ABSTRACT
The development of resilience can start at any time for any reason (development means building on what strengths and skills you already have as well as identifying those you lack). You may seek therapy to construct some skills from scratch (e.g. learning to problem solve in a methodical way, see Chapter 5) or because you feel helpless in a particular situation that you believe you should be responding to resiliently (e.g. `I had my car stolen and I can't stop crying. What's wrong with me?'). Some people assume that their resilience skills will transfer automatically from one situation to another and are stymied when they discover this isn't the case (e.g. being assertive with a rude colleague reduces his ill-tempered behaviour towards you but doesn't work with your new, noisy neighbour who threatens violence when you ask him to turn down his music and you feel powerless in the face of his threats). Or you say you fully understand the importance of thinking and acting ¯exibly in the face of challenging and changing circumstances ± a key resilience quality ± yet you absolutely insist that what's happening in this situation shouldn't be happening, a denial of reality (e.g. having to reapply for your job when your company is taken over by a competitor). You threaten to resign over this issue even as you realize how irrationally you're behaving: `Reapplying for your job is quite commonplace these days. I know that. So why am I getting so hot under the collar about it?' (reapplying for your job may have violated one of your core values such as being treated fairly which means not having to reapply ± once is enough!).
