Introduction

Sarah had recently been widowed, leaving her to raise her six children alone. After an appropriate period of mourning, she became a respected employee at her new job and an even more effective leader of her family. Suffering a similar loss, a friend in Sarah’s walking group became dispirited and depressed.

Cal is a Navy SEAL. His wife said he returned from each of his many deployments the same upbeat, communicative, and loving man he had been before he left. His SEAL teammate, however, became a heavy drinker and grew increasingly cynical.

Facing an imminent layoff, Wendy figured out a way to improve her performance and become indispensable to her boss. Her teammate at the office became paralyzed with anxiety and disengaged from her job.

There’s an old African saying, “You know how well the roof has been built only when the rains come.” Humans aren’t much different. We all know people who have faced great challenges. Some cope well with their stress. Some stumble psychologically but then recover. People in a third group fall and never recover. What separates the first two groups from the third? Resilience! Resilience is the key to resisting stress, rebounding from it, and being your best. This workbook will show you how to increase your resilience.

What Is Resilience?

Most people already have a sense of what resilience is. In the course of my work, I’ve asked people in many settings what they think of when they think of “resilience.” They’ve said:

There are hundreds of definitions of “resilience” found in the psychological literature. We’ll use this as our working definition:

Resilience comprises those inner strengths of mind and character—both inborn and developed—that enable one to respond well to adversity, including the capacities to

  • prevent stress-related conditions, such as depression or anxiety, or their recurrence;
  • recover faster and more completely from stress and stress-related conditions; and
  • optimize mental fitness and functioning in the various areas of life.

As this definition suggests, resilience is standard issue, meaning that we all already possess the strengths of mind and character in embryo—like seeds that can be grown. You wouldn’t have survived this long if you completely lacked resilience. And you have the capacity to greatly expand your resilience.

Responding well to adversity suggests that we adapt calmly and capably to changing circumstances, drawing upon available strengths—be they mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, financial, or social (for example, mentors, family, or friends).

Resilience is a process and a staircase. You might be on step four of the staircase, and I might be on step one, but we can both keep moving up the staircase so that our resilience levels will hopefully exceed the rising tide of stress. You can enlarge your capacity for resilience by practicing resilience skills. As we build resilience, health and functioning typically improve.

Why Is Resilience So Important?

The benefits of building resilience are great and vital! First, resilience counters the psychological problems that trouble so many of us. Approximately 50 percent of American adults (Kessler et al. 1994, 2005) will experience a stress-related condition (see table 1), and prevalence rates for these conditions are increasing globally. Much of this suffering is needless. Resilience can largely prevent these conditions from developing or recurring. Should these conditions occur, resilience can reduce symptom severity and facilitate recovery.

Second, resilience counters many medical and functional problems. The emotional toll of stress-related conditions is bad enough. However, the mind and body are connected. So excessive, unresolved emotional stress makes us more vulnerable to a wide range of medical diseases, earlier death, and impaired functioning at work, home, and play.

Third, resilience is about mastery and growth. Resilience does more than fight problems; it promotes optimal well-being. Resilience helps us thrive mentally, emotionally, physically, socially, and spiritually—and function at our best, especially during difficult times. With resilience, we tend to be calmer, more productive, and enjoy life more. Conversely, those who lack resilience tend to have higher rates of absenteeism and of prematurely leaving their careers.

Table 1. Stress can play a role in initiating, maintaining, and worsening these psychological conditions, or stress-related conditions, and building resilience can help you deal with them.

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Depression

Anxiety disorders

Substance-use disorders

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors

Generalized stress or worry

Excessive or chronic anger (for example, resulting in domestic violence, cynicism)

Sleep disturbance, exhaustion

Eating disorders

ADHD

Relationship difficulties

There are two important points about stress-related conditions worth noting. First, people show stress in different ways. For example, after being exposed to an overwhelming event or a series of stressful events, one person might develop PTSD. Another might develop depression or anxiety, or have suicidal thoughts. Some might experience two or more stress-related conditions at the same time or at different times. Still others might continue to function reasonably well despite being troubled by agitation or fatigue from troubled sleep—even in the absence of a psychological diagnosis. Second, these conditions share many common risk factors, such as unhealthy self-esteem, unresolved emotional upheavals, or excessive physical stress levels. Resilience building addresses these common risk factors, which can protect you against a wide range of challenges, including everyday stress.

Who Benefits from Building Resilience?

This workbook is for anyone, regardless of your present level of emotional health or functioning. You will likely benefit from this workbook if you:

In short, building resilience can benefit all of us. Can you imagine anyone who would not benefit from growing resilience?

What Do We Know About Resilient People?

