Customer Reviews

Resilience: How to Bounce Back When the Going Gets Tough!

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Frederic Flach, M.D., graduated from Cornell University Medical College where he currently serves as Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry. He is an attending psychiatrist at the Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital and of St. Vincent's Hospital and Medical Center. He has written numerous books on resilience and the survivor personality, with a particular emphasis on the management of stress throughout one's life.

This 234-page book is clearly written and well laid out, with a table of contents, index and bibliography. Dr. Flach starts the book with an introduction explaining the concept of resilience, which he defines as the "psychological and biological strengths required to successfully master change." In the modern, fragmented, urban world that 95% of us in the U.S. live in today, no topic could be more significant. Dr. Flach has spent years studying how people cope with major catastrophes and terrible hardships, as well as potentially dangerous major turning points in their lives. He has discovered that there are common personality traits of people who are resilient/survivors, including:
--creativity
--a high ability to tolerate pain, emotional and physical
--self-insight
--self-respect
--self-esteem and the ability to restore it when it is diminished or temporarily lost
--a capacity for learning
--the ability to make and keep friends
--the ability to cooperate and inter-depend on others without being dependent
--a vital, evolving perspective on interpreting the events in one's life and giving them meaning
--a willingness to utilize crisis and suffering as an opportunity to heal old wounds, discover new ways to approach life and make themselves over
--a body able to deal with the physical strains of the stress response
--a willingness to "appropriately collapse" in the face of a significant amount of stress and change (take time to experience the extent of the problem on all levels)
--an ability to contain within reasonable limits the amount of disruption in their lives due to the stress and change
--a desire to directly and practically attempt to reassemble the pieces of their lives after collapsing and containing the disruption
--a support network out in the world and a willingness to seek help when they need it, from friends, family or mental health or medical professionals

I find Dr. Flach's theoretical framework fascinating, informative and very useful, to wit: that it is a fact of life in nature that the physical world we are all part of is made up of endless cycles of disruption and reintegration. As human beings with physical bodies, living in the physical world, no matter how brilliantly and creatively we have managed to seemingly defy and work against the natural reality, it remains, always, within and around us. Thus we continually face crisis (the end of a cycle in our life, which demands that we change in response to a newly entering, different reality), and stress (the response of the body to any demand made upon it).

Dr. Flach provides an clear, easily understandable, compelling discussion of both these issues. I found his remarks on stress an excellent expansion on the huge body of literature on this topic written over the past 30-40 years. And I found extremely profound and useful the way he ties stress and disruption-reintegration together by explaining, very clearly, the concept of homeostasis. This, he states, is the innate drive within all living creatures, including humans, to maintain themselves in states of coherence, that is, to return to the status quo after being disturbed. This self-preserving, adaptive capacity is in all of us, and it is essential that we use it, rather than fighting against it, to maintain physical and mental health.

If you were to read only one book on the subject of resilience, this would be a very good choice. It is easy to read, and it makes a logical, concise, clear argument that is consistent throughout. Dr. Flach draws practical, meaningful conclusions, based on his professional experience with thousands of patients and his own professional research, and offers simple, understandable, practical suggestions for ways to survive and grow in the face of the inevitable stress and change we all face constantly.

The New England Journal of Medicine: "Part practical, part inspirational...Written with clarity...contains short, readable examples for all aspects of life...useful to lay persons in times of crises."...Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Saybrook Institute: "Well written and vital. Flach presents ways of coping with stress, recovering from disruption and creating a process by which one can not only survive catastrophe but can escape with flexibility, faith, and the will to endure."

+++++

Based on his over thirty years of experience as a psychiatrist, Frederic Flach reveals the antidote for the destructive effects of stress and change -- resilience. And the good news is that Flach assures us is that the "most encouraging observation I've made over these years is that resilience is a strength most of us can develop through thought and practice."

What is resilience? Flach tells us that it is "the strengths we require to master cycles of disruption [emotional upset caused by stressful events such as a family death, divorce, or job loss] and reintegration [putting the pieces of our life back together] throughout our lives." This book offers simple and practical advice on HOW to perfect those strengths that we all have within us.

