Melanie Hodges Neufeld

I used to sweat the small stuff and struggle to be resilient. Resiliency is defined by the American Psychological Association as:

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.

My struggle with resiliency worsened when I first faced my chronic illness. At the time I thought the pain and fatigue were the root cause. There is no doubt they contributed greatly to my feelings of being overwhelmed and unable to cope. However, my lack of confidence in my abilities likely played an even greater role. As I’ve previously mentioned, my long road to diagnosis exacerbated my lack of confidence in my abilities. I didn’t believe I could handle the challenges of being a lawyer, let alone a lawyer with a new baby and a chronic illness. Yet nearly 15 years later, I find it much easier to get back up again after each setback. Why?

The article, What Resilient Lawyers Do Differently, lists five key things that resilient lawyers do differently including the following that has been particularly useful in my journey:

They build the type of confidence that grows resilience. Successfully navigating challenges gives you a template to manage future adversity; in fact, not experiencing any hardship actually lessens or undermines your resilience.  The belief in your ability to overcome adversity and achieve your goals is called self-efficacy, simply a fancy word for the type of confidence that grows resilience. You build self-efficacy by capitalizing on small wins, through observational experiences (watching other people bounce back triggers, “I can do this too”) and by getting frequent feedback about what’s going right.

This was an organic process for me. I didn’t understand that building my confidence or self-efficacy would lead to greater resilience. Instead, I can look back and see the correlation. I experienced an incredible boost in confidence and self-efficacy once it was confirmed that my pain and fatigue had a physical cause and were not just in my head. I then continued to build my confidence in my abilities by recognizing that it was my research skills, attention to detail and advocacy that directly led to my diagnosis. This confidence spilled over to other aspects of my life and continued to grow with each small win I achieved in managing my illness.  I’m a better mother and lawyer for it.

In the context of chronic illness management, the article Building Self-Efficacy in Chronic Disease Management defines self-efficacy as “an individual’s belief in their capacity to execute and successfully accomplish tasks related to managing their health”. I am proof that as the articles further notes, “a robust sense of self-efficacy has been consistently linked to positive health outcomes, as individuals with higher levels of belief in their capabilities tend to engage in proactive health behaviors, adhere to treatment plans, and effectively cope with the challenges posed by chronic conditions”.

The article provides further guidance on strategies for building self-efficacy in chronic disease management and overcoming barriers to self-efficacy. I will be exploring these topics further for my own sake and will share in later posts.