How To Survive This Life If You Weren’t Born Resilient
- Dr. Scott Eilers, PsyD, LP
- Jan 24
- 3 min read
When Life Feels Heavier for You
If life has always felt harder to tolerate than it seems to be for other people, that isn’t a personal failure. Some people are born with thicker emotional skin. Others are born more sensitive, more reactive, more impacted by what happens around them. I was one of those kids. A single scary movie scene could ruin my sleep for weeks. Mild rejection could derail me completely. None of that magically disappeared with age.
What changed wasn’t my sensitivity. It was my recovery time.
Emotional resilience isn’t about feeling less. It’s about how quickly you return to yourself after something painful happens. Not how little you feel, but how fast you stabilize.
Stop Requiring Life to Make Sense
One of the biggest shifts I had to make was letting go of the demand that everything have an explanation I could live with. For years, I needed meaning before I could move forward. That requirement kept me frozen.
Some experiences never resolve cleanly. Some pain never turns into a lesson that feels fair. When you stop waiting for life to make sense before continuing, momentum returns. And momentum shortens recovery after stress far more than insight ever does.
Build Confidence That Can Survive Stress
Resilient confidence isn’t imagined, it’s earned.
Not through dramatic challenges, but through ordinary discomfort:
Showing up when you want to avoid
Staying present instead of escaping
Doing the thing even when you don’t feel steady
Each time you do that, you give your nervous system evidence. That evidence matters more than reassurance or positive thinking. It teaches your body, not just your mind, that you can handle strain.
Learn to Notice What You’re Already Handling
Resilience can’t grow if effort goes unrecognized. Many people operate with an internal system that only tracks failure. Over time, that erodes confidence, even when progress is happening.
You don’t need praise. You need accuracy.
If you handled something better than you used to, that counts.
If you stayed engaged instead of shutting down, that matters.
Your nervous system needs that feedback to recalibrate what “capable” feels like.
Purpose and People Change the Weight of Pain
Pain is heavier when it’s isolated.
Purpose, whether it comes from values, creativity, belief, or contribution, adds context. Suffering with context is more tolerable than suffering without it.
Relationships matter for the same reason. Support doesn’t erase pain, but it distributes it. Feeling understood changes how overwhelming stress becomes.
Take Care of the System Doing the Work
Emotional resilience depends on brain health more than most people want to admit. Sleep, regular meals, movement, and limiting substances aren’t lifestyle extras, they’re structural support.
A depleted brain will struggle regardless of insight, intention, or effort. Supporting the system is not avoidance. It’s strategy.
You don’t need to become tougher or less sensitive. You need enough internal support that life stops feeling like a constant emergency.
That kind of resilience is built slowly, imperfectly, and deliberately. And once it starts to form, life doesn’t become painless, but it becomes manageable.
That’s not weakness. That’s recovery.
(If this post hit home, you’ll probably connect with my new book, The Light Between the Leaves. It’s a practical guide for the days when “try harder” stops working.
-Scott
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Q: Can anxiety routines be a sign of depression?Yes. Many people with high-functioning depression use anxiety routines as coping strategies. These routines often mask deeper struggles but also keep people stuck.
Q: What’s the difference between healthy preparation and an anxiety routine?Preparation helps you engage with life. Anxiety routines prevent you from living it. The difference is whether the habit expands or shrinks your world.
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