Resilience is the ability to rebuild after trauma. There are factors that promote resilience. A therapist can help a person begin a process of resilience. 

The word resilience comes from the Latin resilientia, a word used in the field of metallurgy to signify the capacity of a material to regain an initial state after a shock or a continuous pressure. 

The term resilience is a concept of psychology that refers to the skills of individuals, groups, families to face deleterious or destabilizing situations: illness, disability, traumatic event … Resilience is the ability to emerge victorious from a ordeal that could have been traumatic.

This concept was evoked in the 1940s by American psychologists and was popularized by Boris Cyrulnik, French neuropsychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He defines resilience as “the ability to thrive anyway, in environments that should have been dilapidated”.

The concept of resilience is applied to two types of situations: to people said to be at risk and who manage to develop without psychological damage and who adapt socially despite very unfavorable family and social living conditions and to people, adults or children. children, who are rebuilding themselves after hardships or traumatic events. 

Dr Boris Cyrulnik gave a description of the profile of the resilient individual as early as 1998

The resilient individual (regardless of his age) would be a subject presenting the following characteristics: 

• a high IQ,
• capable of being autonomous and efficient in its relationship to the environment,
• having a sense of his own worth,
• having good interpersonal skills and empathy,
• able to anticipate and plan,
• and having a good sense of humor.

Individuals who have an aptitude for resilience are in the Boris Cyrulnick-influenced stream of people who received some affection early in life and had an acceptable response to their physical needs, which created in them some form of resistance to adversity. 

The operation of resilience can be broken down into two stages:

• 1st step: the time of the trauma: the person (adult or child) resists psychic disorganization by putting in place defense mechanisms which will allow him to adapt to reality. 
• 2nd step: the time of the integration of the shock and the repair. After the trauma breaks in, there is a gradual reestablishment of bonds, then a reconstruction from adversity. It goes through the need to give meaning to his injury. The evolution of this process tends towards resilience when the person has regained his capacity to hope. She can then be part of a life project and have personal choices.

Antoine Guédeney, child psychiatrist and member of the Paris Psychoanalysis Institute wrote in a book “ we are not resilient on our own, without being in relation ”. Thus, affective factors have a very important role in resilience. Those who can count on the affection of those close to them have the capacity within them to overcome trauma. 

The resilience journey is also rarely done alone. It is often made operative by the intervention of another person: a tutor for children or young people, a teacher, a caregiver. Boris Cyrulnick speaks of “guardians of resilience”. 

Therapy can attempt to bring about a resilient process. The objective of the therapeutic work is to transform the trauma into a motor.