[n9]

it would be a funny joke if you were joking.

you don't resolve anxiety by adding more capacity to endure it (resilience.) Instead you need to address the root causes— most often maladaptive strategies learned in childhood that need to be relearned and corrected, and then once you are no longer creating the negative emotional material because you're living in a better way, you generally need to support healing/recovery from holding the anxiety however long you did. This often involves recreating or revising relationships with close loved ones.

adding more capacity to tolerate almost always makes things worse in the long run. you don't need a bigger tank to hold more poison, you need to stop creating or consuming the poison, and then you need to detoxify yourself to get rid of what you've already taken in.

disclaimer: I am a psychotherapist but I am not acting as anyone's therapist by sharing this, which is my opinion.

[joelegner]

Do you have any citations that support your claim, which seems to be that “resilience,” is unhelpful or harmful?

[cinntaile]

You're asking the wrong person, you should be asking this question to the guy that claimed "learned resilience" works since he's the one that made the original claim.

[joelegner]

I did not ask the learned resilience claimant for evidence, because I take resilience training to be orthodox for the psychological community, and I believe the person I responded to does as well. Information is surprise, and the surprise factor is presumably in the requested evidence supporting the unorthodox position.

I give my own reference below and a quotation from it.

“A meta-analysis found a moderate positive effect of resilience interventions (0.44 (95% CI 0.23 to 0.64) with subgroup analysis suggesting CBT-based, mindfulness and mixed interventions were effective.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6009510/

[tmoertel]

I don’t think it’s controversial to claim that resilience helps both to prevent and to adapt to mental challenges such as anxiety, nor is it controversial to claim that resilience can be learned.

This is not to suggest that resilience is the only option for anxiety, or that it’s the best option in general or any specific case. But I do believe that if we’re discussing the problem of widespread anxiety, learned resilience ought to be part of the discussion. In many ways, it is a more practical (and personally actionable) response to widespread anxiety than waiting for sweeping societal changes which are unlikely to materialize.

For anyone who thinks these claims might be controversial, I’ll cite some leading authorities that most readers will trust not to misrepresent the scientific consensus:

According to the American Psychological Association, “Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands…. Psychological research demonstrates that the resources and skills associated with more positive adaptation (i.e., greater resilience) can be cultivated and practiced.” https://www.apa.org/topics/resilience

The Mayo Clinic says that “resilience can help protect you from various mental health conditions, such as depression and anxiety.” https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/resilience-train...

Harvard Medical School faculty offer a course specifically on building resilience to manage anxiety and mental health: “If you’ve ever felt stressed, burned out, anxious or sad, you’re not alone. These moments are challenging and make it difficult to find a way forward. However, you can use science-backed tools to help manage these experiences and the emotions that come along with them.” https://www.harvardonline.harvard.edu/course/building-person...