Research by psychologist James O. Prochaska, Ph.D  shows that change occurs in stages detailed below.

Different stages:

1. Feeling stuck: You feel entrenched in a problem often feeling cut and isolated.

Touching the ‘bottom end’, in other words your own threshold for tolerance, acts as a springboard for motivating you to change. You may start sporadically sharing your issues.

Strategies: the first step towards opening up to ‘others’ is tremendously difficult. You might be scared of their reaction, feel too much vulnerable by letting the source of our problem becoming ‘alive’ by putting a word onto it. So you might freeze, hide and not move. Different people have different levels of resistance to pain. Ask yourself how worse does it need to be before you reach for help? Can you name a time, as far as you can remember, when someone gave you a helpful hand and how did you feel then?

2. Reaching for help is a problem half solved. The acceptance phase has now begun. Talking more often to friends, colleagues or family members allows you to offload some of our burden. They might offer a pragmatic or/and an emotional support and you might still resist. Change is frightening and fear of the unknown might paralyse you into the current familiar status quo no matter how much pain you are still enduring.

You might start accepting help but not taking any initiative. That way you are testing out if you can surrender ourselves and lean onto others for support.

Strategies: use helpers that you can trust to guide you and support you emotionally. Not everyone does offer the same. So you may find that a variety of different people offering you with a wide range of help.

3. Believing: Those 2 stages are pivotal in the change process and extremely difficult emotionally. Adequate support in terms of containment is essential to allow you overcoming the highs and lows of new experiences as well as keeping motivated and hopeful.

You start engaging more rather than passively being helped. There is a change of perspective happening as you start seeing the situation from other people’s lenses. Curiosity and interest are re-appearing and constitute the major factors allowing to move forward.

New perspectives and new goals are being tested.

Strategies: examining all foreseen consequences, the pros and cons, remaining realistic are crucial in order to minimise the probability of failure and increased fear.

By breaking down the behaviour and chunking it down you may start noticing the difference between what you want and what you can. What you want is not necessarily what you need. Challenging yourself in a structured and contained way enables you to rediscover yourself.

4. Learning: Self-confidence is growing as you have now learnt new outcomes from new experiences. You are feeling more in control of your behaviours and better in tune with your emotions acting as an internal feed back. Although you increasingly feel in the ‘driver’s seat’ external support is still felt valuable and needed but from a ‘co-pilot’ perspective.

The support is now less present and has moved to a ‘back stage’ role in case you trip. You are enjoying the process of learning and are ripping its rewards.

Strategies: Regular practice is well known from athletes to be the key ingredient for successful change. According to Philippa Lally and her colleagues it takes an average of 66 days to form a new habit. Repeated behaviours create and strengthen new neurological pathways and lead to new automatisms. Be your own champion and keep the practice going!

Enjoy and cultivate positive reinforcement. The ‘work’ needs to be a source of positive feelings.

5. Resilience: The level of support is now very low and you may feel a greater sense of inner calm. You are able to map your success and identify the successive steps taken to reach your end goal.

You have now gained a greater awareness of your environment and yourselves. You know where, when and how you can resource yourself if needs be. You feel confident that you can bounce back from challenging situations. Your past limitations become a source of insight about yourself and no longer an enemy.

Strategies: Map your success. Chunking the journey into little steps helps you getting clarity into what was helpful and what wasn’t. It also shows you how much work you’ve put into your recovery. No efforts, no matter how small they might have seemed, were insignificant. Little successes build up your self-esteem as you take time to acknowledge your courage and strengths.

References

• Prochaska and DiClemente, C. C. (1982) Transtheoretical Therapy: Towards a more integrative model of change Psychotherapy: Therapy, Research and Practice, Vol. 19 pp 276-88.
• Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W. and Wardle, J. (2010), How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol., 40: 998–1009.

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“The oak fought the wind and was broken, the willow bent when it must and survived.” ― Robert Jordan, The Fires of Heaven

We are not living in a bubble. Perhaps at times when difficult events occur we fantasise we could. The reality is that we are subject to the unforeseeable circumstance of a serious illness, a sudden death of a loved one, a terrorist attack or any other traumatic events. Some may experience an overall sense of bewilderment and anxiety and some may fall into despair with a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. Or you may latch onto certainty and desperately launch onto a quest for a plausible explanation.  Enduring a challenging life brings a host of difficult emotions often coming and going randomly leaving potentially people in a vulnerable position.

Yet not everyone falls into depression or heightened anxiety and over time we may recover as we adapt and rebuild our inner balance despite stressful conditions. That’s our survival ‘tool kit’ or broadly speaking it’s about our capacity for resilience. It requires people to engage with time and effort into a series of strategies to face more healthily hardship.

What is resilience?

