How to overcome life's setbacks
BY Lisa Fields
28th Feb 2024 Life
6 min read
Living joyfully despite adversity benefits your mental and physical health, so here's how to overcome life's setbacks and live a happier life
Andrea and Marie
Two women I know, both
in their late 40s, were diagnosed with cancer in the
past year, and they’ve had
dramatically different reactions to
their situations.
Andrea,* a petite stay-at-home
mum and artist, is married with two
school-age children. She lost her long,
curly mane due to chemotherapy,
but now it is growing back in again.
She was diagnosed with early-stage
ovarian cancer, then thyroid cancer,
then had a breast cancer scare that
turned out to be nothing, all within
a year. This normally bubbly, outgoing woman has become very insular,
withdrawing from her friends to deal
with her treatments alone. When I
see her, she seems worn, and she always steers the conversation toward
her health and the setbacks that she’s
been facing.
"Everyone experiences hardship or loss from time to time but adversity can make you stronger"
Marie* is divorced and has two
teenagers. Before chemotherapy, she
had very long, curly hair. It’s starting
to grow back in now too but is still too
short to curl. She was diagnosed with
a very invasive form of breast cancer
and has been receiving a more intense
treatment regimen, which forced her
to work less at her acupuncture and
wellness practice. She radiates positivity whenever I see her. She’s surrounded herself with close friends,
who sometimes accompany her to
medical appointments, and she recently attended a retreat to improve
her attitude toward her diagnosis.
Although you may hope for nothing
but happy circumstances in your life,
everyone experiences hardship or loss
from time to time. Fortunately, adversity can make you stronger.
Resilience is key
The key is resilience—the ability to
bounce back after big setbacks, and
live with joy and purpose. “There is a
difference between coping and being
resilient,” says resilience researcher
Patrick Dolan, professor of sociology
at the National University of Ireland
in Galway. “Coping is what we do in
everyday life. Resilience is going one
step further.” Specifically, resilient
people do better than expected in the
face of serious challenges, Dolan says,
including cancer.
The scientific study of resilience
dates back to the 1940s, when researchers began examining why soldiers in the Second World War reacted to combat situations differently.
“That really is what led to researchers looking at the whole idea: Why
is it that some people are resilient in
certain stressful situations and other
people aren’t?” Dolan says.
"As you build up this unshakable core, when the waves of life come, they don't capsize you "
Researchers found that men who
had experienced stressful events during adolescence, which helped them
develop coping skills, were more likely
to be resilient adults. Those who encountered very few or no difficulties
at all were more vulnerable to depression, anxiety and mental health
issues.
That seems to be the case with the
two women I know who are dealing
with cancer. Andrea had never experienced any tragedies or disappointments before her diagnosis, while
Marie had endured a difficult divorce
a few years earlier. Marie’s negative
experiences may have better prepared
her to handle turmoil.
Says psychologist and
author Rick Hanson,
University of California,
Berkeley, “Resilience is
like a shock absorber inside you. As you build up
this unshakable core inside, when the waves of
life come, they don’t rock
your boat so much. And
they don’t capsize you.
And you recover more
quickly.”
The good news is that you can
learn to be more resilient as you age,
whether or not you have encountered
rough seas in your life.
The steeling effect
By the time you’ve reached your 50s or
60s, you’ve undoubtedly experienced
stressors or tragedies like the death of
a loved one, divorce, financial hardship or chronic illness. Despite the
pain these experiences create, the
perspective they give you can help you
persevere during future hardships.
“There’s something called the
‘steeling effect’ to make us stronger,” says Michael Ungar, founder and director of the Resilience Research Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax,
Nova Scotia, Canada. “If we’ve come
through adversity, that means also
we’ve developed a set of coping capacities. We know how to reach out
for help. Or we know that this, too,
will pass.”
Over time, resilient
people develop the
mental toughness to
face what life throws
at them. They learn to
cope, even live joyfully,
with less-than-ideal circumstances.
Eric Dabas of La
Garde, France, broke his
back in a motorcycle accident at age 17, which
left him with no use of his legs. His dream to become a truck
driver was dashed. For years, he lived
with his mother, feeling completely
isolated. But at 34, he reached out to
a nonprofit organisation that helped
disabled people learn to fly. For three
years, he flew as a volunteer forest fire
spotter. In 2005, he became France’s
first disabled professional pilot. Now
52, Dabas enjoys fulfilling work and a
meaningful social circle. “Not a day
goes by when I don’t laugh or have
fun,” he says. “My life is far more interesting than the life I would have had if
I had become a truck driver.”
