I recently had an interaction with one of my adult children that made me reflect on emotional resilience and its impact on PD. My son was recently diagnosed with Adult onset ADHD and bipolar II. He’s on meds, but is still trying to learn how to manage his disease and cope with daily life. He tends to make bad decisions. Or maybe more correct, he still struggles with consequences of his decisions. This is the background that led me reflect on emotional resilience. When his name appears on caller ID, I never know what to expect. Last week it was a car accident that totaled his car. He didn’t have insurance and he’s got a loan on it. He also drove the car knowing it had mechanical problems and wasn’t safe. Physically he’s fine.
Let me bring you back to emotional resilience. As parents, we worry about our children. We want what’s best for them. We hate to see them suffer. In my opinion, everything I just described are stress triggers. We can’t control stress caused by others actions. However, we can try to control how we react. And how we react will lead to how well we recover from stress. This is the basic definition of emotional resilience. My question for the community is what do you do to strengthen your emotional resilience? Do you, like me, find the recovery process from a stressful situation harder and maybe slower to with PD than before PD?
Sorry to hear that your son is going through all of this. I’m glad that he’s OK after the accident though. I don’t do anything specifically to strengthen my emotional resilience, I just keep pushing forward because I have to. It’s definitely harder for me to recover from stress now versus before PD.