Emotional resilience refers to our capacity to recover from difficulties.  We need some emotional elasticity to be resilient in the face of life’s challenges and complexities.

As Scott Peck said, ‘life is hard.’  Susan David says that, ‘The only certainty is uncertainty.’

Facing life’s challenges in a healthy way includes getting to know our emotions, being curious about what we feel, and seeing emotions as useful information when we have to make decisions and navigate life’s challenges.

Sometimes however, our emotional elasticity breaks.  Perhaps we have had to cope with too many difficulties in one season of life and the burden becomes too great.  Perhaps we have believed the idea that to be strong we always need to be positive, but have ended up denying and bottling up our feelings to the extent that we feel like we could burst.  Perhaps we have simply had to face something traumatic and feel we cannot face it alone.

Sometimes counselling can help in the journey to becoming more emotionally resilient.  Talking about what we feel with someone trained to listen can be a useful process.  Sharing emotions with another can be healing.

Want to know a little more?  Click on the links to the right for some resources.