What is Resilience? Step Away from the Gaslighting

Research on Resilience is 50 years old, and most of our ideas about it–like the idea that resilience is rooted in a person’s individual strength and their ability to “bounce back” after a crisis come from that early research. This has led to a lot of gaslighting–especially in the helping professions like teaching and nursing/medicine, mainly that burnout and a lack of resilience happens when teachers/nurses/social workers are just “not strong enough” to continue in their professions.

This is a grave disservice to those of us who go into the helping professions to support and help students, patients, and our communities. Putting the responsibility of resilience and blame for burnout on the individual person also neglects what newer resilience and burnout research shows us about the role of the workplace in the health and wellbeing of workers.

Recent resilience research shows that the workplace atmosphere matters. It shows that the resources workplaces and administrators release to their employees to meet the demands of the job matter. These resources, or the lack of resources actually matter more than an individual’s internal strengths. So for instance, you can be a person who is optimistic, but if you work in a place that consistentlymakes heavy demands AND doesn’t release the resources you need to meet those demands, you are more at risk for burnout. Michael Ungar, a prominent researcher in the field of resilience, says it this way. You can be a person with lots of personal qualities that help you be “rugged,” but if you have to weather a crisis in a resource-bankrupt system, you will be in trouble. On the positive side though, if it is harder for you to weather a crisis, but you are in a system that is rich in resources that you value, you can be resilient.

Resilience is something systems can build by giving their employees the resources they need to meet the demands made on them. In the next installment of this series, I’ll talk more about what the research says about the most powerful resource leaders give to build resilient people and systems.

I’m Dr. Lara Taylor, a 30 year veteran public school teacher and researcher. I look forward to hearing your thoughts about resilience and burnout in the helping professions.