483 - Enhancing Hardiness and Resilience
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Presented by: Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes
Executive Director, AllCEUs
Host: Counselor Toolbox
Objectives
- Define resilience
- Identify characteristics that make people more resilient and ways we can enhance those characteristics
- Define Hardiness
- Examine what hardiness is important to resilience
Resilience
- Resilience is the capacity to bounce back
- Characteristics of resilient people:
- Awareness of and minimized vulnerabilities
- Healthy self-esteem
- Strong social support system
- Self-awareness
- Self-Efficacy
- Problem Solving Skills
- Practice acceptance
- Can tolerate distress
- Have an optimistic viewpoint
Awareness of Vulnerabilities
- Emotional Distress
- Emotional Eustress
- Mental Distress
- Mental Eustress
- Physical Distress
- Nutrition (poor nutrition, dieting, too much caffeine)
- Sleep
- Exercise (pain, exhaustion)
- Pain
- Illness
Vulnerabilities cont…
- Social Distress
- Social Eustress
- Environmental Distress
- Environmental Eustress
Self Esteem
- Ability to provide validation and acceptance of self
- Identify personal strengths and positive characteristics
- Separate who you are from what you do
- Explore cognitions about:
- Why other people’s opinions matter
- Attributions
Strong Social Support System
- Social supports are our greatest buffers against stress
- Relationships can be one of the greatest causes of stress
- Identify characteristics of healthy vs. unhealthy relationships.
- Explore ways to nurture and enhance healthy relationships.
- Identify ways to deal with unhealthy people
- Learn about temperament and complimentarity
Self-Awareness
- Temperament
- Needs
- Wants
- Values (Truly important, driving forces)
- Goals
- Is what I am doing getting me closer to or further away from what is important to me
- Physical and emotional state in the present
- Triggers (positive and negative)
Self-Efficacy
- Believing in one’s own capacity to accomplish goals (effectiveness)
- Identification as a survivor not a victim (Locus of control)
- Hardiness
- Commitment: Motivation
- Control: Realistic understanding of what is within one’s control
- Challenge: Not too easy, but not overwhelming. Exciting opportunity
Problem Solving Skills
- Ability to conceptualize problems
- Willingness to seek out help
- Motivation to actually take action
- Don’t bring me a problem unless you have an idea for at least one realistic solution.
Acceptance
- Sometimes things just are…
- Unfortunate
- Inaccessible
- Unchangeable
- Willingness to accept life on life’s terms without
- Judging
- Trying to change the unchangable
Distress Tolerance
- Ability to feel a feeling without having to react
- “I am angry”
- “I am having a feeling of being angry”
- “I am angry but can choose whether or not to stew in it”
- Note
- There are no “You made me” (victim stance)
- There is no active attempt to change it at this point
- Feelings are there to tell us something. Fighting them or nurturing them only prolongs them.
Optimism
- Finding the silver lining
- Failure = Learning opportunity
- Relationships = Compassion
- Rainy day = Watering the plants
- Life change = Opportunity to find a new direction
Summary
- Resilience is the capacity to bounce back
- Resilience is a quality we can enhance in our clients while also helping them reduce distress.
- Characteristics of resilient people:
- Awareness of and minimized vulnerabilities
- Healthy self-esteem
- Strong social support system
- Self-awareness
- Self-Efficacy
- Problem Solving Skills
- Practice acceptance
- Can tolerate distress
- Have an optimistic viewpoint