Introduction to Emotional Resilience
Stress can overwhelm your defenses despite you best efforts at coping. In the short term, you may lose your temper, your blood pressure may soar, and you may even feel sick to your stomach. Over the longer term the cumulative nature of stress can keep you on edge long after individual stressful events have passed, and can even contribute to medical problems. For example, unresolved and lingering stressful feelings of anger, hostility and aggression appears to make the development of heart disease and arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) more likely to occur.
There is no escaping stress, but there are ways you can learn to handle stress better when it is present, and to 'bounce back' faster from its impact. The collection of skills, characteristics, habits and outlooks that make it possible to remain maximally flexible and fresh in the face of stress is often referred to as "emotional resilience", which is the topic of this document. Learning to become more emotionally resilient can dramatically improve your attitude and your health in the face of inevitable stress.
Read on to learn about emotional resilience -- what it involves, how it is accomplished, and how you can become more emotionally resilient yourself.
