Resilience is associated with discussions about periods of transition, disaster, trauma or adversity.
Sometimes there is a homeless teen living on the street, a dysfunctional family with an alcoholic parent, or communities trying to rebuild after a disaster. But one thing is for sure; resilient people seem to survive. Resilience is often viewed as an adaptive, stress resistant personal quality that permits one to thrive in spite of adversity.
Resilience is sometimes looked at as a characteristic, a process, or an outcome, and many researchers look at this construct as a dynamic process among many factors that may mediate between an individual and his or her environment. Empirical evidence indicates that resilience is dynamic, developmental in nature, and interactive with one’s environment. For example, research looks at how well adolescents manage adversity and how competent are they when under stress. (Unger, 2008). Resilient adolescents show competence dealing with threats to their well-being as well as positive functioning during recovery from trauma. “Evidently, whether one understands resilience as a developmental outcome, set of competencies, or coping strategies, there is much overlap between these conceptualizations. What these definitions share in common is that they all argue that resilience occurs in the presence of adversity.” (Unger, 2008, p. 171).
At Animal Assisted Therapy of the Mountain Communities, building resilience is often an important part of our focus with clients of all ages. Some of our animals at the clinic have overcome adversity. Many of our clients can identify with their previous hardships. We use bibliotherapy to incorporate the stories of our animals’ struggles in to the counseling process. When a client can relate to the journey of a therapy animal, it builds empathy and helps form a healing, therapeutic connection to another living being. Also, seeing how the animals are now thriving can instill hope in our clients that they, too, can develop healthy coping skills in a supportive environment. We believe strongly that building a connection to animals while working with a trained therapist can improve resiliency and overall emotional well being. We are passionate about building resilience in through animal therapy for teenagers right here in Evergreen, Colorado.