Rafael highlights his journey from Poland to Croatia. While there he shared his Gestalt framework on trauma and hope. He also took a deep dive into the history, culture, beauty, and atrocities of the region. Rafael was particularly moved after visiting Auschwitz. He immediately thought about the resiliency of its survivors, including the original tour guides who were survivors themselves. Jim thought about the well-known psychologist Viktor E. Frankl and what he taught us about resiliency after he survived the camps.

Viktor E. Frankl invented Logotherapy which holds that “our primary drive in life is not pleasure, as Freud maintained, but the discovery and pursuit of what we personally find meaningful.”  Living a meaningful life can enhance one’s own resiliency.  Jim and Rafael share their own resiliency factors and how they have tried to impart resiliency skills and wisdom to their own clients. Rafael and Jim find themselves awestruck by the transformational power of resiliency and how it can be a learned skillset. They stressed the 7 C’s of resiliency and its potentiating effect. They noted that resiliency is a critical ingredient for transcending our own history. Resiliency also helps us transcend our own self-limiting thoughts and behaviors. Carl Jung once said the following about resiliency: “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”

WCMI networking group
A networking group for mindfulness-focused clinicians dedicated to learning together & collaborating for more information click here