Friday, April 13, 2012

Family Resilience

"I've long been interested in the concept of resilience.  I grew up in a family challenged by many adversities.  I was often viewed as hardy, despite my family experience.  I later came to see that those challenges made me stronger.  It took a long time to appreciate my parents' struggles and their remarkable courage, perseverance, and resourcefulness.  In my young adulthood, their deficits loomed large.  Traditional psychotherapy dredged up all the negative experiences of childhood and elaborated on parental failings.  The field of mental health was so heavily skewed toward pathology that it might more aptly have been called the field of mental illness.  My clinical training taught me how to diagnose disorders, but gave no attention to healthy functioning or how practitioners might recognize and promote it."
--Froma Walsh, Strengthening Family Resilience

Please share your stories - how do you recognize and promote healthy functioning in your clients and their families, even in the most adverse circumstances?

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