Stress Articles

Article / Updated 09-16-2022

One of the secrets of effective stress management at work is finding ways to incorporate a variety of stress-reduction techniques into your workday. By using these methods on a regular basis you can catch your stress early — before it has a chance to turn into something painful or worrisome. Take a look at these surefire strategies to help you nip that stress in the bud: Breathe. A day at work is usually a day filled with problems, pressures, and demands, with little time to think about relaxation skills. Your stress builds, and much of that stress takes the form of tension in your muscles. Drain that tension before it becomes more of a problem by trying some relaxed breathing. Move around: Get up and walk away from your desk — get some coffee or water, make copies. Walk around a lot, and at lunch be sure to get out of the office and take a quick stroll. Stand up some of the time you’re on the phone. And if you have a cordless model, walk around. This gives your body a chance to use different sets of muscles and interrupts any buildup of tension. Stretch and reach for the sky: For many of you, your days are characterized by long periods of sitting at a desk or stuck in a cramped work area, punctuated only by trips to the coffee or copy machine. Other folks are on their feet all day. In either case, stretching is a great way of releasing any tension that has accumulated in your muscles. Soothe yourself with sound: If you can orchestrate it, listening to calming music at your work site can unruffle your feathers. A radio, tape or CD player, and some appropriate music can be very relaxing. Classical music, especially Bach and Mozart, works nicely. If these composers are too highbrow, try one of the “lite” radio stations. Just keep the volume down, or use a headset. Lighten up: The right lighting in your workspace can reduce eyestrain and make your environment a more pleasant place to work. Go for soft and indirect lighting. Just make sure you have enough light. Create visual resting spots: Give your eyes — and your mind — a break with photos, artwork, or a plant. At regular intervals, look away from your computer screen or paperwork and focus on a distant object to “stretch your eyes.” You can also create visual relief to your office by adding a few interesting objects. For example: Organize your desk: How can a neater desk reduce stress? Well, because the source of many types of stress comes from a feeling of being out of control, of being overwhelmed. When your work area looks like a battlefield, you feel the tension growing. And when you can’t find that report you need, your stress level soars even higher. By organizing your files and piles, you get a sense (perhaps mistakenly) that there is some order in all the chaos. Become EC (ergonomically correct): Your desk or workspace can cause stress for other reasons besides disorganization. The problem is, your body was not designed to sit and work in one place for long periods of time. When you sit in a stationary position for long periods of time, your muscle groups contract. The blood flow to these muscles may become reduced, resulting in oxygen-deprived muscles. This can lead to pain, strain, muscle aches, and fatigue. Nourish your body (and spirit): What goes into your mouth from 9 to 5 (or from 8 to 7) can make a big difference in your stress level. Eating the wrong foods, or even eating the right foods, but in the wrong amounts, and/or at the wrong times can make it harder for you to cope with the stress in your life. When you eat poorly, your body doesn’t work as efficiently as it should. This means that you’re not in the best position to handle all the pressures and demands you must face at work. Work it out: If you can swing it, one of the better things to do on your lunch break is to hit the gym or health club. Many clubs and gyms are conveniently located near work sites. A number of exercise facilities may even offer you a corporate discount for joining. Better yet, many companies and organizations have workout facilities right on their premises. Work up a sweat, take a shower, and then have a quick but nourishing bite to eat.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 04-12-2022

Identifying the symptoms of stress is an important first step to reducing tension in your life. Once you identify the signs of stress, use your imagination and the proven tool of progressive muscle relaxation to put your mind and body at ease.

Video / Updated 04-01-2022

When you find yourself in a stressful situation, having a simple dialog with yourself can de-escalate the situation, take away your anxiety and stress, and help you cope. You can teach yourself to talk through your stress, put things into perspective, and empower yourself to deal with just about any stressor. Download this audio script along with the companion script " Guided Muscle Relaxation"

Cheat Sheet / Updated 03-28-2022

Life isn't always easy, and how you deal with difficult situations can make or break your life. Achieving resilience doesn't require extraordinary ability. Resilient people see challenges as opportunities, maintain a positive outlook, find meaning in the struggle, and successfully adapt to adversity. If these skills don’t come naturally to you, you can develop them. Humans are innately wired to adapt to difficulty. The key is to be able to tap into this wiring by practicing behaviors, habits, and strategies that help us to thrive.

