Resilience is often portrayed in terms of ‘being strong’ with ‘what doesn’t kill us makes stronger’. However, that kind of ‘encouragement’ leads to feelings of loneliness and isolation with the problem. When adversity strikes, what most people actually want, is support from those around us who care about our wellbeing, and not a clap on the back for how well we took the hit followed by encouragement to stay strong. 

Dr Alison felt that it was time for a new kinder model of resilience to work with. With this in mind, Dr Alison conducted research with parents of children with Autism to find out what made them resilient. She found that they were resilient in spades, and that they each followed a very similar path to each other in responding to the challenges of raising a child with a significant difference or disability. From these findings emerged Dr Alison’s new more compassionate model of resilience.

This model suggests that resilience is:

• A cycle not a linear process.
• Something we do rather than something we are.
• Affected by the environment so it’s not all on us as individuals.
• A process that involves distinct stages in reacting to adversity.
• Still there when you experience unhappy feelings following adversity.
• A process that includes rest – resting is not quitting, it’s recharging.
• Adaptation to adversity which is related to what happened, but motivated by wanting to avoid a repeat event.
• A process that is the same for everyone – there are no non-resilient people. We just need to learn how to efficiently ‘do’ resilience in conjunction with improving the environment.
• Not a ‘one size fits all’ activity – each person has a signature style of doing resilience.