How can you build resilience?

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0:30Kimberley Wilson:This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

0:39Kimberley Wilson:Hello and welcome. I'm Kimberley Wilson. I'm a counselling psychologist and this is Complex. The podcast about psychology and mental health. And I am so glad that you're here because psychology and mental health affects us all. And I want this podcast to be your safe space where you can find reliable information that will hopefully help you live a healthier, happier life.

1:11Kimberley Wilson:In this episode, I'm exploring resilience. And it feels very appropriate a time to be thinking about it. It's the 74th of January. We're all impoverished. It's a time of year where we're told to overhaul our bodies and our finances and our personalities and our relationships and build a pension plan. And also the world is on fire. There's a lot going on. And so it feels like a good time to think about what it means to not just survive, but to thrive and to be resilient. As usual, I will have an expert guest joining me and we'll have a story from a listener that really illuminates the idea of resilience for us.

1:57Kimberley Wilson:So, let me be your guide through the frosty, icy snowstorm of misinformation to the warm, cosy living room of understanding.

2:12Kimberley Wilson:This week, I am delighted that health psychologist and CBT therapist Dr Sula Wingasson has returned to the Complex Studio. Hello, Sula. Hi, thanks for having me back. We had so much excellent feedback about your last episode when we spoke about perfectionism. which by the way listeners can find on BBC Sounds but what have you been up to since then? I have been busy trying to finish the writing of my book which is out imminently. Congratulations. Thank you very much and has taken a lot of work but I'm excited. Writing a book is a lesson in resilience is it not? Absolutely. I was looking back at a diary four years ago where I was like this year I want to write a book and obviously it didn't happen but it kind of goes to show that coming back to something that's important to you finding different ways around I think that's what resilience is all about.

3:08Kimberley Wilson:That's such a good example so you have this personal perspective but you also have a professional interest in resilience as well don't you? Yes so I work a lot with people with chronic illnesses persistent physical health issues and people who've experienced complex trauma so resilience is often raised almost as a dirty word amongst the people that I work with because quite often because of the difficult experiences they've gone through or are going through they're told they're resilient but they don't necessarily relate themselves to feeling that resilient and they also perceive well what other choices have I got and it can be quite frustrating then to be told you're resilient so I'd love to get into that.

3:54Kimberley Wilson:Let's not delay any longer let's get into the complexity.

4:01Kimberley Wilson:Okay so as ever I love to start with a definition what do we mean when we talk about resilience? So in order for somebody to be resilient there's two components right there has to have been an experience of adversity or difficulty in some way. And then the consensus from research and clinical practice is that it is this ability to positively adapt in the face of that adversity. So this kind of positive adaptation, bouncing back, and maybe not even bouncing because maybe that overstates what it's like, but being able to come back from something. Yeah, I think you identify something really important there, which is this connotation that people have with that word resilience of bouncing back.

4:48And there is an assumption that if you're resilient, you know, you're happy to always be having to bounce back or you're doing it with a particular attitude or energy. But actually, resilience can be much more subtle and gentle. And it is just the ability in taking stock, actually being quite pragmatic and readjusting.

5:11Kimberley Wilson:Yeah. And also that it doesn't necessarily mean that you have been completely unaffected, because I think sometimes that's a bit of a misnomer that you, in order to be resilient, I almost need to come out completely unscathed and unchanged from this event. Like if I was a vase and I was just dropped on the floor, I'm supposed to just bounce rather than break and be mended and I can come back to being whole. But there still might be little cracks that show where I've been, that that can still be a form of resilience. Yeah, absolutely. So this perception that resilience is coming back unscathed, I think, does a disservice to the concept, actually, because inherent to resilience is the adaptation, right?

5:54Kimberley Wilson:It also makes me think of the other thing that resilience isn't, which is a kind of imperviousness, this kind of sense of I'm invincible and that I'm completely unaffected by this thing. And quite often when people talk to me about, oh, you know, I'm trying to be resilient, actually what I'm seeing is suppression or denial or avoidance of the thing, as if they feel that in order to be able to be resilient, they have to almost be like this rigid piece of rock that is completely untouched and unweathered. that's a good word for it because we know that actually emotional coping and regulation requires you to engage with your emotions about things and acknowledge them make space for them not pretend they're not there which often puts a lot more burden on and undermines resilience

6:51Kimberley Wilson:now i'm going to share with you a story that a listener has emailed to us about her experience with resilience. I'm going to call her Holly to protect her identity and Sula what I'd love is for you to have a listen and then tell me what you think. Holly says, I've been through some really bad life experiences all in a row. A serious injury, workplace bullying and relationship difficulties and have been profoundly affected. I'm doing okay recovering but I'm struggling to get my head around what resilience looks like for me and if I'm allowed to call myself resilient considering I've been through traumatic collapse after everything happening all at once.

