Building Resilience Through Storytelling

Recently I heard something on social media that made me stop and think; in the video the creator was asking – if kids are so resilient, why are so many adults in therapy?

I’ve often heard people say that kids are resilient, especially in response to some of the more common childhood events like divorce, loss of a loved one, or having to move to a new town or school. But resilience in kids depends heavily on their environment and upbringing. What most people really mean when they call kids “resilient” is that children are remarkably good at surviving and persevering, especially in the short term.

According to the American Psychological Association, Resilience is the process and outcome of successfully adapting to difficult or challenging life experiences, especially through mental, emotional, and behavioral flexibility and adjustment to external and internal demands. So resilience is not just learning how to survive a challenging experience, it’s learning how to thrive after the fact.

As kids grow, if they continue surviving instead of building resilience they are becoming more susceptible to unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance abuse, as well as mood disorders like depression, or anxiety, and they might have difficulty maintaining relationships, making decisions, and many other problems.

As an example, when I was a kid I remember doing my best to behave, to be liked, to be accepted, to belong, to be favored, to be admired, to be the smartest, or to be the best, essentially to please the people around me , at the expense of my own wants and needs. As an adult, it has been very challenging to learn to stop people-pleasing, but one of the most powerful ways I’ve learned hasn’t just been through therapy, it’s been through hearing stories. When friends, family members, or even people I don’t know on social media provide real-life examples from their own lives about how they’ve overcome people-pleasing, they have helped me not only to name what I was doing but also to see how change was possible.

While storytelling can serve many functions in life, entertainment, persuasion, education, cultural tradition, inspiration, motivation – it can also be used as a form of building resilience. By both sharing our stories with others and listening to their stories in return, we are learning and experiencing the following which each contribute to building resilience:

Connection – Stories connect us to others by allowing us to learn more about them.
Emotional Regulation – Stories can offer a safe space for emotions to be shared and validated, and this is one of the many steps towards learning emotional regulation.
Relatability – Stories allow us to relate to one another which can also reduce negative emotions like shame, and help us to feel like we’re not alone in our experiences.
New Perspectives – Stories help us to learn new perspectives from other people who have had different life experiences shaping their knowledge of the world.
Expressing Creativity – Stories allow us to express our creativity , whether through imagination, humor, or perspective.

Without resilience, many people struggle to cope with life’s stressors, which is a big reason so many adults are in therapy. Luckily we now have the language, tools, and awareness to help kids build resilience early. Storytelling is one powerful way to do that because it allows us to show instead of tell kids what to do even before something difficult occurs.