If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that there are things we cannot control. Probably the biggest thing I’ve learned this year is how to be okay with uncertainty — not something I have traditionally placed as one of my top life skills. I like to plan, control, and organise everything, and it sure is hard to do that when life hands you an ‘unprecedented’ global pandemic.

In acknowledging that life is sometimes a big ol’ shitstorm, it’s a good time to adjust our sails to prepare for whatever crazy poop-winds might be in our future. Whether we thrive or barely survive in a period of adversity depends on many things. Some — such as genetic inheritance and childhood experiences — are outside of our control, but others are learnable skills. Let’s focus on what we can change, shall we?

The word ‘resilience’ comes from the Latin ‘resiliens’, which means to bounce back or rebound. It doesn’t mean you sail through life with a smile on your face, accepting everything, feeling nothing, spouting positive platitudes, and avoiding all suffering. It means that you bounce back from adversity and deal with it effectively, growing and building strength from your experiences where possible. Regardless of your starting point, we can all build more of it. Here are five aspects you can cultivate at home.

1. Emotional Awareness and Regulation

Are your feelings your friends or enemies? Helpful servants or cruel masters?

Emotions are messengers that  prepare you for action. There are no ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’ feelings, although they may be inappropriately directed (such as  phobias) or out of proportion (as seen in  depression and  anxiety). Fear, anger and worry all have clear protective benefits, preparing us to respond to a situation. When you can recognise and name your feelings without judgment and get curious about them, you reclaim your power.

Good emotional regulation has clear mental health and life benefits. Not to be confused with denial or avoidance, it allows us to make space between the feeling and impulsive reaction to consider our response. The trick is to create that space to choose, or as a teacher of mine once said, “smell the soup and not put your whole head in it.”

Practice
Learning to stop, acknowledge, and be curious about your feelings can be enough to give you that space. Practices like mindfulness, meditation, or yogaincrease your ability to self-regulate. I use a visualisation of driving a car with all my feelings in the back seat. Sometimes Anger shouts: “Hey! That guy is being a douche! Let’s do something about it!” I thank anger for that information and then use my wisdom to decide which direction to take. I don’t let anger jump into the front seat. He’s a terrible driver.

2. Active Coping Skills

Active coping is taking responsibility for your situation and using your internal resources to create solutions. It includes problem-solving, information-seeking, requesting support, changing your environment, and reframing. Someone with good active coping skills focuses less on changing the unpleasant feeling, which is a bit like covering the Check Engine light with gaffer tape, and more on popping the hood to see why the light is on. A problem-focus rather than emotion-focus strategy is likely to lead to better outcomes.

Active coping skills can be learned, and like any skill or muscle, you can train yourself up on smaller stressors so you can be ready for the big ones and the approach becomes second nature.

Practice
Ask yourself:
What is the outcome I would like from this situation?
Am I taking the best steps to achieve it?
What can I do to improve this situation, if anything?
What other information would help me?
Who can I ask for support or guidance?
Can I simply remove myself from this situation?
Is there a way I can look at this that is less stressful?

3. Flexible Thinking

Flexible thinking allows us to see things from multiple perspectives, adjust to change, and see potential positive and negative outcomes of any situation. If I hold a rigid belief that I require a promotion to be happy, not getting it is likely to devastate me. Flexible thinking allows me to consider other paths to happiness, such as changing companies or focusing on developing new skills, and to see that my value and happiness are not determined by this job alone. People may even transform major life adversity into new life purpose and direction, like those who become spokespeople for conditions that affect them or their loved ones. A big part of cognitive flexibility includes acceptance of the things you can’t change (like the past) and working with them rather than against them.

Practice
Think about stressful life events you have endured in the past, particularly those which felt unsurmountable at the time. Now reflect on three positives that came from each. You may even find that in hindsight, you have gratitude for elements of it. Recognise that whatever you are going through right now, there’s a good chance you’ll see positives in it in the future.

4. Physical Wellbeing

It is no secret that good physical well-being improves your mental well-being. Your mind, body, and emotions are intertwined in complex ways and need to be cared for as one holistic system. Nutrition, physical activity, sleep, and alcohol consumption all have clear links to resilience and good mental health.

Certain nutrients are required for your brain’s mood functions to work, and if your diet is largely processed low-nutrient food,  it can affect your mood and your resilience. Mental illness can be caused or exacerbated by nutritional deficiencies and treated with dietary changes or supplements. Consider getting your levels of the essential nutrients checked with your GP.

