Have you ever heard the advice “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? Or maybe you’ve heard “grin and bear it”. The latter was a popular phrase I heard throughout my childhood, used by my mother when going through a hard time or when brushing my seriously tangled hair. As I grew up, the same narrative followed me. I call it the resilience narrative, the societal expectation to “take it on the chin” when facing the inevitable hurdles of life. Maybe therein lies the problem. Challenges are inevitable, right? But I want to offer some criticism of this narrative. Constant resilience is responsible for burnout.
The Mask
There’s often pressure to perform within the narrative of resilience. We live in a professional world where workers are rewarded for masking their struggles. We’re meant to show up for work on days we can hardly show up for ourselves because the bills can’t pay themselves, yeah? We have to consider the psychological toll it takes on us when we perform in these ways, and there is.
In an article on burying our emotions, Caldo Clinic notes that the mind and body are intricately connected, and this connection becomes strikingly evident when unexpressed emotions affect our physical well-being. Suppressed emotions can act as silent drivers of psychosomatic symptoms, in which emotional distress manifests as real physical ailments. The profound connection between the mind and body is clearly demonstrated when emotional distress is not expressed and instead translates into physical symptoms. These suppressed emotions are often the underlying cause of psychosomatic ailments, in which internal emotional conflict presents as genuine bodily discomfort.
Why Powering Through is Counterproductive
Not only do we begin to see physical symptoms, but we’re also weakening our brains’ ability to solve problems. Chronic stress keeps your amygdala—the brain’s alarm system—on a loop. When you are told to “power through” without acknowledging the stress, the amygdala continues to signal a threat. This creates a state of “hyper-vigilance” in which your brain prioritizes survival over complex thought. Ignoring chronic stress leaves the amygdala—your brain’s alarm system—stuck in a continuous threat loop. This constant signaling of danger causes the brain to enter a state of “hyper-vigilance,” where survival takes precedence over complex thought.
Allowing yourself the space and kindness to admit when something is wrong, face it, and move through it is a form of emotional honesty that will help you address the problem more effectively and avoidunnecessary burnout.True resilience is not the absence of struggle; it is being honest about it. It is okay to have a hard time, and it is okay not to be okay. You don’t have to muscle through anything or “tough it out.” You’re allowed to need rest or gentleness. Yes, challenges are inevitable. But you don’t have to force a foothold where there is none yet. There will be. But take the pressure off yourself. When you look at the challenges ahead of you, what becomes possible once you give yourself permission to be your own strongest advocate instead of your toughest critic?
