Emotional Resilience: How to Build Mental Strength
Why is it that two people can face the same setback, such as losing their job or breaking up with someone, and come through the experience in totally different ways, ending up in totally different places?
Emotional resilience means having the internal and external resources to move through difficult times without being permanently derailed by them. While some of this ability can come naturally, it can also be built or rebuilt with time and effort.
Having emotional strength works like a skill set, one that’s shaped through good habits and how you respond to stress over time. To help you understand how this works, this article will cover:
- What psychological resilience looks like in practice.
- Why some people can bounce back from adversity more easily than others.
- Coping mechanisms that can help you build emotional resilience.
- Practical resilience skills you can start building today.
- How having resilience connects to broader emotional well-being.
Psychological and Emotional Resilience in Daily Life
Having resilience means that you can adapt and recover when things get difficult, without being permanently overwhelmed by what’s going on. It’s not, however, about being able to avoid hard emotions altogether.
Resilient people still experience grief, fear, anger, and frustration like everyone else.[1] But the way they’re able to move through these emotions without getting stuck or fixated on them is the real difference.
Resilience sometimes gets confused with mental toughness or suppressing emotions. Pushing your feelings down or refusing to acknowledge them can backfire, making your stresses harder to process.
What Resilience Looks Like
In practice, resilience can look like:
- Reaching out to someone for support when you need it instead of isolating yourself.
- Changing your plans when circumstances change.
- Taking the time to understand where you’re at emotionally and physically.
Thankfully, emotional resilience isn’t something you simply have or don’t have. It can be built up, and it can also shift depending on things like your:
- Sleep.
- Stress levels.
- Support systems.
- Current life circumstances.
Someone who’s highly resilient might still struggle during a challenging time in their life, and that’s completely normal.
Why Adversity Can Affect How You Bounce Back
The ability to bounce back from adversity in life is different for everyone and can depend on the circumstances around you. A combination of internal skills, relationships, and past experiences can all influence how quickly and effectively someone recovers from hard times.
Early Childhood Experiences and Attachment Styles
People who received consistent support and emotional validation in their early years sometimes have an easier time being resilient.[2] They learned early that difficult emotions and experiences are survivable, that they can draw on support when they need it.
Solid Social Support Systems
Strong relationships are a major part of being resilient. Having people to turn to during a crisis or emotionally fraught time — which can include friends, family, or a therapist — provides practical help and emotional steadiness that’s difficult to find on your own.
Effective Coping Skills
Some people have more practice using and implementing healthy coping strategies. Having these skills, such as being able to reframe a setback in life or manage difficult emotions in a positive way, can get stronger with repeated practice.
Having a Sense of Control and Meaning in Life
People who feel a sense of agency during hard times, even in small ways, tend to recover more easily than people who feel powerless to make changes.[3] Finding meaning in a difficult experience can also support faster recovery overall.
Making Your Way Through Past Hardships
Getting through difficult situations builds confidence in your capacity to handle challenges in the future.
None of these factors are fixed traits that can’t be changed or grown. Someone who doesn’t have a strong foundation can still build one with intentional practice.
Coping Mechanisms for Emotional Resilience
There are various ways to build up your resilience. Try working some of these coping mechanisms into your daily life:
- Process your emotions, don’t avoid them: Naming and sitting with hard feelings can help you move through them and avoid them building up.
- Work on reframing your setbacks in life: Try to think about what a difficult experience taught you. This can be useful insight and make things lighter as you keep practicing.
- Lean on (or develop) your social supports: Reaching out to friends and loved ones during difficult seasons in life can offer practical help and emotional steadiness during hard times.
- Keep up your routines during stressful times: Stick to your small daily habits, like regular meals and getting enough sleep, to give your nervous system something stable to rely on.
- Be kind to yourself: Practice self-compassion and be patient with yourself after a mistake.
- Get enough physical movement: Regular exercise, even light activity, can help to regulate stress hormones and support overall emotional well-being.