Activity
Ask yourself honestly how your diet, activity level, alcohol intake, and sleep are serving you, and give them each a score out of 10 if you like. Identify areas for improvement, and find enjoyable ways to up those scores. Fun and pleasure are key: if you’re forcing yourself to eat kale when you hate it or jogging when the weather is cold and wet, you’re not likely to keep it up. May I suggest dancing and roast veggies instead?

5. Social support

Many studies have been done on the benefits of social support. It has been shown to ease or prevent PTSD, depression, suicide, anxiety, and even dementia. Simply having a lot of people around you is not enough though — the support must be positive, and interactions like criticising, blaming, minimising, and undermining can be more harmful than no social interactions at all!

We need to actively nurture friendships with people who encourage us, support us, and make us feel good about ourselves. If you are currently in a lockdown situation this can be more challenging, but do what you can with what you have available: video, phone calls, messages, and socially distanced picnics are all helpful.

Practice
Make a list of people who support you, inspire you, or provide positive social support. Keep that list handy for times when you need a boost — sometimes when we’re feeling fragile, it can be hard to remember who our supports are. Can you do something supportive for any of those people today? A kind message, a small gift, or an expression of gratitude? An act of kindness gives both you and the receiver free happy brain chemicals!

That’s it folks. Hoist up your sails, fortify your vessel and get yourself in the best condition possible. Because 2020 ain’t over yet, and I want us all to get through it in one resilient piece!

When I started researching my need for novelty and change, the first thing I came across was an article titled “Are you addicted to change? 9 signs you have to slow down.” And my response to that was:

OH FUCK RIGHT OFF.

Apart from the fact I hate being told what I ‘have’ to do, I’m also sick of being warned my life choices are wrong because I’ll miss out on all the things society deems necessary. If I like change so much, how will I commit to a husband ’til death do us part? Raise healthy children to adulthood? Get a full-time job and stay in it until I’m 70? So that I can pay off that 30-year mortgage?

And my response to that is: I guess I won’t! Then without a lick of remorse I’ll jump in my van and drive off to my next destination, laughing my ass off.

If I were to plot a colour-coded graph of my mental health over the past 20 years, you’d see some very distinct patterns. I can be happy in one place for about 6–9 months. Beyond that, the longer I stay, the sadder I get. The sadder I get the more my unhealthy addictions surface, and over time that has appeared as drinking, prescription and recreational drugs, and sex with emotionally unavailable men. This hastens the onset of depression, which leads to more of those behaviours, until somewhere in the midst of rock bottom I somehow find my way to upping and leaving.

Sometimes I’ve left because circumstances have forced me into it, and sometimes I’ve had the insight to understand how bad things were and made an intentional choice or grabbed an opportunity that appeared. Either way, the moment I jump in the car or hop on a plane, it’s like the clouds part, angels sing to me and I magically notice an immediate return of inspiration, optimism, and excitement. Suddenly, happiness is within my grasp, I no longer need to numb out with my addictions, and everything is just fine.

I’ve spent much of my life feeling ashamed of my ‘failure’ to achieve life goals. I struggle to stay in ‘normal’ jobs and relationships longer than a year, and frankly I’m usually ready to leave after about three months. I’ve never been happy for long in a romantic partnership, I’ve never felt maternal and have now had my tubes tied, and I can’t seem to settle down in any given town or city. I spent 12 years overseas in 30 different countries, and have been travelling around Australia in a van for the past two.

“You can’t run away forever,” people chide me, which used to add to my shame. The question I have now is… why is what I’m doing ‘running away’ and what you’re doing ‘normal’? What if I went around telling people “You can’t just stagnate in one place forever!” Or when they asked me “What are you running from?” I countered with “What false sense of security are you clinging to?”

If I had one regret, it would be that I’ve wasted so much time failing at being ‘normal’ rather than putting my energy into an authentic solo nomadic life, full of the independence, change and novelty I love. Maybe, we don’t need to pathologise itinerant tendencies and novelty seeking as ‘running away’ or ‘an addiction’. Maybe, we can just accept that for some people, this IS normal. This is what makes us happy. When someone is stressed because their life is unstable, nobody accuses them of being ‘addicted to stability’, so why are change-lovers so hastily tarred with this brush?

