Individual therapy can provide a window into the inner workings of your mind; from exploring what shapes your responses to identifying negative thought patterns that are trapping you in repeated cycles of disappointment or stress.
However, to get the most out of individual therapy, it is essential to also build new skills and practices that support an improved version of how you want to live your life. Resilience is one such skill.
Many people think resilience is a predetermined part of someone’s nature—you are either a resilient person, or you are not. This could not be further from the truth! Resilience is a skill that can be developed with time and practice.
This blog shows you how therapeutic techniques and interventions empower individuals to manage life’s challenges, heal from past traumas, and grow inner strength and resilience, fostering a holistic well-being and personal transformation.
What Resilience Means
The term “resilience” refers to the ability to adapt to situations as they change, often unexpectedly. A person who is resilient is flexible and can self-adjust when things do not go as planned—such as during times of adversity, stress, sickness, and trauma. This includes not only weathering the difficulty as it is occurring, but also bouncing back to a thriving life afterward.
Resilience does not mean that everything is always all right, never being affected, or that a person does not ever change. Instead, it defines the practice of approaching life’s events with an open mind and a willingness to adapt.
Overcoming Distress and Adversity
One of the methods by which a person can gain more resilience through individual therapy is actively working to overcome adversity. For instance, suppose that your job is a constant source of stress because you work overtime every day and, because you are salaried, you do not get paid more for this effort.
Individual therapy can help you to establish firmer boundaries about your available hours and work-life balance by identifying what is important to you and what is contributing most to your stress. By approaching distress proactively, you can gain practice in addressing it directly rather than avoiding the issue and allowing it to compound.
Distress tolerance skills, which are a set of practices learned through dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), teach you how to approach stressful situations in a holistic and healthy manner. This skill will serve you well throughout life and boost your resilience by stopping a problematic situation before it begins—and helping you see the way out once problems are already in place.
Embracing Change and Flexibility
One of the most essential elements of resilience is flexibility, and to make space for this, a person needs to develop the ability to embrace change. Individual therapy can help you to reframe your perspective on situations, viewing them as opportunities rather than challenges.
A new task at work need not be a stressor—rather, can you view it as a change to broaden your skill set in preparation for a promotion?
Creating Connections
Humans are naturally social creatures, and we thrive on building connections with others. To gain resilience, it is essential to create connections with friends, family members, coworkers, and peers who can fill in when you are not at your best. Resilience means understanding when to ask for help and being receptive to that help.
A therapist can guide you toward cultivating and maintaining strong relationships built on trust and help you understand how to accept and offer help for a more well-rounded life experience. They can also teach you how to listen well in order to create a strong support network without taking advantage of your friends.
Nurturing a View of the Self
Resilience comes from within, and to increase your resilience, you must nurture your perception of yourself. Therapy can help you develop confidence in yourself—that you can solve problems, you are smart and worthwhile, and that you have something to contribute to the world.
Without this self-confidence, even minor events can cause significant and crippling self-doubt and depression. Working with a therapist can educate you on identifying your own needs. These needs may be physical, such as hunger; or emotional, such as seeking connection.
Therapy can help you accept current events in context and not to inflate them to be more than they are, to maintain a realistic view of how your life is affected and what you can do about it.
Become More Resilient Through Individual Therapy
Resilience is one of the most important elements of living a confident and fulfilled life. Unwanted and unexpected things will happen—that is just the nature of living—but how you respond to them dictates where you go from there, and individual therapy can help you exercise your resilience muscles to be better equipped for these situations.
In fact, most people begin therapy with a low tolerance for distress and later finish therapy with high resilience that helps them to succeed, even in the face of difficult situations that would have stopped them in their tracks before.
The team at Village Counseling addresses resilience through a versatile approach that is designed for your personality and goals. Contact Village Counseling to schedule an individual therapy appointment.