Resilience Introduction

Resilience and Empowerment Section Introduction

What is resilience?

Resilience describes how well we are able to stand up to stress and shocks.  The more resilient you are the more you can continue to function despite something bad happening. 

You can see how important this is for people living with cancer.

Often we see that people who were previously very resilient, become very sensitive to shocks and stress after receiving a cancer diagnosis.

Can resilience be taught or fostered?

Yes! And that’s why we have devoted a whole section to this very important aspect of living well with cancer.  Like many things here, it won’t necessarily grow on its own but with a little encouragement and repeated practice you can boost (or restore) your resilience.

Can resilience be measured?

There are a number of questionnaires which have been used to measure resilience and you may like to take one of these before and during your resilience training if you decided to take this on.

What is empowerment?

Empowerment is a related idea which describes how strong and in-control we feel.  As you can imagine, those who feel more resilient are likely to feel more in-control while those who are less resilient are likely to feel more helpless and out of control.