However bad an experience you’re going through, you can always learn from it. If you don’t, why would things change? If they’re bad this time, they’ll be bad next time. I spoke to someone recently whose partner had just died. She had had a tough life, having lost her mother at the age of 15. She told me that she’d coped really badly with that and was messed up for a long time. So this time she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes again. Now that’s resilience.

Think about the things that have gone badly in your life in the past and reflect on how you dealt with them. When new traumas come along, think about how you can handle them. If you keep approaching everything in the same way, you’ll keep getting the same results. So stop it and try something new. Think about what has worked in the past, what hasn’t, and how you can change.

Did you bottle things up and try to cope on your own last time? Well, if that didn’t work I’d recommend a new approach this time – talk to people and ask for support. Did you immerse yourself in work? Did that work? If not, there’s no point repeating it.

It’s not only about your coping mechanisms, it’s the practical things too. If your relationship is breaking down, what can you learn from past experience? Should you talk more? Shout less? Stop working so late every evening? If you clashed badly with your oldest child when they reached adolescence, could you maybe try a different tactic with your next child? If you don’t, you run a high risk of hitting all the same problems again. One friend always shouted at her kids for lounging on the floor to watch TV, instead of sitting in the chairs. One day her son asked her why and it stopped her in her tracks. She thought for a moment and realised she couldn’t think of a reason – she was just repeating what her parents told her. So she laughed and told him he was right and he could stay where he was. A small thing, but it improved their relationship significantly.

When I was in my twenties, a friend of mine in his sixties told me that you don’t stop making mistakes as you get older, but you do find yourself making fresh ones. He said that he ever more frequently found himself thinking, ‘Ah, I’ve tried this before and it definitely didn’t work, so I’ll try something else this time.’ Sometimes it worked, and even when it didn’t it was at least interesting. The depressing thing is how many people I know who couldn’t say this as they grow older, because in fact they just keep repeating the same old mistakes again and again, wondering why things never seem to get any better.

Know yourself. Know your weak spots, know what helps you, know the things that you can and can’t cope with easily, know which potentially negative emotions you’re prone to – anger, depression, self-pity, impulsiveness. The better you understand your own psyche, the better prepared you are to face up to hardship and to bounce back swiftly.