Article / Updated 12-29-2021

Having a belief in something greater than your immediate experience can be a powerful force in helping you create inner peace and cope with the stress in your life. We live in a universe that is both mystifying and, at times, overwhelming. We attempt to give meaning and purpose to our all-too-brief lives. Faith in something bigger, something cosmic, can help some people come to grips with the unknown and perhaps unknowable. No one right way exists for finding a sense of spiritual connectedness. For many, this belief may take the form of a belief in God and involvement in a traditional religious system of beliefs. However, your spirituality may take a different form. It may be a belief in a more global, more vaguely articulated higher power or higher purpose. Or it may take the form of a belief in such values as the human spirit, the human community, or nature. How your faith can help you reduce stress Whatever form your spiritual beliefs take, growing evidence shows that faith can be a powerful stress buffer, enhancing your ability to cope with life’s more serious stresses. Faith can help you cope with illness, and it may even help you live longer. The reasons why faith helps are both direct and indirect: Faith can provide meaning and purpose. Having a deeply felt belief system can help you cope with many of the perplexing and distressing questions that surround the meaning of existence. Why are you here? What is the meaning and purpose of life? What happens when you die? Faith can strengthen stress-effective values. Virtually all religions promote the values of love and kindness and condemn stress-producing feelings such as anger, hostility, and aggression. Faith can provide hope and acceptance. It encourages a sense of optimism and hopefulness that things will work out for the best. Faith also helps you accept what doesn’t work out and what you can’t control. Faith unites you with others. It can create a sense of community that often brings people together in a mutually supportive way. Having others to be with and share with can lower your stress. Belonging to a religious organization can put you into contact with others in the wider community who are less fortunate in some way, which allows you to play a helping role. Faith can calm you. It often involves prayer and contemplation, which, like meditation and other forms of bodily relaxation, can result in a range of physical changes that reduce stress. The power of prayer for reducing stress Herbert Benson, MD, of the Benson-Henry Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital, is a pioneer in the field of faith, relaxation, and stress reduction. He has studied the role of prayer and its effects on stress. Benson found that by having individuals include words or sentences with religious meaning in their programs of meditative relaxation, the levels of relaxation they attained were significantly higher than in those who didn’t include religious content. The content could be as simple as a word or phrase taken from a traditional prayer (the Lord’s Prayer, for example) or a word from a spiritual text (such as shalom, meaning “peace,” or echad, meaning “one”). Research about the power of belief A number of studies now document the importance of faith in strengthening one’s coping ability. Just take a look at these: A recent National Institute of Mental Health study, for example, found that people who consider religious beliefs to be a central element in their lives experience lower amounts of depression than does a control group. In another study, researchers in Evans County, Georgia, looked at the stress-reducing effects of regular churchgoers when compared with non-churchgoers. They found that blood pressure measurements were significantly lower for the committed churchgoers. In a different study, in Washington County, Maryland, researchers found that those who attend church on a routine basis are much less likely to die of heart attacks than are infrequent churchgoers. (Researchers made sure the results had nothing to do with smoking, drinking, and other variables that may have clouded the results.) In a study conducted in Israel, researchers compared the health of secular and orthodox Israelis and found that the less-religious or non-religious group had a risk of heart attack that was four times higher than their religious counterparts. Also, the non-religious group had higher levels of cholesterol than did the more religious group.

