Hardship and the mind-body connection: the effects of low resilience

 What does it mean to be resilient?

The answer will be different for everyone. We each have our own experiences and overcome challenges unique to our lives. No one walks through life hoping to lose their jobs, have a life-threatening illness, or live through the COVID-19 pandemic.

But, when adversity strikes, we find a way through it.

 

Perhaps you’re currently going through something difficult right now. It may have slashed your confidence, leaving you uncertain about the future. But you’re more than capable of resilience. Humans didn’t survive thousands of years by being non-adaptable. You carry those skills within you — you just have to let them shine.

If you don’t, you put yourself at risk of serious health consequences. Mental and physical health are intimately linked, and letting adversity get to you can cause everything from depressive symptoms to heartburn.

It’s important to understand the mind-body connection and how it plays into the effects of low resilience. Once you do, we can work together to find a path forward. You can build resilience.

How does resilience affect a person’s life?

Resilience is a combination of protective factors, including your ability to withstand, overcome, and bounce back from difficult life events.

This doesn’t mean stressful situations won’t affect you — quite the contrary. You’ll still feel all the negative emotions and types of stress. But, with more resilience, you can work through those feelings and avoid psychological distress.

The 4 types of resilience

There are four types of resilience, each corresponding to a different area of your life.

Psychological resilience is the ability to motivate yourself to do something difficult. For example:

§  Running every day to train for a half-marathon

§  Writing a whole book while also working a full-time job

Emotional resilience refers to your ability to conjure positive emotions when you need them — like optimism, curiosity, or joy. Some examples:

§  Encouraging your colleagues through a difficult project

§  Making the best of your recovery time after an injury

Social resilience is the ability to reach out to others for help. It’s also about being the kind of person who others don’t mind supporting. Some examples of social resilience include:

§  Asking friends for encouragement before you head into a job interview

§  Considering and accepting difficult advice from people who care about you

Physical resilience refers to the capacity to overcome physical challenges. For instance:

§  Beating your weight-lifting goal at the gym

§  Helping a friend move a couch down a narrow staircase

Why resilience is important

Life has many blessings. But you’ll never completely avoid hardship. Some challenges will be relatively minor, and others may be disastrous.

When adversity strikes, keeping a resilient mindset allows you to tackle problems head-on, overcome them, and move on. It prevents you from becoming overwhelmed and encourages healthy coping mechanisms. It also helps you tap into your strengths and support networks to rebuild after experiencing pain, hardship, and suffering.

What causes low resilience?

There are a few reasons why people have low resilience. Thankfully, low resilience doesn't have to be a permanent condition. With regular practice of mental fitness exercises, you can build resilience and other core psychological resources, just like you go to the gym to build strength and physical fitness.

 

Here are things that might be affecting your resilience levels:

Childhood experiences. Being consistently overwhelmed as a child and lacking a strong support system are good predictors for unhealthy coping strategies and a low tolerance for change.

Lack of social support. Even if you had a healthy childhood, you might feel overwhelmed if you don’t currently receive emotional validation from loved ones. Your family members, friends, and colleagues should help you feel supported.

Unrealistic plans. Setting unachievable goals can set you up for failure and disappointment. Lower resilience often stems from taking on too much too fast and setting yourself up for failure.

Low self-esteem. If you don’t have faith in yourself or your abilities, you’re less likely to adapt gracefully to stressful situations. Some side-effects of low self-esteem also include mental illnesses such as anxiety, stress, loneliness, and an increased likelihood of depression.

Emotional regulation. If you never learned how to process your emotions or seek help to work through them, you’re more likely to be overwhelmed when challenged.

The impacts of low resilience

Low resilience often leads to higher levels of stress, which is why both conditions share similar symptoms. These include behavioral changes like:

§  Changing your eating habits

§  Smoking, drinking, or other substances

§  Avoiding colleagues, friends, and family

§  Overreacting to minor problems

§  You may also experience emotional symptoms in reaction to adverse events. For example:

 

ü  Irritability ü  Mood swings ü  Anxiety ü  Disappointment with yourself

ü  Tearfulness or aggression ü  Lack of motivation ü  Low energy levels

 

§  From a physical standpoint, you may experience:

 

ü  Fatigue ü  Nausea

ü  Muscle pains and aching ü  Palpitations

 

§  Your cognitive functions may also take a hit, leading to:

 The effects of low resilience on your health

Low resilience increases your susceptibility to stress. This, in turn, can lead to long-term health consequences.

