Resilience

Resilience

Heyy and thank you for coming onto my article, I hope this can help you in the new year and if you need anything please reach out. Remember you are the world (coming soon).

Resilience is what makes us strong, as we embark through each of the years we can become more resilient. Resilience is a neurological movement that eases pain and traumatic experiences, we can also compare resilience to the tree as this withstands many different settings, such as storms, floods, heat and the cold. And like a tree’s roots never stop growing we never stop understanding and expanding our minds. Nurturing a tree’s roots with positive things helps the tree to grow, nurture your mind with positive things it will also help it grow.

I have personal experiences and psychological knowledge on this topic, but as always combining the two gives several outlooks on the chosen topic of resilience. Starting with the psychological side then we will bring in the personal side to it, including life experiences and my time with SAP;UK.

This blog started to emerge on 31/12/2025 at 11.45pm as I was participating with a journey on the m6, to which ‘Resilience’ unravelled and the words began forming, by New Year’s Day I had the full content ready to become what you are about to read now. New years was an unforgettable experience, at five minutes past twelve on the 1st day of the year, I was the first to arrive at a suicide attempt 13 minutes from my home – nothing more than my purposes were realigned. I know what I have to do, and that is preventing suicide.

So, so it goes…

In psychology resilience is the ability to mentally regulate and emotionally cope with adversities, giving an individual the ability to bounce back from crises. It involves personal traits such as self-regulation and individual optimism.

It is characterized with an individual’s capacity to understand and positively adapt to one’s surroundings accordingly. So, when an individual is faced with adversity, they have the ability to maintain a positive mental well-being despite being faced with their current challenges.

Challenges can come from an individual’s personal life, work life or it can be an external cause such as environmental or ecological.

Many single parents have to develop strong resilience skills in order to maintain stability for their children which can be extremely challenging.

When an individual is maintaining resilience, they can represent themselves within several different traits to help them navigate their challenges. Some of these traits include –

• Survivors Mentality: They view themselves as survivors, believing they can overcome challenges.
• Emotional Regulation: They manage their emotions effectively, recognizing that feelings like anger or sadness are temporary.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Resilient people use their strengths to find solutions and remain hopeful during crises.

Factors Influencing Resilience

Resilience is influenced by both internal and external factors:

**Self-esteem generally develops from childhood experiences, and if an individual has faced adversities here and struggles with low self-esteem, learning to understand this really helps with independent growth, understanding how this has affected them and how it currently affects them in the present moment, is a positive step within personal understanding and growth and helps to build self-esteem – if you need any support please reach out;

Articles which discuss Self-esteem – link here

If you have a low family affluence meaning you have no family support then this can also be difficult to regulate, please drop me an email and I can help you regulate this part. **

Building Resilience

Building resilience is tough, but it can be developed through various strategies:

• Prioritize Relationships: Foster connections with supportive people.
• Practice Mindfulness: Engage in mindfulness techniques to stay present.
• Maintain a Hopeful Outlook: Focus on positive outcomes and learn from past experiences.
• Avoid Negative Coping: Steer clear of unhealthy coping mechanisms like substance use.

By cultivating these skills and traits, individuals can enhance their resilience, enabling them to face life’s challenges more effectively.

When building your own resilience, it is important to celebrate your own wins and achievements.

Personal experiences

Individuals build resilience all the time from traumatic events, and I have been one of them individuals. Experiencing the developing feeling of numbness, hopelessness and I have experienced suicidal thoughts and ideations, like many others. It is important you seek help as soon as feelings develop so that you don’t experience further negative implications such as self-harm or even worse suicidal actions. Link here for support –> SAP;UK.

For me resilience began when I was a young child, when I developed some rationality on what was right and what was wrong. I was very aware of the inequalities within family dynamics, and I became very aware of how negatively driven some people could be.

I grew up with little emotional support due to alcoholism and out casting, because of this I had to create my own internal networks, when faced with trauma or adversities I had to keep this to myself, but this enabled me to foster my own physically enabled connections and strengthen my own self-soothing methods, which I now teach to others.

As the years grew on and up until my 30’s I was faced with many more negative adversities, such as a house fire, a suicide loss, further lack of support, many losses, a suicide attempt, several betrayals, homelessness and more it was a hard decade, as was the previous and more than likely the previous, I have blacked out memories from ten and below.

Comparing myself to others is something I do not spend any of my energy on, I do not care what anybody else is doing unless of course it is suicide then I very much care.

I gave up on comparison at nine years old. I grew sad because for the first time in my life I learnt jealousy and it was due to my best friend having really supportive parents. For a short period of time it consumed me but I grew resilient and I never compared myself to anyone or anything ever again.

But what I learnt subconsciously over the years was strength and resilience, my biggest built resilience’s came from disconnected families, finding someone after they lost their life to suicide and then seeing someone I loved betray me in the most vulnerable part of my life, anything after that doesn’t truly have an effect on how my traits are altered they only strengthen my core strengths.

• Growing up watching families connect but outcast is insightful.
• Finding someone after they lost their life to suicide was not a positive cause, but it made me stronger than I have ever been once I had understood neuro-diversion, depression, chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), because of these I help more people today than I ever have.
• Then seeing people I loved become disloyal was an eye-opener on loyalties and trust, but it strengthened my boundaries.

My personal experiences made me who I am today, then being a single parent made me stronger, a health condition made my outlook change and adverse mental health made me understand many aspects of neurology, and love taught me both the positive and negative sides of it. I set strong boundaries because of trauma and ensured that I would never be in the same positions again.

I became happy within my own self, being able to sit alone, sometimes for too long but here was where the growth of resilience really began. I was always alone so what did anything else matter, suicide prevention it is, my purpose strengthened.

