I grew up hearing it. Maybe you did too: the glib mantras of toxic resilience.
Suck it up.
Don’t be so sensitive.
Just move on.
Our parents, coaches, and sometimes even friends pushed us to be tough and deal with whatever life throws at us without complaining. This advice isn’t entirely wrong. After all resilience is essential to navigate life’s challenges.
But there’s a shadow side to resilience that we rarely talk about, a point where “sucking it up” stops being helpful and starts causing harm.
What Resilience Really Means
Let’s start by understanding healthy resilience. 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.”
It’s not about being invulnerable or never feeling pain. True resilience means knowing how to respond and adapt when life gets hard.
Resilience helps us overcome obstacles rather than getting stuck in the mud. It’s about taking action, finding creative solutions, and learning workarounds when we face challenges.
When I was recovering from my brain tumors and subsequent stroke, resilience meant finding new ways to accomplish tasks when my body wouldn’t cooperate. It meant adapting to a new normal without giving up on my goals.
But resilience doesn’t mean suffering in silence or refusing to seek help.
When ‘Sucking It Up’ Turns Toxic
Recently, I had an appointment with a gastro psychologist for my gut issues. As we talked, she kept pointing out symptoms and asking if I’d mentioned them to my doctor. Time after time, I responded, “I just deal with it, so what?”
Her response hit me hard: “It’s not normal.”
This is called maladaptive resilience or toxic resilience. We tend to tolerate situations that shouldn’t be endured, continuously coping with difficult circumstances without making efforts to change them or care for yourself. It’s not the resilience that’s toxic, but rather the ongoing situation we don’t want to address.
Think about it: a battered spouse might seem “resilient” because they endure abuse day after day, but its actually harmful endurance. Sometimes what we label as strength is an inability to recognize when something needs to change.
In my own life, I remained silent about symptoms because I didn’t want to be a bother. I channeled my inner tough-skinned rhinoceros, letting problems roll off my back rather than addressing them.
The result? I suffered instead of finding solutions.
Resilience vs. Survival Mode
Another critical distinction we need to make is between resilience and survival mode. These are completely different states, though many people confuse them.
Survival mode is when your body’s fight-or-flight response is perpetually activated. You’re running on adrenaline, cortisol is pumping through your system, and your body is constantly braced for danger. This state was designed for short-term threats, like running from a predator, not for months or years of continuous stress.
True resilience, on the other hand, allows you to maintain your mental and physical health despite challenges. We shouldn’t just grit our teeth and white-knuckle it through pain. Instead, we should find ways to adapt to circumstances and preserve our well-being.
I once thought I was being resilient when I worked through intense pain, ignored my body’s signals, and pushed through exhaustion—but I wasn’t.
I was in survival mode, and it cost me dearly with repeated health crises that could have been prevented.
The Bank Account Theory of Resilience
I like to think of resilience as a bank account. When you face adversity and push through without addressing the underlying issue or caring for yourself, you make a withdrawal. If you only make withdrawals without deposits, eventually you’ll hit bottom.
What are deposits?
- Getting enough sleep.
- Proper nutrition.
- Exercise when your body allows it.
- Meaningful connections with others.
- Asking for help when you need it.
- Addressing problems rather than enduring them.
- Taking time for activities that bring you joy.
It takes just 20 minutes to pull yourself out of a stress peak if you use the right techniques. That’s a huge deposit you can make into your resilience account. The more you practice these techniques, the faster you recover, and eventually, your stress peaks become lower and less frequent.
But if we keep withdrawing without making deposits, we deplete ourselves—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Individual Resilience vs. Community Support
We often see resilient people as lone wolves fighting through the muck. But humans aren’t meant to function this way. We’re social creatures who thrive on connection. Our bodies and minds calm down when we have support. I’ve seen this play out in my healthcare career and with my family and friends
True strength is knowing when to lean on others and when to stand on your own.
This is something I experienced during my recovery from brain tumors. When I tried to power through alone, I missed symptoms that needed attention.
Have you experienced moments where you mistook endurance for resilience? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. But then I got my mom involved.
She would push me to Queens on the New York subway. Let me tell you, the world is not kind to someone in a wheelchair, but my mom has the strength of a sumo wrestler. She’s also a genius.
She came up with a therapy program that included acupuncture, cupping, herbalism, and piano practice to work my hand muscles. We would walk up and down stairs and hills. My physical therapist was amazed at my progress.
We can stop expecting ourselves to handle everything alone and start building support systems that let resilience flourish. I know the “suck it up” mentality dies hard, but true strength comes from knowing when to reach out and when to stand firm.
To read more about the power and limitations of resilience, check out how a children’s story shaped my understanding of strength during two of my life’s greatest challenges.