Interdisciplinary Psychology:

The Resilient Factor  The Resilience factor was a very “as long as you do what we say you will be a better person” book. Which isn’t  necessarily a bad thing it’s just not my forte. It was well laid out and easily to fallow but a little too hooky for me. The beginning of the book goes over some of material that will be presented in the book and reviews past ideas and theories that have lead to the resilience theory. The first chapter goes over their process and defining what resilience is, which Includes “ABC”s, avoiding thinking traps, detecting Icebergs, challenging beliefs, putting it in perspective and calming and focusing. Then they talk about what and how resilience is formed, using third person stories to show examples.  Then there are some tests you take to find out how resilience you are. Which was pretty interesting but time consuming. After each test there was a brief explanation of what your score meant.  They tested Emotional Regulation, impulse control, optimism, causal analysis, empathy, self-efficacy, and reaching out. After the tests they go over the “ Pillars” being “life change is possible” which talked about some of the psychology theories that where pessimistic and turned more positive. I liked the little joke about behaviorists.              “ A Behaviorist loses his car keys and frantically begins looking for them in the parking lot. A colleague discovers him looking for his keys in the dirt under a bright overhead light and offers to help. After about thirty minutes of searching, the helper asks if his friend is sure he lost his keys here. “No,” replied the behaviorist. “in fact, I’m pretty sure I lost them over there in the dark alley. But the light is much better here.” It may be easier to shine the light of science and behavior, but if the key to boosting resilience is thinking, that’s what we need to study.”  I love analogies so this was such a great  image for me to look at how psychology used to look a issues. The second pillar “ Thinking is the key to boosting Resilience” In this section I liked the story of Joe and how he “ felt like an accident victim in therapy, feeling like anxiety and depression had hit him like a truck and was lying injured in a ditch.” Mental images like that really drive home the feelings to me and really made me see how a person can feel when they don’t have control of there cognitive process.  The third pillar “thinking is the key”. Which goes over how the different types of thinking being negative,  positive or even overly positive thinking can impact your resilience. The forth pillar “ refocus on the human strengths” which goes over the ability to keep your resilience on going.  The middle of the book goes into learning the skills that create better resilience, first of these are “ABC’s” A being adversity meaning the stressors that create the response, The B being the behavior that is the result of the adversity, and C which is the consequences of the behavior.  They go over how to recognizing what they call your “ticker tape beliefs” which are your thoughts that are going through your mind at the time of the adversity. Then there is the behaviors that can create unwanted consequences, which can be reduced to a few feelings. Those being violation of rights leading to anger, loss either of self or real-world which leads to sadness and depression, Violation of another’s Rights which leads to guilt, future treat which leads to anxiety and fear, and comparing yourself to others which leads to embarrassment.  After going through these consequences there are ways to disconnect, like removing emotions for the issue, finding the beliefs that that created the feelings, writing it down to identify the problems better. Then there are the thinking traps, which the book describes eight commonly found in most people. Which are “ jumping to conclusions, tunnel vision, magnifying and minimizing, personalizing, externalizing, over generalizing, mind reading, and emotional reasoning.”  After looking at the different thinking traps the book went over how people fall into these traps and how to ovoid them. The other factors that can determine whether a persons resilience is compromised has to do with what the book describes as “iceberg beliefs” which are beliefs that are core to a persons personal ideality which are not always recognizable to the individual, when these beliefs are challenged can create problems.  As well as whether one can challenge their beliefs. With in those ideas there are descriptions of the different strategies and skills to help. They ended this part of the book with quick fix and time restraint skills what can be done anywhere. The last part of the book is about how to use the skills discussed with family, work and children. The last chapter goes over how to use and maintain resilience through out early day life.  As a whole I liked this book, it had a lot of individual stories to show the skills, which was really nice at first but as the book continued I found myself skimming a lot of the stories, It was kind of strange how the book was selling it self the whole time but I guess that's how a lot of self help books work. When reading the book I keep thinking of people that have poor resilience, and how this book and skills would be perfect for them. Out of all the books we have read I found this my least favorite, in writing style and content.