Why do some people cope better with exceptional situations than others? "Resilience is the answer," says clinical psychologist J. Christopher Kübler and reveals how he helps his clients to train their mental resilience.
We all know them: People who have "nerves of steel", who are "a rock in the storm" or who always prove to be a "stand-up guy". We use phrases like these to describe a remarkable characteristic that experts call resilience. They refer to an experience and behavior that not only allows us to withstand massive stress - in line with the Latin meaning of "resilire = to bounce back" - but also enables us to overcome our challenges and even grow in the process.
Anyone who thinks they are born with little mental resilience will be pleased to learn the following: Experience in counseling, coaching and psychotherapy has shown time and again that most people have resilience skills that are simply not activated. This means that there is more to us than we realize.
General resilience factors
Thanks to extensive research, scientists can now name a whole range of key resilience factors. These include, for example, intellectual abilities, social skills, problem-solving skills, good self-efficacy and self-control as well as successful stress management. Resilient people also prove to be solution-oriented, able to relate, open, interested, self-motivated, determined, purposeful, meaningful, positive-thinking, self-aware, calm and at peace with themselves. With this list of ideal characteristics, which cannot be extended any further, the question inevitably arises: How can I become such a resilient personality? And above all: is it really necessary to have all the factors at your disposal in order to be able to cope with life's adversities?
Resilience as an individual competence
It is important to understand the following in this regard: Lists such as the resilience factors make general statements based on a statistical average of the people examined. This form of scientific knowledge is less useful for coaches, counselors or psychotherapists working in practice. In their day-to-day work, they are concerned with individuals and their specific life situations. The question here is rather one of individual resilience competence. 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 pressed for time (which doesn't exactly help their high blood pressure) needs tailored skills. Other resilience factors help someone who is expected to concentrate constantly, who tends to cultivate a certain phlegmatism and who has more or less severe headache attacks at least once a day. This is exactly what resilience coaching is all about: individual answers and approaches for each individual.
The practice of resilience coaching
Depending on the resilience and personality concept, 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 skills that somehow needs to be compensated for or filled. We have what we need in terms of skills, they are (temporarily) just not (sufficiently) activated. Resilience coaching in this sense then means "treasure hunting" and "treasure utilization". It is about finding existing skills and activating them. Psychological methods that we all use in our everyday lives for our own "psycho-management" can help here - but usually without realizing it and sometimes not as versatile and skillful as possible. This is because this "psychomanagement" usually takes place unconsciously and involuntarily. Experts talk about hypno-imaginative, psycho-energetic and systemic constellation techniques that we use somehow every day and that need to be optimized in coaching. For example, by learning to access our involuntary competence. The fact that this type of resilience coaching builds on both existing skills and "psycho-techniques" that are already used on a daily basis means that there is a good chance of achieving a noticeable improvement in your own resilience skills within a short space of time. Because, as I said, there is more to us than we can dream of!
History of resilience research
Jack Block introduced the term "resilience" to science in 1950. Initially, however, it received no further attention. It was not until 20 years later that Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith took up the topic again in a highly regarded long-term study of children on the island of Kauai. Their question: Why do children develop so differently under equally poor conditions? They had observed that some grew up severely stressed and psychologically impaired, while others appeared to be able to cope with the circumstances. The researchers attributed this to differences in resilience. Since then, a large part of resilience research has been concerned with the question of which psychological factors cause resilience and which environmental or educational conditions have a decisive influence on these factors. The current popularity of the term "resilience" is linked to the growing awareness of topics such as stress, coping, burnout, salutogenesis and mindfulness. They are all aimed at a practical core problem: How can people promote and develop their mental competence so that they can cope with the challenges of everyday life in a healthy way?
