How to Build Emotional Resilience
Develop the capacity to stay steady even when you get triggered.
We all have moments that shake our emotional snow globe.
Moments when your Primal Question gets answered with a big fat “NO”.
Your spouse misses an anniversary.
Your boss overlooks your contribution.
Your family forgets your birthday.
In my coaching practice, I see these moments impact people's lives every day. These situations can send us spiraling. Without resilience, we're at the mercy of every trigger.
We instantly go into our Scramble, exhausting ourselves with protection mechanisms and coping strategies. Our relationships suffer, our work suffers, and most importantly, we suffer. And the worst part?
The more we scramble, the less equipped we become to handle future triggers.
We need to build resilience to these moments.
Most people assume building resilience means never getting triggered or learning to ignore their needs completely. They try to tough it out, shove it down, or pretend the need doesn't exist. But that's not resilience—that's avoidance.
True resilience is about what happens in those moments when your need goes unmet.
Can you stay steady, or do you instantly go into survival mode?
Follow These 5 steps to build Primal Question resilience:
Become Aware of Your Need
First, you need language for what's happening.
Think of it like learning to read a map of your emotional landscape. When you can name your apex need—whether it's safety, love, success, or something else—you gain control over it. It's no longer this mysterious force controlling your life.
It becomes something you can work with, something you can understand and navigate.
Understand How Your Need Got Imprinted
Your Primal Question didn't appear out of nowhere.
It formed in childhood, based on your early experiences. Maybe it was a parent's constant criticism, or perhaps it was subtle messages about what made you worthy of love. Understanding this history isn't about blame—it's about compassion.
When you know why you react the way you do, you create space for new responses.
Meet Your Need in Healthy Ways
The Scramble is just one way to meet your need—and it’s not a very effective one.
There are healthier alternatives. If you need safety, build genuine security through boundaries and trust. If you need love, practice self-compassion alongside connection with others. The key is finding sustainable ways to meet your need that don't deplete you or damage your relationships.
Build Tolerance for Unmet Needs
This is where real transformation happens.
Think of it like building emotional muscle. Can you sit with the discomfort when your need isn't being met? Can you feel the tension without immediately trying to fix it? Like building any muscle, this capacity grows with practice. Start small, with low-stakes situations, and gradually build your tolerance.
Communicate Your Need in Community
Isolation keeps us stuck.
When we try to handle everything alone, shame wins. But when we invite trusted others into our journey, something powerful happens. We discover we're not alone, and we learn new ways to get our needs met. Your community becomes a safety net for those moments when resilience feels impossible.
Here's what I want you to do this week:
Practice noticing moments when your need goes unmet. Don't try to fix or change anything yet—just observe what happens in your body, emotions, and behaviors. This observation phase is crucial because it helps you identify your patterns without judgment.
Write down:
What triggered you?
What was your first impulse?
How did you actually respond?
What need were you trying to meet?
This awareness is the first step toward building true resilience. Each observation brings you closer to understanding your unique pattern.
Remember, the goal isn't to never get triggered. The goal is to develop the capacity to stay steady even when your need goes unmet.
That's true emotional freedom.
Warmly,
Mike