"Resilient people tend to be more optimistic, and have a reduced risk of heart attack and depression"
Resilient people tend to be more
hopeful and optimistic, but the benefits don’t end there. A pair of recent
studies found that resilience can help
reduce pain, speed recovery from
injury, and reduce the risk of heart
attack and depression. A 2017 study
published in the journal Quality of Life
Research, surveyed more than 3,300
people with rare diseases. It found
that those who are resilient were significantly more likely to function well physically and emotionally. A 2015 study published in the journal Psychology, Health & Medicine found that when people are exposed to stress, those who are resilient are more likely to have higher levels of “good” HDL cholesterol, less body fat and a lower risk of cardiovascular those who aren’t resilient.
Conversely, people who are not resilient are more likely to fall ill. Says French neuropsychiatrist and author Dr Boris Cyrulnik, “People are actually sicker, catch viruses more easily and are more likely to develop cancer and cardiovascular disease, including heart attack caused by unmanaged emotions,” he said.
Help yourself
Resilience is a learned skill that you
gain with life experience. It comes
from within, but it’s also deeply influenced by external factors. “Most of the research on resilience actually shows that most of what makes us resilient is actually outside of us,” Ungar says. But there are techniques you can employ before and during trying times that will enable you to be more resilient.
1. Let go of the past
Don’t get
hung up about what might have been.
Instead, decide how to improve your present circumstances or attitude. Try a new coping strategy, says resilience researcher Odin Hjemdal of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. “Ask yourself, What I’m doing at the current moment, is it making me feel better or worse?” If worse, then try to do something else. If it’s hard to chase away such thoughts, train yourself to treat them as passing. “If you’re thinking about the marriage that broke and all the things that could have been, tell yourself, I have these thoughts. These thoughts regularly bring me down. Now, could I carry on and do what I plan to do?”
“It’s all about trying to adjust to the
new life,” says Hjemdal. “If you are
always thinking about the old life you
had, the old plans you had and how
you thought life would end up, you
may end up miserable.”
2. Be kind to yourself
It’s important to be empathetic—not just to
others, but to yourself. “One of the
things about being resilient is not to
blame yourself unreasonably,” Dolan
says. “A lot of people who have suffered previously think they’re at fault
and blame themselves.”
Instead of
trying to fight against painful feelings,
you can accept that you’re experiencing a painful moment, which is part of
the human experience, then embrace
yourself with care and kindness, the
way that you would embrace a friend
who is experiencing a painful moment.
3. Look toward your community
Research shows that resilient
people are less socially isolated. People in mourning will be more or less
resilient, depending on whether they
have a strong social network.
“In any
relationship, one of the partners is going to die first,” Dolan says. “It’s really
key for the remaining partner to have
other people in their life, in terms of
friendships. The social support that
we receive on a continuous basis actually helps enable us to be resilient.”
4. Depend on yourself
Some
situations are out of your control. But
when your attitude can help you improve a situation, take advantage of it.
“You can call up a sense of determination or fortitude to deal with hard
things,” Hanson says. “That opportunity to grow, and then use what you’ve
grown inside yourself, is always available, even in the toughest moments of
all. We earn our happiness, to a large
extent. We earn the mental muscles
we grow as we go through life.”
Resilience in the face of cancer
When I think about the two women
I know with cancer, I hope that my
vulnerable friend becomes more capable of facing future challenges—more like my resilient friend. Marie
announces it when she has an upcoming chemotherapy appointment
and asks people to pray for her.
She has also thanked all of her
many friends for standing by and
supporting her during this difficult
time for her... and for allowing her
to complain when she needs to vent
about her treatments, writing, “I am
so glad I have people who do not need
me to be happy all the time, who know
if I complain it will be brief. Forcing
oneself to be positive all the time is
draining and does not let people in.
When we fear being real, how can we
feel truly loved and seen?”
“You don’t need to have had a very
stressful life to be resilient in older
life,” Dolan says. “It doesn’t matter
what age you are; you can still learn
the same mechanisms.”
*names have been changed for privacy.
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