7:35I'm

7:36Kimberley Wilson:struggling to think of myself as resilient given how much support I need. What if I'm doing resilience wrong because it's taking ages to recover and if I don't fully recover does that mean I'm never allowed to think of myself as resilient again. What a great question Holly I'm so sorry that's such a lot to go through actually what she's describing there is three massive things one on their own would be enough to cause substantial emotional distress for a long while and have to take time to process and recover but there's three so no wonder there's been what she described as a traumatic collapse.

8:19A traumatic collapse. Yeah, understandably. So that absolutely doesn't prohibit her from identifying with the word resilient.

8:26Kimberley Wilson:It's such an interesting question, isn't it? Because what Holly seems to be describing is quite a fixed, almost 2D image of what a resilient person looks like. But as I'm reading Holly's story, I'm thinking, we've been through all of this, you're still here, you're listening, you're clearly engaging with other support services, you're asking these questions, you're thinking about the future, you're working towards something like that is resilience. And it doesn't have to be loud, or particularly triumphant. They don't have to be like trumpets and a band following you down the road. It can be these little acts of just going forwards.

9:09Kimberley Wilson:And I would say you don't even need to do it confidently. Absolutely. Just the act of questioning, I think, is a resilient act and engaging, you know, thinking about it and trying to work out what that looks like. That is a form of resilience because you need that process of mapping out so you can work out what's going to be helpful for you. I also noted the question about can I call myself resilient if I'm relying on so much support? yes i'm so glad that she asked that because again there can be this expectation that if we're resilient we're completely independent we don't need independent anything from anybody we do it on our own which is so unhelpful to us because a big part of resilience and what we see in the research is the people who are most able to internalize a sense of resilience and act with resilience are the people that also have support you know that helps us to be resilient absolutely that we can borrow other people's strength, their capacity, their knowledge and experience that they have gathered throughout their life, their belief in us, their encouragement, and that becomes part of the kind of picnic table of resilience.

10:20Kimberley Wilson:We can't just bring it out of ourselves. I totally agree with that. I think it's a myth that to overcome adversity, it has to all be on us. There's lots of things that tell us that in the media and society and glorify that. But But actually, what we see in the research is quite contrary to that. We do need to be able to borrow from other people when we don't feel resilient or that we can believe in ourselves to lend somebody else's eyes or get somebody else's kind feedback or just, you know, the companionship of someone being there alongside you. Okay, so we have a sense of what resilience is, what it might look like.

10:57Kimberley Wilson:what kinds of things experiences traits can impact or affect our ability to be resilient though it's interesting because there is research that talks about resilience as this internal personality trait or characteristic that you're born resilient but we can also think of resilience as a state or a skill that we can build but it does seem to overlap with other characteristics like optimism and being able to feel gratitude and self-kindness and openness and conscientiousness. So these things can really lend themselves well to people engaging resiliently with adversity. So we might have these kind of built-in tendencies, but they can be affected and shaped not only by our environments, but of course by our experiences and the things we learn and the things we can do deliberately to kind of help ourselves.

11:56Absolutely. So I was looking actually at the research on genetic predispositions of resilience. And in this interesting meta-analysis, it had identified that there are six specific genes that have been associated with resilience. But as you say, it is that context of it's not just about genes, it is also about environment and you can be genetically predisposed or not. But what happens after that is just as important, if not more, I often argue. Yeah.

12:25Kimberley Wilson:And that brings me to another kind of resiliency myth, I'm going to call it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Yes, that's a big one I hear. I feel like it can be very harmful to lots of people because actually, again, what we see is people that have experienced a lot of adversity in childhood. So there's a particular questionnaire to measure that, which is called the ACE, Averse Childhood Experiences. people who score higher on that ace questionnaire tend to actually have lower resilience because obviously it overtaxes us it incapacitates us it prohibits us a lot of the time from learning that we can overcome things if there's been you know so much adversity that the world is unsafe it affects the way your stress response works on a long-term basis exactly that sort of thing so it can be quite the opposite that what doesn't kill you actually makes you less resilient through no fault of your own because important lessons are being learned and you're not having the opportunity to garner these experiences that instill resilience too much stress and adversity can inhibit but too little also can inhibit resilience because you don't get the opportunity to learn what's called stress inoculation you know a little bit of moderate stress and adversity to to recognize actually i can withstand this and find ways to cope and be supported so it's almost like striking a fine balance to develop resilience.

