"Unf*ckology": Resilience Is A Choice, Not A Gift From A Wizard
Software engineer and developer Marlene Jaeckel (@mjaeckel) tweeted about an irate mob coming after her recently. Here's a bit from one of Jaeckel's tweets:
Apparently, telling someone to build emotional resilience is now "code for sexism and discrimination."Yup, also scratching my head over that one. 🙄
I tweeted back: "Just because there are more of them than there are of you doesn't mean they're right. You are arguing for girls to behave with resilience." (She did this herself -- she had a pretty tough time.)
I explain in "Unf*ckology: A Field Guide to Living with Guts and Confidence," that resilience is not just a trait but a behavior you can choose to exercise.
An excerpt about resilience from my book:
What helps in being or becoming resilient -- being able to pull ourselves out of misery and get on with life -- is "hardiness."Clinical psychologist Salvatore Maddi explains that "hardiness ... provides the courage and motivation to do the hard, strategic work of turning stressful circumstances from potential disasters into growth opportunities."
In his research, he finds that hardiness is made up of three "interrelated attitudes," which he calls the three Cs:
•Commitment -- a desire to engage with people and life (rather than detach and isolate yourself).
•Control -- being motivated to take action to make things in your life better "rather than sinking into passivity and powerlessness."
•Challenge -- a willingness to face stressful stuff and use it as a learning experience "rather than playing it safe by avoiding uncertainties and potential threats."In looking at Maddi's three Cs, I'm reminded of another C: choice. Even if these attitudes don't come naturally to you, you can choose to act like they do.
By the way, I would also add one more C to the list: comedy.
For me, a big part of being resilient is humor. I laugh about things that happen to me and even publicly make fun of myself. In fact, I try to make a habit of it.
Amazingly, telling people what an ass you are (if you don't cross the line into self-loathing or poor-me-ville) seems to earn you friends and win you high marks for being entertaining at cocktail parties.
In fact, it's a "costly signal" to be able to put yourself down or talk about your humiliations -- suggesting that you have enough social and emotional capital to be flamingly open about your dipshit-hood.
So much out there now is about how girls and women are victims and victimized -- ironically, at a time when women have never had it better.
Of course, there are incentives for those telling girls and women they're victimized -- like careers in the "diversity" industry and the unearned power over others that comes with.
Maybe some touting women as victims just go in for the tribal identification ("We're all just wymyn being squashed by the patriarchal boot!") or for a convenient excuse for not having a gangbusters job or career.
Telling women they are victims in need of protection and help is not the path to power for those women. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite.
I'll pass -- and I hope people tell their kids to give this thinking a pass, too.
One concrete way to build resilience is to put yourself in situations where you have to struggle. For example, in college I spent lots of time hiking around the woods and camping. I had to deal with heat and cold and bugs and learn to read maps. It was a real growth experience. Same thing with taking up weight lifting and many other things. By mastering difficult things, you build resilience because you realize you are not helpless.
cc at April 5, 2018 8:07 AM
Yeah, one better gain some resilience. Otherwise life will try to reduce one to a fine, pink mist.
I R A Darth Aggie at April 5, 2018 9:27 AM
"Resilience Is A Choice, Not A Gift From A Wizard"
That is exactly what those greedy wizards would say. Never wanting to share with the rest of us!
Ben at April 5, 2018 10:39 AM
It's beginning to look as if we may need a thingy--some kind of arrangement or something to protect the frail and easily injured.
We could call it a patriarchy.
Richard Aubrey at April 5, 2018 11:13 AM
I have recently retired from a UK university. Our head of student services commented on the lack of resilience in the students coming though the university system now. And why is this? I would suggest (and this is what I have seen In th UK, but may also apply to other countries) that it has arisen at the same time as the advent of the 'helicopter parent'. The parent that does all in his/her power to smooth the path of their child. Good for the child? Not really.
CarolBT at April 5, 2018 11:16 AM
The parent that does all in his/her power to smooth the path of their child. Good for the child? Not really.
And no good for the parents, in the long run. They'll get old and frail, and whom is going to look after them? their children? ha! And what are the children to do when the old codgers shuffles off this mortal coil?
Give it few more years, and it'll become the old codger's patriotic duty to let the NHS shuffle them off sooner than later.
Cheaper that way, dontcha know?
I R A Darth Aggie at April 5, 2018 12:09 PM
The parent that does all in his/her power to smooth the path of their child. Good for the child? Not really.
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I think you-know-who wrote about all this quite well - it's about so-called gentle parenting:
https://www.rgj.com/story/life/2018/04/03/rosemond-gentle-parenting-just-rebrand-parenting/483312002/
Second half:
"...According to the gentles, misbehavior is not the child’s natural inclination. If the child does something that is – I cannot for the life of me figure out what word should be substituted for 'bad' – punishment is not an option because punishment identifies the behavior as precisely what the behavior is apparently not (i.e., bad) and assigns responsibility to the child for that which must not, at all cost, be termed bad. According to the gentles, children behave badly only because their adult caregivers have failed to 'connect' with them in some essential way (e.g. they have failed to treat said children as equals). It is essential to maintain the charade that children are divine beings sent from Heaven to grace us with their immaculate presence.
"Apparently, at some point in one’s life, one is capable of doing wrong things, but no gentle parenting website clarified this, probably because when people actually do wrong things it is because they were not parented gently enough, if gently at all.
"At this point, full disclosure is in order: Along with a good 98 percent of children raised in the 1950s, I was not raised by gentles. I was not even 'parented.' From early on, I was raised by people who treated me as if I was intelligent and resilient enough to accept full responsibility for my behavior, which was often – GASP! – bad.
"I have a question for the gentles: If misbehavior is not a child’s inclination, how is it that youngsters who’ve never witnessed acts of violence will hit people when they don’t get their way, slap and even bite other children in order to possess their toys, and act demon-possessed when they, the parents, do not obey? If children are semi-divine beings, why then do they begin to lie (i.e. 'I didn’t do it!') as soon as they begin to talk? Why do children raised by even overly-generous parents refuse to share?
"This gentle parenting flimflam is nothing more than a rehash of the unmitigated balderdash that mental health professionals have been peddling since the late 1960s. Since then, child mental health has plummeted (and continues to do so), child and teen suicide has soared, and college campuses now have 'safe spaces' where 20-something little boys and girls who’ve been gentled – that is, coddled and enabled – for their entire lives can play with puppies and sing 'Puff the Magic Dragon' through maxi-pacies.
"Once again, what goes around (and around and around and …) comes around."
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I had to look up "pacie." It's a pacifier.
Btw, the trouble with NOT using a pacifier with a baby, unfortunately, is that it usually leads to thumb-sucking, which can ruin the shape of the teeth and mouth.
lenona at April 5, 2018 2:03 PM
Lenona,
I didn't find your comments annoying. Disorienting, I must say!
Jay R at April 5, 2018 3:05 PM
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