Five Science-Backed
Strategies to Build Resilience
When the road gets rocky, what do you do?
A mentor of mine recently passed away, and I
was heartbroken—so I tried my best to avoid thinking about it. I didn’t even
mention it to my family because I didn’t want those sad feelings to resurface.
In other words, I took the very enlightened
approach of pretend it didn’t happen—one that’s about as effective
as other common responses such as get angry, push people
away, blame yourself, or wallow in the pain.
Even for the relatively self-aware and
emotionally adept, struggles can take us by surprise. But learning healthy ways
to move through adversity—a collection of skills that researchers call
resilience—can help us cope better and recover more quickly, or at least start
heading in that direction.
The Greater Good Science Center has collected
many resilience practices on our website Greater Good in Action,
alongside other research-based exercises for fostering kindness, connection,
and happiness. Here are 12 of those resilience practices (squeezed into five
categories), which can help you confront emotional pain more skillfully.
1. Change the narrative
When something bad happens,
we often relive the event over and over in our heads, rehashing the pain. This
process is called rumination; it’s like a cognitive spinning of the wheels, and
it doesn’t move us forward toward healing and growth.
The practice of Expressive
Writing can move us forward by helping us gain
new insights on the challenges in our lives. It involves free writing
continuously for 20 minutes about an issue, exploring your deepest thoughts and
feelings around it. The goal is to get something down on paper, not to create a
memoir-like masterpiece.
A 1988 study found that participants who did Expressive Writing
for four days were healthier six weeks later and happier up to three months
later, when compared to people who wrote about superficial topics. In writing,
the researchers suggest, we’re forced to confront ideas one by one and give
them structure, which may lead to new perspectives. We’re actually crafting our
own life narrative and gaining a sense of control.
Once we’ve explored the
dark side of an experience, we might choose to contemplate some of its
upsides. Finding Silver
Linings invites you to call to mind an
upsetting experience and try to list three positive things about it. For
example, you might reflect on how fighting with a friend brought some important
issues out into the open, and allowed you to learn something about their point
of view.
In a 2014 study, doing this practice daily for three weeks helped
participants become more engaged with life afterward, and it decreased their
pessimistic beliefs over time. This wasn’t true for a group whose members just
wrote about their daily activities. It was particularly beneficial for staunch pessimists,
who also became less depressed. But the effects wore off after two months,
suggesting that looking on the bright side is something we have to practice
regularly.
2. Face your fears
The practices above are
helpful for past struggles, ones that we’ve gained enough distance from to be
able to get some perspective. But what about knee-shaking fears that we’re
experiencing in the here and now?
The Overcoming a
Fear practice is designed to help with
everyday fears that get in the way of life, such as the fear of public
speaking, heights, or flying. We can’t talk ourselves out of such fears;
instead, we have to tackle the emotions directly.
The first step is to
slowly, and repeatedly, expose yourself to the thing that scares you—in small
doses. For example, people with a fear of public speaking might try talking
more in meetings, then perhaps giving a toast at a small wedding. Over time,
you can incrementally increase the challenge until you’re ready to nail that
big speech or TV interview.In a 2010 study, researchers modeled this process in the lab. They gave
participants a little electrical shock every time they saw a blue square, which
soon became as scary as a tarantula to an arachnophobe. But then, they showed
the blue square to participants without shocking them. Over time, the
participants’ Pavlovian fear (measured by the sweat on their skin) gradually
evaporated.
In effect, this kind of
“exposure therapy” helps us change the associations we have with a particular
stimulus. If we’ve flown 100 times and the plane has never crashed, for
example, our brain (and body) start to learn that it’s safe. Though the fear
may never be fully extinguished, we’ll likely have greater courage to confront
it.
3. Practice self-compassion
I’ve never been a good
flyer myself, and it was comforting when an acquaintance shared an article he
wrote about having the same problem (and his favorite tips). Fears and
adversity can make us feel alone; we wonder why we’re the only ones feeling
this way, and what exactly is wrong with us. In these
situations, learning to practice self-compassion—and recognizing that everyone
suffers—can be a much gentler and more effective road to healing.
Self-compassion involves offering compassion to ourselves:
confronting our own suffering with an attitude of warmth and kindness, without
judgment. In one study, participants in an eight-week Mindful Self-Compassion
program reported more mindfulness and life satisfaction, with lower depression,
anxiety, and stress afterward compared to people who didn’t participate—and the
benefits lasted up to a year.One practice, the Self-Compassion
Break, is something you can do any time you start
to feel overwhelmed by pain or stress. It has three steps, which correspond to
the three aspects of self-compassion:
·
Be mindful: Without judgment or analysis, notice what you’re
feeling. Say, “This is a moment of suffering” or “This hurts” or “This is
stress.”
·
Remember that you’re not
alone: Everyone experiences these deep and
painful human emotions, although the causes might be different. Say to
yourself, “Suffering is a part of life” or “We all feel this way” or “We all
struggle in our lives.”
·
Be kind to yourself: Put your hands on your heart and say something like
“May I give myself compassion” or “May I accept myself as I am” or “May I be
patient.”
If being kind to yourself is a challenge, an
exercise called How Would You
Treat a Friend? could help. Here, you compare how you
respond to your own struggles—and the tone you use—with how you respond to a
friend’s. Often, this comparison unearths some surprising differences and
valuable reflections: Why am I so harsh on myself, and what would
happen if I weren’t?