Our behaviour towards adversity impacts on our ability to build and sustain a healthy approach towards resilience. Why can’t we be tougher so we can accomplish all of the goals we set for ourselves? Why can’t I carry on with my life as I used to? It is often misconceived that overstretching ourselves equals to resilience. This sounds more like enduring. Super-heroes belong to comic books and other fictions. There are no magic powers involved in resilience. Take the response of millions of American in face of September 11, 2001 and the collective effort of many individuals to rebuild their society.  Resilience is not an extra-ordinary phenomenon. It is a rather ordinary process. It implies bouncing back from personal or professional adversity. It means growing stronger.

Considerable emotional pain does accompany resilient people on their journey towards recovery. We too often take a militaristic or “tough” approach to resilience and grit. In a society overly promoting perfection and success, we tend to believe that the more we push ourselves outside of our comfort zone, the tougher we are, and therefore the more successful we will be. However, this entire conception is culturally biased.

The misconception of resilience is often bred from an early age. Parents promoting resilience through overachievement might praise their children for long nightstand revising, holidays filled with academic exercises. What a distortion of resilience! A resilient child is a well rested one and one that knows how to switch from work to leisure time. Developmental studies show that experiences on the playground have more benefit than those in the classroom. According to Sergio Pellis it is the building of new neurological connections within the prefrontal cortex during our childhood that plays a critical role in regulating our emotions and accessing problem solving and plan making abilities. Overwork and exhaustion are the opposite of resilience. And the bad habits we learn when we’re young only magnify when we hit adulthood.

What do you need to exercise and strengthen your resilience?

First of all you need to ditch the super-hero myth and surround yourself with a caring and supportive environment. Research has found that those who have access within their families, at work and within their community to encouragement, assistance or just a safe place where they feel they can talk and be heard are more likely to overcome stressful events. Relationships that promote trust and sound role model enable people to boost their resilience. It targets one’s ability to communicate effectively, to manage one’s feelings rather than enact on them, strengthen one’s self-esteem and get an ‘helicopter view’ on the present situation to establish clearer steps towards recovery.

One common behaviour that directly correlates to an increased incidence of health problems is the lack of a recovery period whether by disrupting sleep or not allowing ourselves to give us a break. People are different and may use different strategies to overcome their distress however burying ourselves in a busy schedule does not provide the necessary ‘refill’ our organism need. Put it simply, when your car’s petrol tank is nearly empty you stop at the petrol station for a refill.

You might consider looking into past experiences where you have been able to adopt a particular resilient attitude and how this has worked for you. Below are few questions you may reflect on to support you into customizing your own strategy:

• Which type of events have been the most stressful in my life?
• How have I usually reacted?
• Who do I go to for support and do I find this process easy?
• What have I learnt about myself and my way of relating with others?
• Which obstacles were the most challenging at the time and how do I look at them now?
• What has always been a source of hope and motivation and has it changed?

When our body is out of alignment from overstretching ourselves physically, mentally or emotionally our homeostatic balance necessary to maintain a healthy wellbeing is jeopardised. You risk a burnout, a mental breakdown. Stopping or retrieving into our cave might not ultimately restore a state of balance. Building up resilience may be achieved by looking into those various aspects of your life:

• Maintain and cultivate relationships.
• Looking at ‘problems’ or a crisis through a different perspective, like a different lens. Subtle changes of outlook do make a difference. Every little helps!
• Growth involves changing. Embrace change as an agent for growth.
• Be mindful of your goals. Keep them realistic and if too overwhelming chunk them into smaller steps. It is not the quantity that counts it’s the quality!
• Stay congruent with yourself. Your feelings are a source of self-discovery. Staying attuned with them allows you to get a greater sense of your strength as well as your vulnerabilities. Your perspective on life might get heightened and spiritually nourished.
• Cultivate self-care! We all have our own ways to ‘recharge’ and ‘reconnect’ with ourselves. Exercising, meditating , playing music or singing are examples of effective strategies accompanying resilience.
• Challenge negative thinking. Maintaining a hopeful outlook on life despite tragic circumstances is key to resilience. Overgeneralising and catastrophizing is often a pitfall we fall into when we feel overwhelmed and helpless. You may keep a journal of your thoughts and feelings to help you keeping track of your emotions as well as distancing yourself from them.

In conclusion there is no miracle formula to survive and grow out of stressful situations. However the more flexibility and resources we have the more resilient we find ourselves in the face of adverse circumstances. Fighting off, avoiding painful emotions is as pointless as dwelling into them. In a similar vein accepting them is as important as having a break from them from time to time. It’s a quest into restoring a momentary disruption of our internal balance. As we move forward and step towards new horizons we also need to stop, re-assess and recharge. Sometimes a step backward is a crucial step to ensure sustainable growth.

Finally, and perhaps the most important ingredient for a healthy life, love does matter. Our relationships are the cornerstones of our wellbeing. We are dependant on them even if our society cultivates the benefit of independence. Spending quality time with others is as nourishing as having quality me-time. Resilience is the ability to rely on the others help and on one-self. A huge blow against decades of fierce individualism.