Article / Updated 08-13-2021

Research has shown that people who feel gratitude are happier, report more life satisfaction, and report less stress. Grateful people are less likely to be depressed, anxious, lonely, and neurotic. But it also appears that grateful people don’t live in a world of denial. They don’t ignore the negative parts of their lives. Psychologist Robert Emmons, a professor at the University of California, Davis, defines gratitude as “a felt sense of wonder, thankfulness, and appreciation for life.” Gratitude can mean different things to different people. In its simplest form, it can be saying thank you for a gift or service. For you it may mean feeling thankful when you dodge a bullet or get over something bad that happens to you. The word may take on a religious meaning, thanking a higher power for bestowing goodness and “counting your blessings.” For others it can mean feeling grateful when others are less well off than they are. (This may take a less commendable form when a person “compares downward,” identifying others who have less money, less success, less attractiveness, or less intelligence and feeling grateful to be better off.) The connection between gratitude and stress may not be immediately obvious. After all, why should I feel less distressed when I feel grateful for something? Here’s how it works: Gratitude allows you to detach from a stressful period and savor a positive memory or experience. This positive focus can create a positive sense of well-being. This can distract you from your worries and upsets. Remember that it’s hard to think of two things at the same time. Feeling gratitude probably means you’re feeling less stress. You can feel better about yourself. When you express gratitude, you recognize that people care about you and have done a lot for you. This can enhance your positive sense of self, reducing levels of negative, self-downing thinking. When the gratitude is aimed at others, you feel better about yourself because you’re recognizing and emotionally giving to others. Giving to others more often than not makes you feel better about who you are. Gratitude pulls you out of your negative mindset. Much of your stressful thinking is automatic. By focusing solely on your negative experiences, you can spiral downward. By expressing gratitude, you give your thinking a more positive target. You feel better; you feel less stress. Gratitude puts things into perspective. Gratitude provides you with a sense of balance that can help you avert feelings of hopelessness and despair that can play a major role in creating stress. Expressing gratitude to others can create and enhance relationships. You feel better about yourself, and others in turn feel better about you. The bonus is that you may get a thankful response of gratitude from the person to whom you express gratitude. Most often that can make your day and lower your stress.

Article / Updated 06-18-2021

Making lists in order to relieve some of your stress might seem so obvious and so last century, yet lists can be one of your better time-management tools. Try working with three lists: A master to-do list. This list is your source list, detailing all of the tasks and involvements that you want to accomplish. This is your primary list. A will-do-today list. This list details how you want to spend your time today. A will-do-later list. This list enables you to schedule tasks in the coming days or weeks. All of these lists work together, providing you with a comprehensive time-management plan. Below are some suggestions and ideas to keep in mind as you put your daily lists together. Remember, not every idea works equally well for everybody. Give each suggestion some thought and give it a fair try. Ultimately you’ll put together your own unique time-management ideas that best match your style and personality. Don’t overdo it. Don’t make your to-do list so long that it becomes unwieldy. Watch the number of tasks you stick on that list. Don’t schedule the “guaranteed to happen” stuff. Don’t include tasks you know for certain you’ll be doing. These tasks happen without my prompting and don’t require any special motivation or pre-planning. These are usually not time wasters. Again, come up with a daily plan that works best for you. Do the important tasks first. Starting a new year, a new week, or even a new day often fills us with resolve. We begin our days with a higher level of motivation and determination. It probably makes sense to schedule the tougher, less desirable tasks first thing in your day. Pick a more difficult high-priority task first. Commit to staying with that task long enough to finish it or make a significant amount of progress. Be flexible with priorities. When you write down your daily tasks, don’t feel compelled to fill your day with all Level 1 items (the most difficult tasks). Don’t be compulsive. Plan your day knowing yourself and what will work best for you. For some, doing a challenging, difficult task first thing makes sense; for others, later in the day might work better. You can mix it up a bit, juggling the difficult tasks with the easier ones. Identify your best work times. You may be a morning person. You may be a night owl. The hours right after lunch may be your least-effective working hours. Try to match your more-difficult, higher-priority tasks with your more-productive working times. Save easier tasks for times when you feel less motivated. Don’t over-commit. Recognize that you may be less efficient than you expect to be. Be realistic. Be reasonable. If you do it all and have time to do more, that’s great. Break bigger tasks into smaller pieces. If you’re intimidated by the time it may take to do a major or complex task, break it up into smaller pieces and focus on one piece. It’s hard to start a task that seems overwhelming. Create smaller chunks. For example: Clean up the house → Clean the kitchen Write the chapter → Write the outline Pay all the bills → Pay the high-priority bills Schedule breaks. Recognize that a break between tasks can give you a breather and even act as a reward for your impressive effort. These few minutes can be used to catch up on email, make some social calls, text a friend — whatever. You can also take a quick walk, do some stretches, or do a relaxation exercise. Do the “quickies” quickly. During breaks or other down times, you may be able to knock off some easy tasks fairly quickly. Just do it. Anything that you’ve given a “Q” ranking (meaning it can be done in less than five minutes), do right away. Get it off your list. Group similar tasks together. Save yourself a great deal of time by doing similar tasks at the same time. Grouping tasks is much more efficient and much less stressful. You can, for example: Pay all your bills at the same time. Designate a time to go through the bills, write the checks, address the envelopes, and mail them. Combine your errands. Rather than running to the store for every little item, group errands together. Keep a “Things We Need or Will Need Soon” list in a handy place and refer to your list before you dash out for that single item. Put a list on the fridge. An even simpler way to keep track of regularly needed items is to photocopy a master list and stick it on the fridge. Check off a needed item when you notice you’re running low. When you’ve checked off a bunch of items on the list, head to the store. Indicate outcome. When something is completed, either cross it off your list or make a “done” comment in your outcome column. If you don’t get around to starting or finishing something, make a note about when you plan to complete the task. Update your master list. What you don’t accomplish by the end of the day should be reassessed the next day. It stays on your master list until it’s done or you deem it unimportant. Use the 80/20 rule. Apply the Pareto principle (named after well-known economist Vilfredo Pareto), also known as the 80/20 rule, to your time-management analysis. Simply put, it posits: Of the things you must accomplish, doing 20 percent of the most-valued tasks will provide you with 80 percent of the satisfaction you may have gotten by doing them all. In other words, skipping your lower-priority items doesn’t really cost you a whole lot in the long run. Don’t get fixated on those less-valued, less-productive activities. Ask yourself, “Would it really be so awful if I didn’t do this task?”

