By Clara and Justin Hamel
Over the past two weeks, we have explored resilience and some of the ways we can strengthen our ability to adapt when life takes an unexpected turn. We have talked about mindfulness and the importance of learning to notice our thoughts, emotions and physical responses without immediate reaction. However, there is another important piece of the resilience puzzle that is sometimes overlooked … connection.
Resilience is often thought of as something we develop internally by becoming stronger, learning to manage stress, changing our thinking, or becoming better at regulating our emotions. All of these things matter to resilience, but we were never designed to navigate life on our own. Often our greatest resilience comes from the people around us.
This works in several ways. First, connection does something interesting to our attention. It draws us outside of ourselves. This alone has a profound impact.
There is an important distinction here. While self-awareness is healthy, understanding our emotions, recognizing our needs and reflecting on our experiences are vital to emotional stability. But there is a point when reflection can become rumination. Instead of helping us understand a problem, we begin circling around it. We live in our trauma by continually asking why a negative event happened? What did I do wrong to cause this? What if things get worse? Why can’t I handle this or get over it? The questions and focus can be consuming.
Psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema spent decades studying repetitive self-focused thinking, known as rumination. Her research found that rumination can intensify negative thinking, interfere with problem solving and even erode social support. In one experiment, people experiencing depression who were instructed to focus their attention on their feelings and personal characteristics experienced worsening mood, while those who shifted their attention away from themselves experienced an improvement in mood.
This is not to insinuate that we should ignore our problems or stop thinking about ourselves. It is to say that becoming too inwardly focused can create a cycle in which we continually analyze our problems without gaining the perspective needed to move beyond them. Sometimes the healthiest thing we can do is gently redirect our attention outward.
Call a friend. Check on a neighbor. Take your dog for a walk. Volunteer. Sit with someone who needs you. Listen to another person’s story without immediately comparing it to your own. Help your child with something. Make dinner for someone. These may seem like ordinary activities, but they can serve an important psychological purpose. They remind us that we are part of something larger than our own thoughts and circumstances.
In addition, connection does more than simply draw us outside of ourselves. It gives us a foundation. An abundance of research has demonstrated that supportive relationships can protect us from the effects of stress. In other words, resilience does not necessarily mean having the strength to handle everything yourself. Sometimes resilience means knowing who you can call when you cannot, and recognizing that the people we lean on are not a sign of weakness, but part of the foundation that helps us become stronger.
Resilience through connection takes many different forms. Sometimes resilience is reaching out when we would rather withdraw, sometimes it means allowing someone else to help us instead of insisting that we can handle it on our own and sometimes it means putting down the phone, detaching from our own thoughts and being fully present with the person sitting across from us. Whatever form it takes, the correlation between connection and resilience is a beautiful reminder that we are stronger together.
*Dr. Justin Hamel and Clara Hamel have a combined over 30 years of experience in health fields. Reach them at 1° Performance & Longevity, located at 46 N. Central Park Plz., Suite 101, in Jacksonville, on Facebook or by phone at 217-243-6358.
