As we acknowledge Mental Health Awareness Month, the pandemic and ongoing national/international crises continue to strain our coping resources to the limit. Our individual and collective resilience is being tested in unprecedented ways. Resilience, or the ability to learn from adversities and emerge stronger, is a great goal in theory yet often tough to carry out in practice. We hear how meditation can decrease our anxiety, and a healthy diet, good sleep, and plenty of exercise help us rebound from a multitude of stressors. While this is certainly useful advice, what we hear much less about is the way our relationships contribute to our ability to be resilient.
The meaning we make of our experiences, the stories we tell in and about our close relationships, are actually the building blocks of resilience. Rather than telling stories of blame, despair, hopelessness, and disconnection, you can use your life experiences and the unanticipated challenges as opportunities to re-story your relationship in ways that focus on what matters most. Creating stories of the possible are the beacons of hope, the North Star to guide your way. Couples who can find their stories, share them first with each other, then with family, friends and a larger community are more likely to preserve a vision of partnership that sustains and nurtures through the most challenging of times.
Here are the key ingredients to shaping your story and building up resilience.
A Big-Picture Perspective
Taking the long view encourages you to put problems in a multi-dimensional context that is unique and specific to your personality, biology, spiritual values, historical time, and current phase of life. What might look like an insurmountable obstacle in the moment may prove to be a building block to a stronger connection in the future. What might look like incompatibility or a character flaw may also, and perhaps more deeply, be a moment of development that invites change. When we shift our focus from feeling happy in our relationship to looking for purpose and meaning, we’re more likely to define the challenge as manageable, even positive. The joint pursuit of meaning and purpose can also help overcome problems because partners change at different rates. Individual partners always bring varied levels of resources and skills to manage a challenge at any given time. Thinking about our lives in full and our past and present stories helps to better shape an intentional future for our relationship.
A “We” Attitude
Couples with a team or “We” approach to life challenges show greater satisfaction with their relationship and better physical and mental health. The qualities of We-ness can be remembered by the acronym SERAPHS:
Safety
Empathy
Respect
Acceptance
Pleasure
Humor
Shared Meaning and Vision
These qualities can be cultivated so you can learn to think and act with the best interest of your relationship in mind. A “We” attitude represents a sense of mutual identity (who we are) and affirms your commitment to being connected in mutual care (how we love). We-ness gives your relationship a storyline that prioritizes your connection and helps you act in ways that benefit the team rather than either individual. It is a mindset that helps you take joint responsibility for issues you’re facing. Partnerships then become anchored in friendship and sustained by intentionally created networks beyond the partnership. Trust is the cornerstone of resilient relationships; love is remembered and honored.
A Culture of Gratitude
Viewing disagreements as inevitable and focusing on what goes well, even in the face of challenges, proactively creates positives. Relationships, just like our muscles, strengthen through a recurring process of stress and repair. Repair requires the capacity to be vulnerable-to say “I’m hurting” and to hear “How can I help” and “What can we do to make it better?” Approaching differences with curiosity, not seeking the “truth” but rather to understand each other’s perspective is key. Practice a charity of interpretation and give more positive feedback than complaints. Empathize, invite care, and offer emotional support to yourself and one another. Focus on the positive contributions your partner is making and express appreciation on a regular basis. That habit will go a long way when times are the toughest.
Openness to Change and Growth
As in nature, we change when time and conditions are ripe. However, we can nudge and nourish both processes along, and once repair and renewal begin, there is no going back. Like all other worthy endeavors, growing your resilience takes attention and nurture. No matter how tempting, resist “settling” and aim for growth and change, not accommodation. Partners who help us become a better version of ourselves become more valuable and important to us over time. Different phases of the lifecycle as well as different kinds of challenges offer different ways to expand.
Interested in learning more? Check out my new book,
Growing Married: Creating Stories for a Lifetime of Love
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Karen Skerrett, PhD, is a psychologist in private practice and a long-time consultant at Cathedral Counseling Center. She leads the monthly Couple Consultation Group and guided the design of the Premarital Program. She was most recently an Associate Clinical Professor at the Family Institute at Northwestern, the co-author of Positive Couple Therapy (Routledge Press, 2014), and the co-editor of Couple Resilience (Springer Press, 2015) as well as numerous book chapters and professional articles.
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This article is a part of Cathedral Counseling Center's 2022 Mental Health Awareness Month initiative,
Replenish: No One Can Pour from an Empty Cup. Throughout the month of May we are sharing tips, resources, and information to help you replenish your own cup. If you would like to help replenish another's cup and help them access mental healthcare, please
make a gift today to help fund our sliding scale services.