Ten Resiliency Practices When Dealing With Loss
“Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.” ― Elizabeth Edwards
Resilience is an essential quality when faced with setbacks, losses, and adversity.
There are 10 practices that make up a resilient person. These practices will support you while grieving any loss.
10 Resiliency Practices That Will Help You Recover from Loss
1. Adopt a positive attitude
Optimism goes hand in hand with resiliency. Some seem to be more naturally positive but it can also be learned over time. Our genetic makeup is not our destiny.
Optimism is about seeing the gift or opportunity in the adversity. Unbridled or unrealistic optimism is never helpful and will get you into trouble. An optimistic person confronts the brutal facts, appraises the situation, but simultaneously believes they will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
When Vicky died, I believed I would heal but refused to put a time line on it or try to guess my grief journey would play out. There were deeply dark days but also high points along the journey.
2. Practice Mental Adaptability
The more flexible you are in your thinking, the more resilient you will become. This is all about mentally reappraising your situation as things change. Traumatic experiences can be reevaluated by altering the perceived value and meaning of that experience.
The benefits you receive during times of stress and trauma can be found by reframing, assimilating, and accepting while you recover. Failure can be a tool for growth. One acronym for FAIL is First Attempt In Learning.
At times during my grieving journey, I would end up being too isolated because I just wanted to be left alone. What I was missing was the verbal processing needed to get outside my head and alter the meaning I was making.
3. Embrace a personal moral compass
Resiliency is connected to the ability to develop and maintain a set of core beliefs. These core beliefs provide a foundation you can stand on when everything is shaking all around you.
These beliefs can be rooted in your spiritual beliefs or some other belief system. Values you know and hold on to can keep you steady during times of loss and grief.
When I think of my moral compass during adversity and loss, I go to my belief that accepts suffering and adversity as part of life. I also see the world as broken and a place where sickness, accidents, tragic events are part of the human experience. I’m not surprised when bad things happen and that helps me.
4. Find a resilient role model
Some things are learned best by watching others. That’s certainly true when it comes to dealing with loss.
When Vicky died, I found some those family and friends who had experience with what I was facing. I asked questions and listened to their stories. It didn’t always match perfectly but gave me clues as to what I should do.
I looked to historical role models. Nelson Mandela was one I learned from. He lost his freedom yet maintained his sanity and rose to power without bitterness or hatred.
Do not judge me by my success, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again. Nelson Mandela
I read the book of Job in the Bible after Vicky died. Job’s friends weren’t worth following but he showed much resiliency after losing pretty much everything.
A fifth resiliency practice:
5. Face your fears
Not too long after Vicky died, I faced the fear of forgetting her. She was out of sight and I worried that I’d not remember her. I proceeded to honor her life by recorded the memories I had, naming my new bike after her, and making sure to keep her memory alive in other ways.
Over time I was surprised at what happened. Instead of her memory fading, the pain of her loss subsided but the fondness of our times together (riding our tandem, spending time with friends, walking our dog Max) grew sweeter over time.
I discovered that my fear was unfounded and based in False Evidence Appearing Real (F.E.A.R.).
A sixth resiliency practice:
6. Develop active coping skills
Resiliency by definition is proactive not reactive. Resilient people step into their challenges with coping skills they learn over time. Journaling is a coping skill. Walking the dog is a coping skill. Connecting with empathetic people is a coping skill. Writing out affirmation statements is a coping skill.
A coping skills I kept going back to was actively seek support when I needed it instead of waiting for others to contact me. It’s not easy to reach out when you’re hurting but it sure beats the alternative: being the only person at your own pity party.
There is some real wisdom we can learn from the willow on how to cope with adversity.
The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived. Robert Jordan
7. Connect in community
There are introverts and extroverts. Both groups, however, need meaningful connection after the storm of loss blows through their life.
Connection allows for empathy to be given and received.
Connection takes away the sting of loneliness and stave's off isolation.
After Vicky died, I started meeting weekly online with two friends. The effect of their empathy and support impacted my recovery noticeably.
“Social connection is such a basic feature of human experience that when we are deprived of it, we suffer.”
Leonard Mlodinow
8. Get physically active
If you can, physical activity builds resiliency muscles with many positive benefits. Physical activity helps reduce depression and anxiety, relieves stress, improves memory, helps you sleep better, and boosts your overall mood.
You don’t have to be a super star athlete to benefit either. Going for a walk around the block can build resiliency muscles and improve your ability to recover.
I start bike riding the day after Vicky died. As I started to feel the positive benefit, I called it “grief cycling” because I would cry and smile on the same ride.
9. Train yourself to think, feel, and act
Training is “the act of teaching and developing in yourself a skill or knowledge that grows your competency and capacity.”
Training applies to physical training but also to emotional, mental, and spiritual training.
What you read and listen to can increase mental fitness. Training yourself to be more self-aware and process emotions increases your emotional fitness. Practicing spiritual disciplines creates stamina and a mindset that sustains you when the going gets tough.
I’ve added Stoic philosophy to my learning routines the last couple of years and been strengthened in both mind and heart as I bounce forward.
10. Recognize and utilize your key strengths
This practice is all about playing to your strengths which actually adds muscle to your resiliency and helps with the recovery process.
One strength I’ve been working on for several years is public speaking. To grow that strength I’ve been actively involved in Toastmasters (an organization that helps grow your speaking ability).
The first week after Vicky died, I signed up to do a speech on what I had just gone through. Using that strength helped me begin my grieving and opened the door for others to show their support.
Maybe you can draw or fix things or cook or write or organize. Any of our strengths when used actually help us to grow stronger — plus they often end up helping and encouraging others.
Reflect and Apply
Who do you connect authentically?
What is your physical activity of choice?
In what areas are you undergoing training?
What is one of your key strengths you can put into use?
Who is your resiliency role model? Find one and let their story inspire you to live courageously.
What fear holds you back?
What coping skill do you have that you want to keep using when the pain of loss presses in on you
*Source: I used the research of Dennis Charney and Steve Southwick, who are experts in the area of the neurobiology of resilience and its relationship to stress, to guide and inspire these words.
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