Transcript
Defining resilience
Our resilience is the way we adapt to stressful and challenging circumstances.
It comes from the days when our biggest problems weren’t deadlines and household bills...
... but hunting food and escaping lions.
The times when our fight or flight response would take over, and our brains would release chemicals like...
...adrenaline, cortisol, and dopamine. So we could survive the danger and pass our resilience on.
These days, we still have the same responses. We just have different dangers and a better understanding of our reactions.
And one thing we know is that our mental health is greatly affected by how we interpret our reaction to stress.
In a stressful situation, it’s common to interpret the powerful signals and chemicals running through our brains in a negative way.
To become scared, and unable to handle things as well as we’d like to.
So it’s important to remember that resilience is about bouncing back. It’s about doing what’s necessary to maintain our wellbeing.
And this doesn’t always involve a straightforward fight or flight reaction. It could be something like crying.
Just like standing our ground and running for our lives...
...crying is a natural reaction that can help us manage our mental state.
We all have different levels of resilience, and bounce back in our own ways.
By understanding these responses better, we can help each other adapt and enjoy more stable mental health.
Learn more about stress and resilience in module 2.