Melissa Doman

So I think that, again, people have this social assumption that

that being resilient only looks like positivity and that being resilient looks like behaviors and emotions and thoughts that resemble a can-do attitude or a silver lining or some other sort of

sometimes unhelpful platitude that doesn't help people.

So they're concerned that they'll be socially judged, they'll be misunderstood, if while they're practicing resilience, that they talk about how hard that is, or how scary it might be, or some other uncomfortable emotion, because people have an incorrect understanding

assumption that when you're being resilient, that you have to be solely positive.

That's really not the case.

We have a whole host of emotions that we're born with out of the box to let us and other people know what's going on in our environment.

If we need help, if we need support, if there's something that is upsetting us, something that we want to be happy about.

And we have those feelings for a reason.

And when we're practicing being resilient and pushing our limits, sometimes a lot of different kinds of big feelings will come up, not all of which are positive.

So whenever I encounter the situations where people are being emotion shamed for talking about the struggles of being resilient, you know, especially the more negative, you know, negative emotions.

What I tend to say, and I'm more direct than most in case you can't tell, is, well, being resilient can be very difficult and it's natural to have issues.

sometimes negative feelings that come up with that.

So it's healthy for me to talk about it as opposed to pushing it down.

Can you help me understand why you don't agree?

People usually don't have much to say when you invite a conversation like that because it kind of stops them in their tracks and makes them challenge their own thinking, which is also very uncomfortable.

So that's usually how I tend to approach that conversation.

Oh, it costs trust.

It costs psychological safety.

It costs being able to have hard conversations, which are where the best learnings lie.