The other day on one of my drives home from work I was thinking about the idea of resilience. I was relating it to the clients I tend to work with.
I sometimes hear horror stories—the things I'm most afraid of experiencing in life. These are things that people have gone, are going, and will continue to go through.
A common theme with people I talk to in my kind of work is that there are no real excuses. There's just the next day. They are, in a sense, surviving.
I was thinking about my own resilience, and I have done this exercise several times in my life. I grew up in a two- parent home, safe, always had clothes and a bed, never really had to worry.
I grew up close with my two older brothers and did fine in school through graduation. Safety was never a worry. Security was never a worry. I was never anxious about money because my parents insulated us from parts of the real world that we didn't need to know about yet.
The point is, my necessities were taken care of and I was able to just be a kid who had friends and played sports. It's really easy to take that for granted when you have nothing to compare it to.
When I got into the mental health field—to put it simply—I realized my resilience is probably low. And it's hard to know, without going through something seemingly insurmountable, how well you would handle a particular situation.
I've learned that true resilience is built in the trenches. If you want to be tough, then you have to survive some sort of warfare. That can come in a lot of ways. A diagnosis, a traumatic event, a major life change or even a series of compounding events.
Warfare. It builds warriors.
Warriors in the trenches are exposed to far more than others realize. It's a reason to be kind. You never know what someone else is going through.
It's also a reminder to me. Don't take things for granted. That has to be a daily focus in order to have a successful mindset.
When I think about trenches building warriors, I think about how much I want to avoid the trench. I seem to aim for the opposite.
Discomfort is, by all accounts, uncomfortable. I don't like it. I don't like anxiety or having things to worry about.
But we all worry about something. It's inevitable. Whether our battle is for safety, or mental health, or financial security, it doesn't matter. There's some sort of war going on.
No matter how much we try to avoid that trench, we eventually find our way in there. And the focal point isn't that life just happens to us and there's nothing we can do.
On the contrary. The warfare makes the warrior. But a warrior isn't just a state of existence. No, they are a battle-tested soldier. One with a sense of calm in the panic. A warrior uses their experience to gain an edge over the opposing force—whatever that may be.
The whirlwinds will come and go. Wounds and scars will be inevitable. It's simply a product of the trench.
What remains is an undeniable version of yourself. A version that is tougher than you ever thought possible. A badass that can withstand a storm and know that there will be something to build off of on the other side.
What remains… is a warrior.
This is a great spin on the negative idea of pain/trauma or a bad experience… a warrior is stronger because of the fight.
“A warrior uses their experience to gain an edge over the opposing force—whatever that may be. “
Just as physical strength allows us to withstand health issues and physical trauma, I think that faith sustains us mentally and spiritually. I remain amazed at the scriptures and songs that come to mind just when I need them, lifting my spirit and encouraging me. We don’t always need to go to battle to be strong.