The Key to Consistency: Building Emotional Resilience
Picture this: You’ve had a long, exhausting day. Work was relentless, the kids were demanding, and now you’re standing in the kitchen, reaching for that glass of wine or that snack you don’t even really want. You promised yourself you'd stay on track, but in this moment, all you want is comfort.
How many times have you set out with the best intentions, determined to stay on track with your goals, only to find yourself derailed by stress, exhaustion, or an unexpected challenge? You know what you want. You even know the steps to get there. But when life throws a curveball, suddenly, the plan unravels.
It’s 'easy' to show up when conditions are perfect. But the truth is, life is rarely perfect. Challenges arise weekly, stressors pop up daily, and if every bump in the road sends us spiraling, it’s no wonder consistency feels impossible.
The solution isn’t to ‘try harder’ or wait for a time when life is less chaotic—because that time will never come. The answer is resilience: the ability to navigate discomfort, setbacks, and emotions without being ruled by them.
When Frustration Takes Over: Why We Turn to Food, Wine & Distraction
Many of us instinctively try to suppress or bury difficult emotions, only to find they return stronger. It’s not about lack of willpower. You’re exhausted, overstimulated, maybe even lonely. That moment of relief—whether it’s from food, wine, or scrolling—feels like the only thing you can control. The more we fight against emotions, the more power they seem to have over us. Emotional eating, pouring a glass of wine after a stressful day, scrolling endlessly on our phones—these are all attempts to escape discomfort. But what if avoidance is actually making things harder?
The Wells and Shovels Metaphor
Imagine you’re standing in a deep well. The walls are cold and damp. You panic. The only thing in your hands is a shovel, so you do the only thing that makes sense—you start digging. Maybe if you just try harder, you’ll find a way out. But each scoop of dirt only pulls you deeper. The harder you work, the worse it gets. You panic and start digging, believing you can dig your way out. But the more you dig, the deeper you sink. This is what happens when we try to control distressing emotions. The struggle intensifies the issue.
Instead of digging, what if we learned to sit with discomfort? To observe it rather than fight it? Resilience isn’t about eliminating frustration—it’s about learning to navigate it differently.
The Science of Avoidance & Emotional Eating
Research shows that avoidance-based coping (using distractions like food, alcohol, or social media to escape discomfort) reinforces emotional distress rather than relieving it. When we avoid discomfort, we teach our brain that we cannot handle it. This strengthens the urge to escape every time we feel frustrated or overwhelmed.
Conversely, acceptance-based strategies—acknowledging emotions without trying to control them—help regulate the nervous system and reduce long-term emotional reactivity. But here’s the truth: Avoidance teaches your brain that you can’t handle discomfort. Yet, time and time again, you have. Think about the last hard thing you faced. You survived it.
What if, instead of trying to escape discomfort, you built the confidence to sit with it? And here’s something important to remember: you have survived 100% of your hardest days so far. That’s not luck—that’s proof of your resilience. Now, it’s time to stop waiting for life to be easy and start stepping into your strength. You’re capable of so much more than just surviving. You are far stronger than you give yourself credit for. It’s time to start realising your strength.
Practice Exercise: Suppressing the Mind
Try this: for 30 seconds, do not think of a pink elephant.
What happened? The thought became stronger, didn’t it?
This is a powerful demonstration of why trying to suppress thoughts doesn’t work. Instead of pushing them away—or detaching from them with food, drink, doom scrolling, etc.—what if we simply let them come and go on their own??
Setting Yourself Up for Success
Building resilience doesn’t just happen in the moment—it starts with shaping your environment to support you. If your current coping mechanisms are too easily available, it makes it much harder to resist them in moments of high emotion. Right now, you may be setting yourself up to fail without even realising it.
Think about ways to make unhelpful habits harder to access. Don’t buy the things that make avoidance easy. Set up routine grocery deliveries so you’re not shopping after a stressful day with tempting options staring you in the face. And most importantly, create an alternative coping ‘menu’—a list of things that will actually help you feel better after you’ve sat with your emotions instead of suppressing them.
This could be:
Taking a walk
Deep breathing exercises
Journaling
A bubble bath
Moving your body (dancing, stretching, shaking it off)
There are so many ways to calm your nervous system and move through your feelings without burying them. The coping mechanisms you rely on now may feel like relief, but they are robbing you of the opportunity to build true resilience.
Homework: Self-Monitoring Journal
This week, observe when frustration arises. Ask yourself:
When do I feel most frustrated or overwhelmed?
What is my immediate response—do I try to avoid the feeling? (e.g., eating, drinking, scrolling, shutting down)
What is the outcome? Does avoidance truly help, or does it temporarily delay the discomfort?
Are there moments when I paused before reacting? How did that feel?
Stay Tuned for Part 2: Learning to Step Back from Overwhelming Thoughts
Next time, we’ll explore how to observe your thoughts rather than being consumed by them, helping you build emotional distance from cravings and stress responses.
If this resonates with you, let’s chat about how I can support you in building long-term emotional resilience.
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