What resilience is not:

• Being resilient does not mean that a person will not experience difficulty or distress. People who have suffered major adversity or trauma in their lives commonly experience emotional pain and stress. In fact, the road to resilience is likely to involve considerable emotional distress.

Advice on enhancing resilience:

• While certain factors might make some individuals more resilient than others, resilience isn’t necessarily a personality trait that only some people possess. On the contrary, resilience involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that anyone can learn and develop.
• Like building a muscle, increasing your resilience takes time and intentionality.
• Focusing on four core components can empower you to withstand and learn from difficult and traumatic experiences. To increase your capacity for resilience to weather—and grow from—the difficulties, use these strategies:

Build your connections:

Prioritise relationships

Connecting with empathetic and understanding people can remind you that you’re not alone in the midst of difficulties. Focus on finding trustworthy and compassionate individuals who validate your feelings, which will support the skill of resilience. The pain of traumatic events can lead some people to isolate themselves, but it’s important to accept help and support from those who care about you.

Join a group

Along with one-on-one relationships, some people find that being active in civic groups, faith-based communities, or other local organisations provides social support and can help you reclaim hope. Often family carers understandably prefer to be part of a group alongside other people who understand the caring role and their relatives. Becoming involved in carers’ support groups is therefore often beneficial. This quote from a family carer describes how connectedness and fostering a sense of community can help build resilience:

“Just actually getting together in some way. I think this year is quite interesting as we have the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and they are talking about having parties in the street, you think actually that’s great. Let’s encourage community socialising and talking to people.”

Foster wellness:

• Take care of your body. Self-care may be a popular buzzword, but it’s also a legitimate practice for mental health and building resilience. That’s because stress is just as much physical as it is emotional. Promoting positive lifestyle factors like proper nutrition, ample sleep, hydration, and regular exercise can strengthen your body to adapt to stress and reduce the toll of emotions like anxiety or depression. Understandably, often family carers tend to neglect themselves as they are so concerned with caring for their loved one, as depicted by this quote:

“You never as a carer or a mother, you don’t really think of yourself, you always think of your young person or the person that you are family to more than yourself. I have been warned you need to start thinking more of yourself or taking a time out or finding something for your own head space.”

• Practice mindfulness. Mindful journaling, yoga, and other spiritual practices like prayer or meditation can also help people build connections and restore hope, which can prime them to deal with situations that require resilience. When you journal, meditate, or pray, ruminate on positive aspects of your life and recall the things you’re grateful for, even during personal trials. The following sites provide useful apps on mindfulness: https://www.calm.com https://www.headspace.com/
• Avoid negative outlets. It may be tempting to mask your pain with alcohol, drugs, or other substances, but that’s like putting a bandage on a deep wound. Focus instead on giving your body resources to manage stress, rather than seeking to eliminate the feeling of stress altogether.

Find purpose:

• Be proactive. It’s helpful to acknowledge and accept your emotions during hard times, but it’s also important to help you foster self-discovery by asking yourself, “What can I do about a problem in my life?” If the problems seem too big to tackle, break them down into manageable pieces.
• Move toward your goals. Develop some realistic goals and do something regularly—even if it seems like a small accomplishment—that enables you to move toward the things you want to accomplish. Instead of focusing on tasks that seem unachievable, ask yourself, “What’s one thing I know I can accomplish today that helps me move in the direction I want to go?”

Embrace healthy thoughts:

• Keep things in perspective. Life can be incredibly tough and challenging for family carers, but how you think can play a significant part in how you feel—and how resilient you are when faced with obstacles. Try to identify areas of irrational thinking, such as a tendency to catastrophize difficulties or assume the world is out to get you, and adopt a more balanced and realistic thinking pattern. You may not be able to change a highly stressful event, but you can change how you interpret and respond to it.
• Accept change. Accept that change is a part of life. Certain goals or ideals may no longer be attainable as a result of adverse situations in your life. Accepting circumstances that cannot be changed can help you focus on circumstances that you can alter.
• Maintain a hopeful outlook. It’s hard to be positive when life isn’t going your way and when you are faced with significant challenges on a daily basis in your family caring role. An optimistic outlook empowers you to expect that good things will happen to you. Try visualizing what you want, rather than worrying about what you fear. Along the way, note any subtle ways in which you start to feel better as you deal with difficult situations.
• Learn from your past. By looking back at who or what was helpful in previous times of distress, you may discover how you can respond effectively to new difficult situations. Remind yourself of where you’ve been able to find strength and ask yourself what you’ve learned from those experiences. Other family carers describe measures they take to build resilience within themselves:

“Me and my wife go to the local reservoir and it’s pretty amazing going first thing in the morning for a dip – it is worthwhile. It’s something to do with exercise and getting out. There are opportunities when I took the boys to the woods, one likes climbing trees which is great but actually just getting out from our little box that we have to work in with technology and reconnecting, listening out for the birds, kicking the leaves or doing something like that.”

“When we started going out walking that really helped because there was something about being out in the fresh air, being with people who weren’t my family, being able to talk to each other and have a chat really helped.”

“We have got to have something interesting to talk about other than this is my current struggle because there will always be a struggle and there will always be something where you are trying to improve some aspect because you are trying to get your kids, well every parent is the same but in our case it’s harder for longer. It’s nice to have outside interests, outside views, outside discussions about things that are nothing to do with your kids or your family.”