And don’t confuse my need for novelty with unreliability or irresponsibility. In my online work I’ve never once missed a deadline, and as an online student I boast a full array of High Distinctions. I have close and meaningful friendships in different places and value my connections and relationships with other people. All the research I did on ‘novelty seeking’ and ‘neophilia’ was full of warnings. Warning: This may be bad if you have to present a consistent appearance in your job! Warning: This may be bad if you have to abide by someone else’s rules! Warning: You could be more prone to infidelity! Warning: People high in novelty seeking are more likely to develop substance use disorders!

My thoughts on that are: If we stop trying to fit into jobs that don’t suit us, abide by so many rules laid down by others and cram ourselves into traditional monogamous relationship styles, maybe we wouldn’t be driven to seek escapism through substance abuse. How many of these warnings would become irrelevant if we supported people to be who they are instead of shaming them as ‘running away’ and labelling their lifestyle as an addiction?

And honestly, if you’ve ever shamed someone for their adventurous lifestyle… is it possible you might be… just a tiny bit jealous?

You judge plenty of books by their covers, all the time. It’s an adaptive behaviour that couldn’t and shouldn’t be circumvented. Whenever a situation gets your attention, your mind rushes to access any information you have associated with the apparent cues of the situation, so you know how to feel and what to do about it.

· On a dark lonely street, you see a young man in a black hoodie with face tattoos and a slouch, watching you — probably a criminal, wants to rob me, cross the street to avoid him.
· The light turns green and the driver behind you immediately leans on the horn — they must be a rude and impatient asshole, grow up dickhead.
· A woman screams at her tantrum-throwing toddler in the supermarket and smacks him in the face — Obviously angry, probably tired, possibly a terrible mother who should never have had children.

Your attributions will vary based on your outlook, experience and upbringing, but one thing I promise is that you make them.
I was house-sitting in Perth and in the second year of my psychology degree when I woke up one morning and shuffled into the kitchen to make coffee. I was sick of feeling so down. I wasn’t coping and my mental and emotional health was dismal. God I was such a mess right now I couldn’t even clean up after myself and the sink was full of dirty dishes. Tears gathered in my eyes as dark clouds of hopelessness rolled on in to wreck my day. If I could only… If I wasn’t such a….

Wait.

Rewind.

Was any of this really true??

Because I had only read about Self-Perception Theory a few days earlier as part of my psychology curriculum, I was able to catch myself creating this story before it got legs. What the hell… my mental health was fine! I had seen the dishes in the sink and since letting the house get messy is one symptom of failing mental health for me, I had unconsciously come to the conclusion that I therefore had failing mental health, and my mind had run with it, winding up a miserable story that invoked tears and sadness that actually wasn’t even true. The story fed into my hopelessness which fed back into my story and so the downward spiral of shittiness descended. And I started to wonder how often I did this. Particularly when I was most vulnerable, before my morning cup of caffeine and positivity had had a chance to circulate my bloodstream.

Self-Perception theory states that “Individuals come to ‘know’ their own attitudes, emotions and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behaviour… Thus, to the extend that internal cues are weak, ambiguous or uninterpretable, the individual is functionally in the same position as an outside observer… who must necessarily rely upon those same external cues to infer the individual’s inner states.” (Bem, 1972).

Basically, in the absence of obvious reasons for it, you judge your internal state by your behaviour in the same way you judge others.

Got a bad grade on my exam — I must be stupid or I don’t care about this subject.

Haven’t been to the gym in months — I must hate exercise and I’m lazy and undisciplined.

Messy sink full of dishes — My mental health must be taking a slide.
It’s fairly easy to see how these attributions become self-perpetuating cycles.

I didn’t go to the gym last week → I must be lazy → I am lazy, so I act lazy → I don’t go to the gym this week → I must be lazy.

Much of what happens internally, we are blissfully unaware of. Psychology has shown us that even when we THINK we’re aware of the reasons we do, say or feel things, we’re probably not — at least not all of it. It is much easier to change our external environment and behaviour than it is our thoughts and feelings because they are visible, measurable and observable to us.

When I know my mental health is iffy or potentially a bit fragile, I take extra care to do the kinds of things I do when my mental health is great. I exercise outdoors, I clean my bedroom, I say nice things to people and offer help freely. I go to the local café for my morning coffee and smile at people, and I make a point of getting things done, even if they are small, manageable things.

Here are your two steps to hacking self-perception for happiness.

