Resilient people choose to balance the positive and the negative, rather than focusing only on what went wrong, or even solely on what is going right. This balance helps you deal with stress more effectively. Resilience can help protect you from a variety of mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety. Resilience can also help counteract factors that increase the risk of mental health problems, such as harassment or previous trauma.
If you already have a mental health condition, being resilient can improve your coping capacity. Being confident in your own ability to cope with life's stresses can play an important role in resilience. Being more confident in your own abilities, including your ability to respond to and deal with a crisis, is a great way to build resilience for the future. A review of research on resilience and chronic diseases suggested that a person's resilience can influence both the progression and outcome of diseases.
Research suggests that certain protective resources, rather than the absence of risk factors, play an important role in a person's ability to cope with and overcome stressors. When it comes to the idea of “natural resilience”, or a person's innate ability to recover from adversity, the research is mixed. It depends on personal behaviors and skills (such as self-esteem and communication skills), as well as external factors (such as social support and available resources). The 7 C's of resilience illustrate the interaction between personal strengths and external resources, regardless of age.
There are personal crises, such as illness, the loss of a loved one, abuse, intimidation, loss of work, and financial instability. In a previous longitudinal study, factors that protected adolescents at risk of depression, such as family cohesion, positive self-evaluations and good interpersonal relationships, also led to greater resilience in early adulthood. How people deal emotionally with stress and adversity varies from person to person, according to the Children's Society.
