Coping With Adversity: Personal Adaptation When Everything Changes

Nothing that happens in the world is tailored to the human being; planet Earth could perfectly continue to exist without us.

However, it cannot be said that most of us are constantly suffering for the simple fact of existing in this environment. There are many clues that indicate that, even if sometimes what happens around us affects us very negatively, there are frequent cases in which we manage to recover, turn the page and continue living.

Therefore, many people wonder... How to face adversity, once it has already begun to occur or has already occurred directly? This is precisely the topic that we will talk about in the following lines.

• Related article: "What is emotional intelligence?"

How to face adversity through personal adaptation?

If there is something that characterizes the human being, it is his ability to adapt to very varied situations.

And, by pure statistics, among those diverse situations to which we can adjust our behavior are adverse moments of crisis or outright catastrophes. It is spectacular to check

to what extent we are able to recover after having gone through very difficult situations, before which anyone would say that we were not prepared or that we could have seen them coming.

But the truth is that, one way or another, there are ways to face adversity and return to emotional stability. In this sense, a key concept to understand this is resilience, a word closely linked to the processes of psychotherapy and mental health in general.

What is resilience?

Resilience is the ability to adapt to difficult times, and through which we resurface from crisis situations to achieve emotional stability again, and even a sense of progress and direction in our lives even when we still carry some problems associated with the adversity that we have been through.

It has been proven that resilience is a latent potential in practically all people, and that given the circumstances appropriate, it is possible to favor their emergence to feel better and adopt a constructive attitude oriented towards the search for solutions.

Its existence is based on the way our brain works.; As with the entire human nervous system in general, it is constantly changing, adapting to our experiences and allowing us to learn all kinds of skills. Therefore, we can even learn to learn to manage our emotions in difficult moments.

• You may be interested in: "5 beliefs that prevent facing changes in difficult times"

Psychological tools to adapt to changes

These are some psychological tips that you should take into account to improve your ability to adapt to changes. These are relatively simple practices that, if incorporated into your day-to-day life and integrated with your habits, allow you to develop resilience.

1. Combine theory and practice

In times of crisis, It is very common for people affected by bad times to take refuge in introspection tasks to try to find a solution to what happens to them. For example, mulling over a series of ideas that concern them, to see if they eventually find a way to get that weight off their shoulders by coming to some conclusion that relieves their discomfort.

This not only does not usually solve things, but it is also counterproductive, because it gives way to psychological rumination: the tendency to not be able to get an anxious thought out of your head, which it returns again and again to consciousness due to the importance we give it and that in the end we cannot even "block", since we end up being very sensitive to its appearance due to all the unpleasant emotions that we have attributed to it over time.

Therefore, in order to adapt to change, we must put into practice the essence of the concept of “adaptation”: to continue interacting with the environment and with others, without closing ourselves in on ourselves.

2. Structure your day to day

In moments of crisis in which everything changes and we must face an uncomfortable or even painful reality, it is easy for the lack of references about what we should do makes us feel that the situation is beyond us, having no where support us. This leads many people to adopt an apathetic attitude, characterized by passivity. and sedentary lifestyle, and certainly when faced with experiences like this, it can be said that this way of behaving is "what the body asks of us."

However, one must not fall into this trap of helplessness and hopelessness; Even if it costs, we must try to set short-term goals, even if they are very simple, to keep us moving. This will allow us to gain momentum and be able to find ways to improve our situation in a relatively short period of time.

To do this, there is nothing like designing schedules that structure our day to day based on activities and clear routines and with a well-defined beginning and ending. It is about staying active to improve our global vision about what we are experiencing and discover options that we would not have noticed from pure theory, in case of staying still on the sofa for hours.

3. Practice Mindfulness

Mindfulness (or Mindfulness, in Spanish) is a state of consciousness that can be promoted through the realization of a set of exercises inspired by Vipassana meditation.

Its effects as a measure of prevention of symptoms linked to depression and as a method of anxiety management, together with the fact that it is relatively easy to practice Mindfuness, have made this resource of modulation of emotions widely used both in psychotherapy and, increasingly, contexts such as educational centers and schools. Business.

Thus, Today there are many teams of psychologists that have experts in Mindfulness both for sessions with patients and to train professionals and individuals in courses and workshops.

4. Seek the support of others

Whether or not you have many friends, you may find people willing to help you, either offering you moments of empathetic listening or going further and offering you social resources or materials.

As much as you've been shutting down until now, do not forget that the reason for being of society is mutual help, and that you can count on it either in your family or friends circles, in neighborhood entities or in the public administration, in meetings of people affected by your problem, forums and Internet groups, etc.

Of course, keep in mind that the objective is not to end up depending totally on these people, but rather that they are a point of support to build your own future, slowly but surely.

5. Keep your feelings of guilt in check

Faced with adverse situations, many of the people who are forced to adapt to their new reality they tend to feel guilty about the pothole they have gone through or are still going through. It is a pessimistic bias that can be very damaging and paralyzing, and slows down the resilience-building process.

To keep it at bay, it helps to keep a thought self-log. When you notice that a thought of self-guilt comes to your consciousness, write down briefly what you have thought, how you have felt and the time and place in which that has happened to you; at the end of the day, write down a reply below each of them that shows to what extent these ideas They are irrational and little adjusted to reality, existing only because at that moment you felt wrong.

6. Maintain a good level of health

Physical health is linked to mental health: get enough sleep, eat well and exercise to be better managing your emotions in adverse situations.

Are you looking for psychological support in therapy?

If you are going through a crisis and feel that you need professional support, count on our team of psychologists. At the therapy center Psychotools We attend both in person in Barcelona and through online therapy processes.

You can see more information about us at this page.

Bibliographic references:

• Abraham, R.; Lien, L.; Hanssen, I. (2018). Coping, resilience and posttraumatic growth among Eritrean female refugees living in Norwegian asylum reception centers: A qualitative study. International Journal of Social Psychiatry. 64 (4): pp. 359 - 366.
• Bonanno, G.A.; Galea, S.; Bucciareli, A.; Vlahov, D. (2007). What predicts psychological resilience after disaster? The role of demographics, resources, and life stress. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 75(5): 671 - 682.