Building resilience through change

Researchers describe resilience as the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, and emphasise that it draws on many resources: relationships, meaning, health habits, skills and the support around you (Southwick et al., 2014). The American Psychological Association likewise frames resilience as a set of behaviours, thoughts and actions that people can build over time.

This framing matters practically. If resilience were a fixed trait, the only advice would be 'have better genes'. As a process, it responds to inputs: sleep, connection, preparation, support, and the demands being placed on you. It also means resilience is not constant — the same person can be resilient in one domain of life and depleted in another, or resilient this year and struggling next.

Studies of people facing loss and potentially traumatic events have found that a stable, healthy pattern of functioning is common — often the most common single outcome (Bonanno, 2004). This is sometimes called the 'resilience trajectory'.

Two cautions belong here. First, 'common' does not mean 'universal': many people struggle and recover gradually, and some develop difficulties that need professional care. Second, resilience after an event is not proof that the event was harmless, and struggling is not proof of weakness. Both responses are human.

Three things recur across the research and in practical guidance. Staying connected to people you trust — isolation reliably makes hard times harder. Focusing on what you can influence — attention is a finite resource, and spending it all on the uncontrollable is exhausting. And keeping basic routines such as sleep, movement and regular meals as steady as you can — these are unglamorous, but they are the platform everything else stands on.

It is also legitimate to name structural realities. A restructure with unclear communication, or a period of change piled on top of an already heavy workload, is harder to adapt to than a single well-managed transition. If the demands around you are unreasonable, part of 'resilience' is saying so — to a manager, a union, a mentor or a clinician — rather than quietly absorbing more.

Two recent King's College London studies add useful nuance. In NHS CHECK, a cohort of 3,289 NHS mental health staff followed for a year during COVID-19, people with higher resilience at the start reported lower burnout and higher wellbeing later — yet the high-resilience group also showed the steepest rise in burnout over time (Kika et al., 2025). The study is observational and self-reported, so it cannot show that resilience caused anything; it does suggest that personal resilience is not a shield against prolonged organisational strain.

A systematic review of 47 resilience interventions for university students found that stress and anxiety may fall after such programmes, with little evidence for effects on depression and inconclusive wellbeing results. Strikingly, most programmes did not change measured resilience itself, and study quality was mostly rated fair (Abulfaraj et al., 2024). These findings are student-specific and cannot be assumed for working adults.

Reflective prompt: which of your current resources is personal (sleep, skills, outlook) and which is structural (staffing, manager support, time)? If only the personal column is being asked to stretch, that is information worth sharing, not a personal failing.