Resilience is a term which you started to meet probably not so long go, Resilience means the ability to cope with crisis and live fully again. The three major responses to crisis are resilience, recovery, and chronicity.

It happens to almost everybody in life at one point, that there are moments of crisis, where one gets hit by collapse, breaking up of a relationship, failure of a business, losing a job, sickness, loss of a loved person, natural catastrophes, experiences of violence, accidents etc. Quite some people manage to recover after a hit by existence after some time, but it can take a long time, and others never recover fully, their crisis becomes chronical, and it gets worse.

What is amazing though to see and gives hope is, that there are people who overcame such moments of crisis, got over the pain and fears, and continued to live their lives fully. And we can learn from these people. Over the last years much research has gone into this field, especially in Neuroscience, and we do know now some major factors which make it possible for people to get on their feet again. This ability is referred to as Resilience - the ability to cope with crisis and live fully again

Big credit for this goes to modern Neuroscience. We know now so much more about the processes of perception, storing of information, and how the stored information influences us, and how we can again change the effect these memories have on us. These understandings make it possible to deal differently with crisis experiences in ones own life, and also show us how to help others come out of the immediate collapse, shock, and trauma after crisis situations and find a positive orientation in life again.

Resilience is not about one magic, powerful tool or understanding. It is rather a whole range of inner set ups, which altogether create an inner support network. And for this we can do something. Ways to help build resilience and avoid chronicity are:

to maintain good relationships with close family members, friends and others;
to avoid seeing crisis or stressful events as unbearable problems;
to accept circumstances that cannot be changed;
to develop realistic goals and move towards them;
to take decisive actions in adverse situations;
to look for opportunities of self-discovery after a struggle with loss,
to develop self-confidence;
to keep a long-term perspective and consider the stressful event in a broader context;
to maintain a positiv outlook, and visualise it;
to take care of one's mind and body, exercising regularly, paying attention to one's own needs
and feelings and engaging in relaxing activities that one enjoys;

Quite some of you might have felt a psychological load on you during quarantine and safety measures now. The daily news about deaths, and numbers of infected are pouring down on us. All this easily creates or adds to chronicity, a fearful perspective on life where we visualise terrible and sad things to happen. These projections - often unconscious - create a powerful subjective crisis reality.

Resilience is exactly what shows us how not to stay lying on the ground, resigning, waiting for the next hit, but how to actively build up a perspective for dealing with difficulty in such a way that we continue to move on on our journey of life towards awareness, love and respect