Why are some people better at coping with exceptional situations than others? "Resilience is the answer," says clinical psychologist J. Christopher Kübler, revealing how he helps his clients train their mental resilience.

We all know them: people who have "nerves of steel," are "as solid as a rock," or always bounce back no matter what. We use expressions like these to describe a remarkable characteristic that experts refer to as resilience. They refer to an experience and behavior that not only allows us to withstand enormous stress—in line with the Latin meaning of "resilire" = to bounce back—but also enables us to overcome our challenges and even grow from them. 

Anyone who thinks they were born with little psychological resilience will be pleased to hear the following: experience in counseling, coaching, and psychotherapy shows time and again that most people have resilience skills that are simply not activated. In other words, there is more to us than we could ever imagine.

General resilience factors

Thanks to extensive research, scientists are now able to identify a whole range of key resilience factors. These include, for example, intellectual abilities, social skills, problem-solving skills, good self-efficacy and self-control, and successful stress management. Resilient people also prove to be solution-oriented, sociable, open, interested, self-motivated, determined, goal-oriented, purpose-driven, 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 person? And above all: Is it really necessary to have all these factors at my disposal in order to cope with the adversities of life?

Resilience as an individual skill

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 studied. For coaches, counselors, or psychotherapists working in practice, this form of scientific knowledge is less useful. In their everyday work, they deal with individual people and their specific life situations. Here, the question of individual resilience competence arises. In other words: What challenges does this particular person face? What 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 a high-profile position at work, who is expected to be diplomatic (despite their choleric temperament) and who is constantly pressed for time (which does not exactly help their high blood pressure) needs skills tailored to their situation. Other resilience factors help someone who is required to maintain a high level of concentration, who tends to be somewhat phlegmatic, and who experiences more or less severe headaches at least once a day. This is precisely what resilience coaching is all about in practice: individual answers 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 is based, for example, on the potential hypothesis. This states that most people do not have a significant deficit in resilience skills that needs to be compensated for or filled in some way. We have the competence we need, it is just not (sufficiently) activated (at times). Resilience coaching in this sense then means "treasure hunting" and "treasure utilization." It is about finding existing competencies and activating them. Psychological methods that each of us uses in our everyday lives for our own "psychological management" can help here – but mostly without us noticing and sometimes not as versatile and skillful as possible. This is because this "psychological management" usually takes place unconsciously and involuntarily. Experts refer to hypno-imaginative, psychoenergetic, and systemic constellation techniques, which we somehow use every day and which need to be optimized in coaching. For example, by learning to access our involuntary skills at will. Because this type of resilience coaching builds on both existing skills and "psycho-techniques" that are already used on a daily basis, there is a good chance of achieving a noticeable improvement in one's own resilience skills in a short period of time. Because, as I said, there is more within us than we can imagine!

History of resilience research

In 1950, Jack Block introduced the term "resilience" into science. Initially, however, it was largely ignored. It was not 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 was: Why do children develop so differently under equally poor conditions? They had observed that some grew up severely stressed and psychologically impaired, while others seemed to cope well with their circumstances. The researchers attributed this to differences in resilience. Since then, much of the research on resilience has focused on 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 growing awareness of issues such as stress, coping, burnout, salutogenesis, and mindfulness. They all address a practical core problem: How can people promote and develop their psychological competence in such a way that they can healthily master the challenges of everyday life?