Are we sometimes transitioning somewhere or somehow?

When engaged in a transition, what is the best way to stay balanced in what we give and receive, protect space and time for rest, and find sources of nourishment that restore our reserves? Alongside social and community resilience, the more personally resilient we are, the more we are able to face, and respond to the challenges of our times. If resilience refers to ‘bounce-back-ability’, then someone with a resilient body, heart and mind will be able to feel whatever feelings arise in response to challenges and stressful situations, and ‘bounce back’, returning to a normal state of well-being.

The less personally resilient we are, the more challenges overwhelms us and we find ourselves struggling with physical exhaustion, losing sleep, isolation or inability to cope with relationships, mental stress or loss of meaning, to name just a few. As our resilience diminishes, the pathway back to healthy functioning takes longer, and in extreme cases of burnout it can take months or even years for a person to fully recharge.

Some simple factors that are known to increase levels of resilience include:

having basic needs met; being financially resourced

eating a healthy diet and taking regular exercise; spending time in nature

feeling seen and appreciated for what we are

feeling connected – to a partner, family, friends, colleagues and the community, and knowing that people will treat us with respect and care

feeling able to effect change and make a difference.

The Transition process itself helps with many of these – working to achieve positive personal outcomes; making friends and building a sense of local community – these all support the personal resilience of whose are going through a transition process/moment. And yet, many people involved will have felt, or known someone who felt, overstretched, stressed or exhausted partly by their transition.

Two key features of any resilient person, are feedback loops and tight coupling (can either be best-friendship or partner). Applying this to ourselves, there are always signs that we are going beyond our natural coping capacity. These will be different for different people, but common ones include:

feeling tired

losing sleep

being unable to switch off

feeling overwhelmed by new requests for responses to challenges

being irritable or snappy with people we are close to L

feeling depressed, hopeless or overwhelmed by sadness in ways that seem disproportionate to what’s happening

feeling isolated or cutting off from friends or colleagues

feeling guilty or resentful, that we are doing too much or not enough.

It’s common in our culture to override these warning signs, and we can often be praised as being heroic in keeping going in spite of them. In this we repeat the pattern of our wider culture: ignoring the warning signs of changes, degradation and exhaustion of physical and mental resources and speeding up in response, rather than slowing and changing what we do.

Training for personal resilience???

The basic principles for personal resilience are that we learn best by a combination of receiving information that helps us understand more deeply challenges and solutions, self reflection, listening to and hearing other’s experience and sharing our own stories and experiences.

An understanding of the physiology of stress and what happens to us when stress overwhelms our capacity to resource ourselves will come just when probably it is too late… why??

The things that best restore, nourish and replenish our energy during this period will be specific to each of us. Spending time discovering what really works for us is time well invested. The list might include fun activities, or doing things or being with people that are nothing to do with Transition! Time spent in nature, listening to music or being creative, or turning off the constant flow of emails and switching off from ‘mental’ activities, give the rational left brain a rest and nourish feelings of connection and flow. Physical exercise helps the brain as well as the rest of the body. For some, it’s time alone that is most refreshing and restorative.

As we give more attention to the feedback from our bodies, hearts and minds we more easily respond by attending to what is needed – rest, exercise, food, company, having a change of scene or pace, whatever is called for. The repeated act of noticing our behavior in stressful situations also increases our ability to choose our response and not get caught in habitual stressful reactions, some of which may be old patterns learned long ago and no longer useful or relevant.