What is Resilience?

1. What is Resilience?
2. Optimism
3. Facing Fear
4. Moral Compass
5. Religion and Spirituality
6. Social Support
7. Role Models
8. Physical Fitness
9. Brain Fitness
10. Cognitive & Emotional Flexibility
11. Meaning, Purpose, Growth
12. Practicing Resilience
13. Resilience During COVID-19

Accompanying Worksheets:

There are lessons accompanying each video that you can access through our recovery portal, Swell.

Medically-reviewed articles:

• Cultivating Patience in Recovery
• What Can Improve the Success Rate of Addiction Recovery?

Professional webinars:

• Relapse Prevention: “Doing” Recovery in this Changing World
• Our Staff’s Stories of Recovery

What is Resilience?

Most people will experience a traumatic event at some point in their lives. Norris & Sloane (2007) estimate this is true for 90% of all people. Some of us will have several traumatic events in our lives. Some people will respond to this trauma in an effective manner and move on in their lives, others of us will struggle to move forward and carry on.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats and even significant sources of stress such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stresses”.

We each have our own built-in resilience. Some of us have more than others. Some of us are more resilient to certain kinds of stressors and less resilient with other kinds of stressors. We can all work to build our resilience and improve our ability to recoup from the stressors we face.

In their book “Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges,” Southwick and Charney (2012) identify ten resilience factors which are helpful. The more resilience we have or can build, the more quickly and easily we can recover from our traumas and stressors.

These factors are:

1. Optimism
2. Facing Fear
3. Moral Compass, Ethics and Altruism
4. Religion and Spirituality
5. Social Support
6. Role Models
7. Physical Fitness
8. Brain Fitness
9. Cognitive and Emotional Flexibility
10. Meaning, Purpose and Growth

Questions: Which of these factors do you feel do well with? Which of these factors do you feel you need to develop?

We will discuss each of these in the subsequent lessons.