In this book, some of the things you will discover are as follows:

(1) Over a dozen traits that will make you more resilient
(2) Why giving into stress and "falling apart" may be the best step to take on the road to resilience
(3) Why the use of prescription drugs may not be the best choice in removing the psychological pain caused by stress
(4) Why creative problem solving is a major part of resilience
(5) The factors in our environment needed to facilitate resilience.

A remarkable quality of this book is that it is easy to read and thus easy to learn from. There is no confusing technical psychobabble. The most interesting aspect of this book is that Flach uses some of his actual patient studies to illustrate his practical advice. Also, there is a large reference section if the reader wants to learn more.

In conclusion, this book will change the way you think about stress FOREVER.

+++++

This is a very encouraging book once you get past the use of the word "resilience," which, at first might seem to imply that the individual lacks "resilience" in the general use of the term. This is not how Flach uses it.

Flach does not "blame" the parents. He points out, that if you did happen to have bad experiences in your past, you do need to recognize and deal with them. He firmly puts the ability to do this, with help if need be, with the reader. The ultimate lesson - it is not only natural, it is a vital part of life to experience problems, hurts, trials, depression, etc. and to move on. Every time we move on, our resilience grows stronger and makes us a more whole and stronger person. If we don't deal with our current or past problems and hurts, we do not grow and our resilience does not grow leading us to possibly greater trouble in the future.

All people go through moments of crisis that they must pass. And Flach wants everyone to know that they not only can make it through, but triumph and grow to a better tomorrow.

I think this book should be read after reading "The Secret Strength of Depression" EXPECIALLY if a person has to deal with depression in themselves or another (which they do, even if they don't realize it Flach points out :) ). Flach first addresses "resilience" here and I think it sets the tone. ALSO, Flach gives a very different and USEFULL interpretation of depression. Depression is NOT very intense negative emotions. It is NOT a very intense low mood. It is not emotions or mood. By separating issues that confuse healing, Flach encourages the individual that they can get better.

Flach is a religious man and it shows in some of his writing in these books (he has other, overtly religious, writings) but it is not overbearing - this is a man who had to council both religious (sometimes dangerously so, as Flach gives a case study of a young man destroyed by guilt) and non-religious individuals.

Like Flach's other book, "The Secret Strength of Depression," the fundamental idea comes across early and the reader can finish the book quite quickly as the flow makes it easy to skip what does not apply to you in particular.

This book is really helpful. It is down to earth and it makes you feel better when you are struggling. It is not a book that tries to force you to "think" happy like so many of them do. This book helps you when you feel down. It helps you feel acceptable and better about going through something bad.

I read this book many years ago and just recently read it again because I was putting together information to help people cope with what we are currently experiencing in our economy. I was reminded of how empowering this book can be.

Resilience contains a great deal of worthwhile information for anyone struggling with change or anyone trying to help others work through change. Some of the highlights of the book that I felt were most helpful include the following:

-- If you feel like you are losing your grounding or falling apart, it is actually a sign that you are healthy. You are
letting go of something deeply embedded within you that will no longer serve you well in the future. While it
is disruptive to you personally, the process of allowing yourself to mourn what you are letting go will help you
become more adaptable going forward.

-- Success is not avoiding the disruption of change, it is having the resilience to recreate a new state of stability.

-- There are six different times during our life cycle when we are most vulnerable to this state of disruption.

-- The attributes of a resilient personality fall into two categories:

Inner Strength (e.g., self-esteem, sense of humor, open-mindedness, wide range of interests, faith, etc.)
Interpersonal Strength (e.g., ability to give and take in interactions with others, a network of friends, self-awareness)

-- Our immediate surroundings, such as our family and workplace, affect our resiliency and there are specific
actions we can take to affect the resiliency of our surroundings.

This book is written by a psychiatrist, and some parts of the book tend to become quite technical, but most of the book is written in laymen terms. I actually liked the 1988 edition better than the 2004 edition because I felt it flowed better. But both editions cover basically the same information, just in different levels of detail. For example, the last edition includes a more detailed discussion of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This book is best for those who want to have an in-depth understanding of resilience, and it is important to keep in mind that Resilience was first published twenty years ago. While the concepts are still relevant and important, they no longer represent the introduction of new thinking.

This is a depressing book for people trying to find resilience within themselves. Dr. Flach blames parenting, childrood, peer groups and "the unconscious" - all of which one cannot change. He seems to believe in psychotherapy not self-help, which is disappointing. What a downer.