Aiming for resilience.

As I noted in my "Adulting" post, being an adult is complicated and fraught with disillusion and cognitive dissonance. I am envious of people who seem to be able to smoothly traverse their lives. Perhaps they've given in to the system, but at least they're happy.

Last Friday, I attended a Professional Day session with an Occupational Therapist. Although the session was aimed at teachers who were dealing with students who had suffered from trauma, I kind-of chose it more for myself. I've been feeling pretty crushed by life as of late and want to get better, want to figure out what's really happening with me. 

The therapist made many references to the relationship between stress and resilience. In response, I made a few reflection 30-second videos; here are a couple of them:

It makes sense that we need psychological stress in order to grow psychological #resilience. Yay #stress! pic.twitter.com/CXsxLPNP00

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) February 19, 2016

Perhaps my [continuing] megastressful year is building some psychological resilience in me that I can take pride in. pic.twitter.com/oG4n6tymnR

— Jeffrey Nordstrom (@jeffnords) February 19, 2016

A week later and these ideas are still bouncing around in my head. I don't know if I really fit the bill as a "resilient" person. But if stress develops resilience, chances are that I'm a different person than where I started. Chances are that I've grown in some ways—some better, some worse.

I mean, if I'm a more resilient person than when I started, perhaps that means that I can make it through the hard times more effectively. A resilient person should be able to know when to stand up for themselves and when to back off.

But it could also mean that I have grown more jaded, more willing to give up on fights that seem unwinnable. Couldn't that be a little sort of resilience too?

I don't know. Perhaps it's one of those classic cases where whatever you do can support any bias you see fit, where any piece of evidence can back up your previous notion. My only issue right now is that I don't know what my bias is in the first place. I don't even know what bias I'm trying to confirm while I watch various shambles crumble about me.

#WordsOfWisdom from #ThomasWatson #bigthink

A photo posted by Big Think (@bigthinkers) on Feb 25, 2016 at 7:10am PST

Even on a blog like this, my integrity and profession require a degree of cageyness around all these thoughts of social failure, of relationship struggles, of typical adult battles. I can't articulate what I want to. And even if I did articulate it, I'd fear speaking whiny, selfish thoughts into existence. I don't want to perpetuate negativity and discouragement. 

But, as the embedded quotation shows, I admit I feel like enough of a failure that I don't know how to fail any more and keep myself together. And if I grow in the ways that I'm expected to, I don't think I like what I'd become. As I noted in one of the videos above, I don't even know if I'm the same person who started this whole thing. Perhaps a more resilient jeffnords is a completely revamped jeffnords.

I know that there are people who clean the slate—they start a new career, divorce, move to another continent, etc.—but I still have a little hope for the future I kind-of started already. I'm not even finished this Master's degree, although I certainly look forward to the day when I am. But I really feel lost with all this.

But I sure hope that, if anything, I can gain some resilience through it all. Amongst all these scattered thoughts and abortive attempts to improve myself, I really hope I can find a worthwhile path that can truly do no harm to the people I love.