After my three traumas and spending years battling with C-PTSD I began to understand what I was experiencing and developed more coping mechanisms on top of my already set coping mechanisms. So, whilst others were spending their time in a positive structure, engaging within social settings or building their education or career paths mine was set in survival mode juggling and jumping everywhere, I had no time to socialise, what I needed to heal was to become back into solitude, (I grew up mostly alone). Here is where I self-healed and grew becoming the person I am today.

Resilience SAP;UK

On top of having to process not feeling good enough then being outcasted, loss, betrayal, lack of support and so much more I also had to process a company start-up, but not just any company start-up a charitable cause that was never anything more than me sharing quotes to help with healing – it just grew right under my feet, I literally had no choice in which way I was being pushed. Nobody talks about how hard this is, the transitioning, the energy, the consumptions, the sacrifices.

I have been within the field of Suicidology since I was seven years old, maybe earlier. Within my years I have experienced many different angles of suicide, from personal experiences to professional experiences. I have seen things and experienced things some would not comprehend. But my resilience is that it has made me a better person today, I can maintain stability for myself and others and regulate always on a neutral comprehension.

I am a volunteer, my only incentive is the aftermath of helping people and community support

But the start-up stress has been hard to understand and comprehend over the years, mainly because I don’t really like technology, I hate being on my phone, I really have no care for finances and EW what the hell are jealous gatekeepers.

& then more resilience for SAP;UK due to my lack of attention to toleration of the above. We have had a rocky time, but regardless of this and gratefully to the strength of resilience – volunteering has always been on the rise for me and us. No matter what, how, when or why, we will just show up… We do not prioritise the funding like so many others do, we prioritise the support. Because you never know who you may need to find. 2025 was an insightful year, I saw a lot as a person and as SAP;UK.

2026 is a year of transparency, redemption and recognition from persistence and resilience and I am 1000% here for it.

So, anyway, as I was driving down the m6 at 23.49pm on nye’ having major flashbacks of my time with SAPUK whilst subconsciously dwelling with resilience, I noted the resilience I have had to develop to not take it personally and the understanding of the personalities who I am dealing with in this life time. It has just made me want to progress more, because if this is what I am dealing with then how can anybody else deal with this? :’)

I noted that I have walked into rooms alone where I know people have been talking about me. I have confidently stood in public after crying in the bathroom. I have called people out when they have been wrong. I have been refused support but watch others doing the exact same get so much support. I have had statuses deleted because my information had more traction. I have had people turn their back on me when all I needed was kindness. I have had people gatekeep and interrogate me. I have been degraded behind my back but idealised face to face. I have picked my flyers out of the bin that another business did. I have been side-eyed because I look different. And then there was a point in my life that if I died, I don’t think nobody would have noticed for months but yet I am facing people like this, it didn’t make sense to me, so I reasoned with my resilience and carried on.


I walked into this field of Suicidology unknowingly at 24 years old, my goal is and always is just this simple, suicide prevention and awareness. But as I grew more natural to the cause furthermore understanding the field of Suicidology and how to regulate one during this crisis, my confidence grew and I dropped the imposter syndrome (this is where you do not believe your own capabilities due to low self-esteem). To which I then started to understand more the ‘professional’ side, I was blind-sighted and mis-directed a lot due to certain people. The ‘professional’ field I unknowingly walked into with SAP;UK, I place it in brackets like this because transparency is a huge part of professionalism. Here holds some unimaginable aspects that we as the community wouldn’t process very well. But I have done the best I could to process what I saw, learnt and understood, I remained within a positive affluence during one of my most stressful but insightful parts of my voluntary role.

Also, what I strongly learnt was that many people in this ‘professional’ field do not tell the truth… but deep breaths we will try another way. So, we did and we grew past that, utilising other avenues of support. When one door closes another one opens. Furthermore, resilience developed again.

Resilience can be driven by passion, it’s seeing something you disagree with and demanding change in a positive manner, it is doing what is best for yourself and others just because you want too.

Resilience is developing patience, patience when individuals withhold or treat you in a negative way. Patience when others judge or belittle you on little with no real knowledge or information. Patience when individuals presume and then spread negative information. Patience when individuals are ambiguous and unsettling. Patience when individuals break trust. Patience because there was a time I just didn’t feel good enough for anything and patience because now I do.

Independent resilience is hard but then SAP;UK needs resilience too, with no support its even harder… It has been an incredibly lonely journey both personally and within SAP;UK, it has taken away sleep, it has taken away hope, the pressures have reduced me to tears, the lack of support has been heart breaking, but I took the hits, I cried and I prayed to the skies above and with this I was given energy. I noted that I have a purpose and I am always redirected onto the same path, it is not love or ambiguous information, it is not a charge on the door or a pressure to give anything. Its spreading peace and love. Because of my resilience and understanding in life, what I share is beneficial information that is going to help you become a better version of yourself, whether it is spoken, written, recorded or even just a gesture of good will. Because of what I have personally experienced throughout life, I don’t want others to feel like the world is colder than what mine has previously and sometimes can feel. ‘I made a light in this area of the deep blue, say hey, come see you can take some home too’ coming soon.

Resilience has been hard, but with the support of the SAP;UK team we have only ever still grown, it might have been slower in parts, but growth is growth, no matter how small. I just have the ideas, the resilience and a few admin skills, but then I remind myself as well that without you as a community, reading my articles, responding to our posts, its you guys, consciously or subconsciously you are really what makes SAP;UK what it is today.

And even if you just made it through this year, that is enough;

I know what I am doing in life, and I know exactly what I produce, I know my purposes and that is preventing suicides and this will forever be my resilience.

Thank you for reading

All my love

Dan