Article / Updated 05-26-2021

Developing resilience and ultimately fitness, or the ability to bounce back from hardship even stronger and wiser than before, involves cultivating these six major pillars of resilience: Physical hardiness Emotional equilibrium Mental clarity and toughness Spiritual connection Loving relationships and strong social connections Influential leadership within your community Developing physical hardiness Physical hardiness can facilitate resilience and protect you from the negative effects of stress. If you think about it, it makes sense that feeling physically fitter would help you be more resilient. It also makes sense that when you feel physically sick or weak, life feels that much harder. It’s impossible to think clearly, work effectively, or fully enjoy life when your body is sick, tired, inflamed, and not functioning at its best. Whether it’s caused by lack of sleep, exercise, or proper nutrition or by poor work conditions, hectic scheduling, or negative thinking, inflammation and a lack of proper fuel will leave you lacking fighting power when stress comes your way. Improving physical vitality requires that you perceive everything in your life as something that is either enriching your health or hurting it; providing you with fuel that will enhance your life force or taking fuel away that will diminish your life force. Whether it’s by improving your quality of sleep, developing an exercise routine, abiding by a healthy nutrition plan, or developing a meditation practice, the key is to challenge the body physically yet also fuel it appropriately so that you can thrive instead of dive. Achieving emotional equilibrium Positive emotions serve as fuel, in that they fuel you to feel strong, capable, and confident — as though you can conquer challenges. Negative emotions, on the other hand, if persistent, align you with fear-based thinking and behaviors and can lead you through the victim cycle. Studies show that resilient individuals are emotionally balanced; they not only maintain positive emotions in the face of stress but also use them to bounce back from negative experiences as they remain confident, optimistic, and open. The path toward improving resilience involves learning how to become more self-aware, mindful, and relaxed so that you can regulate your emotions, find your equilibrium, and shift into more a positive state. The path involves learning to use negative emotions as signals and opportunities for growth and change, thus controlling them instead of letting them control you. Through mindfulness practices, self-observation, and techniques that help you release your negative emotions, you learn to quiet your emotions, find harmony within yourself, and have access to optimism and positive belief. Boosting mental clarity and toughness When fear takes over, the stress response is activated, releasing stress hormones into your brain and body and causing feel-good neurotransmitter levels to drop and fear-related behaviors and thinking to preside. Your ability to think clearly and make good decisions diminishes. A person who is more resilient has the capability to override this physiological change and maintain clarity of mind, objectivity, and rational thinking. Rather than fall apart, they keep it together, work through the stress, and persevere. Being able to boost your mental clarity and stay mentally tough in the face of hardship requires that you be self-aware, calm, open to change, and comfortable with not having all the answers, in the belief that, come what may, you have what it takes to prevail. It involves maintaining a positive and optimistic mental attitude, no matter the circumstance, and having the grit and stamina to keep trying, even when you experience setbacks. Enriching spiritual connection A growing body of evidence is showing that a spiritual outlook makes humans more resilient to trauma. The literature also shows that possessing a sense of meaning and purpose in life is positively related to quality of life and improved health and functioning. People with greater spirituality partake in healthier behaviors, maintain a more positive world view, are more connected to a community, and feel a greater sense of belonging — all factors that strengthen resilience. Enhancing your connection to spirituality can take many forms. You can awaken and harness this pillar of resilience via meditation or prayer, practicing mindfulness, spending time in nature, joining a spiritual community, reading uplifting literature, volunteering, or working toward a greater understanding of your higher purpose. Experiencing resilience with a spiritual lens helps you stay more positive and optimistic, find meaning in difficulty, express more gratitude, discover stronger social support, employ healthier behaviors, and improve your coping skills. Establishing healthy relationships Humans are social creatures. They have an innate desire to belong and to be together. Numerous studies show that social support is essential for maintaining physical and psychological health. Not all relationships, unfortunately, are created equal. Quality relationships can support your resilience, and unhealthy ones can break it. Though healthy, high-quality relationships can buffer stress and can help you live longer, heal faster, and improve behaviors, unhealthy relationships can lead to physical and emotional distress, self-sabotaging behaviors, and loss of self-confidence and self-mastery. To build your resilience, you therefore want to establish loving and healthy relationships that support you to thrive. This requires taking a deeper dive into yourself, uncovering your core values and feelings of worth, learning to accept and love yourself, and committing to knowing that your relationships will help you learn and grow. It involves examining your current relationships, assessing your levels of commitment and investment, improving your sense of compassion, and learning how to effectively communicate, express gratitude, see value, and receive as well as give. Belonging to a community and becoming a leader When you understand that you’re part of a community and you cultivate this network of support, you enhance your resilience. Knowing that you belong and that a group of people have your back helps you know that you have assistance and resources to mitigate uncertainty. It supports you to stay optimistic and feel secure, encourages you to work well with others as a team, enhances your sense of trust and confidence that success is possible, and helps you find purpose in difficult times. The more cohesive and resilient the community, the better off you are. Studies show that people who are affiliated with communities that are prepared and have resources to manage adversity are more resilient than those individuals who lack such an affiliation. Building this pillar of resilience thus involves strengthening your networks of support and helping your community become more resilient itself. It involves knowing that, to some extent, even if you aren’t a CEO, a captain of a team, or someone’s boss, you still have influence on the people around you and you have a choice of whether you want that influence to be positive or negative. Building this pillar involves working through blocks and negative mindsets that might keep you alienated, isolated, or unable to seek support, and also learning to find value in the virtues and efforts of people around you. It entails becoming aware of the influence you have on others; communicating more effectively; remaining clearheaded, authentic, and insightful; and being a positive and resilient leader who inspires others to do the same. Ultimately, the path toward optimal resilience differs from one individual to the next because everyone has different genetic tendencies, backgrounds, and life circumstances, and some individuals are more fit in one pillar over the other. The beauty is that there is no single right way to get there, because many tools and many paths lead to the same place, where, eventually, stressful challenges become opportunities and life indeed becomes more joyful, successful, and rewarding.

