Building Emotional Resilience When You Have Fabry Disease

Emotional resilience is the ability to adapt to stressful situations and cope with life’s ups and downs. Here’s how you can develop emotional resilience and use it to help you in your journey with Fabry disease.

What is Fabry disease?

Fabry disease is a progressive rare genetic disease that results from the abnormal buildup of a type of fat called globotriaosylceramide (Gb3 or GL-3) inside cells and tissues. Gb3 accumulation can cause a wide range of symptoms, including chronic pain, hearing problems, kidney damage, gastrointestinal and cardiac issues, and problems with eyesight.

What is emotional resilience?

Emotional resilience does not eliminate stress or do away with life’s challenges, but it does allow you to tackle or accept problems, live through adversity, and move on with life.

Notably, emotional resilience is not about winning the battle. Rather, it’s finding the strength to power through life’s storms and to remain steady.

Being emotionally resilient doesn’t mean being emotionally void, however. Instead, it means taking a healthier and more optimistic approach to coping with stress, tragedy, or setbacks.

If you’re intentional about it, emotional resilience is a trait you can build and improve over time.

About Fabry disease and emotional resilience

Living with a chronic disease such as Fabry means dealing with a number of symptoms that affect your daily life.

While no known research exists regarding emotional resilience and Fabry disease, a study on resilience in chronic disease found that the trait can be an important factor in health promotion. It also was found to be able to influence illness processes and health outcomes.

Another study aimed at assessing resilience among adults diagnosed with chronic physical diseases found that the resilience score of patients was lower than that of healthy individuals. Because people can acquire resilience at any life stage, regardless of age or disease status, there’s a need for more educational programs that train people how to practice this trait, according to the study.

Finally, other research suggests a need to develop a more systematic resilience intervention program and standardize it.

How can I build emotional resilience?

Here are some tips to help you build emotional resilience:

Be optimistic

Resilient people who go through harsh situations and still accomplish goals balance a positive outlook with a realistic perspective.

Face your fears

The most resilient people face their fears head-on. When you deal with your fears, they usually become less frightening. You can say, for instance, “I’m scared but I can learn from this,” or, “This is a test that’s going to make me stronger.”

Get social support

Our brains need social support to function optimally. Support from friends and family is crucial when life gets tough.

Have resilient role models

We learn by imitation and having resilient role models can make us more resilient as well.

Keep your brain strong

Resilient people are lifelong learners. They keep growing their mind, learning to learn, and adapting to new information about the world. This not only keeps them sharp but is good for health. Being a lifelong learner does not require any special skills, just a desire to continue to grow your mind.

Be cognitively flexible

We all have ways in which we typically deal with difficulty, but resilient people draw from several methods for coping with stressful situations. They tend to be flexible in the way they emotionally react to stress. Instead of sticking to just one style of coping, they shift from one strategy to another, depending on the circumstances.

Last updated: Feb. 26, 2021

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Fabry Disease News is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.