I’m often perceived to be a strong and resilient person. But, like everyone, there are times when I don’t feel as though my resilience is intact. Understanding ourselves is a life-long endeavour. In this article I share what I’ve learnt about myself so far when it comes to keeping going. Like you, I’m a work in progress.
During the strange spring and summer months of 2020, I happened upon some online workshops which are still resonating with me now. Using creative methods which were unfamiliar to me, coaches Christina Bachini and Lindsey Wheeler helped me draw out and draw together some threads. I now recognise these as part of my “resilience DNA”.
Resilience DNA
Thinking of resilience as part of my DNA appeals to me on two counts. No, make that three!
Firstly, I love shapes and patterns, and the double helix with its unending contortions and its endless togetherness appeals to a part of me which I struggle to define. There are no loose ends, and everything has a purpose. Secondly, DNA is our genetic carrier. It brings forward traits from our ancestors, and contains instructions for life. In this respect it grounds me because it connects me with my past, of which more anon. And finally, looking at my resilience as part of my DNA reminds me that it’s core to my being. Just as individual molecules make up the DNA, so my resilience is made up of different elements. Core to my being are love, belonging and independence. When two of those are compromised, my resilience takes a nose-dive. In fact if I am without just one of them for long enough, I start to wither.
Resilience is in the family!
In those creative workshops with Lindsey and Christina I worked out that sewing and needlework link me, inextricably, to strong ancestors. They are partly where I draw my resilience from. I am lucky to know who, and where, I come from. Not everyone has such opportunity. Despite two world wars, I was fortunate to know both my grandmothers, and both of them were seamstresses. Three other women of their generation including my god-mother also imparted their skill and shared their sewing assets with me. I am the proud inheritor of not one, not two, but three needlework baskets and a 1938 Singer sewing machine.
Not that they all enjoyed unending luck throughout their lives. Their resilience was, no doubt, tested. Two of these five women moved continents twice, one of them three times, in order to be able to lead the lives they wanted. One raised four boys more or less single-handed; two remained unmarried and childless, and not necessarily by choice. Another led a complicated life, attached to two very different men. All relied on their sewing skills, sometimes for their very existence and always for their sanity.
So, when I handle well-worn sewing shears, choose needles from grandmother-made needle cases, or measure fabric in inches with a tape soft from frequent use and many air miles, I feel truly connected to women whose lives contained challenge at extraordinary levels. They were survivors; resilient, often hopeful (though not always), usually focussed on what needed to be done, and creative and innovative in finding their way through challenge.
How low can your resilience go?
Lack of resilience shows up differently for each of us. For you, tears may be a sign that you’re not coping, but for others they’re a healthy coping strategy. What others label as low resilience is something that only you can gauge. So, it makes sense to work out what the signs and indicators are for you, and to be sure to differentiate between surmountable issues and challenges, and low resilience.
For me, there are different points on the lowness scale, not all of which I’d label as lack of resilience. If the problem can be isolated, I might feel low – dejected, powerless and hopeless – when I try to resolve that issue, but I have energy for other things. One of the earliest signs that I have an issue to resolve (rather than that I’m in a period of low resilience) is that I expend a lot of energy, quite happily, on an ever-increasing number of tasks. In other words, I’m procrastinating! What looks like purposeful activity to others, is often me distracting myself from a problem I don’t know how to solve, by completing other projects with gusto. In an ideal world, at this point I will pick up the phone to my coach. But I have learnt that not all doctors like to take their own medicine!
If excessive busy-ness is a sign of my procrastination, a reliable low resilience indicator for me is that I lack enthusiasm for anything. It’s an all-pervading feeling that the next negative experience will push me to feeling overwhelmed and unable to cope. Then, I’m bumping along the bottom of the river bed (an analogy I’ve taken from author and resilience trainer Dr Chris Johnstone). I have nothing left to give. It shows up everywhere, and to everyone. At times like this a different kind of professional support could be needed. One of the reasons I might talk to a potential coaching client about counselling is because different needs require different solutions. A good coaching conversation can be an invitation to talk about different solutions as well as diverse problems.
Climbing back up
For me, somewhere in between working with a coach on containable issues and working with a counsellor on embedded low resilience, is a measure of self-help. Chris Johnstone describes some of the short term work that we might do as “attempts to feel good in the moment, but with costs carried into the future”. To avoid racking up those future costs, I find it helpful to understand the current balance in my life. I’m talking about the things that lift me up and sustain me, as well as those which use me up. I turn to Dr Magdalena Bak-Maier’s Grid to help me identify those drains and radiators. After that, it’s usually a question of more self-care and less self-criticism.
I don’t think self-care is a word which my grandmothers and their contemporaries would have used. But I think they would have recognised the calming effect of handling fabric, cutting out patterns on the dining room table, then being lulled by the click of the hand-cranked machine. When I do those things, I am connected to those resilient women.
If you’d like to explore your resilience DNA and make connections that keep you strong, please get in touch. A Discovery Call takes as little as 20 minutes and will give you clarity about your options.