The psychologist advises not to avoid discomfort. Answer the test questions to find out your level of emotional resilience Life

Resistance helps survive discomfort

We all experience a variety of discomforts in life, whether physical or painful and psychological, that we have lost before.

“Modern psychology offers not only learning to think positively, but also learning to allow ourselves to be with unpleasant emotions, because we cannot always change situations. It is true that when we feel unpleasant emotions and they disturb us, we begin to feel the discomfort caused by these emotions, and we want to flee from the discomfort, so we are unable to get away with it ”, says the psychologist of Rimi’s virtual conference cycle “Choose to take care of yourself” E.Masalskienė.

According to the specialist, psychological resilience helps to avoid unpleasant emotions: “The mere fact of understanding what this resilience is made of opens the possibility that some think more broadly. Stamina consists of two components: the ability to recover as quickly as possible and the ability to last as long as possible without stress.

We can strengthen psychological resilience not only by focusing on emotions and their control, but also by maintaining the resilience of other parts of ourselves as a person (body, mind). For example, people who exercise are more resilient physically, so when we start exercising, we become more resilient psychologically; We learn that although it is difficult, we can still continue to achieve our goal. The development of mental resilience also works, so it is recommended to learn new things, tasks, not to avoid various new social situations. Resistance seems to “move” from one area to another. “

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Emotional resilience test

E.Masalskienė ensures that psychological resilience is not a “rebound” of unpleasant emotions or the perception that we are invulnerable, a way to avoid failure: path “

According to the psychologist, people often want to evaluate themselves, to compare themselves with other people. If you want to do that, you can take advantage Wagnild and Young Psychological Resilience Scale.

Using this 7-point scale, rate how much you agree with the following statements (1 point – strongly disagree, 7 points – strongly agree). It is recommended to base your answer on your actual experience. Evaluate each statement individually:

1. Most of the time, I’m still figuring it out somehow.
2. I am proud of what I have accomplished in my life.
3. Usually, I look at both successes and failures philosophically.
4. I agree with myself.
5. I feel like I can handle many things at the same time.
6. I am decided.
7. I can overcome difficulties because I have experienced them before.
8. I don’t lack self-discipline.
9. I keep an interest in what I do.
10. I usually find something to laugh about.
11. Faith in myself helps me survive tough times.
12. In the event of a disaster, I am usually the one others can trust.
13. My life has meaning.
14. Usually I can find a way out of a difficult situation.

All marked scores must be added together and the overall score shows:

• 14-56 points – very low resistance
• 57-64 points – low resistance
• 65-73 points – relatively low resistance
• Score 74-81 – medium resistance
• 82-90 points – fairly high resistance
• 91-98 points – very high strength

Advises not to avoid unpleasant situations

According to E.Masalskienė, when using this scale, it is more important and useful not to self-evaluate or compare your resilience with that of other people, but to see which statements you have rated with the lowest score:

“If you want to strengthen your resilience, you have to do something with your faith in the statement that you rated as the worst. For example, if you rated a self-agreement statement very low, you should think about the best way to agree with yourself, because internal conflicts do not lead to psychological resilience. “

Eglė Masalskienė personal archive photo

The psychologist believes that thinking errors can often be useless for our emotional resilience. “One of these mistakes, thinking about the principle of ‘black and white’, when we think that life is good or bad, we do not see its shadows. Life is everything, so you need to see its various colors.

When we think that life is only good or bad, we do not see its shadows.

Other thinking errors include trying to “read other people’s thoughts”, drawing hasty conclusions or unwarranted generalizations, “emotional” thinking, personalization and labeling, thinking that “I must” do something or succeed, “says the specialist.

The teacher advises another exercise. At the end of the day, recall first the pleasant experience and then the unpleasant one, not by avoiding this memory, but by learning from the experience and concluding that we were able to survive or cope with it: “This is how we learn to endure discomfort – we experience an unpleasant emotion and see that nothing terrible has happened. or if it happened, I stayed and improved, it increases my self-confidence.

There are other exercises to help you understand how the different ways of managing discomfort work. If you feel an unpleasant emotion, you can:

1. Act as the urge suggests. Basically, succumbing to discomfort and responding “on impulse.”
2. Focus on something else. We often do it intuitively. For example, when we have a problem, we do some other activity, so we retire for a while, we rest.
3. Investigate and manage perceived discomfort or impulse. Do not run away from the annoyances and problems, but on the contrary, feel how you feel.
4. Use your imagination and “rework” this impulse or make it meaningful by explaining to yourself why it happened.