We praise the employee who works through burnout, the patient who faces illness with a smile, the entrepreneur who rebuilds after failure, and the person who keeps going despite circumstances that would exhaust anyone. We tell them how resilient they are. Then we move on, satisfied that we have said something kind, without asking a more important question: Who gets to decide what their life looks like after survival?
The World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety account for 12 billion lost working days globally each year. It identifies excessive workloads, limited support, and job insecurity as risks to mental health. I believe we need to stop treating resilience as the ultimate measure of how well someone handles adversity.
The expectation to bounce back can become another burden imposed on people already carrying enough. Worse, it can turn an experience they survived into an identity they feel obliged to maintain. I know how easily others can define you by what has happened to you.
My own experiences, including quadriplegia and a stroke in 2022, could give people ample reason to place me in the familiar category of the survivor. People want to recognize courage, honor hardship and find hope in another person’s story. Yet I refuse to make survival the headline of my identity.
The things that happen in our lives form our stories. They do not determine the entirety of who we are. The danger begins when praise becomes a prescription.
I call one part of this problem "borrowed beliefs." These are ideas about ourselves that we accept from people whose opinions carry weight in our lives. A parent tells a child they are destined to become an engineer. A teacher identifies someone as the gifted one.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
