Rethinking Resilience: Finding Grounding, Compassion and Connection While Navigating Life with IBD
I had the honour of joining the Mount Sinai Hospital IBD Support Network to lead an educational session on resilience, nervous-system care and living with uncertainty. It’s been wonderful to work with the Mount Sinai IBD community over the years, and this invitation felt particularly meaningful. Living with IBD can involve so much uncertainty, from symptoms and treatment decisions to relationships, work, future plans and navigating the healthcare system itself.
In Rethinking Resilience, I explored the idea that resilience does not have to mean pushing through, bouncing back or becoming endlessly better at coping.
Instead, we can think about resilience as flexibility, connection and the capacity to remain in relationship with ourselves while navigating what we cannot always control.
The presentation explored:
the nervous system and the window of tolerance
recognizing our own signs of stress and activation
mindfulness and the practice of “being where your feet are”
working with stress through Befriend, Discharge and Strengthen
self-compassion and how we meet ourselves in difficult moments
acceptance without resignation or approval
agency within circumstances we cannot fully control
the importance of relationships, community and supportive systems of care
and sense foraging, an approach inspired by the work of neuroscientist Dr. Norm Farb and psychologist Dr. Zindel Segal
One of the ideas I keep returning to is that resilience is relational. We are not adapting to illness in a vacuum. The quality of our relationships, our access to care and support, our communities, our workplaces and the systems around us all shape what is possible.
That means resilience cannot simply be another thing we ask people with chronic illness to do better.
Sometimes resilience might look like advocating for ourselves. Sometimes it might look like asking for help. Sometimes it might be making space for anger or grief. Sometimes it might be resting, connecting with another person, noticing what is happening in the body, or simply coming back to what is here.
Please find the presentation below, and let me know if it resonates for you. I’d love to continue to be a part of your healing journey.
