Resilience-Based Counselling

What is Resilience-Based Counselling?

In my practice, I aim to integrate Resilience-Based (or “Resilience-Informed”) principles into my work with clients. Resilience-Informed Therapy was developed by Arielle Schwartz. Her model integrates different techniques into a holistic mind-body approach to trauma recovery.

Schwartz states the following: “Resilience Informed Therapy helps you to:

• Build your resources and focus on your strengths

• Increase distress tolerance (i.e. increase your ability to handle hard emotions)

• Reprocess traumatic life events safely

• Feel empowered to take an active role in your health and wellness”

This orientation posits that resilience (our ability to bounce back in the face of adversity) can be built. For this to happen, we have to expect that we will experience loss and pain in our lives and choose to act and think in adaptive ways when bad things do happen. We can develop growth-mindsets, where we view life’s challenges as events that we can learn from and grow from. When we accept life circumstances that can’t be changed, we are able to make room to focus on what we do have control over/what we can change. We learn that we are not powerless in the face of adversity. The holistic element of this approach can be found in its 6 pillars: Growth Mindset, Emotional Intelligence, Community Connections, Self-Expression, Embodiment, and Choice and Control. You can read more about these elements here.