 

Stress is your body’s reaction to a real or perceived danger (also known as a stressor). When you have low resilience, your response to a stressor is more intense — causing the release of stress hormones, like cortisol and adrenaline, through your body.

These hormones increase your heart rate, tighten your blood vessels, and raise your blood sugar. If you frequently experience these symptoms — or experience them for an extended period of time — you open yourself up to several unfavorable health conditions. Here are some examples:

ü  Mental exhaustion ü  A lowered immune system ü  Heart disease and cardiovascular problems ü  High blood pressure

ü  Diabetes ü  Burnout ü  Weight gain ü  Cognitive impairment

High resilience helps with stress management. It reduces your reaction to stressors, thus lowering your stress response and risk of long-term health consequences.

Consequences of low personal resilience at work

Unsurprisingly, 75% of American workers say “stress” is their number one workplace health concern. And for those who lack resilience, stress can seriously reduce their sense of worth, attitude toward their job, and work performance. And let’s be real: work can be stressful.

But it doesn’t have to be, so it’s important to increase your level of resilience at work. It’ll improve your well-being and make you a more valuable candidate to prospective employers.

Some of the top skills valued by companies are related to resilience. They want people who are adept at:

§  Complex problem solving

§  Creativity and innovation

§  Emotional intelligence

§  Cognitive flexibility

§  Self-efficacy

These skills can help you adapt to complex challenges, work more collaboratively with your team, and ultimately reduce the impact of stress on your well-being.

Reframing negative thoughts 

Humans naturally tend toward negativity. We often:

§  Remember traumatic events more clearly than positive ones

§  Dwell on criticism rather than praise

§  Think about negative things more often than positive ones

§  React more strongly to negative events than hopeful ones

You can thank evolution for this cognitive function. Historically, it kept us alert to potential dangers and increased our chances of survival. But nowadays, our negativity bias is much less helpful. It can hurt you in many areas, including your resilience.

When you focus on something bad that happened, the chances are that it wasn’t a life-or-death situation. The unfair criticism you received at work, the rude customer at the coffee shop, the spilled water on your shirt — these are valid annoyances, but they won’t kill you. Even if it feels like the end of the world, you can persevere.

Dwelling on these negative events gives them undue weight in your life. This only increases your stress levels when reframing your thoughts would be much healthier.

You can do this in a few ways:

Avoid all-or-nothing thinking. Be careful not to see everything as a strict success or failure. For example, spilling water is indeed annoying. But it shouldn’t have a bearing on the rest of your day.

Look for the positive. It might sound cliché, but disregarding positive experiences only justifies hurtful thought patterns.

Look for positive things that happened to you. There are more than you think.

Tame your emotions. You’re allowed to be annoyed, angry, or sad. But don’t draw conclusions about your life based on these emotions. Like most feelings, they drift away as quickly as they came.

Don’t jump to conclusions. It’s easy to make assumptions, but you likely don’t have the details to accurately assess the situation. So next time someone cuts you off on the highway, try to think of the whole picture. Their anger has more to do with their issues than yours.

Practice self-compassion. Negative thoughts harm no one more than you. You can acknowledge a bad day while also letting it go. Removing negativity from your mind is an act of self-care.

Focus on what you can control. The world is full of things you can’t change, so it’s no use dwelling on them. Instead, focus on what you can change. This will help you feel more empowered and optimistic — thus improving your resilience.

The road to resilience

You’ll invariably encounter hard times. It’s a part of life. But, by building resilience, you can gracefully take on the challenges that come your way.

It won’t be easy, and it’s okay to ask for help if you need it. Working with a mental health professional can help you identify negative thought patterns and stop the effects of low resilience — especially if your negativity is rooted in childhood trauma.

 

You Are Stronger Than You Think

Imagine that you magically wake up tomorrow as a stronger and more resilient version of yourself. How would you live differently? What would you do if you knew that you would eventually recover from failures or setbacks?

Would you take more chances? Finally finish that project or make that call or have that conversation?

