Exploring Resilience
What is resilience?
Resilience is the ability to adapt positively in the face of significant adversity, trauma or stress. You can get a sense of your own resilience by assessing how well you adjust so as to cope with adverse life events.
Take an inventory of your resilience
Sometimes you will find it difficult to adjust effectively to unfamiliar or traumatic stressful events. These include, but are not limited to, relationship problems, health challenges, exposure/subjection to violence or abuse, unforeseen work-related problems, an event which alone might not be stressful, but can easily accumulate at a particular time in your life.
In the face of a stressful and traumatic life situation, you can take an inventory to evaluate areas of your life that will contribute to and enhance your personal resilience.
Exploration exercise
Step 1:
Below are factors that promote resilience. These factors fall into two categories i.e., intrapersonal dependence and interpersonal dependence. In my practice, I often use these terms to help people consider if they have a balance of depending on themselves and depending on others. Different people need more or less of one or the other. Sometimes an adjustment in these areas is helpful to deal with current and future challenges.
Write down how these areas feature in your current life situation.
What abilities do you think you have to cope with stress effectively? Are these healthy or detrimental to your health and well-being? What is one word/theme that describes how you cope?
Do you have good problem-solving skills that allow you to:
Find effective and alternative strategies to meet your goals?
Concentrate?
Think clearly?
Consider best and worst case scenarios and accept possible outcomes?
Who can you go to primarily for encouragement, help and support?
To what extent do you believe in yourself to cope and manage your feelings?
Are you regularly in contact with others, such as family or friends?
Who are the friends and people around who support you? What is it about them that is helpful?
Do you/have you allowed yourself to disclosure the details of the adversity or stress to loved ones? Explain.
Do you have a spiritual view of your situation?
Do you/can you identify yourself as a ‘survivor’ or ‘victim’ of the current adversity or stress?
Do you take time out to help others?
Do you/can you find positive meaning in your situation?
Step 2:
Look back at what you have written. Think about what has been effective when you have experienced adversity or stress in the past. What factors do you need in place now? What areas need changing?
References: Agaibi & Wilson; Luthar & Cicchetti
