7 Strategies for Increasing Emotional Resilience

Hello, tender friends!

We don’t need to live enslaved to our emotions, but I didn’t know how to break free for for far too long.

I spent years praying that God would reveal the desires of my own heart to me. Years. I was so disconnected from myself that I didn’t even know what would make me happy in life. I only felt somewhat calm if providing a concrete benefit to someone else.

Evangelical Christians deliver countless sermons designed to make people recognize their own sins of wrath, addiction, etc. But there’s a trick that Satan plays that is discussed far less often.

The trick is that Satan convinces you that something that could actually please the Lord makes you a selfish and worthless human. Satan convinces you that you’re not working hard enough or providing any value to the world unless you’re drilling your body and brain into the ground like a jackhammer.

One day after I had started to see real gains in my healing, I took Cub to the park, and he and I walked along the river’s edge as he threw stones into the water. As each stone plunked into the water, he laughed. I laughed.

In that moment, it struck me that God himself rested. And he wanted me to do the same, as I was, right then. Prior to having Cub, I would never have allowed myself “idle” hours on the side of a river.

As I began to heal, I asked God to reveal to me what I did wrong. What was my part, my sin, in getting so sick?

Over time-and this is still a work in progress- he has shown me that I didn’t properly value myself. He has shown me that the things I consider selfish, including this blog (because I’m still trying to get over the belief that there’s something obnoxious about sharing autobiographical experiences and believing that they have value-who am I to believe that?) aren’t actually selfish and can be an act of service that pleases Him. They can be a form of rest from the struggles of life. Self-regulation isn’t selfish.

The following 7 coping strategies are ones that I developed, and have continued to develop, as part of my continued, lifelong healing. While your list will likely look different, coming up with something to make your thoughts more positive, particularly if struggling with illness, is critical.

Recognizing that there’s nothing selfish about devoting time to the following activities was revelatory. Here are seven of my strategies:

1. Read fluff fiction, aka mass market fiction. This is something that I never did prior to the health crisis. The light-hearted scenarios of bestsellers got my mind off of feeling unwell and even made me laugh out loud, which I sorely needed.

1. Journal. Getting back into writing intimidated me. I was afraid to be alone with myself or my thoughts. My output gradually increased as my fear decreased during healing. When I went back to writing professionally, the confidence that it gave me was more valuable than the paycheck. Knowing that an editor had read my work and was going to pay me for it help me to realize that my brain was back. I wasn’t destined to a limited cognitive capacity forever. Personally, I began writing about things I’d suppressed for years. And you know what? I believe that writing is another way of exorcising demons, as valid as dousing yourself with holy water.
2. Name your feelings achieve distance from them and explain why you feel that way. This is something that I actually explicitly taught to my students, but I avoided certain feelings of my own on the feeling wheel. I couldn’t acknowledge, for years, that people who were supposed to care for me violated and abused that trust. The feelings wheel enabled me to finally write about experiences that were decades old with more confidence. (As an aside, feeling unable to call someone out on hurting you is a stronghold. So break that stronghold if you recognize it in your own life. Learning to say, “F*** off” is one of the best things I’ve ever done, and disappointing people is preferable to dying in silence).
3. Lock a beautiful image in my mind to counteract dark thoughts when they came. When my mind was under attack, I continuously replayed the site of Cub’s face smiling and laughing and the mountain view outside of our house. This took a ton of self-discipline and self-control, as I would repeatedly be bombarded with fear. I had to rewire my brain to replace that negative thought pattern.

1. Listen to Christian meditation CDs. I can’t speak to other meditations, and I know a lot of Christians oppose them, but I purchased CDs that were literally people reading the Word with background music and breathing exercises and muscle relaxation techniques. This worked wonders for me.
2. .Plan forward progress. I generally don’t allow negative experiences to rent space in my brain. If my brain drifts to a place of frustration, I start planning a new recipe, revise something I’m writing on in my head, or plan educational activities for Cub.

7. Snuggle. Yes, I was that mom who hovered over her sleeping infant and wrapped her body around him for months. I needed the physical contact, and it was one of the only ways in his early life that I felt he was truly safe.

Ok, that’s it for today, tender friends! Thank you so much for stopping by!

I’ll be releasing the post about our first eggs (Cub shouts, “Hooray!” every time) on Thursday. Today’s post spurred another relate idea in my brain, so I’ll be sharing how indulging in a writing bag and the perfect notebook are part of my personal bliss.

Have a great day! I’d love to hear how you unwind in the comments!

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