Why is it important to embrace resilience?

I’m always wary of the tired old mantra, “If it doesn’t kill you, it’ll make you stronger.” I mean, what about polio? Or whiplash? Or loads of other horrible things that if you survive you’re left scarred in one way or another.

I think it’s a tired cliché that people trot out when they bump into you in the supermarket after something awful has happened and they don’t know what else to say and feel a bit awkward. Actually, some things that happen to people are just awful and that’s the end of it.

However, for many years I worked in a specialist NHS clinic for people with eating disorders. Eating disorders are a greatly misunderstood group of conditions. People often mistakenly think it’s just about vanity when instead it’s usually about control and many of those with them have a history of profound trauma or emotional difficulties.

Eating disorders have the highest mortality of any mental illness, with one in five of those with an eating disorder dying from it. Treatment for it is long and arduous. So, it’s fair to say it’s not something to be taken lightly.

Yet over my time there I was often surprised by how many patients would tell me how the experience had changed them for the better after receiving treatment.

I’ve noticed the same with patients with all sort of other conditions too, from depression to cancer. That’s not to say that they would ever wish their condition on anyone; just that through having their illness, they then had a better understanding of themselves and also a gentle, more sympathetic understanding of other people’s plights and difficulties.

It’s not so much that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger; more, it might make you more understanding and sympathetic to the battles and struggles of others. It makes you softer and kinder, in a way. It can also give people a sense of determination and grit they never had before.

I had one patient who was very unwell and at a real risk of dying. As well as an eating disorder, she also used drugs and was an alcoholic. The combination of her mental health problems meant that the chemicals in her blood were often dangerously abnormal and she was frequently rushed into hospital.

However, over several years she worked incredibly hard and gradually improved. She stopped drinking, stopped using drugs and her eating disorder improved. She got back into work and started doing several courses so she could get promoted. In just a few years she had gone from someone who we all feared might die, to having a career and a mortgage and being infinitely happier.

We were preparing to discharge her from the outpatient clinic when she came to tell me some good news. She had just got an amazing new job on the board of a very big, famous company.

She had applied for this just for the experience—she never in her wildest dreams thought she would get it. She’d leap-frogged about five rungs on the career ladder in landing this job. I was astonished.

She had had to go through a series of gruelling, intense interviews but she said that whenever she felt she couldn’t handle it or doubted her capabilities, she reminded herself that nothing would ever be as bad as what she had already gone through and nothing as hard as what she had already done.

She swore it was this attitude that got her through the interviews. She had not only managed to turn her life around, but somehow used the struggles with her health to make the most of her life now she was better.