'Weebles Wobble but they don't fall down': What is resilience?

We need to wobble to know we can stand back up.

It's not that we have a choice, but lack of wobbling is rigidity, we need to allow ourselves to be impacted and shaken by unpredictability, loss, things not going to plan, life's uncertainty.

Maya Angelou says: 'You may not control all the things that happen to you but you can decide not to be reduced by them’.

How we respond to the unpredictability is how we find resilience. Resilience is a process, you lose it and find it, it is not a destination, it is an intention. When life throws you little and big curveballs every day and nothing goes to plan, you can feel thwarted and prone to despair and resort to grandiose statements like:

'it's typical, things always go like that for me, I can never get a break, life is futile, might as well give up', which come with big feelings of sadness, pain, anguish, frustration, rage and shutting down, collapsing or frantically fighting.

Resilience is not being equanimous all the time in the face of adversity, it is almost inhuman and if we expect this of ourselves we are setting ourselves up for another failure and another stick to beat ourselves up with.

If we accept that we will wobble and sometimes even fall, we may also allow ourselves to notice when something small changes and reminds us that things won't always feel so bad, or be so bad, or there is something to be grateful for that we had not noticed.

In these difficult times when the world is in such turmoil and Christmas brings for many of us strong feelings and maybe internal turmoil, it's important to give ourselves the permission to not always feel 'resilient=strong and equanimous', but human=vulnerable and also flexible and resourcful, and to know that things change on a moment by moment anyway.

Our job is to notice and stay with 'what is' to find the glimmer of hope and get back, upright is not the permanent state of being, we can be trees in the wind, to flex and bend and not break.

As therapists, we can also offer this compassion and permission to our clients once we offer it to ourselves. Think about what helps you when you feel despaired and keep it in your back pocket.