Article / Updated 05-26-2021

What is resilience? To understand what resilience is, first you must understand what resilience is not. When you take responsibility for your behavior and learn to overcome feelings of victimization, helplessness, low self-worth, or hopelessness, you’re truly on the path to resilience. That doesn't mean that you don’t experience periods of fear, worry, or upset. Of course you do! You’re human. The key is that you don’t stay in these negative states for too long because you’re able to shift your perspective and use the situation to learn and grow. The victim mindset Life can be hard, and when it knocks you down, it’s normal to fall and even to cry. Staying in a state of pity for too long, though, can lead to a victim mindset, where you feel you’re powerless to effect change and that life is totally out of your control. When you have a victim mentality, you believe that life is happening to you rather than for you or with you. It’s a mindset that usually develops over time, after experiencing multiple setbacks or hurts or the loss of love and support. Eventually, you decide that you have no control over life and that you’re helpless to change it. As a result, you may avoid taking responsibility for yourself or your life and avoid taking risks, embracing change, improving yourself, or making hard decisions. Instead, you may live in fear, complain a lot, and tempt other people to feel sorry for you. This list describes some of the signs that indicate you’re on the verge of having a victim mentality: You feel powerless. When bad things happen to you, you believe that you have no control over the situation and that you’re helpless to effect change. You believe you have no power and are therefore a victim of life’s circumstances. Powerlessness can manifest as a lack of self-esteem, feelings of failure and incompetence, and low motivation. If you find that you’re feeling helpless or powerless, ask yourself, “What is it that I do have control over? Is the belief that I am powerless true?” You put yourself down. Feeling powerless often goes hand in hand with negative self-talk and self-doubt. You question your abilities, feel you aren’t worthy of success, believe you’re incapable of succeeding, and often end up self-sabotaging your efforts. You regularly put yourself down and, in so doing, paint yourself as a victim. If you find that you’re putting yourself down, ask yourself, “Am I really that terrible? Is this belief even true? Can I think of times when I was successful?” You overgeneralize the negative. When a negative event happens, you overgeneralize and view it as part of a continued pattern of negativity and ignore evidence to the contrary — that many aspects of your life, and even similar situations, have been positive. You may use the words never, always, all, every, none, no one, nobody, or everyone to support your belief that you don’t, and never will, have or be enough or that a situation will forever be bad. Examples of statements you might make are “I can never win,” “I am always the last to know,” and “You never listen to me.” If you make these kinds of statements, ask yourself, “Are there times when this doesn’t happen?” and “Is this statement really true?” You catastrophize. When you exaggerate the importance of a problem, making it bigger than it necessarily is, you’re catastrophizing. For instance, you might tell yourself that you absolutely cannot handle a given situation when the reality is that it’s just inconvenient. In other words, you believe that even the smallest inconveniences are the end of the world. A tendency to make such problems important can indicate your underlying fears of being inadequate, unimportant, or dispensable. If you find that you catastrophize and make mountains out of a molehill, ask yourself, “What is the worst thing that could happen? Is this statement really true?” You feel paranoid. You regularly feel that the world is out to get you and inflict misery on you. You believe that no matter what you do, life will be miserable and always unfair and you can’t count on anything, least of all other people. Life is not only happening to you but also against you. If you find yourself feeling like life is against you, ask yourself, “Are there times when things went my way? Is this belief really true?” Learned helplessness Most people vacillate between feeling optimistic and feeling victimized, depending on what is happening in their lives and how they’re feeling about themselves at that particular juncture. Though people don’t start out feeling victimized