STEP ONE: Make a list of the kinds of things you do when you’re feeling GOOD and when you’re feeling BAD. Do as many things from the GOOD list as you can each day, even if only a few of them feel manageable. Things that are immediately visible are particularly helpful, such as cleaning the kitchen or making your bed. Activities like going for a walk outside, eating the healthy foods or dancing have a double benefit — exercise, nutritious food and fresh air will give you a boost on TOP of your self-perception. Do them even if you don’t feel like it. ESPECIALLY if you don’t feel like it.

STEP TWO: Don’t reward yourself for doing these things. The presence of an extrinsic reward can lead you to conclude that you undertook the activities for the sole purpose of receiving the reward, the attribution to ‘feeling good’ becomes redundant and the effect is lost. You have to keep your reasons ambiguous to make space for the happiness attribution. If you want to use rewards, make them goal-based rather than task-based. For example, reward yourself for clocking up 100km on the treadmill this week rather than for showing up to the gym.

And that’s it! Go forth and hack your attributions my friends — your mental and emotional wellness is worth working for.

“Hello, I’ve come to take my clothes off.”

The announcement was offered with self-assurance and my widest ‘no big deal’ smile, but scrutiny would have revealed the tremble in my fingers as I released each button and allowed my clothes to drop to the ground.
**

“Who are you?” We ask each other in self-development workshops, gazing into each other’s eyes with what we hope is unconditional acceptance and gentle curiosity. Well, I’m Larissa. I’m single and childless, mostly by choice. I’m a vegetarian, I’m a hypnotherapist, an internal seeker who values self-awareness and self-inquiry. I’m a psychology student, a traveller, and a singer. These are the answers I’ll offer in response to this inquiry, but this workshop-appropriate list lacks an important classification, perhaps the most important one. It whispers to me from shadows of shame.

I’m Larissa, and I’m fat.

As a size 16 woman weighing in at around 90kg, I’m labelled ‘obese’ on the BMI, my defining number languishing chubbily on the red end of the Heart Foundation scale, reminding me I’m in danger of keeling over from a fat red heart attack at any moment. The underweight end is blue, by the way, which hardly offers the same sense of health-shaming alarm, even though the risks are of similar magnitude. My ‘obesity’ is not unusual, it doesn’t render me disabled, I don’t have diabetes or heart problems, and you probably know people fatter than me. But this story isn’t about superlatives and bizarre events. It’s about the very common experience of being a fat person in a fat-shaming society, and how the tendency to store calories like an efficient famine-ready camel can completely shape your life.

Do you cringe or feel uncomfortable every time I use the word ‘fat’? Good, me too. That’s why it’s important. Let’s work through this together.
**

Born 6 weeks premature and heavier than the average full-term baby in Whyalla hospital, I started this life big. I was 8 or 9 when I was referred to a childhood obesity specialist and sent for tests that involved gagging down a salty orange drink they told me would taste like flat Fanta (lies) and being jabbed with needles that made me cry. The wiggly line on my chart indicated thyroid dysfunction, and marked the beginning of a youth full of doctor’s visits and medication.

At the age of 9 I learned to diet. I learned that food was ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and mostly the enemy, that my body was wrong, and to feel shame if I ate food that made it more wrong. I saw dieticians who made me keep food diaries, and berated me if I ate cake at a party. I remained chubby, but medication and diets kept me out of the ‘obese’ neighbourhood, and experimenting with eating restrictions to manage my weight became a major part of Who I Am.
**

“Love yourself!” The holistic practitioners sing to us now, “Love yourself no matter what size you are!” and they Insta-pose with hearts and flowers in their thin bodies that have always been thin, pleased with themselves for having distributed the new gospel and therefore solved the problem and fulfilled their purpose.

Self-love is great in theory, but allow me to present you with the front page of Realistic News, smacking it loudly with the back of my hand. How do you love yourself when you’ve been given the opposite message from every angle for 40 years? Every billboard, every movie, every TV program, advertisement and magazine shouts ‘Beauty is thin!!’, Disney princesses are thin, the fatties are all villains or comedic characters. These are the subconscious programs we receive when our brains are still forming, they mould our neural pathways and create our hard-wired beliefs when we’re too young to question them. Thin = good, Fat = bad.

A large woman on social media commits a daring rebellion, posting a picture in a bathing suit with a real message of messy, difficult self-love. Inevitably the comments are littered with disgusted reminders that promoting obesity is bad, deeply held fatphobia and thin supremacy disguised as concern for her welfare and the welfare of others. Cover yourself up, your body is a harmful message. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Think of the children. Go for a walk.

