Emotional resiliance, the causes, and the effect upon your behavior.

[colditz]

Some people are more emotionally fragile than others ... are devastated for weeks by a gang of teenagers shouting something at them. Others would just think 'Twats' and move on. Others would shout obscenities back, and fume for days ... and still others wouldn't even notice.

Why is this? What causes these huge gulfs between people's personalities? How can we raise our children to be resiliant? How can we become more resiliant ourselves?

poor baby is an interesting one.

when a young child hurts themselves, if you 'go with' the fact that they are in pain, they will stop crying and being distressed far faster. that is not the same as smothering them in sympathy. it is simply allowing them to feel the hurt. so 'oh goodness, that looks painful' isn't the same as [tearfully] 'oh my darling darling oh god oh poor you oh my darling'.

sympathy is sometimes a form of emotional vampirism imo.

I don't think anyone is saying grief is inappropriate. I spoke to a very good friend this morning who has had to deal in the last 3 years with more in her life than anyone else I know (and that includes everyone on the whole of mumsnet). She will grieve for the rest of her life, but she is the most resilient, amazingly strong person I know. We were talking a bit about this this morning and I said that when we met (when out ds1's were about 1) we had no idea what was in store. And she said something along the lines of 'ah well life goes on and you have no choice'.

The original question was about resilience. I don't think it's resilient to be stuck. That doesn't mean I don't think people should grieve, or that they shouldn't be sad, or that they shouldn't avoid stuff that makes them sad. All that is healthy. But if your grief takes over and you are unable to move on with the rest of your life, or you are unable to stop thinking about it all the time, or you're unable to form untroubled relationships then I wouldn't call that resilient.

yes agree with that sophable.

mohamed al fayed is a good example of that, yurt.

it isn't NOT resilient to be stuck. stuck is stuck. it isn't wrong. and going all hardcore on someone and telling them to get over it just isn't any good. it might push their feeling underground. it might make damn sure they dont' share them with you, or maybe (worse still) themselves.

like i said before, people are stuck for a reason. they need compassion. sometimes they need a long time of that. to compensate for some lack of compassion that lead to them being stuck.

that is what i think.

berolina- insight being hard won.... actually said something similar to my friend this morning. We were talking about getting through stuff and surviving it, however awful and I said something about someone who had told me that 'it makes life interesting' and I could see that, but I would have been quite happy wiith an uninteresting life. She agreed.

Stuck for so long that their life passes by and they miss loads of opportunities? I can't see that as a good or resilient thing sorry. I'm not talking about 'getting over' stuff, I'm talking about being able to rebuild life around grief (something my very strong friend has talked about doing and has done).

There's stuck and stuck, though, soph (IMO). My mother (again) was stuck in such a way that the passage of over 6 years made not a jot of difference to her absolute and in the true sense of the word radical rejection of my life choices (specifically my choice of dh). She is coming round to me now, but never to dh. I would suggest that that kind of stuck is actually actively not resilient (iyswim).

well, okay, fair point there, soph!

yes, we treat DD1's 'owies' like that, yurt.

'yes, it hurts, how can we make it better?' sort of approach, including Charlie and Lola plasters and 'magic ointments' - Neosporin gel or Weleda arnica ointment.

she has also seen our owie scars, so she understands that even though it hurts, it gets better in time and scars are not a bad thing at all.

What is your definition of resilient sophable?

but let's face it, some folks are just crap at dealing with hard stuff. they just don't get it and they get all befuddled and uncomfortable with it around them.

but sometimes they're also very good listeners!

yurt - yep, there are a few things in my range of experiences which have probably made my life 'deeper' in a few ways, but where I would have been perfectly happy with shallows...

I swing between being proud of having come more or less OK through some stuff and despair at my repetition of shite patterns.

Have been giving this quite a lot of thought, esp since reading VVV's post of a while ago. I think being allowed to be who you are by your parents is a really big deal - I don't mean "get whatever you want", but an acceptance that you may not fit a mould. I've only ever had one bad thing happen to me, and I think looking back it was allowing myself to feel what I felt - to not feel pressured into not feeling angry, to being dutiful, to conforming to expectations , so many things, that has allowed me to accept what happened and let it be part of my life. Not sure how much sense I'm making, but VVV, I think my Mum did what you're doing with your dd, and it's worked pretty well for me.

Expat: I think it's also true that people who are uncomfortable with emotional stuff can also be good comforters because they don't engage in emotional discussion but offer practical help, whether it's making you a nice cup of tea or quietly paying off your debts. I really do think that a mix of types of support is better than only having one person to lean on (because that one person will sooner or later be unable to bear the burden, whether the support he/she is giving is emotional or practical).

I suppose what I mean is that a key component of being able to survive trauma is not investing all your mental/psychological wellbeing in one individual.

a very salient point, madame, and one which i agree with.

sophable, I agree with a (somewhile ago) post that a child will cling to (and be nourished by) the merest sliver of kindness etc.

My family were completly odd, alcholic depressed mother, workaholic head in the sand father who'd had 3 heart attacks by the time I was 11, junkie psycho brother, brother that commited suicide, useless junkie dole sponging brother and me, the youngest - more qualifications than all of them put together, fab job/career, fab marriage, excellent lifestyle etc.

The only difference? I was 'taken under the wing' of several families (parents of my school friends) I went on hols with them, stayed at their homes, watched them interact, was loved and had a consistent place of refuge. You cannot overestimate how much difference it made in my life.

FWIW I am very emotionally resilient and am excellent in times of stress/emergency but given to a little black dog every now and again.

oooh yes madamez and expat

Yurt: and I bet the children of those marriages need to seek sources of comfort and encouragement outside the family...

ha ha - well the one I'm particularly thinking of has no children (as they would have broken the 'special' dh/dw bond )

i hope my kids learn to rely on many sources of support in their lives! i'd hate to have someone entirely dependent on me for their happiness. youch!

co-dependency NO MORE!

all i hope to do is give them the groundwork of good judgement skills to determine who is a good source of that. of course, we all make mistakes, but a good groundwork means you can hopefully recognise mistakes soon enough and learn from them.

Yes Expat!

I hope to teach my children that you can travel a long, long way, just by putting one foot in front of the other - even though there are days when one step seems too much to ask!

Soapbox: ooh that's a really good watchword to instill.

she sounds very angry berolina.

that sucks in terms of your dh.

emotional resilience as I understand it means that you have an internal sense that you are love and good enough. so though life hits you from all sides (as it does) you grieve (i.e. you FEEL the pain) and you get through it in a way that those that do not have that internal sense just can't.

emotional resilience isn't survival. it is the certainty born of early strong secure attachment that you are worthwhile and life is worth living....no matter what it throws at you.

absolutely expat and madamez....co-dependence is the opposite of emotional resilience: it is internal, it doesn't rely on the other.

but there are plenty of people who have your definition of emotional resilience and they didn't have 'the certainty born of early strong secure attachment that you are worthwhile and life is worth living....'

they either were born with it or they got it from within themselves somewhere down the line.

trust me, i've worked with LOADS of refugees and asylum seekers and seen this happen again and again.

it's truly a wonder of humanity, but it does occur.