as children for the most part, they can eventually learn to feel this way as they incur hardships, traumas, or other difficult life events that may cause them to feel more helpless about affecting change in their lives. For some people, as they face continuous negative and uncontrollable hardships, and their efforts fail at effecting change, they eventually stop trying and give up believing that they have any power to improve their circumstance. Is there something in your life you have tried to do and regularly failed, so you gave up trying? How did that failure make you feel? The term learned helplessness was coined by the psychologists Martin Seligman and Steven Maier in 1967 when they were studying how dogs behaved when experiencing electric shocks. Seligman and Maier discovered that dogs who realized that they couldn’t escape the shocks eventually stopped trying, even when it was possible for them to avoid the shock by jumping over a barrier. In later experiments, Seligman studied human subjects and their response to loud and unpleasant noises. Subjects had the option to use a lever to stop the noise. Subjects whose lever was ineffective at stopping the noise gave up trying after one round. Learned helplessness can show up in all aspects of your life. You can see it all around you if you look. People are discouraged about politics and decide not to vote, or they’re discouraged about losing weight because nothing has worked, or their best friend won’t leave a bad relationship because they believe that no one better is out there, or their child has decided not to study because they believe that they will fail anyway. You or someone you know might be depressed, emotionally unpredictable, unmotivated, and unwilling to change healthy habits. When you learn over time that you have little to no control over your life and life circumstances, no matter what you do, you give up hope and give up trying. It may keep you in an abusive relationship or a stressful job or keep you physically ill, even though you have options available to you to get out and change. Here are some common signs of learned helplessness: Mental health problems, such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) Inability to ask for help Easy frustration and willingness to give up Lack of motivation and desire to put in effort Low self-esteem and self-belief in success Passivity in the face of stress Procrastination Hopelessness When you feel hopeless, you lack hope in the possibility of a better future. This belief negatively affects how you see the world, yourself, and other people. It can lead to feeling depressed, as though darkness has descended on your life and there’s no point in doing anything. You’re devoid of inspiration and you have no interest in going out, seeing people, working, or engaging in normal activities. The scarcity of social connection and poor motivation to seek help then adds to feelings of isolation or abandonment, exacerbating the feeling of hopelessness. Hopelessness is often associated with mental health issues like anxiety, depression, substance dependency, suicidal ideation, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress, and bipolar disorder. It can also show up intermittently during periods of difficulty and eventually pass when life lets up a bit. The problem is that when you fall into hopelessness, it can feel like a trap so that you lose the motivation to find help and get out, even though you have plenty of pathways to do so. I have worked with many people who have complained of depression and described feeling this way. I personally have faced “the darkness of my soul” at critical junctures in my life, after experiencing one traumatic event after another. For my clients as well as myself, feeling hopeless was a symptom of feeling defeated, dissatisfied, and beat up by life events and feeling too exhausted to gather the energy to fight back. With time, love, and support, and reappraising my core beliefs and improving self-care, hopelessness was eventually turned back into hope. Here are some signs that you’re starting to feel hopeless: Your situation will never improve. It’s too late for you to change. No one can help you. You will never be happy again. You will never find love. You have no future. Success isn’t possible. If you’re having difficulty getting out of the trap, I cannot stress enough how important it is to seek help from a therapist, counselor, or trusted friend. You aren’t on this journey alone, and you have available options to feel better, as both I and my clients discovered.

