I was shown a course this week about emotional resilience. Basically it was stress management rebadged. Most of the participants were somewhat disappointed; they thought they were going to get something new, as the phrase emotional resilience sounds different to stress management.
So what’s the difference?
Stress management is just that, techniques for dealing with stress. Largely these tend to be relaxation techniques, which are very useful. Emotionally resilient people do tend to be less stressed, especially by critical events. However they are a bit more than good at managing stress. Some of the attributes of emotionally resilient people include:
• Able to recognise their emotional state at any moment, especially in heightened emotional situations
• Can change emotional state at will
• Able to recognise the temporary nature of feelings
• Can quickly, within seconds, work through their fears and anxieties constructively
• Remain positive, constructive and keep going in times of danger or difficulty
• Think quickly, clearly and objectively in times of difficulty or crises
• Remain calm and focussed in situations others want to run from or situations where others tend to freeze
• Able to confidently enter situations of ambiguity and uncertainty
I felt sorry for the participants as they could have gained a lot more from the day.
Great points! ER and Stress Mgt are different. However, I think your list of attributes or ER people is stating an ideal that few people can aspire to. ER is a “range” and I think saying things like “Can change emotional state at will” makes it sound like a superhuman skill. 95% of people cannot instantly change their emotional state to whatever they want it to be.
I prefer to give a more moderate definition like “Are able to tolerate emotional discomfort and influence their emotional state with inner dialogue.”
Also, many fears and anxieties take more than seconds to work through…why define that so narrowly? If a person takes a day to work it through are they not ER? Compared to someone who is trapped by their fears for years…I would say they are! : )
You have a great list and topic here…I just hope you can “moderate” your standards to be more inclusive of “good” vs. “perfect” and give more people hope to attain ER.
All the best,
Ariane
Hi Ariane,
Thanks for the comment. I would agree with you that Emotional resilience has a range and is most certainly different from individual to individual. Having developed the techniques we did have for disaster managers and emergency service workers at Cranfield University and since used these with 1000’s of people from all walks of life I have not come across anyone that cannot quickly learn the techniques necessary to be able to deal with their emotions in the moment. It only takes a few seconds to reduce the feelings in the moment to enable people to regain composure and move through the feelings so that they don’t adversely affect their performance.
Working through their fears and anxieties in as much as understanding them and why a particular fear is a problem for an individual does take some time. However learning to cope with the resultant emotions and learning how to be resilient can be quite a quick affair, especially when an individual has found their own triggers, dishabituating them does not have to be a lengthy process. I hope this clarifies what I meant.
Very best wishes and many thanks for the comment.
David