Frequently asked questions (FAQ's)
What’s the difference between counselling and coaching? I was trying to decide between doing resilience coaching and having some counselling sessions. How do I know which I need?
Good question! Coaching tends to be shorter in duration, and may be more situation-specific than counselling or psychotherapy. In counselling, insight leading to appropriate action is often derived from in-depth study of one’s (past) family-of-origin dynamics, whereas in coaching, the focus is on present action leading to accomplishment of well-defined, specific objectives. As a coach, I am probably in a more directive role with the client than when guiding a counselling session.
Let’s say a man is made redundant for the third time in three years, as a client of mine once was. A typical presenting issue for counselling might be the exploration of, “Why me? Why three times in such a short period?” In trying to make sense of the multiple redundancies, the man might look into unconscious attitudes he holds about work, and especially about the work he was doing. This might deepen into understanding, for example, the effect his father’s employment history and way of relating to him has had on him, just as one way the process could play out.
In a coaching session, conversely, that same man might develop the specific objective of working out how to best support himself during the period of unemployment. He might, for example, work on identifying his social networks, learning how to talk to himself soothingly, or exploring different career opportunities. Alternatively, he might simply want to be coached through the process of finding new employment.
Can people really learn to be resilient if they are not born that way? Isn’t there some truth to the phrase “born optimist”?
Yes, there is. Psychologists Martin Seligman and associates put experimental subjects into situations where they had no control over what happened to them (such as receiving an electric shock or hearing an unpleasant noise) no matter what they did. The studies demonstrated that when exposed to such situations, most people (and dogs and rats) learned helplessness. The researchers, observed, however, that a minority – one third in the case of some human subjects – refused to go into helplessness, continuing to believe that they could sort out the problem. This group would be the born optimists of the world.
Seligman and others have also demonstrated, however, that those of us not born with “optimism DNA” (the other two thirds of us) can still learn optimistic ways of thinking and behaving, which helps us to be more resilient in adversity.
I’m wondering about the relationship between being optimistic and being resilient. I can “think positive” or not, but I still have to survive the same events either way, don’t I?
Maybe not. Peter Ubel, in his book You’re stronger than you think, cites the research of Sanna Eronen to show that personality influences the kinds of circumstances people experience. Eronen asked student subjects to interpret ambiguous cartoons, and then assessed them on how optimistic their interpretations were. Five years later, she measured the number of good and bad events in those students’ lives, and discovered that those who had originally had a positive interpretation of the cartoons experienced significantly more positive events and fewer negative events than other students.
Ubel also reports on a series of studies by Sonia Lyubomirksy, which showed that happy people tend to interpret and respond differently than unhappy people to identical circumstances. The different reactions then beget (attract) different life events.
You may not be totally convinced that positive thinking will generate more positive circumstances – leading to increased capacity to survive – but it might be worth getting into the “glass half-full” habit of thinking just in case.
You speak about hardiness as well as resilience. What’s the difference between the two?
I use them
synonymously. A hardy person (or plant
or animal), like a resilient one, bounces back to a state of relative
healthiness after experiencing difficulties. A hardy or resilient person, upon experiencing adversity, either adapts
to the new circumstances or changes them. What that person doesn’t do (which would indicate a lack of this
strength), is begin to commit antisocial or psychotic acts. Resilient, hardy souls usually find a way to
maintain reasonable levels of happiness and optimism.
Does being resilient mean one would always respond in a particular way?
Not necessarily. As I reviewed the skills demonstrated by the resilient people in my book, I began to realise that, while all of my “heroes” overcame their tough times and while some skills were used over and over again, each person used a unique combination of skills to prevail. I began to notice further that the groupings of skills seemed to form several distinct styles. These observations form the basis of writing that I am working on now. Each person who would be resilient can answer for him/herself, “What resilience style(s) do I tend to use?”
How do I know if I am resilient or not?
As with the question about particular response, it seems to me that, rather than thinking about resilience as a “yes or no”, “black or white” type of trait, it is helpful to identify the survival traits we do possess, and also identify areas where we could develop more. Chances are, if you have been around long enough to be interested in asking this question, you have developed some resilience. That is, life has thrown some challenges at you, and in the effort to meet those challenges, you have undoubtedly learned some things about overcoming adversity.
What might be an interesting exercise is to study the beginnings of the chapters of Back from the Edge, where I list some of the main skills that the person I am writing about exhibited. You can reflect on whether you have or could use the skills/attitudes in question, and in what circumstances you might feel comfortable using them. In cases where you decide that you wouldn’t be able to approach the challenges in the ways that others did, you can always ask yourself, “Why not? What would get in the way of me responding like this? Do I need to address this factor/situation in myself or my environment in order to maintain my highest possible chance for survival?”
Also, I invite you to visit my site later this year. I should by then have ordering information about the book I am working on now, which contains an informal test to help you identify which resilience style(s) you tend to use, and which you tend to feel less comfortable with.
Sometimes it’s obvious what to do in a troubling situation, but sometimes it isn’t. How do I know which response would be a more survival-friendly course of action?
Ah, this question points to the subtlety that can be part of developing resilience: the need to acquire discernment. My personal favourite for addressing this issue was Rob Hewitt, both in his account of his days bobbing around in the ocean, and in my account of his experience when I questioned him about how he knew what to do when. More than anyone else I write about, Rob’s decisions in the water were going to lead to either physical survival or not, so they were literally life-and-death decisions.
His answer was refreshingly frank, and (for those of us that like iron-clad guarantees) at least a little scary. He basically said that, whenever he tried something, he just observed what happened. He used that feedback to decide if he should carry on in the same vein or change course, go to Plan B.
For example, at one stage during his ordeal, he knew that as a strong swimmer, he could probably swim the distance between where he was bobbing around and the island past which the ocean current was carrying him. But if he tried to swim it and used up all his energy, he would have none left with which to survive the cold night on the island, where he would still have to await rescue in any case. If he chose to surrender to the ocean currents, however, he had the terror of not knowing where they would carry him: possibly out to sea. Rob said that he noticed that every time he tried to make a run for it and swim like crazy to the land, something happened that prevented this. Either the waves would come up and push him back, or he would experience a wave of overwhelming fatigue and dizziness. He concluded that, as horrible as it was bobbing around, continuing to do so held his greatest chances for survival. Clearly in retrospect, Rob made the choice that helped him to survive. His discernment aided his resilience.