Resilience in Chronic Illness

Resilience in chronic illness is known to result in better health outcomes than usually expected and allow positive adaptation despite the experience of stress. It also enables good recovery from any trauma. Perhaps most importantly, resilience increases the ability to learn, grow and develop as a consequence of adversity allowing one to be transformed by going through such an experience.

Put simply, resilience is the capacity to retain structure, processes and function in the face of disturbances to the system. It is the ability to respond positively to adversity even when this adversity puts health, well-being and development at risk.

Resilience in chronic illness is known to reduce the severity of symptoms and lessen the degree of uncertainty associated with long term stress, as well as modify the quality of life and the progression and mortality associated with illness.

There are several protective factors associated with resilience such as optimism, positive mood, self esteem, self care, independence, social support, reduced anxiety and spiritual inspiration.

These factors have wide ranging effects on several systems that regulate health and functioning such as the neuroendocrine, musculoskeletal, immune and affective systems. Research has shown that people scoring high on resilience scales have much less anxiety and depression, indicating that resilience confers protection against psychiatric illness, which are very common with chronic disease.

Building resilience translates to the adoption of health promotional behavior such as adequate nutrition, stress reduction, self realization and adequate physical mobilization.

Improved resilience has been shown to reduce incapacitation due to chronic disease as well as positively influence many life domains such as financial stability, social support, occupational competence, family dynamics and emotional self regulation.

The Resiliency Initiative aims to provide information, paradigms and interventions that might enable adaptive recovery and enhance resilience in chronic illness and in this way help to reduce the impact of the stress that people with chronic illness face on a daily basis.

If you battle a chronic illness, there are 3 things you need to consider. What you can do? What you have? What do you do if things get worse? Asking why you have your debacle and how much more you will suffer, we believe is NOT resilience enabling. If the last two considerations are left out of the equation, you do not have to ‘hope’ to get better or happier. The primary prerogative with our resilience program is to look squarely at what there is, and work with what you get.

Our resilience paradigm has 3 main elements, Reframing, Arranging and Maneuvering. Do bear in mind that these are only the major building blocks. The program is detailed and geared to generate capacity which keeps it forever open ended. The 3 main building blocks are described briefly below.

With reframing, we look only at the debacle and the measures, and nothing more. Reframing is not a call for resignation. It is clearly seeing that resisting what is occurring leads to machinations that deepen our reliance on things. And the things that we rely on keep increasing. In addition, relying say on medications is a lesser dependence than resorting to harboring ill-will or misgivings. With medications, we might get to a state of lesser pain or discomfort which in turn enables the readier adoption of wholesome views and feelings while ill-will embeds and perpetuates, especially if arising from the experience of illness or difficulty. When we resist, for example an illness, we instantly create a picture that depicts ourselves without comfort or pleasure, and we begin to act, mentally and physically and that too with primarily ourselves in mind. Such action takes us all the way to certainty and security, and if we take recourse to unwholesome states and feelings, we invariably couple such ways of being with things that are as basic as looking for food or say the desire to be free of pain. Hence the emphasis on not resisting. When we do not resist, we abort this entire chain of events. Instead we can focus on what is occurring and what we can do.

Reframing, Arranging as well as Maneuvering involve actions or perhaps more aptly, machinations. Mental or physical machinations can be coarse or they can be extremely subtle. With each such move, we interface with what we think is certain, either directly or by virtue of its absence. In considering our three primary variables impinging on resilience, one cannot ignore direction. Direction could be deemed supposedly positive or supposedly negative. Say, you are worried about the impact of pipe smoking on respiratory health. In that manner, pipe smoking is a negative direction. If we look closely, we find that if we give in to this supposedly negative direction, we actually do not interface with apparent certainty. So, if there is no resistance to the idea of pipe smoking, our machinations tend towards uncertainty. On the other hand, buying bread in order to make a ‘healthy’ sandwich is a positive direction that quite obviously interfaces with apparent certainty. Now consider this. With the pipe smoking example, we stay uncertain and our machinations do not lead to a reliance on the reinforcement of body-mind mechanisms. With the supposedly positive direction of procuring bread, we are certain, and we immediately reinforce all associated body-mind mechanisms!

Why is this relevant to the discussion on resilience? Because no matter what happens, with our machinations, we reinforce our reliance on body-mind mechanisms. And it is these mechanisms that are the basis of illhealth. If we were to stay uncertain, we would not embed factors that could perturb body-mind dynamics. With certainty, which is always only apparently so, we could do damage with even a supposedly positive direction. Reframing aims to mitigate the chain of resistance-machinations-interfacing-reinforcement so that body-mind dynamics are minimally perturbed. If one is unwell, there are many directions that can be taken and there can be a lot of attendant resistance. When we attempt to inhabit a position where we look for nothing, we continually undermine predispositions that might embed what might be unfavorable to wellbeing.

Building Resilience: A Step at a Time

9 Point Meditation on Death

Death! Something we would rather avoid or run away from! However, many have practiced mindfulness of death or Maranasati to great effect. Surprising as it may sound, doing this meditation can be immensely liberating. Amidst the constant noise and chatter, there can be the calming, soothing realization that all things, including us, will end and that there is no fear in this, only freedom.

The meditation is embedded as a pdf file below and is freely available for all to use.

The Resiliency Initiative invites all members of the chronic illness community and beyond to learn about and practice this meditation for building resilience.