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The concept of empathy within the traditional workplace might run counter to a competitive, aggressive business environment. Employees stress and burnout have become increasingly prevalent and raising concerns over the last decade.

More entrepreneurs are now calling for change and the corporate culture is beginning to acknowledge the need to connect and relate to others. This, in my opinion, makes the difference between a sustainable successful business harnessing and fostering creativity and dynamism within its working force and other businesses that sum up their activities to profits and losses. It’s a balance sheet versus person contest.

“On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world,” he said. “Shareholder value is a result, not a strategy . . . Your main constituencies are your employees, your customers and your products.” Jack Welsh

Times might be changing and we may notice a shift within the business jargon of “True leadership”, how organisations now aim to show how they deeply care for people. A new wave towards a more “Humanistic management” will hopefully generate a new generation of empathic managers and leaders.

Not only the corporate world is jumping on the empathy wagon. In politics Barack Obama too expresses the need for compassion during times of economic crisis

“There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit,… but I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.”

So here are 5 ways to cultivate empathy:

• Engage with your colleague. Discover what motivates them and what holds them back. Challenge yourself and step out from your frame of reference. There is growth when different perspectives are shared in an open-minded and non-judgemental way.
• Listen actively. Fully concentrate on what is being said, how it is said, how it impacts you. It involves listening with all your senses rather than just ‘hearing’ the content of the message. Acknowledge their position as a valuable feedback and remain engaged in developing a solution.
• Communicate in a congruent manner. Shift your focus from winning the point of an argument towards resolving differences. Notice how aligned you are with the other, body talk, tone of voice and mostly their way of communicating.
• Don’t fix. Support and help to develop a person’s resources and skills from where they are. Encourage sharing ideas free from the fear of ridicule. You never know a person until you understand their position.
• Care and remain grateful. We need each other to grow stronger and healthier. Empathy is a pathway to success.

• https://www.statista.com/topics/2099/stress-and-burnout/
• https://www.theguardian.com/women-in-leadership/2015/jan/06/how-to-prevent-corporate-burnout
• https://www.ft.com/content/294ff1f2-0f27-11de-ba10-0000779fd2ac

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Professional bodies ensuring that professional criteria are met govern therapists, ranging from counsellors to psychiatrists holding a variety of diplomas, masters or doctorates. It also means that therapists need to abide by their code of ethics. Being registered and accredited ensures that a substantial level of training and experience is at the core of the practice involving future on-going personal and professional development. In the field of change and growth therapists must imperatively endorse continuing learning.

Coaching is often referred as a goal-orientated approach offering empowering techniques. It aims to motivate and infuse confidence to allow growth. Life coaches unlike psychotherapists are not required to gain a degree but are encouraged to follow an accredited program like the International Coaching Federation.

The two professions overlap each other and more coaches expand their practice to train as counsellors and vice versa. This increasing trend may be explained by the fact that both share similar grounds only used in a different way. Goals are a cornerstone in coaching whereas therapy will explore past-unresolved emotional experiences and processes to facilitate change and growth.

Personally the biggest divergence is how my work as a therapist can be sustained by a clinical rationale based on theory. It explains why coaching will be of use or not. Theories applied to coaching don’t do the same for therapy. But does it matter? In my opinion the core of our interest must be how can I be of best use for my clients to help them grow and live more harmoniously.

Therapy is like a micro-laboratory of how you are in-the-world. “Therapy can be an interpersonal laboratory,” Spiegel tells The Huffington Post. “It’s a way of working with cognition, emotion and interpersonal relationships in a way that helps you manage your emotions and learn to see it in a different perspective.”

Therapy is renowned to deal with psychological problems like anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses. The rise of mindfulness therapy has also contributed to simply better our selves in terms of emotional wellbeing. In other words you don’t have to go through a severe psychological trauma to benefit from therapy. The relationship formed within the therapeutic alliance allows you to get a sense of who you are and to receive feedback on your thoughts and feelings affecting your everyday life.

Whether you want to lose weight or struggle to find your identity or your career in a fast pace changing society a coach can help you overcome personal mental obstacles and become accountable for your own progression. The support offered in coaching avoids the pitfall of doing it all alone and we are stronger together when we act as a team. We are social animals and talking, feeling that we belong and are supported help build a stronger sense of self and resilience. Science supports that it contributes to reduce significantly stress.

Ultimately whether you open up and talk to a therapist or a coach you gradually strengthen your ability to work through your struggles to reach a goal or deepen an emotional explorative work. It helps clarifying what lies beneath and brings more meaning in life. Finding your purpose or helping creating a new one is a life changing experience.

Both therapy and coaching bring up new perspectives as a game changer tool.
Sometimes all that we need is someone to allow us to peep through another window;
one that we previously thought never existed.

Let’s start talking.

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