I wanted to truly understand what makes real people resilient, so I traveled the country over a five-year period and interviewed members of the “Greatest Generation.” These were ordinary people who were called to endure extraordinary adversities—economic depression, hard work, war, and sometimes family upheaval. I interviewed forty-one survivors of WWII combat who returned well adjusted, built enduring marriages, and lived fruitful lives. Being eighty years of age on average when I interviewed them, they had much wisdom to share. While most of us will not experience combat, there is much we can learn about maintaining sanity and high-level functioning in everyday life from ordinary people who have. From this (Schiraldi 2007b) and other studies of resilient adults and children (such as Werner 1992), it’s clear that some resilient people seem to capably sail through adversity, while others seem to falter for a time but rebound later in life. It appears that internal strengths and coping mechanisms better predict who will triumph over adversity than external circumstances. These strengths and coping mechanisms—the so-called protective factors—are what you will grow in this workbook:

Notice that resilience is a flexible, relative concept. It does not occur in an all-or-none fashion but exists on a continuum:

Complete helplessness and vulnerability Surviving Resilience(optimal coping) Perfection, invulnerability

While everyone is resilient to some degree, no one is perfectly resilient, or resilient in all circumstances. Resilience does not mean invulnerability, because anyone can be overwhelmed when circumstances are severe enough. Rather, resilience is about generally working, playing, loving, and expecting well (Werner 1992) and functioning at our best possible level in any given situation. As the legendary coach John Wooden taught his highly successful basketball players, success is doing your personal best; sometimes the other team will simply be better on a given day.

Resilience can even vary within an individual depending on many internal and external factors, such as how rested and nourished one is, one’s training and experience, or the nature of the situation. As you train, your aim is to grow your resilience to a level that is greater than the challenges you’ll face.

Nearly anyone can learn how to be resilient at any age. Ideally, we can develop resilience before crises strike. Sometimes adversity causes us to summon and apply strengths we didn’t know we possessed. And sometimes, looking back, we learn from difficult experiences and “get it together” later in life, recognizing weaknesses and turning them into strengths.

A Word About PTSD

PTSD is the most complex of the stress-related psychological conditions. It typically occurs with at least one of the other conditions listed in table 1 and has many common risk factors. Not everyone reading this book is experiencing PTSD. However, if you understand the nature and treatment of PTSD, you’ll understand much about the nature, prevention, and treatment of the other stress-related conditions. This is why I frequently reference PTSD in this workbook.

See Where You Are Now: The Resilience Checkup

Resilient people are aware of, and use, their strengths. The following resilience checkup will assess your strengths, providing you with a starting point from which to measure your progress as you practice resilience skills. The process of taking the checkup will also begin to reinforce some of the goals of resilience training: each item on the scale suggests a resilience strength, and thus a goal. And it will be reassuring to know that you already possess some measure of resilience to build upon. There is nothing tricky about this assessment, nor does it matter how your scores compare with others. So relax, and be as honest as you can.

Please rate from 0 to 10 how much you believe each of the following statements. A rating of 0 means you don’t believe it at all, and 10 means you think it is completely true.

Statement Rating

I generally feel strong and capable of overcoming my problems.

When I get stressed, I usually bounce back fairly quickly.

I generally function well in the various areas of life: job or school, relationships, and play.

I generally stay calm and steady when the going gets tough.

I am generally flexible, meaning if my usual way of doing things isn’t working, I readily try something else.

I am in a good mood most of the time.

I think well of myself and like who I am inside.

Difficult times don’t change the way I feel about myself.

I believe that if I try my best, things will usually turn out well.

I am good at reaching out and connecting with people.

I usually try to solve my problems, but I know when to bend if something is beyond my control.

I anticipate difficult situations, make a plan, and carry out my plan.

I enjoy life and am satisfied with what I am contributing to the world.

I am good at coping with strong negative emotions.

I am good at separating myself from people who get me down or upset me.

I have goals and am optimistic about my future.

I’m involved in a variety of activities that I enjoy.

I don’t have self-destructive habits.

I feel at peace with myself and my past. I’ve grown stronger from what I’ve experienced.

I don’t beat myself up when my best efforts don’t succeed.

I know when to seek help, and where to find it.

I stay focused and think clearly under pressure. I am persistent, determined, and resolved.

Total score (add the scores from statements 1–22):

Next, rate your overall resilience, according to how resilient you generally feel.

0

100

Total lack of resilience

Extremely resilient

Your response:

How often do you feel restricted in your daily activities because of difficulties with resilience?

1

2

3

4

5

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

Your response:

Activity: Resilience Awareness

To increase your awareness of what is possible, and to recognize strengths in others and yourself,

  • • notice resilience traits in others over a two-day period, and
  • • notice resilience strengths in yourself for two days after that.

