Resilience Therapy
Why do I like resilience so much? Because there is something so honest and intrinsic about it. It just makes sense. People talk about resilience in every culture and every language. As I said many of your favourite films and songs are probably about resilience. Everybody is resilient, its just that sometimes we don’t feel it, or sometimes we just need a little bit of time to get it back! You seem to have fallen into a hole that you can’t climb out of, but you still want to be able to reach up and find a helping hand to pull you out.
The good news is that resilience can be rediscovered and constructed. Resilient people learn to live for a while in the darkness, while developing the necessary coping skills to adapt to their circumstances and find a “new normal”. They learn to be self compassionate, kind and non- judgmental with themselves as they go through their crisis. Some will even find a deeper purpose and meaning in life.
The concept of resilience is easy to understand but hard to define. Just like love and stress it depends on the context, the person you are talking to and how much time you have to talk about it. Having studied and worked in psychology for over 20 years, I truly believe that focussing on your resilience is what we all need to do for ourselves, our partners, our families, our communities and our world. I can help you build that resilience when you really need it.
Have trouble getting by when the going gets tough? Everyone wants to perform well when the pressure’s on, but a lot of us withdraw in times of stress or adversity. If you can build your resilience, you’ll have an easier time facing new challenges and how to bounce back from difficult situations, by building your “resiliency threshold.” We can work out your own strategies to keep your life moving forward even when you feel completely overwhelmed.
Look at the resilience mandala below and see how resilience builds over your life, also look at how important sense of humour and creativity are in the model. Resilience work is different, we look at the world in a positive way.
As an expert in resilience, I believe these unprecedented changes have had a significant and adverse impact on the mental health of many people.
And there is no end in sight. If ever a moment called for understanding the concept of resilience, this is it.
Resilience is the ability to adapt to adversity or a stressful life event. Research on resilience has a rich history, dating back to the 1950s; those studies focused on children growing up in high-risk environments. More contemporary research looks at how we adapt to traumatic events like cancer, natural disasters, loss of close family members and most of all a whole lot of uncertainty.
Resilience can be learned
While some researchers suggest resilience is “trait-like” – that is, hard-wired into one’s personality – others say it can be learned and acquired later in life. Some even say adversity brings potential benefits. “There is nothing better than adversity,” said the activist Malcolm X. “Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve the next time.”
The pain and suffering during this pandemic is undeniably real for everyone. But specific segments of the population are disproportionately affected, for some of us it has just been that push too far. It is hard to see the way forward sometimes and the uncertainty makes us feel powerless.