“Why can some people cope with stressful situations more easily and turn it to an advantage, but I can't?”
Some of us may answer this question that they are weak, inadequate or unsuccessful. Everyone has different coping strategies for different challenges in life. Sometimes these strategies work, sometimes not enough. Life is flowing fast, new problems, difficulties and exams come our way every day. Especially this year. In these days of great uncertainty, some of us go on with their lives, and some of us are in great anxiety. Yes, it's true, some of us adapt more easily to the stressful situation by organizing strategies to cope with these difficulties more easily and quickly. This does not mean that other people are incompetent or powerless. This is related to how difficult our psychological resources are and how we can use them in the right place at the right time. Optimism, hope, coping style and resilience constitute our psychological resources.
Psychological resilience can be defined simply as “the ability to adapt”. The underlying philosophy is much richer than its definition. We can explain psychological resilience as how flexible one can be in creating a solution against a negative event and the capacity to overcome this stressful situation. Instead of focusing on the weak aspects of people, they focus on the areas where they find themselves strong and create their coping strategies by emphasizing their strengths. It has been determined that they have developed features such as self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, are aware of their psychological resources, and show a more controlled, flexible approach to stressful events with high psychological adjustment. Among the characteristics seen are weak family ties, economic hardship, loneliness, loss in the family, low belief in change, not loving oneself, trying to pretend to be someone they are not, being alienated from oneself, not being able to recognize their feelings. and suppression, pessimistic approach, finding life meaningless.
Psychological resilience is a feature that develops with the dynamic interaction of individual characteristics and environmental factors. Therefore, it is a feature that can change over the years, that can be improved as well as declining. Well;
How can we improve our resilience?
As we have just mentioned, if we consider the philosophy behind resilience, our main points to strengthen this aspect are; It will be about noticing, determining our goals and highlighting our strengths.
Recognize your strengths and make a list of your strengths.
Think about the last time you used your strengths and in what situation. Make a detailed analysis of what you did in bad situations that you overcame before.
Inform the people around you about psychological resilience and help them find their strengths. This communication with people will actually be effective in helping you gain some active coping skills (such as assertiveness, critical thinking, emotion regulation).
Increase your social activities and reduce the time you are alone. Loneliness is a risk factor for resilience, and socializing is a protective factor against it.
Create routines that support your strengths and positive attitudes. In this way, you can make these behaviors a habit in your daily life.
If you find it difficult to do these things and you think that you are not progressing enough, you can try to get psychological support from mental health professionals. It will be a useful option to re-evaluate and resolve the situations that you have difficulty following while following these steps.
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