What Does It Mean To Be A Resilient Person? The True Meaning

Today, in psychology, the concept of “resilience” is widespread. Everyone has heard this word and has a vague idea of ​​its meaning. Briefly explained, we could say that resilience is the potential that human beings have to adapt and overcome traumas and difficulties.

Around this term there is a lot of confusion. Many people, far from the real meaning of this quality, assimilate resilience with the idea of ​​denying the past and moving on as if nothing had happened. Something like eyes that do not see, heart that does not feel.

However, this attitude (often an unconscious defense against the pain of the reality of the past), in addition to ignoring the origin of the emotional discomfort of the present, the only thing that achieves is to push people, over and over again, to commit the same mistakes or falling into the same traps.

Being resilient is not about denying the past

The concept of “resilience” is not equivalent to constantly living in a positive way, fleeing from reality and not paying attention to real problems.

Many people who have suffered great traumas in their past , pretend to ignore them (I repeat, many times unconsciously) and seek to wear “pink” glasses, proclaiming how bright and wonderful everything is.

In the long run, this attitude of denial ends up leading to serious problems. By not having remedied it, their emotional distress continues to harm them in their present. As much as they try to ignore it, in one way or another, the denied pain continues to present itself in their lives.

Resilience: a path of learning and acceptance

True resilience comes from an inner analysis and an ability to learn and overcome the past.

Precisely, the work we do in therapy is to connect with the past to learn from it and heal whatever is necessary. The past must never be denied or forgotten. On the contrary, we have to take it out of the dark and put it on the table to be able to analyze it, understand what happened and obtain valuable conclusions for our present.

People who have suffered severe abuse in their childhood, for example, have a general reluctance to remember their stories. However, if they don’t work on them and break free, they run the risk of living their entire lives trapped in their past.

Vanessa was one of these people. Orphan of a mother since she was two years old, she idolized her father, who had raised her alone. As she told me in her first session, he had been the most important person in her life and, since he had died, she had not been able to raise her head.

Although she remembered that her father had ever hit her, Vanessa had erased access to the worst beatings she had ever received. One of them, so serious, that he had ended up in the hospital with a broken arm.

The beatings, insults and continuous emotional blackmail to which her father subjected her, for years, undermined her self-esteem to the point of believing that she was clumsy, useless and that, without her father, she could not do anything in life, not even live. “You are not worth anything like your mother, you are not good for anything, thank goodness I’m here to get the chestnuts out of the fire” her father repeated to her, day after day.

Give voice to our interior

Recalling her story, now as an adult, Vanessa was able to listen and give voice to her interior, to her emotions repressed by the blows of her father. He was able to express how unfair and abusive the mistreatment received. Throughout her sessions, Vanessa was connecting with herself, shaking off the enormous influence her father had had on her.

In fact, even though his father had died several years ago, he told me that he still felt like a huge weight on his back. Thanks to her work in therapy, she was able to free herself from this weight to be able to look at herself and be more in touch with her true emotions. Also, he learned to value himself and defend himself from the abuse of others.

People who take advantage of their therapy and achieve this true resilience are much more aware of themselves and their environment. They recognize the adversities that arise, but they do not allow themselves to be overwhelmed by them, but they take advantage of all their capacities to overcome them.