How To Deal With Adversity: Personal Adaptation When Everything Changes
Nothing that happens in the world is tailored to the human being; Planet Earth could continue to exist perfectly without us.
However, it cannot be said that the majority of people are constantly suffering for the simple fact of existing in this environment. There are many clues that tell us 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 started to occur or has already occurred? This is precisely the topic we will talk about in the following lines.
How to face adversity through personal adaptation?
If there is something that characterizes human beings, it is their ability to adapt to very varied situations.
And, purely statistically, among those diverse situations in which we can adjust our behavior are adverse moments of crisis or directly catastrophes. It is spectacular to see to what extent are we able to recover after having gone through very difficult situations for which anyone would say that we were not prepared nor could we 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 emerge 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 we have gone through.
It has been proven that resilience is a latent potential in practically all people, and that given the right circumstances, it is possible to encourage its 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.
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 daily 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 is happening to them For example, thinking about a series of ideas that worry you, to see if you eventually find a way to get that weight off your shoulders by reaching a conclusion that relieves your discomfort.
Not only does this 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, to adapt to change we must put into practice the essence of the concept of “adaptation”: continue interacting with the environment and with others, without closing ourselves in.
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 to make us feel that the situation is beyond us, as we have nowhere to lean. This leads many people to adopt an apathetic attitude, characterized by passivity and sedentary lifestyle, and certainly in the face of experiences like this it can be said that this way of behaving is “what the body asks of us.”
However, we must not fall into this trap of helplessness and hopelessness; Although it may be difficult, 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.
To do this, there is nothing like designing schedules that structure our daily lives based on clear activities and routines with a very defined beginning and end. It is about staying active to improve our global vision of what we are experiencing and discover options that we would not have noticed from pure theory, if we stayed still on the couch for hours.
3. Practice Mindfulness
Mindfulness (or Full Attention, in Spanish) is a state of consciousness that can be promoted through performing a set of exercises inspired by Vipassana meditation
Its effects as a measure to prevent symptoms linked to depression and as a method of managing anxiety, together with the fact that it is relatively easy to practice Mindfuness, have made this resource for modulating emotions widely used both in psychotherapy and , increasingly, contexts such as educational centers and companies.
Thus, Today there are many teams of psychologists who have experts in Mindfulness both for sessions with patients and to train professionals and individuals in courses and workshops.
4. Seek support from others
Whether or not you have many friends, you will likely find people willing to help you, either by offering you moments of empathetic listening or going further and offering you social or material resources.
No matter how much you’ve been holding back until now, Do not forget that the reason for existence of society is mutual help and that you can count on it either in your family or friendship circles, in neighborhood or public administration entities, in meetings of people affected by your problem, Internet forums and groups, etc.
Of course, keep in mind that the objective is not to end up depending totally on these people, but rather they are a support point to build your own future, slowly but surely.
5. Keep your feelings of guilt under control
Faced with adverse situations, many people who are forced to adapt to their new reality They tend to feel guilty about the rough patch they have gone through or are still going through This is a pessimistic bias that can be very harmful and paralyzing, and slows down the process of building resilience.
To keep it in check, it is useful to keep a self-record of thoughts. When you notice that a thought of self-blame comes to mind, briefly write down what you thought, how you felt, and the time and place in which it happened to you; At the end of the day, write down a reply below each of them that shows to what extent those ideas are irrational and poorly adjusted to reality, existing only because at that moment you felt bad.
6. Maintain a good level of health
Physical health is linked to mental health: Get enough sleep, eat well and exercise to be better at 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 serve both in person in Barcelona and through online therapy processes.
You can see more information about us on this page.
