Resilience

Helping Clients Learn How to Surrender

Your new boss shifts the goal posts, demanding a much higher volume of work from you than the high level that was expected before. You take one look at all the new tasks you must do, throw up your hands in despair, and angrily write out your resignation letter. Did you give up or did you surrender? »

Building Shame Resilience in Clients

Jungian analysts have called it the “swampland of the soul”. Other psychotherapy writers have observed how it originally served to keep us safe; the tendency to shame has been a universal one in which our desire to hide our flaws from others has saved us from being kicked out of the group (the society), which evolutionarily would have meant death (Sholl, 2013). So which is it? Is shame totally pat... »

Strategies for Helping Families to Enhance Resilience

If you are supporting a family in transition, you may perceive huge differences between them and the characteristics (named in our previous article) as belonging to resilient families. If so, you may be wondering: “So how do I help move my struggling family down the continuum towards greater functionality?” In this article we address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Sup... »

Post-disaster Resilience: Who Survives Better?

In recent years, many disaster response experts and mental health researchers have switched their focus from looking exclusively at at-risk populations in the aftermath of an emergency to asking, “What are the protective factors?” “What situations, experiences, or personal traits help people to come through a traumatic incident with greater resilience?” First, let’s c... »

How to Deal with Disappointment

You miss out on that plum position you wanted. You lose the court case. Your best mate announces a move to another state. Life is rife with disappointments. Many of them are out of our control, so if we want to be happy, the only option is to learn how to deal with them. »

How to Gain Strength from Adversity

Most of us would have heard the saying, “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” While the optimist in us will hope this saying holds true, it now seems there is some more veracity to this claim. Since the 1990s, there has been huge interest in the question of whether, after a trauma, we must succumb to post-traumatic stress, or whether we are able to instead experience post-tra... »

Common Stages of Disaster Recovery

Disasters and mass disruptive events can be extremely unpredictable and chaotic. Even though that is a valid characterisation of catastrophe, disaster experts have discerned a general pattern or cycle of phases that a community and the individuals in it go through from the time of impact of a disaster to establishing a newly reconstructed life. »

Enhancing Resilience

Have you ever wondered what it takes to survive, or even better, to thrive? Clearly, this might be a life-or-death skill!?In this video, Richard Hill talks about how you can enhance resilience: in yourself, your friends and loved ones, or – if you are a mental health helper – in your clients. »

Fostering Resilience: In-session boosters to help clients bounce back

Suppose someone asks you, a mental health practitioner, “What is the most important thing you do as a counsellor (psychotherapist/psychologist/social worker) for your clients?” Your response might go along the lines of “helping them sort out their problems”, “educating them and inspiring them to make their lives work,” or possibly “providing support and a safe container while they explore new [pre... »

Book Review: Developing Resilience

Neenan, M. (2009). Developing resilience: A cognitive-behavioural approach. East Essex, UK: Routledge. »

Career Challenge Series: Don’t Let NO Stop You

One of the most common questions I have as a Career Coach and as and LCI workshop facilitator is, ‘How do I go about finding my ideal career?’ »

Helping Families Enhance Resilience: Creating supportive contexts

This is the third article of a 3-part series titled Helping Families Enhance Resilience. The series explores how you (as a person providing social support) can help families deal with transition by developing effective resilience skills. »

Helping Families Enhance Resilience: Encouraging effective parenting

This is the second article of a 3-part series titled Helping Families Enhance Resilience. The series explores how you (as a person providing social support) can help families deal with transition by developing effective resilience skills. The series we will address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Supporting a positive self-concept; Encouraging effective parenting and; ... »

Helping Families Enhance Resilience: Supporting a positive self-concept

This is the first article of a 3-part series titled Helping Families Enhance Resilience. The series explores how you (as a person providing social support) can help families deal with transition by developing effective resilience skills. The series we will address three principal areas of focus, which reinforce one another: Supporting a positive self-concept; Encouraging effective parenting and; C... »

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