13:53Yes. It's like when, I'm not a gardener,

13:56Kimberley Wilson:but when you take your little saplings and you have to put them outside so that they can be affected by the wind and that makes them a little bit stronger. Whereas if you just kept them inside in this completely kind of temperature controlled, safe environment, then they don't build up that normal resiliency. Exactly. That would keep them safe. Great analogy. Why I've killed all my saplings. Gardens can teach us a lot.

14:24Kimberley Wilson:okay so what about if we're thinking about the thesaurus the opposite of resilience might be not just fragility but also rigidity and actually maybe i'll come back to my sapling example because there is this idea that resilience is being that tall oak tree that stands firm and is completely immovable. Whereas I often describe resilience to clients as being much more like a willow. Because when a big storm comes, you've seen it in like whenever you go for a walk in the woods, there's just trees just completely tipped over. Whereas a willow that has some softness and can bend once the storm passes can come back to itself yes it will have lost a few leaves it will have lost a few branches this is you know we can be transformed and will be transformed by our experiences but we can come back and we're still whole yeah i think that's so important to have that juxtaposition of rigidity and a big part of resilience is as you say that ability to be flexible to move with things because we don't have ultimate control and there are going to be things that we you know can't prevent we can't change so we have to be able to to have some movement ourselves and your point about control takes me back to holly's idea because i think she wants to be able to say i know for sure that i will be fine and i guess there's a little bit of unknowing built into the process as well yeah that rigid need for certainty again i do think undermines one's ability to be resilient so if we were to think about resiliency across a spectrum what would we put at either ends i guess on one end we'd have struggling which can look different to different people but that can be you know complete resignation deactivation can't do anything you know feel completely unable to engage it can be high distress it can be you know all sorts of things other unhelpful coping mechanisms exactly drinking too much smoking even overworking over exercising avoidance those sorts of things exactly and then as we go to the extreme other end i suppose which is the chumba wumba end of i'll get knocked down and i get up again and this kind of defiant resilience of feeling clear confident I can take whatever adversity comes I think that extreme end of the spectrum is often what people equate with resilience absolutely I think it's certainly that kind of defiant resilience is what Holly has in mind when she says can I be a resilient person if I've been at the other end if I've struggled if I've collapsed if I need help absolutely and what I would argue is perhaps a more sustaining version of resilience is the more gentle resilience, which is a flexible ability to adapt with adversity that comes, take stock, feel the feelings, allow space for them, look at things pragmatically when you're able to again, and then adopt positive coping that can allow you to move beyond whatever that adversity, stressor is.

17:47And so what would quiet resilience look like? so that might be allowing yourself to have a duvet day feel upset cry even it might be looking at who you can ask for support and actually asking for support it might be just simply giving yourself some time to recuperate when you need it rather than having to face things

18:12Kimberley Wilson:right now and push and that it might look at times like you've dipped back into the struggle end right so maybe you are going to therapy or you are nourishing yourself you know you're doing gentle walks every day to help give you a sense of self-efficacy and to get out into the world but maybe once a month you have a duvet day and sometimes the world does feel a bit too much but then the next day you're back up and you're back out and you're brushing your teeth and you're making your bed that can still be part of being resilient attitude is a big part of that isn't it you know being compassionate with yourself to give yourself that grace of having those juve days or being you know more incapacitated on a particular hour day you know even week i talk with my clients actually about this model which really is relevant here of crisis coping and adjustment.

19:09So crisis would be the struggling. And coping, I think, is this moving process of inhabiting resilience, you know, trying something, maybe getting knocked back, you go back to struggle for a bit or crisis, and then, you know, try again and find new experiences, new learning, what have you. And then after a period of being in the coping stage, that then gets you to what we call adjustment which is okay things are changed maybe they weren't exactly as i planned but there's a new appreciation of yourself there's a new sense of self-efficacy which again will fluctuate day to day but uh it's internalized in perhaps a way that's deeper and more sustaining

19:54Kimberley Wilson:than it was before yeah i think that's a really lovely example and we think about kind of post traumatic growth but also that often when you come through something very difficult what you do have is a greater sense of empathy not just for yourself but for other people you know there's a greater sense of oh you and I are humans in this mess together and we're doing our very best and no it's we wouldn't want you to have to go through that to get there but that could be a really meaningful part of the transformation that comes from adversity coping adaptation resiliency see? I think it's a huge part you know working with people with health issues some of which that have come completely out of the blue and when they come to see me often they're at rock bottom in that struggle phase where they're like what is the point if I'm having to deal with this but one of my clients recently said I would never have chosen this obviously it's been awful but I am very grateful for the things that it's taught me about myself my relationship with myself and I feel like I have a much more connected relationship with the world around me.

21:04And I just thought that was so beautiful and really, you know, illustrates what you're talking about there.

21:09Kimberley Wilson:That kind of integration and taking in.