What opportunities have you been putting off or passing up because you don’t think you’re strong enough to deal with the rejection or disappointment?

What if I told you that you are probably stronger than you think you are?

How can I know that? Because most of us are stronger than we think.

There are a lot of ways we overestimate ourselves: We tend to think we are smarter and healthier and better drivers than we probably are. But there are also ways we underestimate ourselves. And one thing we tend to underestimate is our ability to cope with negative events. We often predict that we will feel worse and for a longer period of time than we actually end up feeling. We can’t imagine ever getting over a breakup or job loss or the death of a loved one.

But, our emotional responses are often less intense than we imagine they will be, even for really bad situations, like losing a loved one.

Why you’re stronger than you think

Our brains are wired to try to minimise the impact of negative events. According to University of Virginia psychologist Timothy Wilson, one way our brains do this is by trying to make sense of negative events. We might do this by rationalising or re-interpreting events in a way that makes them seem more predictable and inevitable. We tell ourselves that “we knew all along” that things would happen the way they did. When events seem more predictable and less novel, it reduces their emotional power.

Here is how Wilson describes our sense-making processes in his book Strangers to Ourselves: “Just as we have a physiological immune system that identifies dangerous foreign bodies and minimises their impact, so do we have a psychological immune system that identifies threats to our self-esteem and finds ways of neutralising these threats.”

So, if we’re really that good at making ourselves feel better about negative events, why are we so bad at predicting that response? Why do we think we’ll feel so bad for so long? Why do we underestimate our own resiliency?

One reason is that our psychological immune system that helps us deal with negative events often works outside of our awareness. Since we’re not aware of how our brains work to help us make sense of and adapt to negative events, we underestimate our ability to do so.

Another reason we have a hard time predicting how we’ll respond to negative events is that when we think about a negative event, we often think about it in a vacuum. We think only about that one event and how it will make us feel.

We might be right that we’ll feel bad if we don’t get a promotion, but we probably won’t feel as bad for as long as we think we will, because not getting the promotion is not the only thing that will affect how we will feel. We have a million other things going on in our lives that will affect our well-being. We find out we didn’t get the promotion, but then we go home and eat dinner and go to our kid’s soccer game and meet a friend for lunch. And all of these things will also impact how we feel.

But if we focus too narrowly on the things that will change as a result of a negative event and not enough on all the things that will stay the same in our lives, we will predict that we will be a lot more adversely affected by negative events than we probably will be. We will forget that life usually does go on.

How are you going to use your strength and resilience? You have a hidden superpower. And it’s not magic. You really are stronger than you think you are! It's up to you to decide how you are going to use your superpower! 

The new rules of hydration

When you’re in a work groove, glued to a laptop or blazing through meetings, it’s easy to forget about basic hydration. Then suddenly it’s 15:00 and you haven’t had a sip since…does iced coffee count? Cue the dehydration headache. Even when you do drink enough water, your IG feed can make you feel behind the curve. Who new H2O could be so complicated? Dietician Tammy Jordan gives us a splash of common sense.

 

 

Q: Traditional hydration “rules” state that drinking eight glasses of water a day is ideal. Is this true?	A: Though widely held, this belief isn’t supported by research. The Food and Nutrition Board published this recommendation in 1945(!!!), despite no scientific backing. Yes, it’s important to drink water throughout the day, but if you don’t hit eight glasses, you’re more than likely getting enough through food and other sips.
Q: Recently, there’s been a trend on social media of drinking at least 3 litres of water a day. Is this actually a healthy goal?	A: “Proper” hydration depends on body type, activity level and climate. Your body is well adapted to signalling when you need to drink, so respond to its cues. Generally, there’s no harm in downing 3 litres a day, except for people with heart failure or kidney disease who can’t process that much.
Q: What do you recommend for proper hydration in day-to-day life?	A: Start your day with a large glass of water. Not only will this rehydrate you from sleep, but it’ll also support good cognitive health and energise you first thing in the morning. Throughout the day, keep a large refillable water bottle at hand to encourage yourself to drink, especially when you exercise. And if you don’t like plain water, add some sliced fruit or flavoured electrolytes.

 

 Until next week!

Have a great Tuesday!

The truth about Imposter Syndrome

“Any day now, they’re going to realise what a mistake they made in hiring me. I bet they’re         already wondering.”

How often do thoughts like this one cross your mind? For some people — many people —     they occur quite often. When they do, they bring a cascade of emotions, most of them not    helpful.

These thoughts of being a fraud or having our enormous deficiencies exposed and the anxieties, insecurity, and dread that follow are all part of a phenomenon known as "imposter syndrome". 

Unlike humility, imposter syndrome can do real damage: anxiety, an inability to savor success, and, in some cases, a belief that one can’t go on in their career. 

What is imposter syndrome?

Two clinical psychologists, Pauline Rose Clance and Suzanne Imes, first identified and named the phenomenon back in 1978. 

Imposter syndrome is the condition of feeling anxious and not experiencing success internally, despite being high-performing in external, objective ways. This condition often results in people feeling like "a fraud" or "a phony" and doubting their abilities.

With imposter syndrome, a person doesn’t feel confident or competent, regardless of what     they achieve. They don’t experience the joy of success because they are always waiting for     their inadequacy and fraudulence to come to light.

Although Clance and Imes originally defined imposter syndrome to describe a condition they observed in professional women, research shows that men and women can equally suffer from imposter syndrome.

But humility is good, right? It’s just realistic to acknowledge that no person know everything. The world does change quickly, and problems or situations people face might be more complex than they seem at first. Yet, imposter syndrome is different from a healthy dose of caution of open-mindedness.

Humility and caution stem from an accurate assessment of one’s own capabilities against a complex situation.

The imposter phenomenon, on the other hand, stems from a sense of inadequacy in the environment despite objectively being competent.  It is notable in that it isn't about assessing the situation but about assessing themselves. They feel more inadequate than others facing the same complex situation, such that they don’t belong there at all.

Imposter syndrome can cause people to feel a sense of time running out. It’s as if people have been putting on an act and they can’t keep the act up much longer. This is despite all evidence to the contrary. Remember, people often have these thoughts and feelings after achieving and overcoming obstacles throughout their lives. Why? Many high achievers reach a point in their career where they feel like they are unable to keep going.

Maybe they can’t keep going at the same rate as they have been, and that feels shameful. The shame makes people suffer alone and in silence. People don’t realise how many others suffer from imposter syndrome because no one wants to admit it out loud.

What causes imposter syndrome?

Imposter syndrome is a cognitive distortion. It causes people to doubt their skills and accomplishments. They doubt others’ high regard for them. They doubt their own history and track record.

 

But where do this doubt and distortion come from? Although it can drag at a person's mental health, imposter syndrome isn’t an official psychological condition and it has a variety of causes. Research has shown that imposter syndrome comes from a combination of factors: 

Family environment. Growing up, parents or other family members might have put outsized emphasis on achievement or been overly critical.

Social pressures. Being part of a social circle or group where approval or worth seems to be explicitly connected to achievement.

Sense of belonging. Part of imposter syndrome is the fear of being found out and cast out.

Any circumstance, even in the past, that made a person feel different or excluded from the group — language, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, religion, or physical or learning differences — can fuel the imposter phenomenon. The person can carry that persistent sense of not belonging long after the circumstance is resolved.

Personality. Some personality types are more linked to internalising feelings of pressure, doubt, and failure. Times of stress or transition, even unrelated to work, can make it worse.

 

The effects of imposter syndrome make it worth addressing. The feelings of anxiety and inadequacy can lead people to avoid challenges or opportunities that would let them grow and shine.

 

People may not seek out or fully explore useful relationships at work or school. Even if they do, the internal struggle necessitates a lot of energy. It can lead to frustration, shame, depression, and lack of self-confidence.

Left unchecked, imposter syndrome has a negative impact on people’s relationships, work, as well as job and life satisfaction. The effects can be worse for women and underrepresented groups.

 

Characteristics of imposter syndrome

We all doubt ourselves sometimes. So, you might be wondering what imposter syndrome feels like. Here are the most common characteristics of imposter syndrome:

1.           Self-doubt

A lack of self-worth and self-efficacy results in persistent feelings of anxiety regarding their ability to succeed. Success at work is viewed as an unattainable and risky goal, not a reality that can be achieved with focus and dedication.

