Why you might hate the word 'resilience'

Over the years of thinking, writing, and talking about well-being there are certain concepts and terms that I’ve come to recognize as ‘no go’ zones. I saw the disdain for the resilience concept amplify during the COVID-19 pandemic, when professionals, parents, and workers started to resist the encouragement and ask to be ‘resilient’ in the face of a global pandemic.

I wholeheartedly understand and agree with the problematic nature of the resilience concept within our culture. And yet, I have been resistant to throwing the concept of resilience out from our vocabulary. Even more now, as we face so much uncertainty, loss, confusion and fear. Understanding what will help us navigate through it is critical.

Over the past year, even before the dumpster fire of 2025, I dove deeply into the resilience literature and modern perspectives on resilience. Through that process I realized that its not resilience that I have a problem with. Rather, it is the way other core concepts of our western individualized culture have influenced and intertwined themselves into the resilience narrative that can make us feel frustrated and gaslighted (gaslit?). So today, I offer a pretty long post, exploring all the ways we have construed resilience into the norms of our Western culture, and how we might redefine resilience in a way that actually supports us as we navigate this life.

Photo by Tobias Rademacher on Unsplash

The three resilience imposters

Push through resilience

While this form of resilience is ubiquitous in our culture its natural for me to point out that doctors know this version of resilience intimately. In training, we are expected to push through fatigue, stress, etc to study, take long exams, see patients early before the attending doctor arrives, ect. Pushing through is a core mindset in medical training, one that expects us to ignore bodily needs and desires for the purpose of training. We don’t have space here to argue whether this mindset is necessary to medical training, or just a feature of historical values, but it certainly contributes to burnout, attrition from the field, disembodiment, decreased empathy and compassion, and disproportionately high levels of suicide in women physicians.

While push through resilience is absolutely helpful in times of crisis, when we need to have energy and attention to mobilize and perhaps even temporarily set aside emotions and physical needs, it would be unlikely you would find a mental health professional who would say this approach is sustainable. Over time, this approach is the opposite of resilient, it leads to wear and tear on the body and mind. Even worse, this form of resilience resembles ablism, as not everyone’s mind and body is able to ‘push through’ pain, illness, ect.

I once sat on a panel with a woman in grad school getting her PhD. She also experienced chronic fatigue syndrome. She shared how push through resilience narratives make it seem like her condition is a choice, something she could just mind-ninja her way out of. This message can be stigmatizing and potentially shame inducing.

Productivity resilience

This is a form of resilience I learned from Soraya Chemaly in her book, The Resilience Myth. She describes productivity resilience as “the capacity to withstand immense stress, and get the job done”. Her explanation makes sense of why workers in all fields are resistant or frustrated with organizational wellness efforts. It doesn’t inspire anyones’ resilience if they feel their employer is saying, “get better, so you can do more”. This isn’t to say all organizational wellness efforts are disingeniuos - I know many leaders and well-being advocates who care deeply about the well-being of the people in their organization. However, for the burned out exhausted person, resilience efforts that focus on productivity can feel extremely frustrating and dehumanizing.

Achievement resilience

A close sister to productivity resilience, this form of resilience is told through the story of the successful business person, the child who beat all the odds to become a professional athlete, or the scientist who tried 1000 times before they found eureka. Its the resilience that supports achievement. Like the other types, this kind of resilience can be useful. It reminds us to keep trying, and recognize we don’t know where we will land.

But, this frame of resilience tells the story that hard work and dedication results in achievement. We see individuals as owners of their own success and achievement as the evidence of resilience itself. This narrative can backfire - do we lack resilience if we decide not to attain higher rungs on a ladder, or shift out of a work path that is no longer working for us? Is achievement really the outcome that we want to build resilience for?

Photo by Brands&People on Unsplash

So then, what is resilience?

At its most basic, resilience is the way we describe how people, animals, and systems respond to the inherent challenges of being alive. Bouncing back from challenge or adapting to change - resilience is a concept used throughout human and more than human sciences.

Often when I’m trying to understand concepts more broadly than the rigid conceptualizations that have been taught to me by culture, I look toward nature. This practice - of looking at nature for clues about how we might live, innovate or solve problems - is an emerging field called biomimicry.

Ecological resilience describes how environments withstand stresses like fires, floods, and human development. There are qualities that describe resilient ecosystems: redundancy, symbiosis, regeneration, and variation in qualities, ‘skills’, and ‘needs’.

