When Resilience Turns Adversarial

When toughness turns into resistance, resilience quietly loses its point.

My friend, Judith, was detailing an encounter with an inept and lazy government worker. As the story unfolded, she got to the “I showed them” moment. This was met with a lot of “way to go” responses from all of us. Who doesn’t love a good David and Goliath story?

To be fair, Judith’s response was measured, she didn’t “go off” on the employee but without sufficient context, her behaviour would have appeared rude and condescending. On the other hand, she didn’t let this encounter derail her. She spoke to the supervisor, made a formal complaint and achieved her goal. The squeaky wheel clearly got the grease.

I remember hearing similar stories about berating wait staff and evoking the manager to get free appetizers, drinks or even complimentary meals.  Among her friends there was general agreement, and a certain admiration, for her resilience in the face of adversity.

What stuck with me is that Judith had developed a great deal of pride in her toughness. She never met a setback that she couldn’t attack head on.

The mental strain of maintaining an exterior shell can lead to anger. And anger can be useful in a battle. But what if it is a battle of our own making?

We are living in a world that feels more dangerous and less predictable. In our efforts to achieve a sense of control there is a danger that we can confuse resilience with being adversarial. We don’t control world events, but we have moments; moments where we feel our choice is fight or flight.

We have all experienced moments where we feel that a friend has betrayed us when they didn’t include us in a social event. Or where a coworker gets the promotion that we feel we deserved. And when a prize is awarded to someone else, we might feel we deserved it more. But of course, we are only seeing the event, not the intent that led to the outcome.

When we misattribute intent, when we see these as personal attacks, we start to justify our behaviour. We cut our friend off, without explanation. We refuse to work under our coworker’s direction and become resistant, not resilient.

And we threaten to invade Greenland.

When we are angry, even with cause, it is natural to seek an enemy. Because an enemy justifies rage, righteousness and retaliation. Randomness doesn’t.

Unclear motives are not the same as hostile intent.

We don’t get to decide how the world unfolds. We do get to decide whether we meet it with resilience — or interpret disappointment as an attack.