The Resilience Rant: Reclaiming and Reframing

Introduction

Resilience gets a bad rap these days—and not without reason.

In recent years, especially in conversations about trauma, adversity, and systemic harm, the concept of resilience has sometimes been used to shame people rather than support them. Instead of a skill to help people recover, it’s been treated like a litmus test of personal worth. A lack of resilience, some seem to suggest, is a moral failure. “Suck it up, and drive on,” they say. “Be more resilient.”

If you’ve read my earlier work and it sounds suspiciously like “Stop Sucking, Be More Better,” then full marks for recognizing sentiments that are unhelpful.

Further, if that unhelpful take applied to resilience makes you uncomfortable—you’re not alone.

A blog post I read some time ago captured this discomfort with piercing clarity. The author took issue with the way some frame resilience in the wake of trauma, particularly when it’s used to explain why some people seem to recover faster or more completely than others. She argued that much of what shapes our recovery—genetics, support systems, socioeconomic factors—is outside of our control. And she raised a critical point: when we place too much emphasis on individual resilience, we risk blaming survivors for not healing quickly enough, or not “looking resilient” from the outside.

I agree with that critique more than you might expect. I also think it is shortsighted and robs humans of a necessary skill for flourishing.

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Yes, Resilience Can Be Misused

Hot take: resilience has been misused. It’s been weaponized as a way to silence pain, to shame people from calling out the purveyors of trauma, or to (mis)place the burden of recovery entirely on the individual—especially when the trauma in question was inflicted by someone else.

And when we teach resilience without context—when we fail to differentiate between resilience as a strength and resilience as an expectation—we risk doing real harm.

But rejecting the concept altogether? Nope. Can’t do it. Sorry, but not at all sorry. I had a visceral reaction to the wrongheadedness of the blog post in question. I am glad for the schedule of planned blog series because it gave me a full 4 months to calm down and collect my thoughts.

Let’s not confuse nuance with negation. Saying that resilience has been misused doesn’t mean resilience is useless. Insisting on complexity doesn’t mean we abandon agency.

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Resilience Is a Real, Learnable, Life-Giving Skill

Resilience isn’t just a buzzword or a moral yardstick. It’s a field of study, a set of teachable skills, and a powerful area of research grounded in positive psychology. Scholars like Martin Seligman, Barbara Fredrickson, and Ann Masten have shown that resilience is not a fixed trait—it’s a dynamic process of positive adaptation in the face of adversity.

In other words: it’s not an inborn immutable character trait; it’s an art to be learned, cultivated, and made your own.

In our own training program, we define resilience as the ability to maintain or regain mental and emotional health despite experiencing adversity. That ability isn’t evenly distributed, but it is trainable. Resilience can change over time. It can be supported, strengthened, and scaffolded—just like physical recovery after injury.

And here’s the real kicker: building resilience doesn’t require ignoring pain. It requires facing it, with compassion, perspective, and support.

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Misunderstanding Resilience Leads to Hopelessness

The original blog post argued that so much of our trauma response is out of our hands—genetic, environmental, circumstantial. Fine, fair enough. But if that is the road you take in determining response to adversity, there is great danger around the next bend: if most of life is out of our control, then why bother trying at all?

I call this the nihilism trap. It’s the quiet voice that says, “If I can’t control everything, maybe nothing I do matters.”

Hope and optimism are often conflated as being about “good feelings towards the future.” Sure, but consider that the difference between hope and optimism is that hope requires agency to pursue those outcomes. I had a client once with a breakthrough insight: If I wasn’t hopeful that I would succeed, why the hell would I bother getting up in the morning?

I say this to nihilism: Bollocks. In fact, studies show that the people who navigate adversity most successfully aren’t the ones with perfect circumstances—they’re the ones who believe they can influence their outcomes and take action to adapt.

Resilience is the category of adaptive actions that makes sure you are more ready the next time adversity comes your way. And it is a positive feedback loop: resilience successfully applied can be what helps you choose to take action to build more resilience.

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This Series: A Reclaiming, Not a Rebuttal

So as much as the “old me” would take pleasure in flaming the post that inspired me… I’m going to take the opportunity to demonstrate growth and what little maturity I’ve managed to develop. Sorry to disappoint those of you who already started popping popcorn: this won’t be a point-by-point takedown piece.

The blog post that inspired this was thoughtful and sincere, and it raised serious issues that deserve our attention. Human agency, hope, adaptation—these are real. They are difficult, but they are sacred, and I will defend them as such.

The original post was earnest, and its author, in their own way, was desirous of making the world better. I don’t question the motive, just the mechanism. Because ultimately, the effort was too reductive—both of resilience and of the extraordinary human capacity for growth in the face of suffering.

What I hope to offer in this series is a different way of thinking. A refusal to settle for black-or-white logic. A commitment to nuance. And an insistence on grace—for ourselves, and for those with whom we disagree.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll explore:

• How resilience can be defined and understood without becoming a moral judgment
• Why it matters as a concept for healing and flourishing—not just surviving
• What research tells us about its teachability and long-term impact
• And how each of us can begin to build it with simple, grounded practices

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Reflection: What Does Resilience Mean to You?

Before we dive deeper, take a moment to reflect on your own relationship with the word resilience:

• When have you felt pressure to appear resilient?
• Has the concept ever helped you—or hurt you?
• Do you believe resilience is something you can grow?

There are no right or wrong answers here. Only starting points.

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Practice: Define Your Own Resilience

Take five minutes today and write your own definition of resilience—not the dictionary version, but your version. You might start with:

“To me, resilience means…”

Keep it somewhere you can revisit. We’ll return to it later in the series.

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If you’ve ever felt caught between powerlessness and pressure—between grief and grit—this conversation is for you. Let’s reclaim resilience not as an obligation, but as an opportunity to grow, recover, and thrive.

As always I’d love your thoughts so please comment on any aspect of this post, and share your thoughts on where this series should take us.

See you in Part 2.