Can Resilience Change?

Resilience can grow. Research at the University of Maryland (Schiraldi et al. 2010; Sullivan, Brown, and Schiraldi 2013) found that practicing resilience skills leads to significant gains in resilience, along with increased happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and curiosity—and significantly decreased symptoms of depression, anxiety, and anger. This is very good news indeed!

About the Skills You’ll Learn

This workbook is highly experiential. Your success at developing resilience will be determined by how much you practice and apply the principles and skills we explore.

We’ll explore many tools to keep you strong. The tools are drawn from both traditional and positive psychology. Traditional psychology fixes problems and helps us move from negative to neutral in terms of mood and performance. Eliminating negative thought patterns and managing distressing emotions are examples of traditional psychology methods. Positive psychology focuses on strengths and growth, moving us from neutral to positive emotional states and closer to peak functioning. Interestingly, happiness skills, which are tools of positive psychology, also help to prevent and treat stress-related conditions.

This workbook follows a logical sequence. Most will find it beneficial to work through it from the beginning to the end. Others may choose to skip around. Most people will find value in most, if not all, of the skills if they give them a fair trial. However, you may wish to bypass skills that don’t seem right for you. You’ll likely have success early on with many skills. Initial success often indicates that a skill will be a useful addition to your coping toolbox, although other skills might “click” only after repeated practice.

Attitude is important. Try to keep an open mind. Assuming that resilience skills will quickly or perfectly solve all problems can lead to disappointment. On the other hand, cynicism can prevent us from giving skills a chance. Try for the middle ground, the beginner’s mind that says, “With practice and mastery, this skill might help.” Then see what happens.

The Resilience Model

Building resilience follows a simple conceptual model: the resilience model.

Optimize brain hardware. First, to understand the resilience model, compare the brain to a computer. The brain hardware refers to the number, health, and function of the brain’s neurons and supporting tissues. The software—resilience skills—will not work well if the hardware is sluggish. So strengthening brain hardware is where resilience building starts. When you take care of the brain, you’re also taking care of your body, mind, and spirit.
Optimize brain software. Resilience skills can be likened to the software, or programming, that helps us heal and cope with life’s adversities. These skills fall into five important categories:
  1. Regulating arousal (your body’s response to stress)
  2. Managing strong distressing emotions
  3. Increasing happiness
  4. Thriving: peak functioning and adaptive coping
  5. Preparing emotionally for difficult times

How Long Will Resilience Building Take?

Take whatever time you need to cultivate resilience at your own pace. You may wish to select the skills that resonate with you and practice each for several days to give them a fair trial. You may prefer to work on these skills individually, in a study group, or with a therapist. After completing this workbook, make a plan to continue practicing your favorite skills in order to maintain your skill level.

Before Beginning

There are a couple of things to consider that can help you have a more successful experience with this workbook. First, have yourself screened for unresolved mental disorders and treated if necessary. It is very difficult, for example, to feel happiness in the presence of unresolved trauma. We have learned that unresolved emotional upheavals predict a wide range of psychological, medical, and functional impairments. Fortunately, we know that trauma—and other stress-related conditions—can be effectively treated with a wide range of modalities.

Second, develop independence from family dysfunction. Family support is invaluable in the recovery process. However, resilient individuals know how to separate, figuratively or literally, from destructive family patterns. One might acknowledge and accept that “Mom struggled with depression.” Another might come to realize that he doesn’t have to accept his father’s constant criticism and can’t fix him or gain his approval. Other individuals might move at least ninety minutes away from dysfunctional family members to gain relief (Wolin and Wolin 1993).

Finding Motivation

Mastery of resilience skills doesn’t happen overnight. It takes effort. Before you commit the time and effort required to complete the program, it might be helpful to do a cost-benefit analysis, just as a manager might before implementing a new plan. Below, list the disadvantages and advantages of embarking on resilience training. I provided a few examples to get you started.

Cons: The bad thing about resilience training is… Pros: The good thing about resilience training is…

I’ll have to commit the time for regular practice.

People might look more to me for leadership.

I’ll have to be responsible.

I’ll have to stop feeling helpless or giving excuses for passivity.

I’ll handle my emotions better.

I’ll feel better mentally and physically.

I’ll enjoy life, home, and work more.

I’ll feel the satisfaction of doing my best.

Another motivating strategy is to complete the following sentence stem in as many ways as you can:

The positive consequences of becoming more resilient are…

Conclusion

Everyone can benefit from developing resilience. You already have within you the strengths to do so, like seeds capable of being grown. Applying the skills in this workbook will help you grow these strengths.

Are you ready to begin the rewarding journey of building resilience? Chapter 1 is the logical starting point—strengthening the brain.