Yes. That’s the short answer. Toxic resilience is real.
Toxic resilience is a problem
If you’ve followed me for a while you’ll know that I have long talked about how toxic the old school interpretation of resilience is. In fact, it’s one of the reasons that I became a resilience coach. This is, essentially, the idea that if you’re resilient you don’t have emotions, you definitely don’t display those emotions, you’re always in control and you will always bounce back. It’s the “stay strong and stay positive” narrative, gritting your teeth and pushing through.
What’s wrong with that? I hear you say. Isn’t it what most people do? Yes it is. And that’s why we are the most depressed, disconnected, divorced and (to add another d) downright unfulfilled we have ever been. Isn’t it time we learned that putting your emotions in a box and shutting them away doesn’t work? Doing this makes us the equivalent of making yourself a stiff, inflexible tree, rigid with determination to push through and keep hard emotions at bay – in a storm we snap. Genuine resilience creates the flexibility to bend and adapt.
“You should be more resilient” = toxic
Perhaps because we are fed such a misguided view of resilience, an alarming number of people have come to me recently and said that they feel they are being held up to an impossible standard of self-control in the workplace that is being described as “resilience.” Many of these people have been told they need to be more resilient – or that their response is not resilient. When actually what is happening is their organisation is using the term to invalidate their natural human response to stress, pressure or – sometimes – the fact that they are being really poorly treated and are unhappy about it.
What’s frustrating is seeing something that I know to be such an incredibly powerful and important force in life being rejected because the point of it has been missed. Or corrupted to toxic resilience. Resilience is motivating, powerful and doesn’t just enable survival but growth and thriving too. But it isn’t about emotional suppression. No, not even in the hard moments. What you resist, persists – the suppressed emotions will just get bigger over time (until they erupt). You release the pressure valve on emotions by learning how to process them – that’s just one way that rigid and old fashioned ideas on resilience have this all wrong.
Genuine resilience = productivity AND happiness
If you genuinely invest in the resilience of your workforce, you’ll have people working for you who are committed, brilliant, innovative, disciplined, motivated, productive and collaborative. But what is missing from the conversation is the fact that what actually creates those things in human beings isn’t criticism, punishment, bullying, forcing or comparison. It’s self-compassion, allowing someone to be authentically themselves, creating genuinely inclusive environments. And how many companies are really willing to embrace rhetoric like that when it isn’t the dominant language in any corporate environment?
The science says..
If you need the validation of science, we are increasingly seeing studies that show us how much better performance is when someone has a self-compassionate inner narrative. This is fundamental to a growth mindset – a term that is so often hurled at employees without really explaining how you get one. It’s also the basis of resilience. If you don’t have a compassionate inner narrative then all of the traits we associate with resilience – adapting, bouncing back, being consistent etc – become impossible.
The nervous system has to be part of the conversation
We also know how important it is to be in touch with your nervous system. For someone to be able to adapt in the face of adversity they must be able to calm their nervous system. Without a calm nervous system we can’t access the decision-making parts of the brain, we lash out, stop communicating and we run away from problems. These things are the opposite of resilient behaviour in the workplace. And yet, so many resilient narratives today don’t even touch on the nervous system – as if this is something you step out of when you walk into the office. How can you demand that staff be resilient when you’re not giving them information about it or you’re creating environments that inflame and trigger the nervous system?
Other traits that we glorify as “resilient” also have their roots in the “softer’ side of being human that many corporate narratives on resilience simply ignore. Being able to bounce back requires an understanding of motivation, for example. Which is actually all about being able to calm your fears – fear is what causes us to procrastinate and freeze. But there is little emphasis on this. Being consistent requires psychological steadiness – and that only comes from emotional awareness, from making space for your emotions not suppressing them. The employee who cries in a stressful situation isn’t showing a lack of resilience – the boss who shames them for it or explodes in anger, is.
How to create a genuinely resilient team
I write and speak about resilience – and coach it 1:1 – so that we can all have more of it. Because real resilience isn’t a standard of toughness you need to live up to – or a robotic ability to bounce back after something hard has happened. It is supportive and self-compassionate and builds on a foundation of self-awareness and nervous system regulation. All of which may sound like things that are only important for who we are outside of work but, given the changing nature of the working world today, have actually never been more relevant to how we interact professionally. And also to what companies can hope to achieve with their very human workforce.
If you’d like to talk about how this could better support your business, I’m keen to chat – book a free intro call and let me know what your key challenges are.
