2 Commonly Overlooked Signs Of Resilience

Sometimes, resilience looks like the opposite of what you’d typically expect.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | May 18, 2026

Resilience is often misconstrued as a kind of mental toughness or emotional immunity. But research shows that, in reality, it’s a lot more flexible than most of us give credit for. We typically picture someone resilient as someone who’s completely unshaken by stress and always calm under pressure; someone who’s emotionally steady no matter what life throws at them.

Not only is this depiction of resilience incomplete, but it’s also very misleading. We’re led to believe that resilience is a means for avoiding distress, when, really, it’s about how we respond to it.

In fact, two of the most reliable signs of resilience look like the opposite of what we typically envision: struggle and self-doubt. Underneath these two experiences, however, are processes that allow people to adapt and recover from just about anything life throws at them.

Here are two surprising signs that you may be more resilient than you think, according to psychological research.

1. Resilient People Keep Showing Up, Even When They Don’t Want To

Perhaps the most common misconception about resilience is that it protects you from overwhelm. This couldn’t be further from the case; nothing in life can render you completely immune from stress, not even resilience. What resilience does, instead, is modify your relationship to it.

Psychologists define resilience as the ability to adapt successfully in the face of adversity, trauma or significant stress. An important part of this definition is that, oftentimes, feeling anxious, tired or emotionally stretched is an important part of resilience.

In a renowned 2009 longitudinal study, researchers mapped New Yorkers’ resilience trajectories following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as well as Mexicans’ resilience trajectories following the 1999 floods. In both samples, the authors found that many individuals who were classified as resilient still reported distress during difficult periods.

More specifically, this meant that resilient individuals still experienced moderate to severe symptoms after their traumatic experiences. What distinguished them was not the absence of stress but rather their ability to eventually continue functioning and gradually return to baseline.

This is something that’s often referred to as “resilient functioning.” That is, you may feel overwhelmed, but you still strive to meet your responsibilities and maintain your relationships, even though they’re the last things you want to do. On your worst days, you do whatever you can to take small steps forward, even if that simply means getting out of bed and eating something.

From a cognitive perspective, this ability is often reflective of an individual’s capacity for stress appraisal. According to 2023 research from the Journal of Youth and Adolescence on stress appraisal, individuals who view stress as manageable or meaningful tend to cope more effectively. In turn, they also experience better outcomes over time.

So, if you have ever thought, “I am barely holding it together,” but still showed up to work, supported others or handled what needed to be done, that is not failure. It is resilience in action.

2. Resilient People Question Everything About Themselves

Self-doubt may seem, at first glance, like the complete opposite of resilience. After all, it’s a feeling that often proves to be counterproductive, if not somewhat destabilizing. However, psychological research teaches us that the ability to reflect on your thoughts, emotions and behavior is actually a core component of adaptive functioning.

This is a process known formally as “metacognition”: the ability to think about your own thinking. A 2025 study from the Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment found that individuals who engage in reflective processing exhibited significantly more dispositional resilience.

Metacognition is essential for someone to be able to learn from their experiences, adjust their behavior and make more effective decisions over time. This capacity is what allows for flexibility, which is a central component of resilience. However, it’s important to note that this is not the same thing as unproductive rumination.

Rumination involves repetitive, negative thinking that does not lead to resolution, and it’s commonly associated with increased risk for anxiety and depression. Reflective processing, on the other hand, is constructive. It demands you to ask questions about your thoughts and feelings, such as, “What can I learn from this?” or “How can I respond differently next time?”

A 2023 study from Healthcare indicates that this kind of reflection is linked to emotional regulation and post-traumatic growth. This is because intentional introspection and self-reflection enable individuals to integrate difficult experiences into their broader sense of self, as opposed to surrendering to them or allowing themselves to be overwhelmed by them.

In other words, questioning or even doubting yourself doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re unstable. If anything, it suggests that you’re likely in the active stages of processing your experiences and, more importantly, adapting from them. This is resilience at its finest.

Why It’s So Hard To Recognize That You’re Resilient

One reason resilience is so often underestimated it never looks as impressive as it sounds. It’s hardly a visible experience, let alone a dramatic one. For most people, it manifests as small, repeated and somewhat boring actions, for instance:

• Getting out of bed when you don’t want to
• Responding to someone kindly when you’d rather not be
• Acting thoughtfully rather than impulsively
• Taking breaks when you recognize that you’re overwhelmed

These behaviors may seem ordinary, and, for most people, they are. But for someone who’s gone through something traumatic or extreme, doing even the bare minimum to survive — eating, showering, moving your body — can feel like a monumental effort. In this sense, these behaviors are far from ordinary.

This is confirmed by the vast majority of resilience research, which highlights that it’s built through routine coping processes rather than extraordinary acts. Over time, these little acts of strength accumulate in ways that bolster an individual’s ability to handle future stress.

But perhaps the most common (and unfortunate) reason resilience goes unnoticed is that we have a tendency to compare ourselves to unrealistic standards. If resilience is defined as never struggling, then almost no one will feel resilient. But if it is defined as the ability to navigate difficulty and continue moving forward, then, immediately, so many more people qualify.

So, if you’re prone to dismissing your own resilience, it’s likely because you’re using an inaccurate definition of it. Once you stop seeing strength as the absence of struggle but rather as the ability to move through it, you can start recognizing your progress for what it is.

And that matters, because adversity has a way of making life itself feel deeply unfair. How can the world keep moving when yours feels like it’s come to a halt? How can everything continue as normal when nothing feels normal to you?

Resilience isn’t about liking that reality, or even accepting it all at once. It’s about continuing anyway. There’s no way around pain, no way to bypass it entirely; there is only the slow, painful movement through it. And every small step forward, no matter how unremarkable it looks from the outside, is proof that you’re already doing it.

Are you more resilient than you give yourself credit for? Take this science-backed to find out: Brief Resilience Scale

About the Author

Mark Travers, Ph.D., is the founder of Therapytips.org, where he helps match new clients with the right therapist on the team — request a session or get matched here. Mark received his B.A. in psychology, magna cum laude, from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Colorado Boulder. His academic research has been published in leading psychology journals and featured in major outlets including The New York Times and The New Yorker. He is a regular contributor for Forbes, CNBC, and Psychology Today.