Article / Updated 05-26-2021

So, what determines your resilience? At some point, most people incur some form of suffering, whether it’s the death of a loved one, illness, injury, divorce, job loss, or another difficult life event. Not everyone copes with adversity in the same way, though, because it’s influenced by multiple factors. Some of these factors you have no control over, like your genes, the culture you grew up in, or critical life events that may have occurred in your past. Some of these factors are within your control, such as your beliefs, behaviors, attitudes, and chosen networks of support. The question is, which of these determinants carries the most weight when it comes to resilience? Is it up to nature, or is it a result of nurture? Though genetics does play a role, it appears that people have the ability to develop resilience despite genetics. According to a study conducted by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Nursing Research led by Heather Rusch, two critically important factors associated with resilience are in your control to change: Self-mastery: The degree to which you perceive yourself as having control and influence over circumstance Social support: The degree to which you perceive you are cared for and receiving help from other people The stronger these two factors, according to the research, the higher the likelihood that an individual will be resilient in the face of trauma or stress. Your genes Though it hasn’t been established that a single gene or gene variation confers resilience, it has been found that genetic factors can influence how you respond to stress and deal with adversity. A range of genes have been identified that are associated with resilient phenotypes (how a gene expresses itself physically). Genes or variations of genes, for example, can influence the stress response, nervous system, immune system, and pathways that produce feel-good neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and determine your biological response to stress. The bottom line is that science is showing that although genes play a role in determining resilience, they’re only part of the story because it’s now widely known that nature and nurture go hand in hand. Your life experiences—especially early life, culture, and behaviors—influence the expression of genes and the neurobiological systems that enable adaptation to stress and resilience. Meditation, exercise, healthy nutrition, and social support are examples of lifestyle changes that can effect such neurobiological changes and, possibly, genetic expression. In short, you can influence your genes and still achieve better self-mastery and social support. Childhood development Early childhood experiences can positively or negatively affect the development of the stress response and how individuals subsequently learn to cope with adversity. Trauma and abuse can lead to changes in central nervous system circuits, a hyperactive stress response, more anxious behavior, and vulnerability to stress from learned helplessness, as people learn to believe that they have no control to change their circumstance or situation. It has also been shown that when individuals realize that it’s possible to change behaviors—even in the face of adversity — and feel better, learned helplessness doesn’t happen. Examples might include when a child suffers bullying at school and receives a lot of love and support from family, friends, and counselors and is provided with effective coping tools. Children who gain the ability to adapt to stress develop better self-esteem, prosocial behavior, and more immunity to stress as they age. As such, neither your genetics nor your past necessarily blocks you from being resilient. Either of these may support a tendency to adapt to stress more effectively or less effectively, but neither seals the deal on your ability to become stronger and more positive and have a better sense of self-mastery. Culture Individual behavior and coping styles are influenced by cultural patterns of beliefs, values, commitments, resources, and expected behaviors. Culture, therefore, can predict resilience as it shapes how people might see themselves and how they relate to others. The culture of a family can especially shape how a child develops a sense of self-concept and self-esteem. For example, a culture might value the woman’s role as being quiet and docile, and as subject to a man’s authority, whereas another culture advocates for gender equality. Children growing up in either of these households will likely grow up to have very different self-concepts. Culture refers not just to your ethnicity or religion but also to the culture of your family or your workplace. Cultures that promote respect, collaboration, reliance, open communication, and strong core values promote resilience within the community as well as individual resilience. Psychological outlook Your upbringing and environment can influence your outlook and how you see yourself and the world at large. A positive outlook has been found to be protective in the face of adversity and