Resilience is a word derived from the Latin “resilire”, which means to refuse, to go back, to go back to the previous state, the capacity to withstand great impacts of temperature and pressure and to be able to recover and return to its previous form.
Resilient people are those considered to have a good ability to recover from adversity, for example, survive trauma and have a positive outlook from which to rebuild.
Challenges
The therapist needs to be prepared to build new paths in the face of challenging, stressful or even traumatic situations, be it their own or that of their clients. Therefore, this is a skill that every therapist must develop in order to become a qualified professional. Developing your emotional intelligence is an investment in your career as a therapist.
Professional resilience
Professional resilience is about managing uncomfortable situations well, overcoming obstacles, applying emotional intelligence at work and getting to the end of the tasks.
But how can the therapist become resilient?
Components
To build resilience, the therapist needs to take some pillars into account. The efficient management of emotions, for example, remaining calm in the face of a problem and using clues to better understand situations and people are fundamental in therapeutic practice.
Self control
It is necessary to maintain a professional attitude and personal respect, not to be impulsively driven by emotions and to be optimistic that things can improve. The belief in being able to solve your problems and having control over your health also make up resilience, which can be learned just like any other.
Reinvention
Resilience also has to do with the ability to get up, keep up to date and be in constant personal development so that you can help other people find their ways of strengthening themselves.
With the time of experience, increasing challenges will require this constant reinvention of the therapist, therefore, invest in your personal maturity to support the demands that arrive.
Fortification
The therapist’s self-esteem and his confidence in his potential, his skills and his experience can be shaken when a case is unusual in front of the others. Thus, the professional must seek to strengthen each difficult situation faced, and become more capable of not being overwhelmed when new issues arise.
Self perception
Perceiving yourself as a strong and capable person, who has the means to learn how to deal with misfortunes helps to maintain a resilient posture. Assess your self-perception as a therapist and assess whether you can trust yourself.
Connections
Maintaining meaningful connections with their clients, taking into account the human beings they encounter and not just their diagnoses and treatments, strengthens the therapist’s resilience within the therapeutic setting.
Pressures
Being in an increasingly demanding and competitive job market requires the therapist to manage external demands. Having balance to assess such demands, seeing the reasons why the situation affects the therapist and learning to have some healthy distance to see things “outside” are tools for these moments.