Stiff Upper Lips
The myth of resilience as a state of constant calm.
It’s not just a British thing
When I googled “Stiff Upper Lip” (and after I ignored many photos of what looked like various types of cold-sore), I was met with a plethora of images of older white men in bowler hats. You know the type, dripping with old school gravitas. Sometimes the hat was replaced or enhanced by a British Flag in the backdrop. It seems the internet considers a stiff upper lip to be a British thing.
I’ve lived in the UK most of my life. Grew up in London, went to university in Bristol and have since spent the majority of my working life back in London. I also spent some time studying in Togo and Paris, a summer working on a student visa in the USA, and a glorious 4.5 years working in Sydney, Australia. In addition to these stints living in different places I’ve traveled extensively, seeing a lot of this magnificent planet of ours, and meeting people from very different backgrounds and with very different experiences to me. How dull life would be if we only spent it with people living the same life as us.
What I've realised from my travels is that a stiff upper lip is just the name we give to a mask in a sea of masks. It is a mask that we are taught to wear to hide how we are feeling. Because, the world would end if people saw our messy emotional truths (spoiler alert - it actually wouldn’t, I have tested this theory out). On my travels, I’ve seen a lot of different shapes of mask designed to do the exact same thing. Masks of respect, based on enforced hierarchies. Masks of “work is my identity” ambitious employee bravado. Masks of the perfect doting wife and mother. Masks of the outdated, misogynistic sitcom-funny, distant husband and father. Masks that belong on walls in museums, not on people.
Some masks are loud and scream for attention. Others are worn to protect the wearer from being noticed. I wore the mask of a conscientious, workaholic throughout my twenties,and it made me sick. Masks are fixed in a single expression, they aren’t designed to change or grow. We are. And I get it, in certain spaces it is not safe to share your whole self. Your safety always comes first. But if you never get to take the mask off, something inside you is liable to break. And speaking as someone who has spent a lot of time researching why people are diagnosed late for various types of cancer, a stiff upper lip could even kill you. Seriously, if you’re not well, be a bother. Get help. Self advocate. Make noise. Take up space. I don’t care how busy the GP is!
But I digress, I’m here to talk about resilience, the cancer stuff has a tendency to sneak in.
Resilience is more bungee cord than rope
Probably because I grew up in Britain, when I used to think about resilience I’d visualise these calm, senior, white men, with luxuriant mustaches and oodles of gravitas. Maintaining a stiff upper lip and being resilient occupied the same psychological geography for me. Resilient people didn’t blink in the face of challenges, they silently assessed them, took charge and saved the day. No matter what you threw at them, they would simply wipe their bowler hats clean and fix the situation, before having a fortifying cup of tea. Why did it take me so long to notice that this version of resilience is nothing but a hollowed out mask?
In this fantasy, resilience is this unshakable ability to be calm despite the storms of life’s adversities, a lie reinforced by toxic workplaces who like to push their employees to breaking point, before discarding them. It is like having a robust and constant rope, that you can rely on to always hold firm, even if, at times it is wrapped around you so tight, you struggle to breathe. By this definition, I was about as resilient as I was a serious grown up. Which is to say, not even vaguely resilient. I’ve always felt everything far too much. I am an exposed nerve moving through life. The curse of the empathetic writer. I can go from a good moment and plummet straight into the abyss of a pitch black moment. I am a bungee cord human. But I have also been to hell and back (more than once, I should get frequent flyer points), and I’m still cracking jokes and refusing to take life too seriously.
The truth is that rigidity is the enemy of resilience, not an aspect of it. In life as in architecture (just saying that to sound clever, but I’m semi-confident that it is true), some flex is required to avoid collapse. Googling the definition of resilience I get:
the capacity to withstand or to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness
the ability of a substance or object to spring back into shape; elasticity
I don’t like the “speed” aspect baked into this definition of resilience. Who decides what the appropriate level of quickness is? Life is not a race. So I decided to google “what is the best definition of resilience” (I offer zero apologies for dragging you down my google rabbit hole). This is what I got:
“Resilience refers to the ability to successfully adapt to stressors, maintaining psychological well-being in the face of adversity. It’s the ability to “bounce back” from difficult experiences.”
Boom - the bungee cord.