associated with better coping behaviors, quicker recovery times, improved health and wellbeing, and a better sense of self-mastery. The reverse is true for a negative outlook, as a negative view of oneself and the world increases the perception and magnitude of stress and reduces the sense of self-mastery and belief that challenges are manageable. A negative outlook is associated with limiting beliefs, negative self-talk, narrow thinking, and less effective coping habits. A myriad of traits are associated with a positive outlook. Those most associated with resilience are believing that success is possible (optimism), viewing difficulties as opportunities for growth and learning, having the willingness to push forward, being able to accept change, and being open to making mistakes and learning from failures. All these traits can be cultivated with practice and also aren’t purely dependent on upbringing and genetics. Coping habits Coping habits are habits you have developed that have helped you get through challenges or difficulty. In general, there are two types of coping habits, adaptive and maladaptive. Adaptive habits are the behaviors that help you cope with stress that are also healthy for the mind and body. Maladaptive habits are behaviors that might reduce anxiety and therefore help you cope but are themselves destructive to your health. Confronting your fears head-on, appraising situations realistically, calming your emotions, and maintaining healthy behaviors — like good sleep hygiene and a balanced exercise-and-nutrition regimen — are examples of adaptive coping habits. Choosing to avoid dealing with fear and drinking alcohol, binge eating, or throwing yourself into work so that you aren’t sleeping, exercising, or eating appropriately are examples of maladaptive coping habits. Some adaptive coping habits that improve resilience are exercising, eating a healthy diet, meditating, accessing social support, connecting to spirituality, learning to reappraise thoughts and beliefs, regulating emotions, and partaking in altruistic activities. These habits can be learned and cultivated, even when maladaptive coping has been the norm. Social support Support comes in the form of family, intimate partners, colleagues, neighbors, friends, spiritual community members, and others. The presence of strong networks of support and the seeking of social support are both associated with resilience. Both invigorate psychological hardiness and the ability to thrive in the face of adversity. Studies show that stronger social bonds can improve quality of life, wound healing, and life expectancy. In contrast, the lack of support is correlated with more depression and a weaker sense of control. The ability to forge healthy social bonds, be able to communicate effectively, and show value and compassion are traits that a resilient person exemplifies, enabling them to have a truly viable social support system in times of need. With help, anyone can learn to improve their ability to form healthier relationships and stronger networks of support. Humor Sometimes, you have to laugh to literally keep yourself from crying, and when you do, it can make you more resilient. Humor helps you release stress, and it’s a conduit to strengthening social bonds while being protective against stress. A study of sojourn students from mainland China attending school at a Hong Kong university, for instance, found that the students who used humor to adjust to the new culture were able to thrive best, and that humor acted as a buffer against stress. Humor and laughter are wonderful resources when coping with hardship, because they lighten the load emotionally as well as physiologically. Laughter especially can relax the stress response, give you more energy, and soothe tension. It has also been found that laughter can improve your immune system, relieve pain, improve your mood, and enhance a sense of wellbeing. You always have the option to make use of your funny bone during times of stress. Spirituality The internal belief system that guides values, ethics, social behaviors, and psychological outlook also influences resilience. Individuals who have a strong sense of purpose, a feeling of connection to a greater whole, or a feeling of connection to spirituality are more resilient. Studies show that purpose in life is a key factor in helping individuals manage traumatic events, and that low spirituality is a leading predictor of low resilience. Whether it’s because you have a sense of purpose, belong to a spiritual community, partake in healthier behaviors, or have a more optimistic outlook, science confirms that spirituality confers better health. It doesn’t matter what pathways you choose to connect to spirituality, because it comes in many forms. You can follow a particular faith or religion, feel connected to a higher power, spend time in nature, read uplifting literature, or be driven by a higher purpose. How spiritual you are today may be influenced by your upbringing and culture, but it’s also a factor that can be cultivated in order to build your resilience.