Resilience: the Ability to Bounce-Back
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What is Resilience?
Resilience is a person's ability to 'bounce-back' from problems, difficulties and life challenges.
In life we can all expect to have our fair share of difficult times, for example when losing a loved one or when suffering ill health.
Everybody has a different level of resilience and this is why some people are able to cope more than others when experiencing similar problems.
Resilience is directly related to our coping skills.
So what makes a person more or less resilient?
The Origins of Resilience
Resilience is a combination of biological, psychological and social factors.
Whilst there is some evidence that a part of being resilient is passed on genetically, the greater part of resilience comes from social experiences during our earlier developmental life.
Dr. Michael Ungar
Dr. Michael Ungar is a world renowned expert on resilience.
You can listen to what he says about it in the video below:
Resilience is a learnable skill
We all have, more or less, a certain amount of resilience 'inside' us that we can use when facing problems, but for those who have been finding it difficult to cope, we recommend following a course of CBT Therapy which is specifically designed to improve resilience.
This course is a wholly scientific, evidence-based training programme which examines and then changes the core beliefs that form the most important foundation of resilience.
These core beliefs set the stage for the subsequent development of our 'rules for living' which we use to negotiate our day-to-day experiences and our ability to cope is directly intertwined inside these beliefs.
By learning how to change those core beliefs we can change how we feel and respond to any situation in a way that is more 'useful' for us, or, in a more resilient way!
Agency: The Power To Determine Your Own Direction
Making Sense of Agency
Agency, within a psychological context, is defined as:
“The sense of agency (SA), or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one’s own volitional actions in the world.”
Attribution Theory: Locating the Cause of Events
Attribution theory, developed by Fritz Heider 80 years ago, explores how we perceive and understand the causes of our experiences.
It is closely tied to the concept of Locus of Control, which measures our belief in our ability to shape our own life outcomes.
Mental Health Barriers: Obstacles to Wellness
Mental health barriers are those factors in lfe that prevent people from experiencing high degrees of wellbeing and overall wellness.
Some of these barriers are common across all human beings and others are culturally, socially or age specific.