21:16Kimberley Wilson:Now, while you're listening, you may be realising, I hope you are, that you are more resilient than you realised. And if that is the case, then very big congratulations. do give yourself the credit you deserve because we so often tend to focus on the moments where we think we've failed or where we feel we've been weak rather than the many many times that we've recovered from those tricky things that life throws at us but perhaps listening to this you're someone who is feeling like you're struggling or you're feeling fragile or maybe you've worked out that you hold yourself in this rigid, quite hard position in order to feel like you manage, in order to feel like you're being resilient.

22:06Kimberley Wilson:If that's you, the very, very good news is that the research shows us that you can develop resilience and it doesn't matter how old or young you are. So Sula, what kinds of things do we know can help to support someone to develop or nurture their resilience? So it is exciting, the research, because they're showing that when people engage in predominantly cognitive behavioral interventions, mindfulness-based interventions over a period of eight weeks or so, that resilience really shifts. And so what these interventions do is arm people with a range of different types of responding and ways of relating to their experience so we've got things like cognitive restructuring which would be being able to look at what's going on look at your automatic perspective on on what's happening and exploring other alternatives and testing out you know whether actually you can engage with what's going on from those alternative perspectives you know that's gone wrong so it's all going to go wrong that relationship ended so i'll never find someone else you know but when we can identify that little corner of okay maybe that generalization isn't true can free up quite a lot which allows you to engage with things in a different way yeah and it's a really encouraging story that A, that these aren't really long interventions, you know, two months, and we have kind of long-term outcomes, that these seem to be sustained effects, and that these are kind of very clear skills, things like self-regulation, problem solving, working on social skills, which really speaks to how important other people might be to our sense of resilience.

23:57Kimberley Wilson:And that by improving these skills, you can improve your capacity to be resilient. Absolutely. It's such a good conversation to have. It's such a good topic to address. And what I love about this episode is I feel like we've done a bit of a prison break. because what I hope is that we have helped some people who feel trapped in this sense that they're not resilient or that resiliency looks very specifically like hardness and rigidity and it's much more individualized and personal and changing and flexible and that you can inhabit it in a way that feels kind of gentle and good for you and that coming back to Holly that this this idea that actually it doesn't matter how long it takes you're still being resilient there isn't a deadline it's really about where you are in the process so I hope that listeners are taking some encouragement from that yeah absolutely I think thinking about resilience is a skill that you can build and not having unrelenting expectations of yourself particularly when you're probably having to build it at a time where you're most depleted and incapacitated is such a good way of thinking about it.

25:16Kimberley Wilson:Thank you so much, Dr. Sula Wingassen, for discussing resilience with me today. Thanks for having me, Kimberley. And thank you to everyone listening. As you can hear, I am on a mission to clear up the mental health space because it is a mess. And what I want is for Complex to be the place where you can get trusted information from people who know what they're talking about so that you can take better care of yourself and the people around you. And I would love to know what you'd like me to explore. Please email your stories, a paragraph or two, to complex at bbc.co.uk. And please note that I can't answer you personally.

25:58Kimberley Wilson:So if you have a concern about a medical or mental health issue, then I strongly urge you to seek expert help. And if you want details or further support with some of the issues raised in the podcast, You can find them at bbc.co.uk forward slash action line. And the link is also in the show notes on BBC Sounds. And that is it from me. My thanks again to Dr. Sula Wingasson and also to the lovely team at Loftus Media. Producer Kirsten Lass. Assistant Producer Katie Chandler-Clark. Researcher Samara Linton. Science Editor Rami Zabar. Technical Producer Ruben Huxtable. Digital Editor Richard Berry.

26:37Kimberley Wilson:Studio Engineer Matt Hewer. sound engineer Ruth Rainey, and at BBC Sounds, Assistant Commissioner Izzy Lee Poulton and Commissioning Editor Rhian Roberts. I'm Kimberley Wilson. Thank you for listening. Take care and go gently.

27:09Kimberley Wilson:Log flume. From one thought to another. And very often, beyond words. I don't know how to describe the language I use. I'm Amanda Iannucci. I'm all reset and turbocharged to stress, test to destruction. Used and abused buzzwords and phrases from the world of politics. I come with a dazzling array of guest presenters and I'll be exploring the verbal tricks of the political trade, the intentions behind them and the effect they have on all of us. The new series of Strong Message here with me, Amanda Iannucci, from BBC Radio 4. Listen now on Pixie Sounds. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains.

27:45Kimberley Wilson:A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, It's time to put my balls on the dashboard. As he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious. In 15 years, he's a billionaire. This is Total Wolf, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive. This week on Good Bad Billionaire, how Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts.