Head Tale

You know that feeling when you hear or say a word over and over so much, it stops having meaning?

That’s sort of how I feel about the term “resilience”, especially in a workplace context.

(Shea’s got me beat on that – she’s actually the one who hears it more than I do as that’s a very common term in healthcare these days.  And there’s also no word at her job that makes her angrier!)

I (and she) have a number of issues with the idea of “resilience”:

The biggest is that it simply shifts responsibility from the employer/system to the employee/individual and lets the employer off the hook for understaffing, toxic workplaces, bad management, and a host of other sins:

“Sure, you’re working short for the sixth day in a row and there’s patients sleeping in the hallways and your “breaks” are eating a PopTart at the desk between call bells.  But have you tried being more resilient?”

I also think that it creates unfair comparisons, even subliminally, about who is “better” at dealing with challenges instead of acknowledging that everyone deals with things differently:

“That person’s mom died but they were back at work the next day – how resilient!” vs. “That person’s dog died and they took a week away from work – they need to be more resilient.”

Another HUGE issue is that talking about resillience often happens without acknowledging how being “resilient” is also a matter of privilege.

“Your car broke down and you didn’t just take it to the shop to have it fixed? the six-figure manager says to the part-time worker who makes minimum wage while driving an old beater with an odometer number similar number to the salary of the manager.”

Another issue is that “resilience” seems like the latest buzzword/fad in management circles.  I asked Chad (ChatGPT) if there was a timeline of “trendy” movements in management and this is what it came up with:

The bigger historical pattern

I’d summarize the progression like this:

1950s: Think positively.
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1960s: Find yourself.
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1970s: Take control.
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1980s: Build self-esteem.
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1990s: Become effective.
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2000s: Become resilient.
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2010s: Optimize yourself.
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2020s: Regulate yourself and protect your boundaries.

And there is a fascinating tension running through all of it.

The individual is repeatedly told:

“You have more control over your life than you think.”

That’s empowering.

But eventually it can become:

“If your life isn’t working, you haven’t worked on yourself enough.”

The self-help movement has gradually shifted more of the responsibility for dealing with difficult environments from institutions onto individuals.

That doesn’t make resilience, mindfulness, self-esteem, boundaries or growth mindset inherently bad. It does mean they’re worth examining alongside the conditions people are being asked to cope with.

Finally, I asked Chad for a few reasons “Resilience” is problematic:

1. It shifts responsibility onto you
Resilience frames hardship as something you should absorb. If you struggle, it feels like a personal failure. This hides structural causes like workload, poverty, trauma, bad management, or policy failures.

2. It normalizes bad conditions
If people keep coping, leaders never fix the system. Schools, hospitals, workplaces, and families stay unhealthy because people “handle it.”

3. It rewards suppression, not processing
Resilience often gets confused with staying calm, pushing through, or not showing distress. That can mean bottling emotions, which later shows up as burnout, anxiety, or physical symptoms.

4. It glorifies endurance
You get praise for tolerating more pain, more stress, more unfairness. Endurance becomes a virtue. Rest, limits, and saying no look like weakness.

5. It ignores context and biology
Not everyone starts with the same nervous system, support network, or history. Trauma, ADHD, anxiety, poverty, and discrimination change how stress hits. “Be resilient” ignores this.

6. It creates survivor bias
We hear stories from people who “made it through.” We do not hear from those who burned out, left, or broke down. That skews what we think is realistic.

7. It gets weaponized in workplaces and schools
Resilience training replaces real change. Instead of lowering workload, improving staffing, or fixing culture, people get workshops on coping better.

8. It confuses adaptation with health
You can adapt to very unhealthy situations. That does not mean you are okay. It means you learned to survive.

9. It discourages asking for help
If resilience is the goal, needing help feels like failure. People hide struggle longer than they should.

10. It turns a human trait into a moral judgment
Resilient becomes “good person.” Not resilient becomes “weak.” That is not how stress and recovery work.

A healthier reframe looks like this:

• The goal is not to be more resilient.
• The goal is to reduce what you must be resilient against.
• The goal is recovery, support, limits, and safer systems.

Resilience is useful when it describes recovery with support. It is harmful when it describes enduring without it.

…and to be fair, I also asked for a list of the positives of the concept:

Resilience has real benefits when you use it correctly and do not turn it into a moral rule.

1. Faster recovery after setbacks
You return to baseline sooner after stress, loss, or failure. This protects your mood, sleep, and focus.

2. Lower long term stress load
Resilient people do not stay in fight or flight as long. Their nervous system settles faster. That reduces wear on the body.

3. Better problem solving under pressure
You think clearly when things go wrong. You do not freeze or spiral. You act.

4. Persistence toward goals
You keep going after mistakes, rejection, or slow progress. This is strongly linked to skill growth and achievement.

5. Emotional regulation
You feel emotions without being overwhelmed by them. You can name what you feel and still function.

6. Realistic optimism
You expect difficulty but believe you can handle it. This improves motivation and reduces avoidance.

7. Stronger relationships
Resilient people ask for help sooner. They also support others without burning out as quickly.

8. Protection against burnout
You notice strain earlier. You recover between stress cycles instead of stacking them.

9. Adaptability
You adjust to change without losing your sense of self. This matters in work, health, and relationships.

10. Confidence built from evidence
You trust yourself because you have handled hard things before. This is earned, not forced.

The key difference from the harmful version:

Healthy resilience = recover, regulate, adapt, seek support.
Unhealthy resilience = endure, suppress, tolerate, stay silent.

There are ways for workplaces to legitimately measure and/or improve resilience among their workforce.

Some things that can help:
– regular analysis of sick call rates
– regular analysis of turnover
– exit interviews (though these are fraught with traps)
– employment engagement surveys
– 360 feedback instead of one-directional reviews
– making sure “mental health *is* health” isn’t just a phrase in the employee handbook but understood at all levels of the organization.

(The perogy picture is an inside joke…you’ll have to buy my memoirs to learn the story.  Or just send me a DM and I’ll tell you!) 😉

– ensuring consistent onboarding/ongoing training for *all* employees at *all* levels – not just new hires.
– provide alternate avenues for conflict resolution outside of traditional grievance procedures (in unionized environments) or legal procedings (in non-unionized)

Anyhow, I (and Chad) could go on.  But I’ll just end where I began with how words lose their meaning through overuse:

Resilient.
Resilency.
Resilent.
Resilent.
Silence.
Be Silent.
Don’t Question.
Don’t Complain.
Don’t Resist.
Re-absorb it.
Re-accept it.
Be Resilient!

Because at the end of the day, are we actually building resilience?  Or just teaching people to tolerate things that are unacceptable, insulting or even abusive?