You can have bad days and still be resilient. The important thing is to not to get addicted to the bad days. To not live there. To resist the urge to succumb to the seductive voice in your head telling you to
let go of hope
stop fighting to be happy
stop showing up for yourself
ignore the stinky bedding and go back to bed
feel bitter
feel wronged.
You get the gyst.
3 techniques to help bounce back
A crucial caveat here, is that if you are struggling with depression, get professional help. I know there can be waiting lists through traditional routes, but if you can afford to, pay to go private. If you can’t, see if there are charities that can get you get access to help. I am not a therapist, but I have been a patient. Therapy helped me a lot. A well-intentioned substack is not a replacement for therapy or medication if you need it.
The three techniques I list here are designed for those who are in the process of trying to bounce back from one of life’s rug-pulls. These are a few of the tools I’ve used over the years to help me become more resilient and content in my life. More will follow in future articles, but baby steps. I didn’t want to overload you. Sometimes more is just more. And these are a good initial building blocks:
You are allowed to feel the crappy emotions, they are valid. If having to look upbeat and positive all the time is exhausting you, schedule a wallow. I recommend setting aside one day, ideally no more as it can be addictive. Cry, feel sorry for yourself, eat junk food. Acknowledge your feelings. You can do this alone, if you prefer, but it can be beneficial to include a trusted friend (not for the full wallow, maybe just the evening do). A true friend won’t mind the ugly crying. I have been privileged to have friends lean on me over the years, and I have also sobbed on a fair few of them, it always strengthens our relationship. I would hate it if a friend felt they couldn’t cry on me. So invite them in, you might be surprised to find yourself laughing as you cry. Recognise and release as many of the dark thoughts as you can, until you are ready to go to bed feeling fully emotionally wrung out. Wake up the next day, have a hot shower, a healthy breakfast and shift into a more pragmatic mode. The simple act of getting even small things done will help start the bounce back.
Write things out. Sometimes it can help to name your fears and feelings. What is the worst thing that can happen and why? Catastrophise. Vomit it all out, ideally hand written on physical paper, if that is an option for you (no ableist mandates here - if speaking into your phone is more accessible for you, do that). It doesn’t need to be legible. It just needs to be out of you. Free write for 20 mins. Don’t stop until your alarm sounds. See where your thoughts take you. Rinse and repeat each day. In challenging times, I’ve filled notebooks, with my daily ramblings. It is like a dark gothic version of Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages (many of my writer friends are familiar with The Artist’s Way). I still do it from time to time. I never read them back. That is not the point. In fact, this reminds me that I need to destroy my old notebooks. I would hate for anyone to read them after I’ve died. Out of context, they would be a tad disturbing.
Re-evaluate. So an aspect of your life hasn’t turn out the way you hoped. Don’t scrabble to get it back on track without first assessing if it is still the right track for you. Habit can having us clinging to things we don’t even really want anymore. These rug-pull moments can help crystalise what is important. Some of us are still trying to manifest the dreams we had in our 20s (which is valid if you are in your 20s, but not so much at 50). Whatever track you pick, make sure it reflects what is important to YOU, not what other people think is important. Shedding the weight of other people’s expectations (assuming they aren’t dependent on you, don’t go abandoning your kids at a supermarket or anything) is freeing. And keep it fluid, as time goes by you might stumble onto unexpected paths you never even contemplated exploring. Those are often the more interesting ones.
These are three things that I have done to keep going through adversity. No bowlers hats were worn by me at any point, which is a shame as I suspect I would suit one.
I hope this article has helped you in some small way, even if just to provide some light entertainment. If you enjoyed it, please pass it on, it would be amazing to reach more people. You never know who might be feeling like they are navigating a tempestuous life in a small canoe, and my ambition is to at least help reinforce the paddles.
In next week’s A Life Quixotic, I’ll be focusing on how to navigate the emotional impact of being made redundant. This may seem a rather specific topic, but given the current employment market, it is not as niche as I would like. So even if you, dear reader, have not been made redundant, it might provide helpful support for people you know who haven’t been as lucky.
P.S. Out of curiosity, I copied a draft of this article into an AI detector and got 0% AI detected. I’ve never felt so human in my life! Although now I am second guessing why I needed a program to validate my humanity. What strange times we live in.
