Resilience Refresher
Prof. Susan Dunnett
University of Edinburgh Business School
Exploring resilience
Why resilience?
Support groups are pathways to resilience – spaces to celebrate, reflect and build resilience
What can leaders and members do to enhance each other’s resilience?
What are the benefits of resilience in the illness context?
“Resilience is the process of negotiating, managing and adapting to significant sources of stress or trauma.” (Windle et al, 2011)
• Studies in the context of illness show that resilience fosters:
✓Enhanced well-being
✓Higher quality of life
✓Happiness
✓Lower psychological distress
• Resilience helps with transition and adapting to change
“a process of reflection, learning and action focused toward overcoming adversity”
(Kralik et al, 2006)
What helps to build resilience?
Social support and self-care are central to resilience
(Stewart and Yuen, 2011)
• Acceptance – of illness, of symptoms, of limitations, of challenges
• Education – understanding, preparedness, sense of control
• Having hope
• Support and connection
• Space and time – reflection, goal and direction setting
• Effective coping strategies
• Overall health and wellbeing – side effects, symptoms
• Access to necessary resources
• Benefit-finding – finding positive meaning in the diagnosis/illness
The story so far…
2019 Wall of Resilience Gallery
2020 Coaching your Resilience, Dr Durie podcast
2021 Building your resilience in challenging times, IMF Living Well webinar
2021 IMF Myeloma Action Month campaign – 31 Days of Resilience
2021 First virtual Resilience Workshop with the Bay Area Support Group, CA
2021 ESRC grant to widen out the project to an IMF Resilience Programme
2022 Resilience workshops with North/South Dakota and Alberta, Canada groups
2023 Training sessions and coaching films delivered to IMF SG Team
Build resilience by focussing on these three areas Physical resilience
Starting the resilience conversation in your group… and keeping it going
• Use questions to open your meeting which allow members to quickly say how they are doing – one word answers are good, or a score from five, return to this question at the end.
• Focus on self-care: ask members what they have done that month to enhance their well-being
Questions to begin and guide a conversation (members can write down answers):
• What does resilience mean to you?
• Write down something or someone that helps you stay resilient – tell us about it/them.
• When do you feel resilient?
• What helped acceptance of the diagnosis/symptoms/side-effects for you?
• What advice would you give your newly diagnosed self about resilience and living with myeloma?
• In what way has the support group helped you feel resilient?
Celebrating your resilience – ideas for your group
• Make your own Wall of Resilience Gallery – see the IMF SG Toolkit
• Share stories of resilience – write short paragraphs and present
• Share the things that enhance your wellbeing – arts, crafts, hobbies
• Share playlists of feel good music – create a SG playlist
• “Getting to know you” sessions and presentations with individual members
• Interview or presentation with long-term survivors and long-term care partners – how do you stay resilient and live well with myeloma?
• Care partner presentation/interview – getting to know this role and the person
• Care-partner resilience workshop as a separate session – safe space for reflection
Keeping it going: Resilience champions and buddies in your group
• Identify a resilience champion in each group (or could be a wellbeing champion) they can lead on all related activities and can open/close meetings with reflections on resilience.
• Pair up members as wellbeing buddies – where they will check in on each other and check in on actions for change to increase action and accountability.
• Consider appointing a wellness committee in support groups –linked to IMF SG Team, create short wellness agenda every month
Guiding your group to the “Quick Win”
• The quick win is a great way to use the last minutes of the group meeting, to end on positive action – ask members to identify one action they can take to make themselves feel more resilient or improve their wellbeing. It’s important to ask people to share what their quick win is – they can do this in pairs, breakouts or to the whole group.
• Quick win: what can you change today to make yourself feel better?
• How will you make sure you take that action?
• Or: What action can you take this week to improve your resilience/wellbeing?
• The group should check back in on “quick wins” and actions – the resilience champion or buddies can lead on this
• Know your resilience, what does it look like for you, what do you need?
• Mentally resilient: A walk around the garden? A break?
• Physically resilient: Rest and sleep, a new day
• Emotionally resilient: Seek out friends, animals, nature
"Isaac’s Tree testifies to the power of life. A little maintenance goes a long way!"
John Auerbacher
