Why do some people cope better with exceptional situations than others? "Resilience is the answer," says clinical psychologist J. Christopher Kübler, revealing how he helps his clients train their psychological resilience.
We all know them: people who have "nerves of steel," are "a rock in the storm," or who always prove to be "the best of the best." With phrases like these, we describe a remarkable quality that experts call resilience. They refer to an experience and behavior that not only allows us to defy massive pressures—in keeping with the Latin meaning of "resilire" = to bounce back—but also allows us to overcome our challenges and even grow from them.
Anyone who thinks they were born with little psychological resilience will be pleased to learn the following: Experiences in counseling, coaching, and psychotherapy repeatedly show that most people have resilience competencies within themselves that are simply not activated. This means: There's more in us than we can imagine.
General resilience factors
Thanks to extensive research, scientists can now identify a whole range of key resilience factors. These include, for example, intellectual abilities, social skills, problem-solving skills, strong self-efficacy and self-control, and successful stress management. Resilient people also prove to be solution-oriented, capable of building relationships, open, interested, self-motivated, determined, goal-oriented, purpose-driven, positive-thinking, self-aware, calm, and self-assured. Given this endless list of ideal characteristics, the question inevitably arises: How can I become such a resilient personality? And above all: Is it really necessary to have all of these factors at my disposal to cope with life's adversities?
Resilience as an individual competence
In this regard, it is important to understand the following: Lists such as those of resilience factors make general statements based on a statistical average of the people examined. This form of scientific knowledge is less useful for practical coaches, consultants, or psychotherapists. Their day-to-day work is about specific individuals and their specific life situations. The question here is more about individual resilience skills. In other words: What challenges does this particular person face? Which resilient behaviors tailored to them would be effective for them? And what resilience factors do they need to be able to behave in this way? A person who is constantly in an exposed position at work, who is expected to be diplomatic (despite their choleric temperament), and who is constantly under pressure to meet deadlines (which doesn't exactly help their high blood pressure) needs skills tailored to these challenges. Other resilience factors, however, help someone who is required to maintain a high level of constant concentration, who tends to be somewhat phlegmatic, and who suffers from headaches of varying severity at least once a day. This is precisely what resilience coaching is all about: customized responses and approaches for each individual.
Practice of resilience coaching
Depending on the concept of resilience and personality, there are certainly very different approaches to coaching. One very helpful approach, for example, is based on the potential hypothesis. This states that most people do not have a significant deficit in resilience competence that needs to be compensated or filled somehow. We have the competence we need, it is just (temporarily) not (sufficiently) activated. Resilience coaching in this sense means "treasure hunting" and "treasure utilization." It is about finding and activating existing competences. Psychological methods can help here, which each of us also uses in our everyday life for our own "psychomanagement" – usually without realizing it and sometimes not as versatile and skillful as possible. This is because this "psychomanagement" usually occurs unconsciously and involuntarily. Experts speak of hypno-imaginative, psycho-energetic, and systemic constellation techniques that we use in some way every day and that need to be optimized in coaching. For example, by learning to access our seemingly involuntary competence at will. Because this type of resilience coaching builds on both existing competencies and "psycho-techniques" we already use every day, there's a good chance of achieving a noticeable improvement in our resilience competence in a short period of time. Because, as we said, there's more within us than we can imagine!
History of resilience research
In 1950, Jack Block introduced the term "resilience" into science. Initially, however, it received little attention. It wasn't until 20 years later that Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith revisited the topic in a highly acclaimed long-term study of children on the island of Kauai. Their question: Why do children develop so differently under equally adverse conditions? They observed that some grew up with severe stress and psychological impairment, while others appeared to be able to cope with the circumstances. The researchers attributed this to differences in resilience. Since then, much of resilience research has focused on the question of which psychological factors promote resilience and which environmental or parenting conditions have a decisive influence on these factors. The current popularity of the term "resilience" is linked to the growing sensitivity to topics such as stress, coping, burnout, salutogenesis, and mindfulness. They all address a core practical problem: How can people promote and develop their psychological competence so that they can overcome the challenges of everyday life in a healthy way?