- Set realistic expectations and goals: Recovering from hardships takes time, so don’t pressure yourself to bounce back immediately.
Mission Connection is here to help you or your loved one take the next steps towards an improved mental well-being.
Building New Practical Resilience Skills
Building resilience skills is always easier before a crisis hits, not during one. Small and consistent habits that were developed during calmer periods in life can hold up better when the truly stressful times come along. Here are some simple ways to develop new resilience skills:
Practice Your Grounding Techniques
Using simple grounding techniques, such as slow breathing or noticing five things around you when stressed, can help regulate your nervous system when things get hard. A common one is the five-four-three-two-one method, where you name five things you can see, four you can hear, three you can touch, two you can smell, and one you can taste.
Grow Your Network of Supports
Make an effort to stay regularly connected with family, friends, and loved ones. It can help prevent problems before they start, and it gives you support when tough times come.
Keep a Journal
Record all the times you got through something difficult, along with anything that might have helped you. Even a few sentences at the end of each day can help you notice patterns.
Reviewing these journal entries later can remind you what you’re capable of, which can help when self-doubt creeps in. It can also remind you of strengths and strategies that you had forgotten.
Set Manageable Goals
Break down large challenges into smaller, achievable steps. Each small success builds confidence in your ability to handle what comes next — and don’t forget to acknowledge your progress along the way too.
Practice Sitting With Discomfort
When you stay present with distress or discomfort, rather than automatically trying to escape it, your tolerance can build gradually.
Get Enough Rest and Recovery
Getting regular rest, physically and emotionally, helps to replenish your capacity to handle future challenges coming your way.
Emotional Resilience and Overall Well-Being
On the whole, building resilience tends to improve overall well-being, and a stronger foundation of well-being makes resilience easier to access during stressful periods.
Without resilience, stress tends to build up rather than resolve. This can directly contribute to:
- Anxiety.
- Depression.
- Physical health issues.
Strong resilience helps prevent this buildup, allowing stress to pass through rather than settle in.[4]
People with strong resilience also tend to develop better emotional regulation, since working through setbacks builds new familiarity with difficult emotions. Each challenge you get through successfully can make the next one feel slightly more manageable.
Furthermore, resilient people tend to communicate more openly during conflict and recover more easily from relational issues. This can strengthen your relationships over time, providing even more support to draw on for future resilience.
Greater Capacity for Growth
Resilience allows people to find new meaning and growth from difficult experiences. This capacity can also contribute to a stronger, more grounded sense of identity.
While emotional and psychological resilience doesn’t eliminate the need for support, it can work as a protective factor (alongside therapy, relationships, and self-care practices), particularly during mental health challenges and stressful times.
Develop Emotional Resilience With Help From Mission Connection
Resilience is extremely helpful, but it can’t carry the weight of every hard situation. Some circumstances, especially periods of prolonged stress, trauma, or major mental health conditions, call for more support than self-guided strategies can offer.
Mission Connection offers expert outpatient mental health care for people working to build their mental resilience and better manage life’s challenges. We use evidence-based treatment approaches and holistic principles to help you heal, along with the guidance and support you need to make changes and stick with them.
In addition to standard outpatient care at our locations in California, Virginia, and Washington, we also offer more intensive levels of care, such as a partial hospitalization program (PHP) or an intensive outpatient program (IOP). We are in-network with most major insurance providers.
To find out more about our in-person, virtual telehealth, or hybrid program that combines in-person and virtual care, call us at 866-833-1822. You can also get started online.
Emotional Resilience FAQ
Isn’t emotional resilience just something you’re born with?
Not at all. Resilience can absolutely be learned. It’s true that some people get a head start in life, but your resilience skills can develop with practice and experience, regardless of where they started.
Does being resilient protect you against feeling emotional pain?
No, resilient people still experience all of life’s ups and downs. The difference, however, is in how they navigate these feelings, rather than avoiding them altogether or getting stuck inside them.