Some Basics Of Stress Resilience

By Eugenia Dickerson


Stress resilience is a term that describes the capability of a person to cope with tension or anxiety. This attribute is very important as it helps people to resume with their normal lives after experiencing some form of demoralizing event in their lives. Rather than sinking into hopelessness, some people have been reported to have improved functionality a feature commonly termed post-traumatic growth. Resilience is a process and not the trait of individual persons.

Through this process, people exhibit positive adaptations in behaviour. Naturally, most human beings react negatively to adversity, trauma or threats. Through various psychological therapies such as positive reinforcement negative reactions can be gradually reduced and better behaviours adopted. Affected individuals are usually encouraged to maintain a positive perception of things and to continually have a high self-esteem. For this to happen, proper social support structures must be in place.

There are a number of factors that have been identified as enhancing this attribute. Close relationships with your families and friends is one of them. This coupled to the ability to easily share experiences makes it much easier to cope with difficulties. Other factors include ability to seek help and resources, good communication skills and presence of a winning mentality.

Religion has been established to important factor in dealing with life challenges and raising the self-esteem of affected persons. Research shows that youths that join the church tend to have an improvement in their academic performance. This improvement is attributable to the mere attendance of church and the interaction with the religious community rather than doctrine. The church is believed to have a great influence on emotional, social and physical health.

Resilience can be determined objectively using what is known as resiliency quotient, SRQ. This is a measure of different aspects of life and uses them to estimate the quality of life. The main areas that have to be assessed include dietary behaviours as regards type of food and eating patterns, quality and duration of sleep and availability of family and social structures. Other aspects that have to be highlighted include physical exercise and level of income.

After the resiliency quotient has been determined, the affected person can be advised appropriately. Typically, the quotient is given a numerical value that is in turn allocated a percentile with respect to the general population. Persons that score highly are regarded as being normal while those that are given low scores require some form of assistance. Both medical and psychological support may be required for the serious cases.

There are many systems that are affected by stress. The systems that are commonly affected include the musculoskeletal system where joint and muscle pains are commonly experienced, the parasympathetic system and the sympathetic system. Other systems include cognitive system where there may be abnormalities in memory, decision making, judgement and learning, the immune system and the emotional system. Treatment is therefore geared at resolving all these problems.

Stress resilience requires that one plays an active role in overcoming difficulties. One needs to challenge themselves to look at this from a positive perspective regardless of how difficult the situation is. This has to be something that is done on a daily basis. The importance of family support in this process cannot be overemphasised.




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