Resilience requires community
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As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m currently undergoing some health issues that are causing fatigue and general taking up of my time and energy in unpredictable ways. What this has meant is more evaluation of what I need in order to manage my day to day life. It’s affected my ability to socialise as well, which is frustrating.
What this also means is I’ve been doing a lot more community and socialising online, which has led to me thinking more about the role of community in my life.
I’ve spoken about resilience before, but I’ve not really explained the role of community in resilence, so this is what I’m going to talk about today.
First: what is resilience?
Resilience is often defined as the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties.
I think sometimes this definition fails us a little bit. It implies that resilience only happens when stressful or difficult situations happen, rather than it being consistent work that pays off during stressful times.
We also see it as internal, solo work. It’s our job to look after ourselves and weather any storms alone. This can lead into toxic thoughts of being a burden or asking for too much support from people.
(This is also capitalism and we shouldn’t let the capitalistic brainworms stop us from being in community with each other).
While there is absolutely value in learning to sit with yourself and your emotions and managing those thoughts and feelings, it doesn’t mean that resilience is measured only by your ability to get through live by yourself.
Resilience is a skill. It can be built, and maintained. It’s part of self care, and part of the reason I say to plan for your bad days on your good days. When you’re struggling you need to make things easier for yourself, and knowing how to look after yourself easily is part of that.
This is a fundamental part of resilience. When times get tough, how can you look after yourself?
This is where community comes in. Reaching out for support, leaning on that support, and accepting help is part of resilience. We can’t survive everything by ourselves, accepting help makes us more resilient, not less so.
Talking to someone, even about something inconsequential, can be really helpful when you’re struggling. It can help ground you in the present, and also help you feel back to your ‘old self’ again, which can be helpful, as it can ‘prove’ that you can get back to a version of ‘normal’ (see my post on choosing joy).
But on a higher level, regularly communicating with people will help build your resilience. This can be in person, online, a mix, whatever. It’s the interaction with people different from yourself and your families/people you live with/etc. That taking you out of your life and into someone else’s is really key to building empathy.
Empathy can help you communicate, build self awareness, and set effective boundaries.
These are part of both community and resilience.
Being in community, fully participating in the give and take of community will help you build resilience and empathy and connection. When I say fully participating I mean learing to be vulnerable and accepting support. Being in community requires giving and recieving support, not just giving and disengaging if you when you can’t.
We need vulnerability in order to build resilience. If we can’t be vulnerable with ourselves and with each other, it’s going to be harder accept help, set boundaries, and be congruent. These things make resilience much easier. It sounds counter-intuitive, but knowing when you’re coming to your limit and asking for help early makes you more resilient, because it means you’re getting help before you burn out, not after.
This is not meant to guilt you if you’re someone who finds it difficult toaks for help, or realise when you’re sliding into burnout. These things sometimes creep up on us. This post is to lay out why our current relationship with the concept of resilience is mixed up. Once we realise what resilience means on a practical level, we can start unpacking our toxic notions of hyperindependance and individualism, and start to build community.
In conclusion: community will save us all, resilience requires community, no one can do it all alone. Go say hi to someone today.