateful for them.

But now in my 50s and have trouble sleeping, restless legs, but try to look after myself.

i am coming undone with what I think is my own disabilities - booking dr appt online, getting represcriptions of meds at GP - all the small things. Dh does some of it, but it’s really the smaller things sending me over the edge.

i also worry about all this shortening my life, not being around when the dc need extra care/

@Locutus2000 can you enlighten me then?! I am not sure how my OP can be seen to be in any way offensive

This absolutely sums up my view of this thread.

I dont think it is unpleasant or foolish, but other posters have made good points about life not being a competition.

If you'd started a thread just asking about times you've been resilient this thread may have been seen as a nice intention.

However to compare yourself to the “average person“ is trying to put yourself above them.

You have no idea what others have been through behind closed doors. You've also no idea how people who haven't been in a tough situation yet will be in difficult situations.

Sad and bitter way to think, OP.

My life has been an utter shit show the last two years, me and DH have lost three of our parents one after the other after very short illnesses for two of them. My child's mental health has been poor and had two suicide attempts. Two of our children have had four hospital stays between them for kidney infections, appendix out, sepsis. My car was crashed in to by a bus. My pet was knocked down and died.

I had my eldest alone myself as a teen mum over twenty years ago. Yes I'm resilient but I never ever judge other people and how difficult they are finding things in comparison to how I do because one thing I have learned throughout everything is compassion. Everything I have been through in life has made me a kinder, more considerate person exactly because you don't know what else other people are going through.

Dad dying when I was 17
Infertility (never had a child)
Mum’s dementia

Plenty have had a worse time than me though.

I am a resilient person. Came through grinding poverty, dad a drunk with busy fists, mum manic depressive.

You learn to just put your head back and soldier on. Be a solutions person, not a problems person. Get on with life... all the clichés.

Had a heart attack at 53. All that cortisol has to go somewhere.

I don't think you build resilience. I think some people are less prone to stress because they're less sensitive emotionally. I'm autistic so I'm at the very sensitive end of the spectrum.

Nothing really terrible has happened...the usual things...divorce, two autistic children...money worries...moved house many times....one son has dropped out and has a non-24 hour body clock which prevents him living a normal life....other son at uni - which is good but a huge worry. In November my mum died and then a few weeks later my dog very suddenly died.

My digestive system has been ruined from all the cortisol etc and I feel ill a lot of the time. I ate some cheese the other day and I've been ill since. We're not meant to live like this. We're meant to live in tribes and we'd have died if we'd been left alone. Now we just die a slower death from stress. Sorry to be melodramatic.

I think reliance is a very strange thing. I've had some quite major things happen and I wonder how did I survive, but more recently smaller things (including having a baby) and it almost broke me. I've always been one to suck it up and move on, but now I realise things can slowly chip away you and wear you down

Op you have been amazing and I can’t imagine how hard it was, but it’s taken me until in the last few years that stress/ falling apart is generally a sum of other things that other people will never know or see coming together and piling up and flooring you. When I was trying to stop my dying dad going down the stairs on his own while trying to feed a newborn- I always thought- that's stress and when people would talk about being stressed I’d kind of think ‘oh ok’ but much smaller things than they were saying have stressed me out as I’ve gotten older, I suppose because it’s the sun of life since. But you have done amazingly, just try not to judge others

I worked in a highly toxic environment for a few years when I was younger. At the time it was horrific and really took its toll. My stress levels were through the roof and I was burned out when I left.

Cut to now, literally nothing phases me at work. Nothing. I am so so calm in every situation. Even when we detect major criminal activity or I have the global CEO call me out the blue or the police turn up to the office. I am like zen monk! At 5:32 it is out of my head and I’m fully present in life!

On the flip side I have very little tolerance for others flapping about nothing. Eg someone stressing over giving a 5 min presentation to a team of 5, im like, get over it! 😂😂 I really have to work on my compassion in that situation!

How is looking after a single baby which women have done since time began and in far far worse circumstances amazing? It just isn’t amazing or a sign of resilience, it’s life and life isn’t supposed to be an easy glide.

Many many people are out there actually surviving and coping with really difficult lives and traumas. They don’t sit there going “go me I’m so much more resilient than everybody else”.

I'm the opposite probably. My mum is still with us although I'm her carer these days. Father died suddenly and too early, but despite me being a daddy's girl, I wasn't traumatised by it. No real complaints.Happy childhood, money not much of an issue, only short periods out of work. I'm married to a good man, kids all relatively healthy. Daughter had short spate of eating disorder but fingers crossed she's been fixed, as far as anyone ever is from eating issues.Brother had mental health problems but the state has looked after him fairly well.

So I feel like I've not been through real challenges. I always feel I've landed on my feet living in a first world country where women can vote, I've never had any major trauma . Don't know if I would be resilient or not if or when something really bad happens. I have been blessed so far, I do understand that.

Having a baby triggered my trauma of being a CSA survivor - OP you have no idea what others have been through and why they are struggling with ‘small’ things compared to you.

Having a baby early 20s and building my career. The parents I work with who have babies in their 30s just seem a heck lot more frazzled and overwhelmed with it all, I didn’t know any different and took it in my stride (and have been told that by many people too!) I also seemed to find parenting toddlers easier than family and friends, I had a much less patient approach that didn’t take nonsense. I know people would tell me that’s a bad thing and one of the better things about having kids older is being more patient, but honestly I think we did great, my kids are amazing; polite, friendly, happy and we get on really well. I wouldn’t do it differently.

I was also a military wife so DH was away for months, often last minute, and again that built a lot of resilience to change. I’ve had the pleasure of line managing ex military wives and they’re definitely some of the most resilient people I know.

I'm sorry you feel like you've been through something. It's not a competition. I don't think you should pride yourself on being more resilient than the average person. I think you should be proud of your resilience and have confidence that you can withstand challenges in the future.

You should also think about your support network and not be afraid to ask for help sometimes. You don't have to do everything alone any more.

Being a woman in tech, I realise I'm so much more resilient than the men. Women get treated badly on so many levels, normally lots of small things. I manage men and they stress over little things on the rare occasion they experience them, often vocal and angry about it.

You know what they say? “Your next door neighbour may have broken his foot, but it’s your own big toe that’s hurting”

@OneStepEachDayAtATime I really feel this. I struggle with this myself. My parents were really good at fussing over every little thing and I copied their behavior without thinking. Yet, they also went through significant health issues that had them both at death's door from time to time.

I am still trying hard to make letting of minor things and what other people and say and do my default attitude, especially when I am not close with them. But it's hard. It has become such a habit to stress over little things and to take up other people's worries over the years, that I often don't realize I am doing it till someone tells me to calm down.

I’ve always found that trope rubbish too! There’d be no such thing as PTSD, depression or addictions if it were true. It belongs firmly in the crass, bullshit pile, along with everything happens for a reason.

I’ve had some extremely stressful times in my life but I know they haven't made me stronger because when there’s an inkling things are going to get stressful again (health, money etc) I go straight back to how I felt before.

A lot of these read as 'my life's harder than your life and I have no sympathy or interest in your problems'.

I should have more resilience on the paper if you looked on my childhood experiences but unfortunately I've just come out as a more broken, anxious and cynical person (although empathetic) than I would have been without those experiences. When I compare my reactions to my friends who got happy upbringings I can see how they can stay in a cool analytical mode while dealing with hardships whether I freeze or break down inside (while trying to maintain a cool composure to the outside world). So no, bad experiences have not brought anything positive into my life.

This!