So, how do resilient kids and protective factors help you become more resilient around economic loss? Let’s take a look again at the protective factors but this time regarding the emotional consequences of economic loss.
Reasoning ability: The more you can sharpen your problem-solving skills, the more options you can generate about your financial situation. In so doing, you create a sense of control and your anxiety diminishes.
Emotional support outside of the family: I referred to this in my June 14th post, 5 Ways to Get Your Bounce Back After Financial Loss. Having people around you who are understanding and can be supportive of you while you grieve is essential to making it through a loss. It can be awkward talking about economic losses, but even if you just choose one trusted person, you’ll release your internal pressure valve. Less pressure means more ability to adapt and use some of the other skills like problem-solving.
Internal locus of control: While the economy itself may not be your responsibility, how you react to it is. Believing that your behaviors, actions, and attitudes impact your destiny moves you from the “victim” role to the “survivor and beyond” role.
Autonomy: Sometimes combining all of these factors can get confusing. “So, how do I be autonomous, have internal locus of control AND rely on my support system?” Just like that: It’s a both/and situation. You can be BOTH in charge of yourself internally, confident about your decisions AND incorporate your social support into your resiliency toolkit. Since autonomy literally means “self-rule”, you can make your own royal decisions about what best works for you in bouncing back from economic loss.
Sociability: This factor becomes really important when dealing with institutions that may have a big part in economic loss like banks, investment firms, and employers. Sociability is the ability to get positive attention from others. As you are trying to resolve some of your financial woes, can you work with these organizations in such a way that they will want to help you? It’s about finding the right mixture of assertiveness, courtesy, genuineness, and the ability to compromise.