2.          Undervaluing contributions

People experiencing imposter syndrome undermine the worth of their achievements, which results in a persistent sense of incompetency.

3.          Attributing success to external factors

Imposter syndrome causes people to credit their achievements to situational factors beyond their control.

When team members offer positive feedback in the form of praise, raises, or promotion, people will struggle to accept responsibility for their success. Instead, they may attribute the positive impact they created to chance, coincidence, good luck, or the contributions of their coworkers.

4.          Sabotaging self-success

Imposter syndrome reinforces feelings of inefficacy. It pushes people to go out of their way to make poor or risky decisions.

The imposter phenomenon causes people to experience a fear of success. They believe it is unattainable no matter how hard or often they try to attain it — success isn't meant for them.

Imposter syndrome also results in people psyching themselves out. They tell themselves their contributions will be sloppy, insufficient, or purposeless. This self-doubt can cause them to apply less effort, attention, creativity, and persistence until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

5.          Setting unrealistic expectations

Imposter syndrome creates the sensation that our best isn’t enough. It pushes people to set unrealistically high standards to accommodate for feeling inadequate when accomplishing realistic, timely, complex, and challenging goals.

6.          Continuous fear of not living up to expectations

No matter what goals people set, imposter syndrome negates their ability to achieve them. It causes people to feel as if they are not able to fulfill expectations they set and others set for them, despite their best efforts. They perceive these expectations as a burden they cannot shake instead of a challenge they’re excited to overcome.

7.          Burnout

To overcome a sense of incompetence, people push themselves. They expend their energy quickly. Work starts to become more of a chore than a source of meaning and purpose, and they lose much of their passion for what they do.

 

How to deal with imposter syndrome

Trying is exhausting. It depletes rather than energises. Yet people can, and do, keep going.

How do you keep going when you hit that brick wall? And how do we regain some joy in the work and our accomplishments?

 

First, understand that imposter syndrome is a form of saboteur. You are not helpless against it.

Also, don’t try to ignore it. Instead, tame the emotion by acknowledging its presence. Be aware of its impact on your body.

The SBNRR technique (stop, breathe, notice, reflect, respond) technique can help you slow down and consider the situation — and your own thoughts, feelings, and reactions — more mindfully.

Stop: Allow yourself to stop in your tracks and take a moment to pause.

Breath: Give yourself a deep breath and let your thoughts go and not be attached to them.

Notice: Notice your feelings, your body, your surroundings, your peers, the situation, your reaction, and anything else that you can notice.

Reassess: Evaluate the situation and the reason you felt a need to fall into the imposter syndrome.

Respond: React intentionally. It can be more informed and composed now that you have calmed yourself a bit.

 

In addition to this technique, there are several tips to overcoming imposter syndrome:

Assess the evidence. Making a simple 2-column list — on one side, “Evidence that I

am inadequate” and on the other side, “Evidence that I am competent” — can help    bring perspective. This list enables you to combat imposter syndrome by collecting,    acknowledging, and reflecting on proof of your competency.

Refocus on values. Take your focus away from outward signs of success or achievement and remind yourself of what really matters to you.

Reframe around growth. Life and a career are a journey. You can’t grow, learn, or make progress without stretching yourself.

Get out of your head. Rumination, a pattern of circling thoughts, goes hand-in-hand with imposter syndrome. Find someone to talk to or write down your fears — they are less powerful when they aren’t circling.

Practice self-compassion. Don’t beat yourself up for feeling like a fraud. Now that you understand where the doubt and inadequacy come from, give yourself credit and compassion for how far you’ve come.

Be kind to yourself. You are a human. Humans make mistakes. You will, too. “Practicing self-compassion will help you tame your inner critic.”

Keep failure in perspective. Instead of focusing and defining your failure in the abstract, take time to write down the likely outcomes if some part of your effort fails. Rarely is it the end of the world. Try learning from your failures instead of letting your failures define you.

Practice mindfulness. Use the SBNRR technique to pause and re-evaluate. This technique gives you the opportunity to situate yourself in the present. It’s a reflection point that enables you to recognise the capacities you have and used to successfully reach this point.

Seek trusted feedback from your network. Make a practice of periodically getting feedback from people you trust and respect. Knowing that you have a source of meaningful feedback can help you let go of wondering what everyone else is thinking of you.