The Nitty Gritty of Resilience

All people are capable of extraordinary things and that means something different for each of us. At MRC we want to support our students to recognise this. We cannot change that they will face challenges along the way (take 2020 for example), but we can teach them skills so these challenges do not break them and in doing so, build their resilience. Simply put, resilience is the capacity to ‘Bounce-Back’ from stress, challenge, trauma or adversity. Resilient people are brave, curious, empathetic, and flexible. They can identify when they are stressed and have strategies to manage (they can turn lemons in lemonade).  

Over the past few years, our students have faced many challenges and for the most part, they HAVE displayed resilience. We are proud of our students. In the last months alone, they have received university offers, advocated for change, supported their friends, adjusted to cancelled sports and events, thrived amidst the Learning@Home changes and managed when home life does not look the same anymore. So, whilst resilience is alive at the College, we can continue to foster it. Here is how: 

• Resilience needs relationships, not independence. Research shows that it is not inner strength and independence that gets adolescents through adversity, but the presence of at least one supportive and reliable adult. This person can be anyone and their role is to provide a solid base. Effectively, while the young person is out exploring, they do not shut the door on them, but they stand still, they wait, and they hold the door open for when they return.  
• Be there and be calm, even when it feels hard 
• Young people often miss the people cheering them on. Try to build connection and exposure to people who care about them. E.g., “Your coach said they were proud of how you kept supporting even when you didn’t get on the ground.”  

2. Let them know that it is okay to ask for help. For some reason young people often think they must deal with things alone to be brave and that asking for help makes them a burden to others. When in fact, the bravest and most successful people (lemonade makers) know when to ask for help and are comfortable doing so.  

3. Build their executive functioning. Executive functions are a set of cognitive skills that allow us to learn and manage daily life. While the prefrontal cortex of our brains (the last part to develop), is primarily responsible for these, there are things we can do help young people to improve them: 

• Establish routines.  
• Model appropriate social behaviours, problem solving and emotional regulation. 
• Games involving strategy and memory e.g., chess, sudoku, cards and rummy.  
• Encourage healthy debates and actually listen to their perspective. 
• Teach study habits e.g., schedules, note taking and cue cards 
• Promote using tools to support organization e.g., digital calendars and to do lists.  
• More ideas can be found here 

4. Encourage a regular mindfulness practice. Mindfulness is the capacity to be in the moment. By learning to control our thoughts and what enters our awareness we strengthen the calming, rational part of our brain (prefrontal cortex) and reduce activity in the instinctive, impulsive and emotional part (amygdala). Doing so impacts our mood, focus, physical health and relationships. Like anything new it takes practice and is not always easy. 

• Try to encourage one activity at a time e.g., going for a walk without a phone 
• Use a mindfulness-based App e.g., Smiling Mind or Headspace  

5. Exercise. Daily exercise strengthens and organises the brain and makes it more resilient to stress. It also releases the lovely feel good hormones. Encourage your adolescent to find an activity or combination that works for them e.g., swimming, yoga, walking the dog, mountain bike riding, basketball or going for a walk with friends.  

6. Build feelings of competence. Often young people are their own biggest critic and need help to recognize their strengths and their capacity. Yet, confidence is not gained from an abundance of unearned praise (e.g., “This is the best lemonade ever”), but from noticing effort and skills (e.g., “you tried really hard making the lemonade”). 

• Help to nurture the voice that reminds them they can do hard things “You’ve got what it takes. Keep going. You’ll get there.” 
• Acknowledge their effort when they do something difficult. 
• Encourage involvement in safe and considered risks to assist in realising their capacity to influence outcomes.  

7. Nurture optimism and teach reframing. Optimism is one of the key characteristics of resilient people. Our brains become more optimistic through the experiences and views they are exposed to. 

• Offer young people a different view, but first acknowledge their view and how they feel. E.g., ‘Having two exams on the same day can feel stressful and overwhelming. Does that mean that you will have some days with no exams?’  
• Focus on what is left, rather than what has been lost. Acknowledge their disappointment, before gently steering them away from looking at what the problem has cost them, towards the opportunities it might have brought them. 

8. Increase emotional intelligence. Resilience does not mean you will never fall down, but that you will get up again. We all experience pain, failure, anxiety, and sadness. The goal is to recognise and respect those feelings, without letting them take over.  

• All feelings are ok. We can learn to float and not drown in them.  
• Initially, help by labelling emotions e.g., “You look worried” 
• Then help to identify stressors and increase the tools available to manage these.  

9. Face fear – but with support. When we are scared our amygdala fires up and tries to protect us. It does this by triggering the ‘Fight, Flight, Freeze’ response. However, it often gets things wrong. E.g., running late to a meeting is uncomfortable, but it is not life threatening. Beginning to identify when this is happening and facing our fears is empowering. However, to do this we need the right support. Young people are often black & white when faced with something difficult. In these instances, it seems like they have only two choices; ‘face it head on or avoid it at all costs.’ The third option; ‘to move towards it gradually and with a certain amount of control’ is often missed.  

• Fear of failure is not so much about the loss, but about the fear that they (or you) will not be able to cope with the loss. Let them know you trust their capacity to cope. If you believe they can cope with the struggles, they will believe this too. 
• Support them to break the challenge into small steps. E.g., Instead of avoiding the presentation or doing it in front of the class, they could record themselves.  
• Know when to seek more support or guidance from a mental health professional. Again, modelling that it is ok to acknowledge our challenges and ask for help. 

10. Don’t rush to their rescue. This is perhaps the hardest for adults who innately want to protect their adolescent. However, it is in the precious space between falling and standing back up that we learn to find our feet.  

• Exposure to manageable stressors and challenges increases our ability to cope. It does this by making changes in the prefrontal cortex (the ‘calm down, you’ve got this’ part of the brain) and protects against future stress e.g., to store a recipe for lemonade.  
• As parents/caregivers or teachers we often feel the struggles of our teens. It hurts when they miss out on something. Not because of what it means for us, but because of what we know it means for them. Remind yourself that they will be okay. However long it takes, they will be okay. 

11. Nurture a growth mindset. We can change, and so can other people. Research has found that those with a growth mindset; ‘The belief that all people have the potential to change’ (as opposed to, they will always be shy or a bully), are more likely to show resilience when things get tough, have a better view of themselves and experience less stress and anxiety. (I.e., Make more delicious lemonade)  

12. Build their problem-solving toolbox. When things go wrong, let them talk and try to resist going into problem solver mode (so tempting, I know!) Instead, be the sounding board. As they talk, their mind is processing and strengthening and in time they will come up with their own solutions. Instead of ‘problem solving’ or grilling them for a reasonable explanation for something they likely already regret and cannot change. Start to model ‘self-talk’ and give them the language to problem solve. In time this will flow on and be applied to new problems… E.g., ‘When life gives you oranges…’  

• Asking ‘why’ will often end in ‘I don’t know.’ Instead ask: How can you fix this?’ ‘What would [someone who they see as capable] do?’ ‘What has worked before’ or ‘How can we break this big problem into little pieces?’ 

13. Contribution – young people want to matter. Ultimately, we are all on the journey to find a sense of meaning and purpose in our lives. When children and adolescents are given opportunities to be creative, kind and to make a difference they learn both the joy of giving and the grace of receiving.  

The bottom line is that Resilience is just one word that encompasses a range of important skills. Yet, by fostering resilience we are helping to strengthen neural pathways in the brains of our students. These pathways are the voices that say: “This sucks, but I can do it” or “Those lemons would make some really good lemonade”… 

Miss Nicole Young  

College Psychologist