But you know, love yourself.
**

I can’t remember when the teasing began, but by the ninth grade I hated school. I started skipping classes, and by my final year I barely turned up at all. I had no problems with the work. I had problems with not being able to get through a single day without a fat joke, comment on what I was eating, or contemptuous giggles. Best years of your life, my arse. I didn’t learn strength in the face of adversary, or how to rise above mockery. What I learned was the art of avoidance and walking away, which combined with the freedom of adulthood I have refined into a superpower, departing painful situations in a single bound, with a smile and a wink and a hefty dose of non-attachment.
**

I’ve tried all the diets. The thing about diets though, is that they are more highly correlated with weight gain than weight loss. In fact, weight gain is the most likely outcome of a diet. When you intentionally drop kilos, your hormones and metabolism adapt in such a way as to practically guarantee that weight will return. On top of that, it now appears that health risks such as heart disease and diabetes may be caused by weight cycling rather than obesity itself, a result of constantly losing weight and gaining it back in attempts to comply with society’s insistence that we must be thinner.

I gave up alcohol this year. Feeling inspired and motivated, I started implementing food changes in my life, and by that I mean I went on another diet. I gave up wheat, sugar, vegetable oils, trans fats, all grains, starchy vegetables, and all dairy except for grass-fed butter, which is a ‘good fat’. I ate mostly veggies to keep my fibre intake up but I didn’t lose weight, so I started intermittent fasting 3 times a week and exercising daily. Two months later I still hadn’t lost any weight. Upon stepping off the scales that day, I cried and ate half a litre of ice cream, and gained half a kilo.

Eat less fat, eat less sugar, eat more protein and fat and avoid carbs, fruit is good, fruit is bad, meat is good and also bad, go on a juice fast, try intermittent calorie restriction and don’t starve yourself, eat a big breakfast, don’t eat until midday. Being overweight is bad, losing weight and putting it back on is worse. This is diet culture. Work your butt off, all the time, following some arbitrary rules for minimal rewards and then despair in the experience of your body fighting you to keep or return to its heavier weight. Rinse and repeat.
This week I started a new diet called a ‘thyroid protocol’. Yes I do know the definition of insanity, but what else is there to do?
**

Around the end of high school, new government guidelines meant I lost my thyroid medication and in the space of a year, my weight skyrocketed to more than 100kg. I was wearing a dress size 20 at age 20. The world is not kind to those of a dress size 20, in my experience. I could not get a job, people regarded me with irritation and scorn, and I learned to shrink myself energetically in attempts to be inoffensive.

If you’re reading this and thinking “She must have been eating a lot of cheeseburgers though,” you’re both wrong, and just like everyone else. It’s a well-documented psychological phenomenon that we attribute other people’s perceived failures to enduring negative personality traits, even in the face of disconfirming evidence, because it gives us a sense of control and boosts our own self-esteem. This is why it feels acceptable to judge fat people. People blame us, our personal failure, a lack of willpower and excess of overindulgence that they personally would never fall prey to.

Harvard conducted a study on ex-contestants of The Biggest Loser who had regained weight, and found that their metabolisms had undergone ‘adaptation’. Their bodies now refused to burn calories in the same way as other people, making weight gain inevitable. When the results were published, thin people squinted at them, skimmed over the bits that challenged their beliefs and typed “They must have returned to their old habits” into the comments before continuing with their self-satisfied thin lives.
**

I have not experienced self-love as a destination, but as ongoing choices. The first time I got naked for public scrutiny, I stood terrified in the spotlight of their gazes, half-waiting for their expressions of disgust, knowing glances and smirks as they considered the ‘wrongness’ of my body. “What beautiful curves,” they muttered as their pencils scribbled over paper and I stood as still as possible, breeze caressing my skin and courage in my silent affirmations. I still have many of those drawings, gifts from the artists, tucked away as a physical reminder of my beauty and bravery.

I life model professionally now, and every pose I offer is a statement of my rebellion. This is me. I am art. I am beautiful, and I refuse to be ashamed. The loveliest renditions I’ve seen are not the ones that slim me down and gloss over my imperfections, but the ones that capture my bulges and cellulite whilst revealing the radiance of a bold, imperfect woman whose worth comes from somewhere much deeper than her physical contours. This is my rebellious self-love, and no matter how hard that choice feels sometimes, I keep making it. Because THIS… is Who I Really Am.

Care to join me?