15 Rare Qualities That Make A Woman Truly Emotionally Resilient, According To Psychology
Emotional strength isn’t always loud.
Vlada Karpovich | Pexels We all reach critical points where our emotional resilience is tested. It might be a toxic friend or colleague, a dead-end job, or a struggling relationship. Whatever the challenge, you have to be strong, see things through a new lens, and take decisive action if you want to move through it successfully.
It sounds easy. We all want good friends, good jobs, and good relationships. But it isn’t.
Here are the rare qualities that make a woman truly emotionally resilient:
1. Emotional intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the cornerstone of mental toughness. You cannot be emotionally resilient without the ability to fully understand and tolerate strong negative emotions and do something productive with them. Moments that test your emotional resilience are ultimately testing your emotional intelligence (EQ). Your EQ is a flexible skill you can improve with understanding and effort, according to the American Psychological Association.
2. Confidence
Mix and Match Studio via Shutterstock
Emotionally resilient women know their mental outlook has a powerful effect on their ability to succeed. Yet, a paper in the Australian Journal of Labour Economics showed that confident women did not go on to earn higher wages and get promoted more quickly than men did.
However, the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine showed how true confidence — as opposed to the false confidence people project to mask their insecurities — has a positive effect on emotional resilience and health. Emotionally resilient women have an upper hand over the doubtful because their confidence inspires others to help make things happen.
3. Self-control
Dealing with difficult people is frustrating and exhausting for most. Emotionally resilient people control their interactions with toxic people by keeping their feelings in check.
When they need to confront a toxic person, they approach the situation rationally. They identify their emotions and don’t allow anger or frustration to fuel the chaos. They also consider the difficult person’s standpoint and can find common ground and solutions to problems.
Even when things completely derail, emotionally resilient people can take the toxic person with a grain of salt to avoid being brought down.
4. Flexibility
Emotionally resilient women are flexible and constantly adapting. They know that fear of change is paralyzing and a major threat to their success and happiness. They look for change that is lurking just around the corner and form a plan of action should these changes occur.
Only when you embrace change can you find the good in it, according to an article in the Physician Leadership Journal. You need to have an open mind and open arms if you’re going to recognize, and use, the opportunities change creates.
You’re bound to fail when you keep doing the same things you always have in the hope that ignoring change will make it go away.
5. Saying no
A study published in EMBO Reports supported that the better you are at saying no, the less likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. Emotionally resilient people know that saying no is healthy, and they have the self-esteem and foresight to make their nos clear.
When it’s time to say no, emotionally resilient women avoid phrases such as “I don’t think I can” or “I’m not certain.” They say no with confidence because they know that saying no to a new commitment honors their existing commitments and allows them to successfully fulfill them.
The emotionally resilient also know how to exert self-control by saying no to themselves. They delay gratification and avoid impulsive action that causes harm.
6. Taking risks
Wasana Kunpol via Shutterstock
Emotionally resilient women know, that when all is said and done, they will lament the chances they didn’t take far more than their failures. Don’t be afraid to take risks.
I often hear people say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen to you? Will it kill you?” Yet, death isn’t the worst thing that can happen to you. The worst thing that can happen to you is allowing yourself to die inside while you’re still alive.
It takes refined self-awareness to walk this tightrope between dwelling and remembering. Dwelling too long on your mistakes makes you anxious while forgetting about them completely makes you bound to repeat them. The key to balance lies in your ability to transform failures into nuggets of improvement. This creates the tendency to get right back up every time you fall.
7. Embracing failure
Emotionally resilient women embrace failure because they know that the road to success is paved with it. No one ever experienced true success without first embracing failure.
By revealing when you’re on the wrong path, your mistakes pave the way for you to succeed. The biggest breakthroughs typically come when you’re feeling the most frustrated and the most stuck. It’s this frustration that forces you to think differently, to look outside the box, and to see the solution that you’ve been missing.
8. Letting go of mistakes
Emotionally resilient women know that where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems that you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress, which hinders performance. When you focus on actions to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy, which produces positive emotions and improves performance.
