We all deal with adversity. No one is spared. But one of the central challenges in a person’s transition from childhood to adulthood is learning how to cope with tough times. In this brief article I hope to highlight some of the wisdom I have learned from years of practicing my profession and living my life.

Locus of control is a psychological concept that describes a core aspect of the human psyche, simply speaking, being in control. Anything that deprives us of this control proves stressful and anxiety provoking. We all know that it is foolish to expect to maintain total control of our lives. Nevertheless, we go about our daily lives with this basic need for control. It is how we deal with life situations that threaten this need for control that often determines our level of life contentment.

Let us apply this concept to medical adversity. In a previous post I raised the importance of differentiating “illness” from “sickness” with the former representing the medical disorder affecting the individual while the latter reflects how one reacts emotionally to being sick. One’s response to illness often determines both the level of suffering as well as the degree of recovery and suffering. Locus of control plays a central role in dealing with illness. A major scientific study some 25 years ago by psychiatrist researcher Dr. David Spiegel demonstrated that women with breast cancer experienced improved recovery when they participated in a support group that helped them cope with cancer. One of the key points that came out of this study was that most women believed that their lives were now under the control of their illness, that they had lost the locus of control. In this instance, learning how to cope involved confronting one’s beliefs about the illness and putting them in the proper perspective. Despite the challenges of treating breast cancer these women learned that they had not lost control of their lives.

This discussion leads us to one of the major advances in psychiatry, our discovery that our brain controls much of bodily functions. Since the human mind is a reflection of the activity of our brains one can see how improving psychological wellbeing can translate into improved bodily health. Maintaining a sense of hope and a belief in the future support a healthy adjustment to illness and helps avoid the debilitating effects of feeling like one has lost control. Do not underestimate the power of hope. Your doctors and nursing staff will do their part in caring for you but how you attend to your health adversity often plays a major role in recovery from illness.

Finally, we can’t discuss adversity without talking about resilience. Resilience refers to the ability to bounce back from life challenges. Human beings have a certain degree of resilience built-in from birth, a basic survival skill. However, amplifying our inherent resilience is possible. Negative thinking represents a major obstacle to resilience. Although it may seem so simple to combat negativity, it is surprising to most to discover how automatic negative self-thought has become. Overcoming negativity is an active process, training oneself to identify negative thoughts at their outset so that one can then determine its merits. More often than not, tossing out negative thinking becomes possible once such thinking is identified. It is sad that many of us go through life without being aware of the degree of negativity that we allow ourselves to experience.

The moral of this story is that dealing with adversity is certainly possible. But it requires attention to your experiences with life events and an active approach to one’s own emotional response. All too often we remain the passive victim in a sea of adversity without realizing that we have the ability to make the best of difficult situations. You will benefit from the help you get from healthcare professionals, family and friends, but in the end, you are the captain of your ship.