What comes to mind when you think of the word ‘resilience’? What qualities and strengths do resilient people you know possess? Resilience is an essential tool for medical and dental students navigating challenges and constant updates in education and clinical skills. Furthermore, it is a critical life skill. Training our minds to become more resilient is essentially about learning how to tap into psychological tools to navigate adversities, recover and grow through them (Reivich, and Shatté, 2002). Far from the outdated ‘bounce back’ analogy, resilience actually is a journey, one that is dynamic, and there is no instant recoil back to recovery but a more compassionate finding of our internal resources and seeking social support.
Benefits of Resilience
The ‘Tree of Life’, located on the US West coast in Olympic National Park, Washington, has forged roots that supply the tree despite not having soil. This tree and countless others show nature’s ability to adapt to different weather conditions: to bend with it rather than break.
Similarly, resilience requires us to think flexibly, to roll with the rough and smooth. This dynamic process involves an interplay of protective factors in an individual, family, peer network, and community that allows us to develop, maintain, and regain mental health despite adversity (Khwaja, 2023).
The benefits of learning these vital life skills is beginning to establish in growing psychological intervention literature targeted at medical and dental students (Peng et al, 2014; Rosenzweig et al, 2003).
- Greater ability to regulate emotions
- Enhanced ability to handle challenges and stress
- Reduced occupational hazards, such as burnout and compassion fatigue
- Reduced presenteeism and absenteeism
- Enhanced communication
- Improved interpersonal relationships
- Openness in upskilling and developing
- Greater ability to give and receive support
Resilience Protective Factors
We all sit on the mental health continuum. Our position on this continuum is always shifting, according to what’s going on in our life plus the interplay of our risk and protective factors. And so doubling down on our protective factors for mental health and well-being, shifts us to greater levels of resilience. These levers include:
Self-awareness: The awareness of our thoughts and emotions at any given moment. We are often more aware of our physical reaction to stress but less aware of our thoughts due to a disconnection between the mind and body.
Self-regulation: Once we are self-aware, we are then able to self-regulate, another key protective factor. This is the mind skill in recognising which thoughts or emotions may be helping or hindering us and finding strategies to change those thoughts and calm our physiology when our brain is in a threat response (fight or flight mode).
Positive emotions: This includes the elevated emotions of love and happiness, not to discount the underrated yet humble emotions of gratitude, optimism, self-compassion, and curiosity.
Self-efficacy: Our ability to complete goals and master our environment, known as self-efficacy, is another crucial component. This impacts our choices, goal setting, effort, and persistence. We know that individuals with more self-efficacy are more likely to achieve difficult goals and try again despite rejections.
Positive relationships and organisations: Since humans are hardwired for social connection, it is unsurprising that our community also provides us protection from adversities. Nurturing positive relationships at university is essential in building both resilience and our well-being.
Meaning: Essentially, meaning making despite obstacles is centred in engaging in something bigger than ourselves. We may find meaning through spirituality or reflection.
Training Our Brain For Greater Resilience
Here are some simple strategies/activities to help you increase your levels of resilience today
- Lean into lifestyle factors: Level 1 starts with ensuring you’re focusing on a good foundation to positive health: nutrition, sleep and movement.
- Check-in: In order to support ourselves, and thrive, we need regular check-ins. We can do this through journaling, or taking a walk, or a mindful deep breath. Ask yourself: what’s going on for me right now? What am I feeling? How are my thoughts?
- Identify your common thinking traps: These are thought patterns that aren’t helpful for us, known as cognitive distortions. You can do this through journaling, and noting down the thoughts during certain stressful times, eg you may notice a catastrophising pattern when you’re doing a certain new procedure. Instead of focusing on the negative cycle of events that could happen in that moment, consider how to take a breath, notice the thoughts and remind yourself that you are not your thoughts. The act of simply labelling a thought can be very effective in reducing its negative impact on us.
- Find activities that bring you in flow states: These are activities where you ‘get in the zone’, lose track of time and feel fully absorbed in that activity simply for the pleasure of it. Flow states are very good for our brain, and associated with happiness (Seligman, 2002). Examples include teaching, cooking, writing, painting, playing a musical instrument
- Practise gratitude: this small habit can help remind us to spot all the small good things that make up our life.
The Navigating A Squiggly Life toolkit costs £39.99 available from https://www.mind-ninja.co.uk
