Developing Resilience

[SjoGirl]

Hi all,

Heaven knows one needs to learn resilience if you are going to live with Sjogrens and/or other chronic illnesses. Here's a link to a Webinar by a world expert on the topic: http://bbrfoundation.org/meet-the-scientist-july-2013. The Webinar was hosted by the Brian & Behavior Institute which supports researchers working to understand and cure depression and other forms of mental illness.

Great news as per the Webinar, resilience can be learned and strengthened. Guess what they say is true -- if it doesn't kill you it will make you stronger (well, maybe).

[Sleepy In Seattle]

I firmly believe that happiness and resilience are carefully cultivated habits, not character traits or things that just "happen" to you according to the circumstances of your life. Nobody can be happy or resilient ALL the time, but you can definitely improve your mental habits so that when bad things happen, you can respond as adaptively as possible.

[Dee]

This site is actually a great resource for other information as well, thanks!

[Tivia]

Oh god I need to learn how, I am a terrible stressful and worrisome person.
I have something happen not matter how small it is, like break a dish and I am in tears and freaking out over how bad my life is. I think its a culmination of a bunch of little things adding up, like when you have a very bad day you cant shake off. Most days seem like that, and makes you go ..what next?

[SjoGirl]

Tivia, I was the same way until I experienced a set of life-altering events, including deaths of family members, job changes, SjS coming on and more. Those events and a great counselor (plus a very even keeled spouse and great church) helped me change may ways. It's a better way to live for sure.

[slccom]

Tivia, cognitive therapy is very valuable for people with anxiety. And it sounds very much like that is your underlying problem. If you are being treated for depression, the likelihood of anxiety along with it is very high. I find buspirone very effective for that.

Hugs, Sharon

[irish]

Believe it or not, we do have the ability to choose how we react to events in our life. I used to be such a nervous nellie and worried about everything.Now that I am older I am amazed that I wasted so much energy worrying about some of the things I did.

At my age I now have other issues that are cause for worry that are much more intense and serious than the stuff I worried about years ago. I have learned to worry less. THat does not mean that I don't worry, I just feel it creeping up on me and tell myself that I am not going to worry about something at that moment.

Another thing that we can do is teach ourselves how to react to certain issues. I think that as  nurse I learned how to cope and deal with life threatening issues in a more regimented way. When someone is bleeding or having a life threatening event it does't do any good to panic and get teary. I think that by running a scenario over in your head you can teach yourself how to react and get help in a timely manner. There is always time later to cry and moan and groan over an event.

Sometimes a lot of the worry, etc that we go through is caused by us thinking that what we do and what we think will change the course of history. As we live and learn we find out that much of the stuff in our life is not under our control and our stinking thinking just wears us out. Just some thoughts on this subject. IRish

[Katybarstool]

Irish

I love your term 'stinking thinking'. Each time I start to worry about trivia now, I'm going to remind myself - no stinking thinking!

Kathyx