the trouble with resilience narratives

This past year has been a difficult one for me, including a series of personal traumas and professional challenges, even before the current pandemic situation hit. I am humbled and thankful for the outpouring of support I received from family, friends, and colleagues, but one day, hearing for the umpteenth time something about my resilience, I bristled. “I don’t want to have to be resilient!” As I looked into this thought/feeling, I was reminded of all the times I’ve coached others towards resilience, which I had learned, was defined as “the ability to bounce back.” Indeed, resilience is an important life skill, but it can leave one feeling like one of those inflatable punching bag clowns I remember from my childhood.

We all love a good come back story, and it certainly beats staying down in the dirt. But, resilience narratives can equate to gaslighting, especially if we are too quick to go there. Karen Nicholson has written about “soft touch hegemony,” in which worker empowerment is leveraged for business returns (2015, p. 330). Here I am reminded of that Rene Brown cartoon about empathy, where someone thinks they are being caring, but really they are not allowing another person the time and space to feel what they must and ought to. If we’re too quick to look for silver linings, it may seem like we are denying the existence of the cloud.

These aren’t the only issues with resilience narratives. As I questioned why I should feel icky about resilience, I thought also of Meredith Farkas’ 2017 article in Library Journal, “Less is not more: rejecting resilience narratives for library workers,” in which Farkas connects resilience narratives to cultures that demand we do more with less, accept what we’re given, and go above and beyond without due recompense, working ourselves into the ground.

For leaders, all this means not to be so quick with the resilience narratives. Moreover, it begs the question, is there a root cause that you or your organization can address? For example, I have worked in a few organizations where security concerns were a recurring stressor. Revising our codes of conduct, offering more training, and hiring security personnel addressed the problem itself, rather than just demanding that staff deal with these situations again and again.

It is also important to think of the underlying assumptions and privilege in coach speak as to resilience and self care. Not everyone has equal access to time and space for self care. If we are asking others to be resilient, we should be asking also what we can do to engender the circumstances for their resilience, including fair pay and health care and a schedule that supports their needs.

Resilience is an amazing and essential skill, but before we ask folks to bounce back, let’s stop and ask, back to what?

Nicholson, K.P. 2015. The McDonaldization of academic libraries and the values of transformational change. College & Research Libraries, 76 (3): 328-338.