Emotionally resilient people distance themselves from their mistakes, but they do so without forgetting them. By keeping their mistakes at a safe distance, yet still handy enough to refer to, they can adapt and adjust for future success.
9. Having unlimited joy
When your sense of pleasure and satisfaction is derived from comparing yourself to others, you are no longer in control of your happiness. When emotionally resilient people feel good about something they do, they won’t let anyone’s opinions or accomplishments take that away from them.
While it’s impossible to turn off your reactions to what others think of you, you don’t have to compare yourself to others, and you can always take people’s opinions with a grain of salt. Emotionally resilient people know that regardless of what people think of them at any particular moment, one thing is certain — they’re never as good or bad as people say they are.
10. Being appreciative
Emotionally resilient women don’t pass judgment on others because they know everyone has something to offer, and they don’t need to take other people down a notch to feel good about themselves.
Comparing yourself to other people is limiting. Jealousy and resentment suck the life right out of you. They’re massive energy stealers. Emotionally resilient people don’t waste time or energy sizing people up and worrying about whether or not they measure up.
Instead of wasting your energy on jealousy, funnel that energy into appreciation. When you celebrate the success of other people, you both benefit.
11. Exercising
A 2019 study out of Sweden found evidence to suggest that "being active, even to a modest level, is superior to being inactive or sedentary." Exercise can also improve body image and self-esteem.
Rather than the physical changes in the body being responsible for an uptick in confidence, which is key to emotional resilience, the immediate, endorphin-fueled positivity from exercise makes all the difference.
12. Sleeping well
PeopleImages.com - Yuri A via Shutterstock
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of sleep in increasing your emotional resilience. When you sleep, your brain removes toxic proteins, which are by-products of neural activity when you’re awake, according to 2023 research.
Unfortunately, your brain can remove them adequately only while you’re asleep, so when you don’t get enough sleep, the toxic proteins remain in your brain cells, wreaking havoc by impairing your ability to think — something no amount of caffeine can fix.
Emotionally resilient women know their self-control, focus, and memory are all reduced when they don’t get enough — or the right kind — of sleep, so they make quality sleep a top priority.
13. Limiting caffeine intake
Drinking excessive amounts of caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, the source of the fight-or-flight response, as shown in The Journal of Physiology. The fight-or-flight mechanism sidesteps rational thinking in favor of a faster response to ensure survival. This is great when a bear is chasing you but not so great when life throws you a curve.
When caffeine puts your brain and body into this hyper-aroused state of stress, your emotions overrun your behavior. Caffeine’s long half-life ensures you stay this way as it takes its sweet time working its way out of your body. Emotionally resilient people know too much caffeine is trouble, and they don’t let it get the better of them.
14. Forgiveness
Emotionally resilient women know that life goes a lot smoother once you let go of grudges and forgive even those who never said they were sorry. Grudges let negative events from your past ruin today’s happiness. Hate and anger are emotional parasites that destroy your joy in life.
The negative emotions that come with holding on to a grudge create a stress response in your body, and holding on to stress can have devastating consequences (both physically and mentally). When you forgive someone, it doesn’t condone their actions; it simply frees you from being their eternal victim.
15. Choosing positivity
Keep your eyes on the news for any length of time, and you’ll see that it’s just one endless cycle of war, violent attacks, fragile economies, failing companies, and environmental disasters. It’s easy to think the world is headed downhill fast.
And who knows? Maybe it is. But emotionally resilient people can manage their emotions so they don’t get caught up in things they can’t control. They focus their energy on directing the two things completely within their power — their attention and their effort.
It’s hard to be emotionally resilient, especially when you feel stuck. The ability to break the mold and take a bold new direction requires the extra grit, daring, and spunk that only the most emotionally resilient people have.
It’s fascinating how emotionally resilient women set themselves apart from the crowd. Where others see impenetrable barriers, they see challenges to overcome, opportunities, and actions to take when things look bleak.
Emotional resilience is not an innate quality bestowed upon a select few. It can be achieved and enjoyed.
Dr. Travis Bradberry is an award-winning author, and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests. He has been featured in Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.
