This unique book shows how resilience can be reinforced and structured to create stronger individuals and societies, vis a vis increasing traumatic and stressful life circumstances. The author investigates several human practices, processes and features that aid our capacity to resist, combat, adapt to or counter extreme traumatisation. These features and capabilities come into play at the interface between vulnerability and resilience, leading to a deeper understanding of the mechanism of resilience itself. Each chapter illustrates the components necessary to achieve resilience: attachment, connectedness, memory, testimony, education and the development and practice of artistic and creative activities. The book also explores the positive effects of moral commitment, empathy and altruism, and psychodynamic intergenerational therapy on trauma, showing that acts and feelings of compassion and forgiveness, and an appreciation for and use of higher order symbolic structures, such as art and creativity, together contribute to building and reinforcing resilience and social solidarity.

Drawing on cases across a range of life-threatening experiences, Laurence Gonzales makes a compelling argument about fear, courage and the adaptability of the human spirit.

In 1990, after a sudden cardiac event, Joyce Mikal-Flynn was dead for twenty-two minutes. While CPR and determined doctors returned her to life, she came to find that this new life wasn’t her life at all. Faced with depression, personal and professional setbacks, she ultimately recognized that this was not an end point—but a beginning. Over time, she understood that taking control begins with the essential choice to move forward. Her struggles fueled her. You got this, she told herself with every obstacle, failure, and misstep. Trauma and crisis are inescapable aspects of life. Framed, at times, as something to get over, trauma never fully leaves those who experience it. For over two decades, Dr. Mikal-Flynn has worked with and studied issues faced by survivors. She understands and recognizes their desire to move forward, identifying specific mindsets and behaviors that encourage progress. Making the choice to move forward, fierce determination, and well-researched actions are key for survival and growth. Interlacing stories with research on genetics, posttraumatic growth, and the neuroscience of resilience and happiness, this book outlines how survivors of trauma structure a positive and productive response. An ingenious strengths-based rehabilitation system—metahabilitation—engages them by uncovering and developing their resilience, grit, and capacity for growth after trauma. This book shows you how survivors are built and presents a unique system guiding them forward.

The nursing profession is under pressure. Financial demands, student debt, the target culture, political scrutiny in the wake of major care scandals and increasing workloads are all taking their toll on professional morale and performance. This timely book considers the meaning of resilience in this adverse context and explains why measures to preserve individual nurses’ and students’ well-being are flawed if they don’t take into account wider political and organizational perspectives. Arguing that healthcare can be thought about and experienced differently, this book: provides a summary of the latest research on resilience, explaining its relevance and also limitations for nurses; considers debates about compassion and highlights the effects of policy agendas on nurse education and nursing work; re-evaluates nursing’s professional identity, including where nursing has come from and the effects of class, gender and race on its powerbase; assesses the role of politics and social media, both in driving change and feeding resistance; and introduces the idea of critical resilience as a complete framework for resisting bullying and fostering survival and change in the nursing workforce. Direct, upbeat, at times provocative and witty, this agenda-setting book enables nurses to understand why they feel the way they do. It also lists what opportunities are available to them to change, resist and survive in what has become a complex, challenging – if still deeply rewarding – line of work.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The incredible true story of survival and salvation that is the basis for two major motion pictures: 2014’s Unbroken and the upcoming Unbroken: Path to Redemption. On a May afternoon in 1943, an Army Air Forces bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean and disappeared, leaving only a spray of debris and a slick of oil, gasoline, and blood. Then, on the ocean surface, a face appeared. It was that of a young lieutenant, the plane’s bombardier, who was struggling to a life raft and pulling himself aboard. So began one of the most extraordinary odysseys of the Second World War. The lieutenant’s name was Louis Zamperini. In boyhood, he’d been a cunning and incorrigible delinquent, breaking into houses, brawling, and fleeing his home to ride the rails. As a teenager, he had channeled his defiance into running, discovering a prodigious talent that had carried him to the Berlin Olympics and within sight of the four-minute mile. But when war had come, the athlete had become an airman, embarking on a journey that led to his doomed flight, a tiny raft, and a drift into the unknown. Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater. Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion. His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will. In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit. Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit. Praise for Unbroken “Extraordinarily moving . . . a powerfully drawn survival epic.”—The Wall Street Journal “[A] one-in-a-billion story . . . designed to wrench from self-respecting critics all the blurby adjectives we normally try to avoid: It is amazing, unforgettable, gripping, harrowing, chilling, and inspiring.”—New York “Staggering . . . mesmerizing . . . Hillenbrand’s writing is so ferociously cinematic, the events she describes so incredible, you don’t dare take your eyes off the page.”—People “A meticulous, soaring and beautifully written account of an extraordinary life.”—The Washington Post “Ambitious and powerful . . . a startling narrative and an inspirational book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Marvelous . . . Unbroken is wonderful twice over, for the tale it tells and for the way it’s told. . . . It manages maximum velocity with no loss of subtlety.”—Newsweek “Moving and, yes, inspirational . . . [Laura] Hillenbrand’s unforgettable book . . . deserve[s] pride of place alongside the best works of literature that chart the complications and the hard-won triumphs of so-called ordinary Americans and their extraordinary time.”—Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air “Hillenbrand . . . tells [this] story with cool elegance but at a thrilling sprinter’s pace.”—Time “Unbroken is too much book to hope for: a hellride of a story in the grip of the one writer who can handle it.”—Christopher McDougall, author of Born to Run

You have survived the crisis—trauma, disease, accident, or war—now how do you get your life back? The shark attacked while she was snorkeling, tearing through Micki Glenn’s breast and shredding her right arm. Her husband, a surgeon, saved her life on the spot, but when she was safely home she couldn’t just go on with her life. She had entered an even more profound survival journey: the aftermath. The survival experience changes everything because it invalidates all your previous adaptations, and the old rules don’t apply. In some cases survivors suffer more in the aftermath than they did during the actual crisis. In all cases, they have to work hard to reinvent themselves. Drawing on gripping cases across a wide range of life-threatening experiences, Laurence Gonzales fashions a compelling argument about fear, courage, and the adaptability of the human spirit. Micki Glenn was later moved to say: “I don’t regret that this happened to me. [It] has been . . . probably the single most positive experience I’ve ever had.”

Stop running. Nothing is chasing you. Thanks to technology, today’s world is more comfortable than ever, but our survival instinct that evolved to protect us from danger is on high alert. Though mild discomforts such as work demands, traffic jams, family conflict, or having to perform under pressure are not life threatening, they can still trigger the brain’s fight or flight fear reaction. And this response can lead to a reliance on drugs, alcohol, overeating, insomnia, phobias, chronic pain, illness, or just losing our temper for no apparent reason. In this eye-opening book, psychologist Dr. Marc Schoen offers practical strategies to tame your overly reactive survival instinct and conquer fear, build resilience, boost decision-making, and improve every aspect of your life.