Amid increasing anxiety and depression rates, being “more resistant” has become a popular shout of podcasters, influential and life coaches. But have we lost sight of what really means being resistant? This insight episode asks, is resilience everything that is made? Look at the challenging resistance on Tuesday, April 8 at 8.30 pm (AES) in SBS or .
To say that Milena Cifali has had difficult years would be euphemism.
In the summer of 2019 he was in Brisbane with his partner, deciding how to see in the New Year when the couple received a phone call that overturned their lives.
“A friend of ours in Mallacota, said: ‘I just went through your house. Nothing is left. Everything is burned,'” Milena told Insight.
Later they saw their home on national television.
“We saw the rubble. We saw the ash. We knew that our pets were gone, that they had died.
“At that time, you cannot process what you have lost because there is too much to understand.”
Milena and her partner were in Brisbane during the summer of 2019 when her house in Mallacota, Victoria, was destroyed in a forest fire. Fountain: Supplied
Two years later, after resetting Brisbane, Milena returned to the coastal city that once called home to seek the closure of the fires. But what was destined to be a trip to heal culminated in another tragedy.
“I parked on the path of a friend, I went out to get my luggage from the trunk and the car began to roll,” said Milena.
“I was caught under him for about 20 minutes.”
He broke his hip, knocked down his leg muscles and was hospitalized for three weeks. He came home in a wheelchair and even now, depends on a crutch.
“Strange closure.”
Milena was hit by a car, under which she caught her for 20 minutes. Fountain: Supplied
Milena experienced what she describes as a compound trauma, when an adverse event of life accumulates on top of another.
“If you pass through a trauma or moment of adversity in particular and then something else is stacked on top of that and something else, it becomes quite difficult to navigate.”
For her, resilience is a positive and important quality, one that describes as a central one to advance with her life after enduring so much loss at a financial, emotional and physical level.
“I think the central theme is hope. If you have hope, you can recover from trauma and adversity and find a path.”
The people ‘forced to be an inspiration’
Milena’s experience of living through compound traumatic events resonates with Natasha Sholl, although Natasha sees the term ‘resilience’ differently.
Like Milena, Natasha’s life has been placed by difficult experiences, or as she describes it, “a depressing CV”.
Natasha believes that the term ‘resilience’ has been armed. Fountain: Supplied
In her 20 years, her boyfriend died suddenly as they slept. While rebuilding his life, his brother also died without prior notice. Then, in 2022, his 12-year-old son Ezra was diagnosed with cancer and severe Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has left him paralyzed.
She believes that the term resilience can be useless, placing the burden of responsibility in the individual instead of the community.
“It has almost been armed now to force people to be an inspiration when in many cases, there is no other option,” he said.
“The term resilience does not show the sacrifices made … and the things that really go under the surface.”
Natasha’s 12-year-old son, Ezra, was diagnosed with Cancer and Guillain-Barre syndrome, which has left him paralyzed. Fountain: Supplied
Natasha, now 42 years old, resents the way in which our culture shapes a tragedy of life as learning experience.
“Try to re -package the trauma to be acceptable for the general public to say: ‘This terrible thing happened, but it’s fine because you have learned from it.’
“I am not necessarily a stronger version of myself. I am only a different version of myself.”
I am not necessarily a stronger version of myself. I am only a different version of myself.
Natasha Sholl
Honoring our emotions
A quick search on Tiktok or YouTube does not produce shortage of influential, self -help gurus and motivational speakers that sell quick solutions to become more “resistant”, a phenomenon that has some alarmed experts.
“I think we have to understand that people do not necessarily choose to be resistant,” said Insight Helen Street, social psychologist and associate professor at Western University of Australia.
“The more difficult the times that people experience, the more resistant they should be. Therefore, it is problematic if we begin to talk about resilience as some kind of desirable feature.”
She says that we must be careful not to judge people about how they react to challenging situations, which can lead to “people bother to be annoying or panic that are not going through something in a socially acceptable way quickly quickly.”
“We need to honor people’s experience.”
That approach to resilience ‘smile and’ it ‘or’ just
“This idea of moving forward is to close it from the opportunity to hug and connect deeply and run the risk of forming significant relationships around it.”
For the street, resilience is about our ability to navigate the change. If we accept change, we are less likely to feel resentment or life is unfair, he adds.
“[It’s being able to] Honor those negative emotions and then you can find new ways to connect with the world that help you move forward. “
Choose our reaction
Alex Noble agrees that resilience is “adaptation.”
His life changed in October 2018 when he was shot down during a rugby game, hitting his head on the earth.
“Suddenly, in that fraction of a second, I could not feel anything; I could not move anything, and he was literally lying there in the middle of the paddock, like a couple of eyes.”
Alex is now a C4 quadriplegic with a very limited movement from the neck down.
“Everything that mattered to me and the purpose of my whole life took me away, so.”
In the hospital, unable to move nothing more than his eyes, he knew he had two options: surrender and feel sorry for himself or fight. The answer was obvious.
“From then on, I haven’t looked back,” he told Insight.
Alex says he has been forced to adapt to his new circumstances, and is proud of what he has achieved.
“I may not have the ability to control what happened to me. But I did it and I will always have the power to control the way I answer what happens to me.”
Alex says he has been forced to adapt to his new reality since he became paraplegic, and is proud of what he has achieved. Fountain: Supplied
He believes that before his spinal cord injury, he was not so resistant.
“If something small was wrong, then … it would explode, angry … and not have control over my emotions.”
Now 22 years old, Alex is studying a business and lawyer and working on a law firm. He also founded his own boat rental company, traveling around the world delivering key notes and has published a book.
For him, resilience has meant to rise again when life demolishes you.
“[It’s] confront it, adapt it, overcome it. But even more than that, growing from that and being better than before. “
The power of the community
Milena says she also made the decision to “move and beyond, instead of being trapped.”
While many people see that adverse events make them harder, they feel they have made it “softer.”
“More compassionate, more understanding of what other people could be happening,” he said.
“My feeling is now: ‘How can I help others who are going through things?’ Because I can better relate to that feeling of trauma. “
She believes that a community can make an individual more resistant.
“Only with the exchange of union and support, listening and conversation. That is all that is reduced to communication.”
Natasha says he also learned how important the community and a collective approach to foster resilience.
“My social networks are flooded with, you know, raising resistant children. I simply make fun of me because [my son] and his brothers did not have an exposure to what would be required of them. “
When tragedy occurs, people join instinctively, she says.
Natasha says that people naturally come together to support each other in difficult times. Fountain: Supplied
“[My other children] Naturally he knew how to nourish himself; How to put your own needs in second place.
She says that Ezra’s brothers spent every weekend at the UCI so that they can spend as long as possible with their brother.
“They were not trained for that, that simply came from love.”
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