Do you have bouncebackability?
It is possible your eyes bounced right off of that recently coined word. Here’s an easier spelling: bounce-back-ability.
While you think about your answer to our question, let’s continue with a definition.
What Is It?
According to the British publication The Guardian:
Iain Dowie coined the word bouncebackability in the 2003-04 season when describing how his Crystal Palace [soccer] team had gone from the fringes of relegation in December to winning promotion through the play-offs in May. Not many managers have been responsible for adding words to the English lexicon but Dowie shared the honour with Sir Alex Ferguson in 2005 when both “squeaky bum time” and “bouncebackability” entered the Oxford English Dictionary.
Well, we don’t have a single thing to say about “squeaky bum time.” But we DO want to talk about bouncebackability and the ways in which it can support your ongoing mental well-being.
When Dowie coined the word, he was talking about his team’s ability to bounce back from setbacks so successfully that they were able to turn a possible negative outcome (relegation to a lower league) into a positive outcome (promotion to a higher league).
To make that turnaround happen, the team needed resilience—which is a more common but less memorable term for bouncebackability.
What Does Bouncebackability Look Like?
Most everyone would agree that life is full of setbacks and difficulties and annoyances. Often, as those things pile one atop another, they start to wear us down. When that happens, we find that we are oh-so-very tired and often in a bad mood that just seems to make everything worse.
For a person struggling with depression, anxiety, or another mental health disorder, this piling up of challenges can start to seriously chip away at the sense of overall well-being. A mental health disorder often seems to encourage you to give up when things get tough, to believe that things will never improve, or to choose not to pursue things that might be difficult—even if those things are worthwhile and would otherwise be exciting to you.
When you have resilience, it is easier to grapple successfully with the negative internal messages that are often part and parcel of a mental health disorder.
So, we are back to our original question: Do you have bouncebackability?
If your answer is “no,” all is not lost. Happily, resilience is something you can develop.
Build Up Your Bouncebackability
It perhaps goes without saying that one of the key ways to build up your resilience is to get treatment for your mental health disorder. Whether that treatment is inpatient or outpatient and centered on therapy, medication, or a combination of the two, quality treatment provides the essential foundation for building a stronger reserve of bouncebackability.
In addition to treatment, there are a range of other things that support your overall resilience. They include, but are certainly not limited to:
- Getting enough rest
- Eating a nutritious diet
- Exercising regularly
- Spending time in nature
- Practicing mindfulness
- Listening to (or making) music
- Setting aside time for an engaging hobby
- Spending time with family and friends
When you take care of yourself, you support your overall resilience and well-being. In fact, the two are deeply intertwined. When you are resilient, you support your well-being. And when you are well, you support your resilience.
Bounce Your Way Over to Johnstown Heights
If you are struggling with a mental health disorder, the time to get high quality, compassionate treatment is right now. At Johnstown Heights Behavioral Health, we have the expertise and experience to address a range of mental health disorders including the various kinds of depression, anxiety and panic disorders, and disorders grounded in trauma.
We will listen to you and meet you where you are with a personalized treatment plan designed to help you improve your mental well-being and, by extension, your bouncebackability. Having the wherewithal to deal effectively with challenges that will inevitably arise in your life is an important part of improving and maintaining your mental health. We can help put a bounce back in your step as we build up your bouncebackability.
