I Don’t Want to Be Resilient Today
An Anti-Performance Manifesto
Resilience is supposed to be a strength. That’s how it’s sold to us. The ability to recover quickly, to push through, to adapt. The people who bounce back are the people who win. That’s the narrative. Sounds exhausting just writing it down, doesn't it?
The problem, however, is that resilience has stopped being a resource and turned into a demand. It’s no longer about what helps us survive but about what’s expected of us if we want to be seen as capable, employable, responsible, worthy.
And I don’t want to be resilient today. I don’t think you should have to be either.
How did resilience get weaponised?
The word itself sounds harmless. Who wouldn’t want to have inner strength? But in practice, resilience has been turned into a tool of survival under conditions that shouldn’t exist in the first place. The word itself, has become one of the most overused of our time.
Children are told to be resilient instead of schools being made inclusive. Employees are given resilience workshops instead of workloads being reduced. Families are told to build resilience instead of society providing the structures that actually support them.
The effect is always the same... resilience shifts responsibility away from broken systems and onto individuals. If you crumble under impossible conditions, it’s not the conditions that need changing, it’s you.
What the resilience story never admits is that coping costs something. Coping is never free. Every time you push through, you burn reserves you might not get back quickly or at all. Energy, health, relationships, mental health are all the hidden debts resilience racks up. How are we meant to ever pay this debt back, despite being asked to keep paying? Essentially, your value lies in your ability to withstand and that is the lie of endless coping.
The problem with resilience as a demand
As mentioned, resilience is supposed to describe an inner resource, but somewhere along the way it turned into a requirement. Instead of being a capacity that helps us through hard times, it’s become a performance standard we’re expected to meet. Don’t crumble. Don’t stop. Don’t let it show.
For neurodivergent people especially, the pressure is relentless. We are often expected to absorb environments not built for us, survive systems that wear us down and tolerate sensory, social and emotional strains that accumulate daily. Then, when we inevitably struggle, the response is to tell us to be more resilient. Translate as endure it better.
This does two harmful things at once. Firstly, it shifts the burden onto individuals and secondly it hides systemic failure. Instead of asking why schools burn kids out, why workplaces overextend their employees and why access and safety are so scarce, society asks "why aren’t you bouncing back faster?".
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The performance of strength
Resilience is rewarded because it’s tidy. It’s easier for schools, workplaces and systems if people quietly absorb pressures without making demands. No disruptions, no awkward truths, no need to rethink the system, right? Resilience is so culturally celebrated because it looks good on the outside.
That’s why resilience feels like performance. We’re encouraged to turn suffering into neat growth stories. “It made me stronger.” “It taught me a lesson.” “I wouldn’t change it.”
But what if the truth is that it broke me and I’m still recovering? What if the honest version of resilience isn’t always a triumph but a refusal to sugarcoat survival?
Rest as defiance
Not wanting to be resilient today means giving yourself permission to stop without apology. To rest without turning it into a productivity strategy. To rest because your brain and body had enough.
In this context, rest is an act of resistance. It interrupts the cycle of extraction and performance. It challenges the idea that you only matter when you’re functional. It honours that you’re a human being, not a machine with endless capacity.
Redefining survival
Sometimes survival is a victory. Not the remarkable kind where you emerge radiant and articulate, ready to give a TED Talk about your hardships. The messy survival where you shut the world out, eat cereal for dinner, let the laundry pile up, say no and turn your phone off.
It doesn’t look resilient. But it’s real. And it counts. We can let survival be just that - survival.
Survival doesn’t need to be spun into a growth narrative to matter. It matters because you’re still here.
The cultural shift we need
I have no intention of rejecting resilience. What I do want is to refuse it as a demand. The obsession with resilience hides the fact that most of what we’re asked to endure could be prevented if systems, structures and cultures actually worked in a meaningful way.
Workplaces don’t need more resilience workshops. They need boundaries around hours, pay that meets needs and environments that don’t drain people dry.
Schools don’t need to label certain children resilient because they quietly cope with exclusion or overwhelm. They need to design learning environments where those kids aren’t forced to cope in the first place.
Families don’t need more pressure to teach resilience. They need actual support, community and accessible services.
Resilience should never be a substitute for safety.
What does living this refusal look like in practice?
Name the cost. When you push through, acknowledge what it takes. Maybe it costs you energy, health or downtime later. Naming it makes the invisible visible.
Opt out strategically. Cancel plans. Walk away. Protect yourself before you’re spent. That's what boundaries look like.
Respect low-capacity days. Productivity is not your measure of worth. Resting, recovering or simply existing is enough.
Tell the truth. Instead of saying, “I’m fine” when you’re not, experiment with honesty. You can just say, “It’s hard right now.”
Ask for what you need. Support and accommodations aren’t luxuries. They’re rights.
Drop the resilience badge. You don’t need to prove you handled it well. Surviving is enough.
Why this matters now
The timing is critical. We live in a world that’s constantly in crisis. Climate change, political unrest, economic instability, ongoing wars and humanitarian suffering. The demand for resilience has never been louder and people are exhausted.
Telling people to be tougher isn’t a solution. It’s denial. What we need is a cultural shift. Collective care instead of individual endurance, honesty instead of toxic positivity, systems that don’t keep breaking people and then praising them for how well they rebuild. We need to start rejecting impossible standards and reclaiming humanity.
Refusing resilience
So no, I don’t want to be resilient today. I don’t want to keep proving I can carry what shouldn’t have to be carried.
I want conditions that don’t require endless coping. I want systems that make resilience optional, not mandatory.
I want to shout from the rooftops that I deserve to be more than what I can withstand.
And in a world addicted to performance, maybe, just maybe, that’s the most radical survival strategy we have.
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Yes Yes and Yes again. Brilliantly put!
I so adore this. Rarely see it talked about but feel it in my bones.