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This module covers mental resilience which is the ability to maintain positive mental habits regardless of the circumstances. Mental resilience allows us to manage our thinking in difficult situations.
Watch this 48 minute video.
Positive mental habits
Stress and mental resilience
There are three basic human 'needs' that we all rely on in order to feel secure and resilient.
If we have a lot of problems that we do not feel we can do anything about, we start to feel helpless and incompetent. This affects our resilience. If we are able to solve the problems that are confronting us we tend to do better.
When we cannot control our environment our stress levels tend to rise. We want to be able to manage ourselves and our environment in a way that suits us.
We need to be able to make sense of our social environments. In a new environment or culture, it takes us time to make sense of the situation and understand how people make sense of themselves.
Mental needs and stressors
Over time, repeated or unresolved stressors reduce resilience by causing fatigue, loss of confidence and loss of personal agency.
'Cognitive' stress reponses
When we deal with a stressor, we may respond in the following ways.
Anxiety
Anxiety is our response to a sense of ‘overwhelm’ in our lives. We have too many issues to deal with and our mind is unable to settle. A vicious cycle of worry can set in and create ‘fear like’ responses in the body. Over
time, we can develop a habit of anxious responses to quite minor upsets.
Frustration
Frustration develops when we have a feeling of being stuck or blocked – by our situation or, sometimes, by the actions of others. Frustration is related to anger – we are reacting to a feeling of threat – and, over a long period,
can become damaging to our health too.
Rumination
Rumination is the technical term becoming ‘lost in our thinking’ – we can go around in circles, thinking the same thoughts over and over again, without any productive results. While we need to reflect on our lives to make
sense of our experience, long periods of over-thinking tend to be unproductive and to lower our mood.
Improving mental resilience
People who are resilient have positive mental habits.
Research shows that people who are resilient are able to maintain a sense of realistic optimism.
The learnable skill is the ability to give yourself the opportunity to detach from the situation and analyse the what is happening. This is known as detached analysis.
Mental responses to stressful events
When we experience an event as frustrating or anxiety provoking, our thinking response is often less effective than usual. We are all prone to certain tendencies when we are under mental stress - these are technically known as 'cognitive distortions'.
If we are able to examine our thinking and notice any distortions, we are well on the way to a more realistic assessment of the situation.
Challenging our negative thinking after a stress event
Many of the techniques for examining our negative thinking encourage us to task ourselves reflective questions about our assessment of the situation. Four of the key 'areas for enquiry' are shown in the graphic below.
Next time you find yourself in a negative thinking pattern about a stressful situation, you can begin by asking yourself the questions shown under the graphic.
Evidence
What proof do I really have that my assessment is true?
Alternative meanings
What other meanings can I imagine in this situation?
Impact
What's the most that can really happen here?
Usefulness
Is this way of thinking helping me here?
The mental recovery cycle
When we experience a stressful event we can try to challenge our negative thinking immediately but sometimes the way we feel gets in the way. As we described in the emotional resilience module we need to bring ourselves back to a calm and
resourceful state before our best thinking comes back 'online'.
There are some simples steps we can take to do this - we call this the mental recovery cycle. Next time you experience a stressful event, try using the ideas in the cycle below to help you come back to a more resourceful frame of mind.
Calm
We cannot think clearly when our bodies are ‘out of equilibrium’ – our stress hormones affect our thought processes, making things feel more difficult and reducing our problem solving abilities.
The first step is always to calm our emotional state, perhaps by using one of the techniques described in the ‘Emotional Resilience’ module.
Detach
When we are in the middle of an stressful experience or time, everything that we are dealing with can take on more significance than it should.
We often need to ‘take a step back’ from what is going on and consider things from a new perspective.
Decode
'Decoding’ is the step of analysing negative thought patterns of unhelpful beliefs in order to check their reality. It is a vital step in recovering from stress events – if we continue to believe distorted or exaggerated negative thoughts,
we are likely to judge the situation as much worse than it is.
Enact
Once we have decoded our own mental responses to find a more realistic analysis, we are able to take positive steps forward to solve our problems or deal with issues. This, in turn, builds our sense of competence and the belief that we can
tackle things – vital factors in our overall sense of resilience.
Quick fixes for recovering your mental balance
ometimes we don't have much time to respond to a stressful event. These quick fixes will help you find your feet again - you can then use the techniques in the next section to reflect more fully on hat happened.
Calm
Find a buddy and have a chat.
Do something you enjoy.
Do something that occupies your brain with something else.
Detach
Imagine talking to a respected friend about the situation. How would they respond?
Imagine yourself looking back at this moment from six months in the future.
Use your learning from the Decoding to take an appropriate and measured action.
Explore your 'decoding' with someone else - ideally people in the situation but anyone you respect can give useful feedback.
Using the recovery cycle to build long-term resilience
In order to build our mental resilience, we need to realise that we can manage our own thought processes.
The quick fixes above are helpful in themselves but we need to build genuinely new thinking habits if we want to improve our mental resilience in the long run. As always, we can learn from the habits of naturally resilient people.
In the next segments, there are some more detailed exercises and practices under each of the key recovery cycle headings to help you build more positive thinking habits over the medium term.
One of the most important ways of calming ourselves when we feel overwhelmed in to pay attention to how we are using our attention. Focussing on issues that are outside our control just generates more anxiety and a sense of dis-empowerment.
There is a useful exercise for focussing your mental resources under 'Managing your attention'.
Stepping back from a negative thinking response is not as easy as it sounds. However, using one of the ‘3D’ techniques usually helps – we can distract ourselves by doing something else, distance ourselves from the situation to see things
in a new way or, even better, shift into a dialogue with someone else, rather than getting stuck in our own inner conversation. There is more on the 3Ds practice under 'Detaching from negative thinking'.
When we fall into an unhelpful belief pattern, the key step is to notice any ‘cognitive distortions’ that have crept into our thinking. We are all prone to certain tendencies when our minds are stressed – these thinking ‘biases’ affect
our sense of reality and how we interpret what is going on around us.
In the upcoming section titled, 'Decoding unhelpful beliefs' we will look at the ‘Record, Rationalise, Replace’ process. This process helps us to notice any distortions in our thinking and gives us the option of replacing unhelpful responses
with more realistic and positive ideas.
Once we have got our thinking onto a more ‘realistically optimistic’ track, we can regain our creativity and consider our options. The willingness to ‘experiment’ with new habits or behaviours is a major strength of resilient people. There
are a range of suggestions for building in new activities and conversations throughout this module. You can learn more about this great technique under 'Decoding unhelpful beliefs'.
Introducing the Leading Libraries series. It covers the findings from the C21st Public Servant research, the origins of the four 'Leading for' capabilities and explains how to use the materials.
This set introduces you to resilience and why it is important for leaders. It covers emotional resilience; mental resilience; relationship resilience and social resilience.
It covers the key concepts of dialogue and why it is important for leaders, listening and inquiry skills, an introduction to 'conversational moves' and how to create a space for dialogue.
Emphasising the need for inclusive practice in our services and communities. It covers the foundations of inclusion, barriers to inclusion, power and privilege and allyship skills.
Building creativity and design skills for leaders. It covers the innovation cycle, diagnosis and perspective shifting skills, creative idea generation and safe-to-fail experimentation.
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