Once we start to develop a kinder attitude
toward ourselves, we can crystallize that gentle voice in a Self-Compassionate
Letter. This practice asks you to spend 15 minutes
writing words of understanding, acceptance, and compassion toward yourself
about a specific struggle that you feel ashamed of—say, being shy or not spending
enough time with your kids. In the letter, you might remind yourself that
everyone struggles, and that you aren’t solely responsible for this
shortcoming; if possible, you could also consider constructive ways to improve
in the future.
4. Meditate
As mindfulness gurus like
to remind us, our most painful thoughts are usually about the past or the
future: We regret and ruminate on things that went wrong, or we get anxious
about things that will. When we pause and bring our attention to
the present, we often find that things are…okay.
Practicing mindfulness
brings us more and more into the present, and it offers techniques for dealing
with negative emotions when they arise. That way, instead of getting carried
away into fear, anger, or despair, we can work through them more deliberately.
One of the most commonly
studied mindfulness programs is the eight-week-long Mindfulness-Based Stress
Reduction (MBSR), which teaches participants to cope with challenges using a
variety of meditation practices (including the ones detailed below). Various studies have found that MBSR has wide-ranging health and psychological
benefits for people in general, as well as those struggling with mental illness
or chronic disease.
One meditation that might
be particularly
effective at calming our negative thoughts is
the Body Scan. Here, you focus on each body part in turn—head to
toe—and can choose to let go of any areas of tension you discover. Strong
feelings tend to manifest physically, as tight chests or knotted stomachs, and
relaxing the body is one way to begin dislodging them.
In one study, researchers found that time spent practicing the Body
Scan was linked to greater well-being and less reactivity to stress. Being more
aware of our bodies—and the emotions they are feeling—might also help us make
healthier choices, trusting our gut when something feels wrong or avoiding
commitments that will lead to exhaustion.
When stress creeps in, good
habits often creep out—and one of those is healthy eating. When we’re
emotional, many of us reach for the sweets; when we’re short on time, fast food
seems like the only option. So in addition to helping us cultivate mindfulness,
the Raisin
Meditation could help change our relationship to
food.
This exercise invites you
to eat a raisin mindfully—but wait, not so fast. First, examine its wrinkles
and color; see how it feels between your fingers, and then take a sniff. Slowly
place it on your tongue, and roll it around in your mouth before chewing one
bite at a time. Notice the urge to swallow, and whether you can sense it moving
down your throat into your stomach. Not only will you have practiced
mindfulness, but you may never look at food the same way again.
One final meditation that we can sprinkle
throughout our day—or practice on its own—is Mindful
Breathing. It involves bringing attention to the
physical sensations of the breath: the air moving through the nostrils, the
expansion of the chest, the rise and fall of the stomach. If the mind wanders
away, you bring attention back. This can be done during a full 15-minute
meditation, or during a moment of stress with just a few breaths.
In one study, participants who did a Mindful Breathing exercise
before looking at disturbing images—like spiders or car crashes—experienced
less negative emotion than people who hadn’t done the exercise. Negative
thoughts can pull us along into their frantic stream, but the breath is an
anchor we can hold onto at any time.
5. Cultivate forgiveness
If holding a grudge is
holding you back, research suggests that cultivating forgiveness could be
beneficial to your mental and physical health. If you feel ready to begin, it
can be a powerful practice.
Both Nine Steps to
Forgiveness and Eight Essentials
When Forgiving offer a list of guidelines to follow.
In both cases, you begin by clearly acknowledging what happened, including how
it feels and how it’s affecting your life right now. Then, you make a
commitment to forgive, which means letting go of resentment and ill will for
your own sake; forgiveness doesn’t mean letting the offender off the hook
or even reconciling with them. Ultimately, you can try to find a positive
opportunity for growth in the experience: Perhaps it alerted you to something
you need, which you may have to look for elsewhere, or perhaps you can now understand
other people’s suffering better.
If you’re having trouble
forgiving, Letting Go of
Anger through Compassion is a five-minute
forgiveness exercise that could help you get unstuck. Here, you spend a few
minutes generating feelings of compassion toward your offender; she, too, is a
human being who makes mistakes; he, too, has room for growth and healing. Be
mindfully aware of your thoughts and feelings during this process, and notice
any areas of resistance.
Not convinced this is the
best approach? Researchers
tested it against the common alternatives—either
ruminating on negative feelings or repressing them—and found that cultivating
compassion led participants to report more empathy, positive emotions, and
feelings of control. That’s an outcome that victims of wrongdoing deserve, no
matter how we feel about the offenders.
Stress and struggles come
in many forms in life: adversity and trauma, fear and shame, betrayals of
trust. The 12 practices above can help you cope with difficulties when they
arise, but also prepare you for challenges in the future. With enough practice,
you’ll have a toolbox of techniques that come naturally—a rainy-day fund for
the mind, that will help keep you afloat when times get tough. Just knowing
that you’ve built up your skills of resilience can be a great comfort, and even
a happiness booster.
By Kira M. Newman |
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/five_science_backed_strategies_to_build_resilience?utm_source=GG+Newsletter+Nov+9%2C+2016&utm_campaign=GG+Newsletter+Nov+9+2016&utm_medium=email
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