Resilience in psychotherapy

What role does resilience play throughout the psychotherapeutic process? How can it be enhanced?

The concept of resilience is as old as time, and has to do with the capacity of a material, person or ecosystem to return to its initial state (from the Latin "resilio" - "to return").

John Bowlby was the first to speak of resilience in the eighties, although it was Boris Cyrulnik who popularized the term in his book Ugly Ducklings: Resilience. An unhappy childhood does not determine life.

In nature, resilience would be the capacity of an ecosystem to recover and return to its previous equilibrium after a catastrophe. In serious physics, it would be the capacity of an object to recover its initial shape despite the blows it may receive and despite the efforts that may be made to deform it.

In psychology, resilience is the ability as human beings to adapt positively to adverse situations.. In common parlance, it would be the closest thing to "fortitude", to overcome something adverse and come out stronger.

From neuroscience it is understood that resilient people would have greater emotional balance in stressful situations, with a greater ability to withstand pressure. This provides a greater sense of control in the face of any contingency and a greater capacity to face challenges.

Resilience in psychological therapy

Obviously, we will have to accept the idea that the people who come to therapy are either not resilient or are not aware that they are resilient. Therefore, we will often find ourselves in the opposite case of resilience, with "asilient" people.

Recently, some authors contrast "nomic resilience", or an individual's potential capacity to cope with adversity, with "anomic resilience or the individual's potential capacity to face adversity, versus "asilent anomia", or the belief that one is incompetent in the face of adversity without being so.

How can we make use of this innate capacity of our brain in therapy? The first thing that always comes to mind is the figure of the "resilience tutor", a concept coined by Cyrulnik in 2005 and which would include "those people, instances, groups, a place, an event, a work of art that causes a rebirth of psychological development after the trauma, which for the injured person are the starting point to try to resume or initiate another type of development; those who suffer from suffering have the possibility of finding in their affective and social context, resilience tutors with whom they can feel unconditionally loved, grow and overcome".

Can therapists embody this figure in their clinical practice? Obviously, it will depend to a large extent on your life experience. In my opinion, in most cases, the mere fact of having chosen therapeutic help as a way of life makes us already resilient to some extent, or at least puts us on the way to developing this mechanism in ourselves. That is why, in my humble opinion, every therapist should do some deep work on himself.

Personally, I always frame my therapeutic approach in the following phrase of my personal harvest: "the key to living lies in 'making sense of your life', and this includes making sense of the 'suffering' that is also part of your life". Always understanding that understanding and developing a sense of resilience is key to any psychological healing process..

Techniques that help overcome adversity

In Vitaliza we have asked ourselves from the beginning if, besides and beyond the classic cognitive-behavioral approaches or any other form of psychoeducation, there is the possibility of neurobiological level to reinforce the capacity of our brain to respond in the face of adversity..

And the answer is, in our opinion, yes. And specifically, we are talking about emotional regulation through neuromodulation and the development of mindfulness..

Biofeedback and Neurofeedback

Neuromodulation through bio and neurofeedback optimizes the response of our Autonomic and Central Nervous System when responding to the environment.

Biofeedback makes us aware of our autonomic response to stress (breathing, cardiac coherence, Heart rate, heart rate, heart rate). (breathing, cardiac coherence, temperature, etc.) and allows us to regulate these constants in a functional and adaptive way. And Neurofeedback, a technique that regulates our brain electrical activity through a second-degree operant conditioning system, optimizes and reinforces our alert response and our capacity to integrate stressful and anxiogenic states.

Both aspects, the capacity to regulate our autonomic responses and the optimization and reinforcement of our response to the environment at a neurobiological level are basic elements, functionally speaking, of our capacity for resilience.

Mindfulness

Another particularly useful tool in this context is Mindfulness. Indeed, many field studies have shown, in line with the contributions of Siegel and Shore, that the practice of Mindfulness stimulates and develops the capacity of our brain to functionally integrate the amicable triggers of our mind. integrate in a functional way the amygdala triggers secondary to stressful or traumatic events..

Our brain's ability to digest the distress produced by any painful, frightening or traumatic event is amplified, allowing for a more balanced and functional response to them. more balanced and functional response to them.. Speaking in terms of EMDR culture, we could say that the "window of tolerance" to distress, fear and stress is widened, with the consequent benefit in terms of emotional balance, a basic aspect as we said before if we talk about resilience.

Conclusion

To summarize, in Vitaliza the concept of resilience and the figure of the "resilient tutor" are key in our clinical intervention, especially with adults. This therapeutic approach is always accompanied by emotional regulation techniques, reflected more specifically in Neuromodulation (Biofeedback and Neurofeedback) and Midfulness or Mindfulness.

Author: Javier Elcarte, neuropsychologist, expert in trauma, founder and director of Vitaliza.