We often think of evolutionary science and the saying “survival of the fittest'“ as a paradigm for resilience in nature. However, I learned from and important teacher, Janine Beynus, that this is a misinterpretation of Darwin’s work. Here is a transcript between here and Krista Tippet on the OnBeing podcast.

[Krista]: “Darwin, who’s never said “survival of the fittest,” by the way… he said “fit””.

[Janine]” Seriously, we have built our whole society around this. He did not say [survival of the fittest]. He said, “survival of the fit.” Which means: fit to place, fit to your community. Because he understood, studying evolution and all, coming up with natural selection — he understood that organisms don’t just move into a place; they co-create a place and then the place creates them, and then they create the place. And so that’s this idea of — I also think of it as a homecoming, like coming back to fittedness.

OnBeing

What a shift this makes, letting go of the notion that we are competing for resilience and survival and instead that we are co-creating our survival with the organisms and environments in which we live.

Photo by Monika Sojčáková on Unsplash

Alternative types of resilience

I thought a lot about resilience this summer during the Olympics. When Simon Biles stepped away from the 2020 olympics, we didn’t know whether she would be back, and if so, whether she would ever perform like the GOAT again. And yet, there were people even then who applauded her choice to step away. To not push through, to not hold pushing through, achievement, and productivity at the center. Instead, she trusted herself that she needed to step away. She offered a different paradigm for resilience.

When I think about the type of resilience that we need in this time and place in the world, many concepts come to mind: a ecosystem of resilience, humanistic resilience, self-trust resilience. Across these potential models of resilience, there are three core themes.

1. Connection to self and community

2. Cycles and rhythms of change

3. Agency and empowerment

Connection to self and community

Walking away from the olympics demonstrated self-awareness and self-trust. Believing in her experience enough to make an impossible choice. After her remarkable performance this past summer, Simone talked about her commitment to therapy, how her coaches and team helped her in rebuilding her career. She was connected to herself, and her community.

Throughout her book, Soraya Chemaly also describes how connection with community helps folks withstand immense and catastrophic challenges like hurricanes. Studies continue to show the importance of relationships in measurable health outcomes like heart disease and mortality. So much evidence demonstrates that resilience resides in connection.

Cycles and rhythms of change

Athletes have ‘rest days’. Animals hibernate. Trees shed their leaves and go dormant. We know rest, recovery and regeneration are not optional in the natural world. So why do we leave it out of our conceptualizations of resilience? Our society still sees growth as linear, performance as a straight line with an increasing slope.

But resilience includes cycles of production and cycles of rest. Rest and recovery help us to be more mentally and emotionally flexible and adaptable to change. A cyclical model of resilience also reminds us that we are not always ‘bouncing back’ to baseline. Sometimes, due to circumstances or losses, our paths change entirely. We do not go back to where or who we were. And perhaps we don’t always want to.

Agency and empowerment

In any situation or circumstance, there is power in acknowledging where we have choice, agency, and power. I recently heard a guest on podcast I love say “I believe in myself” and I thought, “that right there is a part of resilience”. It doesn’t mean pushing through, self-neglect, or productivity orientation. Instead, its an empowerment to say, I believe in myself to navigate this. That might look like knowing when we need to leave a toxic environment, set a boundary, or ask for what we need. It doesn’t mean we always get those things. Instead it is a reminder to look around and say, “what are my choices right now and how do I want to navigate them?”

This part of resilience reminds me of Dr. Pooja Lakshmi’s definition of ‘real self care’. “Real self-care, as you’ll see, is not a one-stop shop like a fancy spa retreat or a journaling app; it’s an internal process that involves making difficult decisions that will pay off tenfold in the long run as a life built around the relationships and activities that matter most to you.”

Resilience is something we foster together

Soraya Chemaly says in her book that interdependence and nurturing relationships are the key to our resilience and well-being. As a working mother of three, this assertion resonates fully with me. When I think about the things that have moved me toward more wholeness, well-being and joy, almost all of it occurred in community and connection that fostered my authentic self. Relationships and places that not only nurture me, but allow me to do the things that help me nurture myself.

So I invite you to consider:

1. How does culture impact your view of resilience?

2. When have been the times that you have felt most able to navigate change and challenge and what resources were present in your life?

3. How can you build resilience within your community?

4. What is truly nurturing for you?

Wishing you strength in connection,

Sarah

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The Inner Compass newsletter is about how we navigate the challenges of modern living while building self-trust and an inner sense of direction. In the spirit of building my own self-trust and honoring the creative parts of me, I’ve started a second substack called The Misty Couldron where I share my poems. Follow along if you are curious!

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